Mclaren MP4-30 Honda

[CjC]

I think they sacrificed a lot and you can't forget size 0. I speak with two people on staff at Honda Racing on a regular basis. One being a relative and one a friend who I met at Toyota Racing. We did not work at Honda Racing at the same time. I do know they virtually scrapped their initial design concept they started in Q4 of 2013 when they received the size dimension requirements of the PU for the 4-30 chassis in mid 2014. That is why I don't understand why Honda didn't put their foot down at that time and tell Ron Dennis it can't be done. Oh well, what's done is done and now everyone is feeling the pain including me. I have my doubts about the MP4-30 chassis as being excellent. If you put Merc's current 2015 PU into the MP4-30, I really don't believe it would be any quicker than Williams and certainly not up to Ferrari.

Started in Q4 of 2013? Thats why they are so far behind. Merc started in Q1 of 2011 (and were scheming even before that on single cylinder units) So thats an extra 2 years of work Mercedes HPP did on the engine before going racing compared to Honda (even accounting for their 1 years delayed entry).
Even considering the law of diminishing returns Honda have very little hope of catching Mercedes now in this engine rules phase, HPP have an extra 2 years of development and an extra year of racing experience. Honda talk about innovate achitecture or radical new designs but HPP are so far ahead that they have the time and resource to research and test anything Honda come up with and have probably already considered it already anyway.
Ferrari have done well to make major gains compared to Mercedes but their design time and racing experience was the equal of Mercedes and they are still behind.

If Mercedes are so far ahead again and stay ahead, won't the rules have to be altered so others can catch up for the good of the sport?

[taperoo2k]

I think they sacrificed a lot and you can't forget size 0. I speak with two people on staff at Honda Racing on a regular basis. One being a relative and one a friend who I met at Toyota Racing. We did not work at Honda Racing at the same time. I do know they virtually scrapped their initial design concept they started in Q4 of 2013 when they received the size dimension requirements of the PU for the 4-30 chassis in mid 2014. That is why I don't understand why Honda didn't put their foot down at that time and tell Ron Dennis it can't be done. Oh well, what's done is done and now everyone is feeling the pain including me. I have my doubts about the MP4-30 chassis as being excellent. If you put Merc's current 2015 PU into the MP4-30, I really don't believe it would be any quicker than Williams and certainly not up to Ferrari.

Started in Q4 of 2013? Thats why they are so far behind. Merc started in Q1 of 2011 (and were scheming even before that on single cylinder units) So thats an extra 2 years of work Mercedes HPP did on the engine before going racing compared to Honda (even accounting for their 1 years delayed entry).
Even considering the law of diminishing returns Honda have very little hope of catching Mercedes now in this engine rules phase, HPP have an extra 2 years of development and an extra year of racing experience. Honda talk about innovate achitecture or radical new designs but HPP are so far ahead that they have the time and resource to research and test anything Honda come up with and have probably already considered it already anyway.
Ferrari have done well to make major gains compared to Mercedes but their design time and racing experience was the equal of Mercedes and they are still behind.

If Mercedes are so far ahead again and stay ahead, won't the rules have to be altered so others can catch up for the good of the sport?

No, they'd attempt to freeze Mercedes development plans for the PU, while opening things up for the others to catch up. But it probably won't happen anytime soon. Honda's best hope though will be in 2017 when the rules change, they'll have gained a lot of experience over 2015 and into 2016 so they could hit the ground running.

Honda should have insisted the chassis to be built around the Power Unit, I think that's one of the key reasons as to why Mercedes hit the ground running so quickly.

[PlatinumZealot]

Why blame Arai? His team has done the near impossible. They got on the grid in only 18 months. It is unfair to sack a man that has delivered the engine in the time Mclaren wanted it. To me, it is a bitter sweet success, but a sucess none-the less. Even Ferrari who had three full years did not produce a winner the first time out. I think any higher expectations were nostalgia fueled. Let us give them to the end of next year at least to come on terms with Ferarri or even somewhere close.



agreed, we need to see what he does next. If the PU isn't at least at Ferrari 2015 then he's in trouble (IMHO).

