Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[PlatinumZealot]

Do you mean to charge the battery and propel the car at the same time? Example MGUH out put 200hp to the K.. 160 to propel the car and 40hp to charge the battery? In theory it is possible. I'm not really sure of the situation where you would have excess boost under maximum acceleration though.. but it should be possible.

[gruntguru]

No he meant energy per lap.

Highly unlikely anyone has more than 120 kW from the MGUH. I did some calculations earlier in the 1.6 thread - can't remember exactly but it was well under 120 kW. The only way would be much higher boost and higher compressor and turbine efficiencies. (I assumed 80%)

[maguetox]

Honda just keeps going:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_qe7EmWcAABevw.jpg

@Lucky: Nice article. Pretty much Scarbs Version of how the PU Layout is isn't it?

A post race celebration?

what they are going to celebrate?

[Juzh]

Do you mean to charge the battery and propel the car at the same time? Example MGUH out put 200hp to the K.. 160 to propel the car and 40hp to charge the battery? In theory it is possible. I'm not really sure of the situation where you would have excess boost under maximum acceleration though.. but it should be possible.

MGU-H transfers recovered energy in KJ (not kw), and that energy is unlimited. Doubtful anyone actually recovers enough to reach K 160 bhp limit. ~90kw was a number thrown around some time ago.

Highly unlikely anyone has more than 120 kW from the MGUH. I did some calculations earlier in the 1.6 thread - can't remember exactly but it was well under 120 kW. The only way would be much higher boost and higher compressor and turbine efficiencies. (I assumed 80%)

This.

[Kiril Varbanov]

9 engine development tokens left for Honda this year, as an average of rivals.

[Turbo]

The Honda sounds awesome. Nice mean Growl

[ringo]

The honda seems to be a failure after the first praxtice sessions of the year. I am really confused as to what is so critical that this engine cannot perform at its intended power level. What is really so wrong with it?
And how can such a bad engine pass through so many checks and end up on the track?

[akshat21]

The honda seems to be a failure after the first praxtice sessions of the year. I am really confused as to what is so critical that this engine cannot perform at its intended power level. What is really so wrong with it?
And how can such a bad engine pass through so many checks and end up on the track?

Ron Dennis did say that the engine is a "piece of jewelry". Beautiful to look. Not much good for anything else.

[taperoo2k]

The honda seems to be a failure after the first praxtice sessions of the year. I am really confused as to what is so critical that this engine cannot perform at its intended power level. What is really so wrong with it?
And how can such a bad engine pass through so many checks and end up on the track?

Too early to judge the Honda Power Unit a failure. It seems Honda have been very aggressive in the design and the packaging from McLaren means they have a lot of issues to sort through. Once they get on top of the issues then we may see the true potential of the power unit. Could take all season to find out though.

[damager21]

Honda confirms running detuned engine for reliability.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118058

"I expected in Barcelona much better pace in Australia, but unfortunately we don't have the experience of higher temperatures so we could not [risk] losing the engine in the first race," said Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai.

"Our settings are very conservative for this weekend, so that is the reason why we lose power with the MGU-K and the engine itself.

"The heat problem is not only with the engine, but also the MGU-K, we took that [reduction in] power to survive several races with the one engine."

"Yes, we have identified the issues, actually we have much less issues this weekend than we had during testing," said racing director Eric Boullier.

Eric Boullier and Yasuhisa Arai
"That is good news, we made some progress.

"There is a fix in place and we are working on an 'absolutely' recovery. But is there a timescale? We don't know.

"We just want to do our best to recover as quickly as possible.

[weissblau]

I am surprised that Honda did choose this layout of the turbo/MGU-H..
From the results of last year they should have made a better design. Either a copy of Merc or something similar.
Their design seems to be the worst from a thermal standpoint.
Is the seal they are having problems with in the MGU-H?

[PlatinumZealot]

The Engine is running on 50% of the power range (not sure if this means 50% boost or not) according to Arai.
They are saying that the engine is working 100% reliable mechanically and that the root of the problems is the PU mappings which are up to now, are not dialed in.

[Thefuelman]

Looks like Mclaren took big risks to build a winning car from the start, with narrow margins and all tightly packed. I guess it's in their DNA, to design a car that could win races instead of building a test platform (with extra cooling, good and fast acces to electronics, etc).

I don't think Honda made any big mistakes with the ICE, thats pretty straight forward design for a racing company (because of the low revs), so the biggest problem would be in the electronics, wire loom and software. Most of those can be changed without tokens.

So, McLaren has the aero to win, the ICE to win, just have to fix the electronics.... so who knows, they might still surprise us!

but looking in hindsight, with the amount of money wasted in these first few races (not just the whole pm4-30 design, but also two WC drivers), for the same money they could have bought Manor or Catheram last year and raced/tested the Honda engine before it went to McLaren.

Finally someone with some logic and sense, I like this post and I think later in the season McLaren will surprise a lot of people!

I hear you but if your that far off the pace you havn't done any performance testing. Its a big jump to conclude that they have a winning car and winning ICE unit. Push the car to be 4 or 5 seconds a lap is more than just those 2 things, more power= more traction needed, higher entry speed to corners, better balance needed to cope, the ERS changes. Pushing the aero to greater limits and gathering data that they have never encountered before. I just dont see it as simple as saying they just need to sort the energy recovery systems out and they will be leading.
I recall the FW24 williams had a BMW engine upgrade that had crazy bhp and it was detrimental for a while as traction was all over the place and race performance really suffered for a while midseason.
Lets just suppose that the aero and car are a match for Red Bull or Mercedes and they are this far off i.e 5 seconds, from what we have seen thats even more than losing all ERS for the entire lap. Remember Mercedes losing 2 or 3 seconds a lap when ERS failed in canada last year? My point is for the car to be as good as your saying and all the deficit being drivetrain they would have to be running with no ERS at all and losing a slice of ICE power aswell. I think turning this around will be a very long arduous process rather than a quick fix.

[JimClarkFan]

Looks like Mclaren took big risks to build a winning car from the start, with narrow margins and all tightly packed. I guess it's in their DNA, to design a car that could win races instead of building a test platform (with extra cooling, good and fast acces to electronics, etc).

I don't think Honda made any big mistakes with the ICE, thats pretty straight forward design for a racing company (because of the low revs), so the biggest problem would be in the electronics, wire loom and software. Most of those can be changed without tokens.

So, McLaren has the aero to win, the ICE to win, just have to fix the electronics.... so who knows, they might still surprise us!

but looking in hindsight, with the amount of money wasted in these first few races (not just the whole pm4-30 design, but also two WC drivers), for the same money they could have bought Manor or Catheram last year and raced/tested the Honda engine before it went to McLaren.

Yep, I actually believe that despite how poor this initial result is it was the correct move by Mclaren to seek out another engine partnership.

It was brave, bold and overhyped, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was the correct decision. I truly believe Ron when he says that you can't win a championship if you aren't a works team.

[GoranF1]

The Engine is running on 50% of the power range (not sure if this means 50% boost or not) according to Arai.
They are saying that the engine is working 100% reliable mechanically and that the root of the problems is the PU mappings which are up to now, are not dialed in.

source?