Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[dren]

So there are no upgrades to the engine in testing?

I thought there was a major upgrade in Spain, now it has been pushed back to after Monaco?

They never said Spain would have a large update package. They said Spain would start a cycle for a series of updates coming over the next few races.

Stevesingo that article is, forgive my French here, bull****. Arai's actual comments were that he is targeting a podium mid season-he hopes. He never said it will happen. They conveniently left out that part of the quote. Arai is not the best English speaker which means he often makes mistakes speaking English and press being what it is chews it up even more and spits it out to readers and then people come on this forum posting how Arai is predicting a podium by mid season, what utter rubbish.

Yes, very true. Those are targets but not actual predictions. The press dicks it all up.

[PlatinumZealot]

Amus back-pedalling on the axial compressor claims.. now saying it is small centrifugal. After so many false predictions over the years I won't believe a thing they say until I see the compressor for myself.

[FW17]

Ryo Mukumoto

Q: Hi Ryo, nice to meet you here. Could you tell us the latest development of Honda?
RM: Hi. Currently we are no near top. We are developing still, but it's no easy. We have good (progress), about half (50%) and we continue to fight. We have good onwards from the engine, but right now we are still too far.

Q: Alright, what's the problem with the engine these few races?
RM: We cannot run full like others. Our engineers good work in Japan and we have manage to reach getting 70% full power in supeingo (Spain), and we will try to extract more from power engine. The way our engine designed mean's it's all new and we cannot examples from the rest, we have to experiment ourselves. The position of various key components are unique and some are not ideal, but some good. We did alot of research before coming up with this design, I admit some have not worked but we change them soon use tokens and they will good.

Q: Could you see Mclaren-Honda winning a race this season?
RM: No, difficult next season too. You know new team hard to win race, compare to the rest who work long together. We will try to win a race next year, but no guarantees in motor. Our target is to be near 3rd team (Williams) at the end of this season. It would be a good (achievement) if we do it.

Q: We have heard a lot of things about the Mclaren chassis and the size zero rear end. Care to share more about it?
RM: Eh... small size good for aero, and we package our power (engine) to match it. There is more to (extract) it, but currently if you notice we have not make big steps in aero. There is a big change coming up (b-spec), on target for England (Silverstone). It will be launched with our new engine.

So Silverstone is when the B comes out. Hopefully as big a turnaround as the 19

Maybe we can also see a naked journalist again

[kaepernickus]

Can someone tell me who Ryo Mukumoto is?
I have googled the name and the only guy I found was the one who is a designer gone engineer responsible for the Honda S660 car (concept).
That wouldn't be my most trusted resource.

[tuj]

"One area where we are weak is horsepower - we need more horsepower. So one area to use the tokens is combustion, and the MGU-K and MGU-H because energy is a very important part. Combustion and energy recovery systems are very important."

Asked as to how that could be achieved, Arai said: "Maybe we need to change the combustion concept, or the turbocharger, or the camshaft, those kind of parts. We should try to change the combustion concept because maybe the other power-unit suppliers are always thinking about better combustion characteristics. Every day, on the research and development side they are thinking about it, working on or testing a new combustion concept to get more horsepower to immediately apply that. Maybe that's the area to use the tokens."

emphasis added.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119023

[dren]

Ryo Mukumoto
Q: We have heard a lot of things about the Mclaren chassis and the size zero rear end. Care to share more about it?
RM: Eh... small size good for aero, and we package our power (engine) to match it. There is more to (extract) it, but currently if you notice we have not make big steps in aero. There is a big change coming up (b-spec), on target for England (Silverstone). It will be launched with our new engine.

So Silverstone is when the B comes out. Hopefully as big a turnaround as the 19

Maybe we can also see a naked journalist again

That almost mirrors Ferrari last year. They designed and packaged the PU for aero gains that were never realized at the detriment of PU performance.