The whole Monza press conference we are "25 bhp ahead of Renault" and Spa "we have an upgrade to put us on par with Ferrari" made a desperate situation worse. He effectively signed his own death warrant then. Back in 2014 when they were trying to get the mp4=29H running and failing miserably should have had them taking a new approach but they seemed very laid back and the same it'll be alright on the night attitude from Honda and Arai
There was a point just before the season started where the situation was the car would lurch out of the pits leaving two black tyre marks on the garage floor because there wasn't a software mode on the engine allowing it to perform a get away from the pits, just the startline launch procedure. McLaren engineers had to step in and rectify it just before the season started mainly for PR reasons. Regardless the McLaren Arai situation has already run its course and is irrepairable, I imagine if he was to stay that the Honda McLaren wont be together next year.
Assuming Alonso's comments on Monza were true that they loose 3 tenths in the corners and 3 seconds on the straights even I must concede that the MP4-30 could be one of the best cars on the grid. Ill go further and say that i'm sure a majority of the 3 tenths lost in corners is down to having to run severly trimmed car. If they ran a ferrari or Merc engine im sure at least 2 of those 3 tenths would come back.
However I digress. Arai's position is untennable and he needs to go PDQ. If they still use Honda next year, and it does seem to be IF Arai surely cannot be there.

Keep in mind three tenths lost in the corners is huuuuge at Monza though. The chassis is average at best. I wish I could find the interview Eric actually admitted that the chassis is not as good as the top 4 teams.

[PlatinumZealot]

-Honda was basically given some chassis dimensions by Mclaren to stuff a PU into.

This is the arrogance of Ron Dennis.

If he was humble enough and admit that the 2014 Mclaren was lame as muffin balls, he could have given Honda the same dimensions as Mercedes, but noooo! Knowing him he probably believed Mercedes "big engine" was slowing down his "revolutionary" chassis. Somewhere along the line Ron Dennis did not want to back down.. and this is why Honda's "gem" is more like a pop corn seed.

[Wazari]

I don't want to start a war among posters. I was just trying to maybe shed some insight as to the path of the current Honda PU without getting anyone inside of Honda in any hot water, which BTW is pretty easy to do. So let's say we are purely speaking in hypotheticals;

Sometime in late 2012, a British manufacturing firm contacts a Japanese automaker about the possibility of re-entering the F1 arena as an exclusive engine supplier for their F1 team. The Japanese say how much and how soon? The teams says probably at the start of 2016, but let's discuss details soon. Many meetings but nothing ironed out. Engine manufacturer dedicates small amount of staff to start broad concept layout of this PU. They soon hear from above, move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. By now it's Q3 - Q4 of 2013 and the plan is to start racing in 2016. They are going to build this PU with a radial turbine at the rear of the motor with a higher and longer footprint than the ultimate design. Japanese executive(s) so eager to please and get back to "glory days" of F1 says no problem to British team when they announce they are going to terminate contract with current engine supplier at the end of 2014. Oh crap.....More crap; now year end of 2013, British team says we are revamping aero package and chassis with a strict size requirement. The current design won't fit..........Nani kore??(What the.....) Sorry folks, the saga continues, I have to run.

Of course this is all fictional.........

[davidfroshanzen]

I don't want to start a war among posters. I was just trying to maybe shed some insight as to the path of the current Honda PU without getting anyone inside of Honda in any hot water, which BTW is pretty easy to do. So let's say we are purely speaking in hypotheticals;

Sometime in late 2012, a British manufacturing firm contacts a Japanese automaker about the possibility of re-entering the F1 arena as an exclusive engine supplier for their F1 team. The Japanese say how much and how soon? The teams says probably at the start of 2016, but let's discuss details soon. Many meetings but nothing ironed out. Engine manufacturer dedicates small amount of staff to start broad concept layout of this PU. They soon hear from above, move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. By now it's Q3 - Q4 of 2013 and the plan is to start racing in 2016. They are going to build this PU with a radial turbine at the rear of the motor with a higher and longer footprint than the ultimate design. Japanese executive(s) so eager to please and get back to "glory days" of F1 says no problem to British team when they announce they are going to terminate contract with current engine supplier at the end of 2014. Oh crap.....More crap; now year end of 2013, British team says we are revamping aero package and chassis with a strict size requirement. The current design won't fit..........Nani kore??(What the.....) Sorry folks, the saga continues, I have to run.

Of course this is all fictional.........

why McLaren Honda does not change the concept of zero size and honda installing large PU design back ? This makes it at least a little damage to the McLaren brand

[Moose]

Keep in mind three tenths lost in the corners is huuuuge at Monza though. The chassis is average at best. I wish I could find the interview Eric actually admitted that the chassis is not as good as the top 4 teams.

