Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[CjC]

After been peeved off all weekend about the car, engine an relative pace, I'm pleased JB finished the race!
Sky sports were reporting that the honda is running on 30% power, IF that's true then there is a lot of ceiling space for the engine to move into and also the chassis and aero improvements. Let's see how the season pans out- can't wIt to see an all out quali lap

I do not believe this 30%. In the fight with the FI you could clearly see full power on the two DRS straights. I think they have their biggest problems with MGU-H, because Button was much slower on the short straights between the corners.

I do agree that the 30% is a very low figure, but I do trust sky with their info as they have respectable journalists talking to respectable representatives from the teams.... I dunno, I'm not sure if I believe it or not. The engine is definitely turned down but by how much only honda really know...

[RicME85]

Surely its a reduction of 30%?

[jason.parker.86]

The problem McLaren have here is they ran a Mercedes engine last year. Mercedes were never going to give them any technical data because of the Honda alignment but McLaren should have had Honda in the back of there car last year gathering valuable data for this year.
In my opinion the Mercedes engine is in a league of its own... and only Ferrari seem to have caught up sufficiently (I bet Alonso is kicking himself).
In my opinion there is something McLaren and Honda are trying to achieve which is the reason behind there reliability woes. A company such as Honda would have dyno's coming out of there ears and I believe the engine itself is fine. The problem is electronic... they are trying to do some magic trickery which is proving hard to get working.
The only other time I can think McLaren struggled this bad was with the octopus exhaust system which was so complex that not even they understood it.

[Shakeman]

The problem McLaren have here is they ran a Mercedes engine last year. Mercedes were never going to give them any technical data because of the Honda alignment but McLaren should have had Honda in the back of there car last year gathering valuable data for this year.

And how do you suppose they went about doing that with Merc engineers assigned to McLaren in the garage?

The data you speak of would be accessible through Merc provided software tools and any breach of confidentiality would've left McLaren open to another spy data FIA investigation and at the very least their contract being torn up with Merc and having no engines to run.

The thread needs a bit more Occam's Razor.

[GoranF1]

interview with one of the Honda engineers pre-race

-Says they (Honda) did intensive testing on their engine and systems all season long in their factory last season
-Their engines is easily as powerful as Mercedes according to their figures, but still working on driveability and fuel consumpton, 2 things that's not easy to control without a year of experience
-Did not expect so many problems in testing because everything was fine in factory
-Still trying to finetune and change some parts in the car because not everything has been 100% yet (they were surprised by some Mclaren parts)
-They decided to run at approximately 63% engine mapping to ensure they finish this race, but will tune it up and down in the race to further test some key components of the engines + Mclaren parts

EDIT:

Alpesh Patel did a rough estimate with the simulator through reported figures (100% from all systems) from Honda itself and conservative estimates is about average of 3.4s faster on race pace. Quali pace is unknown because of the lack of figures and evidence.


Source; Autosport forums.

[Jef Patat]

Those % power figures just say nothing, 30%, 63%, half, ... Percentage of what? Nominal, max, .. How are we supposed to interpret those nonestatements? Surely it doesn't mean that at 100% they are going to take off and fly over Mercedes to double them.

[RicME85]

Surely it just means 'of the power units ability'

[Per]

Those % power figures just say nothing, 30%, 63%, half, ... Percentage of what? Nominal, max, .. How are we supposed to interpret those nonestatements? Surely it doesn't mean that at 100% they are going to take off and fly over Mercedes to double them.

Exactly. It means nothing if you don't complete the math.

If you assume top speed is purely driven by power vs. aerodynamic drag, then power goes with the third power of speed. If at top speed they are only at 30% of the potential, it means they can go faster by a factor of (1/0.3)^(1/3)=1.49. I think I saw Button hit 300 kph in qualifying so it would basically mean the car can go up to 450 kph at full power on an infinite straight. With a medium-high downforce setting.

Yeah right.

30% reduction already comes close to realistic figures but then you are still right, it will never be 30% across the whole RPM range and ERS mappings.

[mrluke]

So rather than the full 900bhp they were running 560?? nope.

[proteus]

Kevins engine expiring on the warm-up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnospzxD0cM

[nzjrs]

Kevins engine expiring on the warm-up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnospzxD0cM

Ted said in the notebook that was an engine failure. Ted can be pretty loose with his words, but would anyone care to predict if that was fatal for one of the four engines?

[enri_the_red]

to me it seems that there were metal pieces flying off the exhaust, so I would guess that at least it was fatal for one of the turbochargers

[turbof1]

Kevins engine expiring on the warm-up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnospzxD0cM

Jacky told it could be a valve. Now they are allowed to replaced the valves, so hopefully it's something like this and keep using that engine.

[proteus]

Kevins engine expiring on the warm-up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnospzxD0cM

Jacky told it could be a valve. Now they are allowed to replaced the valves, so hopefully it's something like this and keep using that engine.

It depends how much damage did the engine block suffer....the distance he drove with components grinded inside is quite long

[piast9]

With all respect to Jacky I don't thinkt it's a valve. There are pieces flying behind the car, as enri_the_red noticed, probably through the exhaust. Even if not through the exhaust there was a substantial failure in the engine and it is not a valve that has to be replaced but whole turbo, head, engine block or one of the ERSes.