[proteus]

Not really. Ferrari intentionally provided the underpowered engine, due to their problem with fuel consumption + they thought aero was the most important. Honda in the other way has powerfull engine which is not operating at full power due to reliability issues. They didnt intentionally made a weaker engine, they just werent expecting to have so much trouble running it. For me this more looks like the MP4-18 problems. But this time on the track - racing.

[Glyn]

Not really. Ferrari intentionally provided the underpowered engine, due to their problem with fuel consumption + they thought aero was the most important. Honda in the other way has powerfull engine which is not operating at full power due to reliability issues.

Reliability issues, perhaps caused by squeeze effect of tight aero package.

If at the end of the year, they prove us wrong. Props to them.

[bill shoe]

"One area where we are weak is horsepower - we need more horsepower. So one area to use the tokens is combustion, and the MGU-K and MGU-H because energy is a very important part. Combustion and energy recovery systems are very important."

Asked as to how that could be achieved, Arai said: "Maybe we need to change the combustion concept, or the turbocharger, or the camshaft, those kind of parts. We should try to change the combustion concept because maybe the other power-unit suppliers are always thinking about better combustion characteristics. Every day, on the research and development side they are thinking about it, working on or testing a new combustion concept to get more horsepower to immediately apply that. Maybe that's the area to use the tokens."

emphasis added.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119023

So Honda is weak in horsepower. And energy storage/recovery. And it's also known that driveability is weak. And reliability. Other than that, doing great. So Honda will simply address those areas and they will be competitive.

I know there is something lost due to Arai being a non-native-English speaker, but I still think that is one of the most bizzare attempts at optimism I've read.

[tuj]

I thought what was interesting is that he seems to be alluding to the combustion process and/or flame-front propagation as a weak point in the current engine. This is particularly interesting as it might have been the reason we hear the Honda engine sounding different to the others. Perhaps they have went for a different combustion 'concept' than the others?

It seems to me that if you get the combustion process wrong, you've also probably got the wrong heads, wrong piston tops, wrong cams, etc...

[godlameroso]

I thought what was interesting is that he seems to be alluding to the combustion process and/or flame-front propagation as a weak point in the current engine. This is particularly interesting as it might have been the reason we hear the Honda engine sounding different to the others. Perhaps they have went for a different combustion 'concept' than the others?

It seems to me that if you get the combustion process wrong, you've also probably got the wrong heads, wrong piston tops, wrong cams, etc...

That's where Honda's engine building expertise comes into play, maybe McLaren is helping tweak Honda's designs to work better. It's obvious there's a lot of information flowing across both sides, and it's one thing to be able to manufacture an engine, and another to tune it for power. Maybe McLaren learned some things from having Mercedes engines for so long, granted v10's and v8's are a far cry from today's power units, but there have to be some design philosophies that can be carried over.

[Sasha]

That was a Spanish fluff poltico story(pushing the writers own agenda).

1)Ryo is a designer and not an engineer,so he would never be working on any Honda engine/power-train.

2)He is the Lead for the S660 and S1000 and not a team member of the HondaF1 project.

3)How could that Spanish reporter talk to him in Spain when Ryo was in Japan working 16 hour days on his next projects S660 Type-R and S1000??????????????????

[Mesteño]

That was a Spanish fluff poltico story(pushing the writers own agenda).

1)Ryo is a designer and not an engineer,so he would never be working on any Honda engine/power-train.

2)He is the Lead for the S660 and S1000 and not a team member of the HondaF1 project.

3)How could that Spanish reporter talk to him in Spain when Ryo was in Japan working 16 hour days on his next projects S660 Type-R and S1000??????????????????

I must insist, it does not come from Marca as much as I hate that newspaper, it comes from FOX, or at least that is what they claim, and I read that interview long before Marca news.

[Jef Patat]

It's fun that they now actually put their source in bold:
http://www.marca.com/2015/05/17/motor/f ... 93242.html

[ringo]

So Honda is weak in horsepower. And energy storage/recovery. And it's also known that driveability is weak. And reliability.

Yep the whole engine is crap.

Other than that, doing great. So Honda will simply address those areas and they will be competitive.

Sure doing great, despite the minor setbacks with every aspect of the engine.