Keep in mind that McLaren were running a clearly much skinnier set of wings than any other team. Losing 3 tenths while running wings designed to not completely and utterly gimp your top speed is no where near as huge as you make out.

[Facts Only]

Honda should have insisted the chassis to be built around the Power Unit, I think that's one of the key reasons as to why Mercedes hit the ground running so quickly.

I can assure you that the W06 wasn't built around the PU.

The reason that the current Mercs are so good is because every decision is based purely on lap time benefit, especially when it comes to PU vs Aero/Chassis performance debates between HPP and MGP. There is no Ron Dennis Ego or Honda pride, both Mercedes factories are working towards one goal of winning and so laptime is the final say in all decisions.

This is shown by the 'log' exhausts used last year, they decreased power but the laptime loss from PU performance was outweighed by the laptime improvement from tighter Aero packaging, lower CoG and decreased mass.

As I have said before this is why you need a Niki Lauda/Toto Wolf figure who can see beyond engine vs aero arguments and concentrate on the final outcome, Ferrari saw this and brought in Arrivabenne' an outsider who could do the same between the Marenello engine and chassis teams and they made massive steps forward. It was even prevailent in the championship years at Renault, Flavio was in charge and made sure that decisions were based on performance.

Its why BMW/Toyota and Honda all failed, you had chassis and PU groups fighting and blaming each other with no clear overall leader and why Red Bull as a works renault team never really worked.

I bet once the Renault/lotus works takeover is announced it will be a very short time before a new figurehead/boss/leader not directly involved with Viri or Enstone is announced. Are we about to see the return of Flav'? Perhaps Prost? Who knows.

[alexx_88]

I totally concur with what you said, but don't you think you need more of a Ross Brawn type of figure, since the W05 was mostly developed under his reign as well? Also, I can't see Toto having the expertise to judge advanced technical arguments, but maybe I'm mistaken.

[DiogoBrand]

Keep in mind three tenths lost in the corners is huuuuge at Monza though. The chassis is average at best. I wish I could find the interview Eric actually admitted that the chassis is not as good as the top 4 teams.

We really can't have an idea of how good is the chassis unless the PU is up to par with the others. For instance, as already mentioned, McLaren has to run very low DF in order to minimize the loss of speed from the lack of power. Also I believe even the driving styles from Jenson and Fernando have to change according to the car's performance: I remember at Spa some data showing that the McL was the slowest car into a corner and second fastest out or something like that. IMO they are probably sacrificing corner entry to gain a little on exit, like late apexes and other technique changes.
Anyway, even comparing chassis's between Renault/Ferrari/Merc powered cars isn't that easy, then when you have as big of a power deficit as Honda does it becomes pretty much impossible to have an idea about chassis performance.

[Facts Only]

I totally concur with what you said, but don't you think you need more of a Ross Brawn type of figure, since the W05 was mostly developed under his reign as well? Also, I can't see Toto having the expertise to judge advanced technical arguments, but maybe I'm mistaken.

He doesn't need to be able to judge adavanced technical arguments all he needs to be able to do (and does) is judge unbiasedly for example:

Toto: Andy (Cowell), how much laptime will we lose from decreased power from fitting log exhausts?

Andy Cowell: 3 00ths per lap

Toto: Paddy (Lowe), how much laptime will we gain from aero and chassis packaging by fitting Log exhausts?

Paddy Lowe: 5 00ths per lap.

Toto: Right well the log exhausts are 2 00ths per lap faster then so we'll go with them. Done

The problem comes when you dont have that Toto/Niki/Arrivabenne/Flavio figurehead to make that unbiased call you have an engine guy and a chassis guy totally invested in their own area who dont want to comprimise their own work.
Also you need that level of trust and honesty that if the engine side compromise their work that the amount of time gained by the chassis side as a trade off is a true prediction and will materialise.

[turbof1]

I don't want to start a war among posters. I was just trying to maybe shed some insight as to the path of the current Honda PU without getting anyone inside of Honda in any hot water, which BTW is pretty easy to do. So let's say we are purely speaking in hypotheticals;

Sometime in late 2012, a British manufacturing firm contacts a Japanese automaker about the possibility of re-entering the F1 arena as an exclusive engine supplier for their F1 team. The Japanese say how much and how soon? The teams says probably at the start of 2016, but let's discuss details soon. Many meetings but nothing ironed out. Engine manufacturer dedicates small amount of staff to start broad concept layout of this PU. They soon hear from above, move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. By now it's Q3 - Q4 of 2013 and the plan is to start racing in 2016. They are going to build this PU with a radial turbine at the rear of the motor with a higher and longer footprint than the ultimate design. Japanese executive(s) so eager to please and get back to "glory days" of F1 says no problem to British team when they announce they are going to terminate contract with current engine supplier at the end of 2014. Oh crap.....More crap; now year end of 2013, British team says we are revamping aero package and chassis with a strict size requirement. The current design won't fit..........Nani kore??(What the.....) Sorry folks, the saga continues, I have to run.

Of course this is all fictional.........

why McLaren Honda does not change the concept of zero size and honda installing large PU design back ? This makes it at least a little damage to the McLaren brand

Not possible. They've entered F1 and are effectively now locked into their design.

[GoranF1]

I don't want to start a war among posters. I was just trying to maybe shed some insight as to the path of the current Honda PU without getting anyone inside of Honda in any hot water, which BTW is pretty easy to do. So let's say we are purely speaking in hypotheticals;

Sometime in late 2012, a British manufacturing firm contacts a Japanese automaker about the possibility of re-entering the F1 arena as an exclusive engine supplier for their F1 team. The Japanese say how much and how soon? The teams says probably at the start of 2016, but let's discuss details soon. Many meetings but nothing ironed out. Engine manufacturer dedicates small amount of staff to start broad concept layout of this PU. They soon hear from above, move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. By now it's Q3 - Q4 of 2013 and the plan is to start racing in 2016. They are going to build this PU with a radial turbine at the rear of the motor with a higher and longer footprint than the ultimate design. Japanese executive(s) so eager to please and get back to "glory days" of F1 says no problem to British team when they announce they are going to terminate contract with current engine supplier at the end of 2014. Oh crap.....More crap; now year end of 2013, British team says we are revamping aero package and chassis with a strict size requirement. The current design won't fit..........Nani kore??(What the.....) Sorry folks, the saga continues, I have to run.

I had doubts before,but now i am getting more sure that the "nephew" is really you!

Of course this is all fictional.........

[FW17]

I don't want to start a war among posters. I was just trying to maybe shed some insight as to the path of the current Honda PU without getting anyone inside of Honda in any hot water, which BTW is pretty easy to do. So let's say we are purely speaking in hypotheticals;

Sometime in late 2012, a British manufacturing firm contacts a Japanese automaker about the possibility of re-entering the F1 arena as an exclusive engine supplier for their F1 team. The Japanese say how much and how soon? The teams says probably at the start of 2016, but let's discuss details soon. Many meetings but nothing ironed out. Engine manufacturer dedicates small amount of staff to start broad concept layout of this PU. They soon hear from above, move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. By now it's Q3 - Q4 of 2013 and the plan is to start racing in 2016. They are going to build this PU with a radial turbine at the rear of the motor with a higher and longer footprint than the ultimate design. Japanese executive(s) so eager to please and get back to "glory days" of F1 says no problem to British team when they announce they are going to terminate contract with current engine supplier at the end of 2014. Oh crap.....More crap; now year end of 2013, British team says we are revamping aero package and chassis with a strict size requirement. The current design won't fit..........Nani kore??(What the.....) Sorry folks, the saga continues, I have to run.

Of course this is all fictional.........

why McLaren Honda does not change the concept of zero size and honda installing large PU design back ? This makes it at least a little damage to the McLaren brand

Not possible. They've entered F1 and are effectively now locked into their design.

Why locked in

If they feel that the compressor is still too small they can move to a larger one and locate it behind the engine like Renault and Let McLaren deal with the changes to the packaging

Still eight races left still some tokens left, getting the engine right for next year is more critical while changes to he chassis can always be fast tracked.

[turbof1]

The rules do not allow a complete overhaul. First of all, quite a few things of the PU is froozen now, and next year that list will increase by a good chunk. I get that the issue with Honda is not just the compressor, but the whole PU including it's size and shape. For instance the way the compressor is integrated into the ICE will force changes on the ICE as well. It's definitely not something you can cover with a few tokens.

Likewise, a complete overhaul of the PU based on reliability, which does not require tokens, will most likely not be accepted by the FIA or the other manufacturers, all of who can veto such a change. They usually refrain from using that veto right, but going from the current PU design to a bigger one? I think that'll be a step too far for the competition.