McLaren MP4-31 Honda

[Alonsofor2017]

Button: 270 S1 267 S2 276 S3 317 Speed Trap.
Best: 278 S1 274 S2 286 S3 334 Speed Trap.

So 7-14kph better than last year, with new upgraded engine for Melbourne it might be cut down a bit and it might be comparable to Renault

[turbof1]

That should belong in the test thread. I will make an exception by not removing the posts, but I will move them this evening or tomorrow the latest.

[bonjon1979]

Button: 270 S1 267 S2 276 S3 317 Speed Trap.
Best: 278 S1 274 S2 286 S3 334 Speed Trap.

So 7-14kph better than last year, with new upgraded engine for Melbourne it might be cut down a bit and it might be comparable to Renault

Hmm. We're not too far away from being halfway through testing. I'm not seeing anything from the Mclaren to suggest that it's anything but a bottom half of the field car. They might sort the engine out and get more power come australia. They might have a good chassis but challenging for podiums? Not on what we've seen. Now we've had the first engine blow out too. This all feels very familiar. For sure, they've managed more laps this year but I don't have confidence in them at all.

[Jef Patat]

All those quick conclusions. Where has it been said the engine blew up? Note I'm not saying it didn't

[vantage87]

sportinglife.com
The word from McLaren is that a "minor hydraulic leak" stopped Button's car at the end of the pitlane a little earlier, with Eric Boullier not appearing too concerned that the issue will heavily compromise the rest of the team's day.

autosport
McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has revealed details of a minor incident with the team's car earlier in the afternoon session after smoke was seen coming from the car. "It was just an hydraulic leak which caught fire because it was in a hot place," said Boullier. "Nothing wrong, but this is why we are testing."

[vantage87]

Hasegawa said the current power unit is not due any major updates ahead of the start of the season.

"Actually the specification is the same. We have already fixed our specification. Of course we will test some of the parts now and next week but because the homologation is fixed at the end of February we can't expect a big update."
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/148 ... ances-2016

[f1rules]

here is the guy mentioning the top speeds, actually its not an improvement. Mclaren where only 20-30kmh behind when they ran out of deployment, which was not an issue during last years barcelona qual(race yes), numbers from that was posted on autosport forum. so its not amazing i have to say

https://twitter.com/ramp95FI/status/702477925925457920

[Lucky]

https://twitter.com/f1writers/status/702518315227467777

[ringo]

Hmm. We're not too far away from being halfway through testing. I'm not seeing anything from the Mclaren to suggest that it's anything but a bottom half of the field car. They might sort the engine out and get more power come australia. They might have a good chassis but challenging for podiums? Not on what we've seen. Now we've had the first engine blow out too. This all feels very familiar. For sure, they've managed more laps this year but I don't have confidence in them at all.

But i wouldn't pressure them too much. The first thing Ron said was that they will get points initially. Which means appearing in Q3. I think this car can make an appearance in Q3 a few times. So lets start from there then see if they can steal a podium in a high attrition race.

[PABLOEING]

very bad news today about honda 2016 engine.......no power and the worst......no new evolutions in the near future.

[FrukostScones]

very bad news today about honda 2016 engine.......no power and the worst......no new evolutions in the near future.

I think there will be evos and power gains but those grid penalties will hurt.

[vantage87]

Honda: Reliability problems not sorted yet
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/honda ... et-675457/

F1's new project leader Yusuke Hasegawa said after Button's problem that reliability remained one of the big areas that needed to be improved – and that some parts of its power unit were not yet completely sorted.

"In general we checked our reliability on the dyno, so we have already confirmed our engine cell is running on the dyno now for 4000km," he explained. "But of course we have to check in the car as well.
"Reliability is one of the very important things to update from last year to this year. But as I mentioned, still we have some minor problems for the parts, so we have to confirm every part is alright for the race."

When asked, having completed a decent amount of mileage so far this week, if he was satisfied, Hasegawa said: "From an operational point of view, definitely. Yesterday we could run over 100 laps. But until 4000km...this is not long enough."

Honda is expected to bring a new specification power unit to Barcelona for the second test as it closes in on the version it will homologate and use from Melbourne.

[McG]

very bad news today about honda 2016 engine.......no power and the worst......no new evolutions in the near future.

I think there will be evos and power gains but those grid penalties will hurt.

And don't they have development tokens for the season? And isn't there over half of testing still to go?

[bonjon1979]

Hmm. We're not too far away from being halfway through testing. I'm not seeing anything from the Mclaren to suggest that it's anything but a bottom half of the field car. They might sort the engine out and get more power come australia. They might have a good chassis but challenging for podiums? Not on what we've seen. Now we've had the first engine blow out too. This all feels very familiar. For sure, they've managed more laps this year but I don't have confidence in them at all.

But i wouldn't pressure them too much. The first thing Ron said was that they will get points initially. Which means appearing in Q3. I think this car can make an appearance in Q3 a few times. So lets start from there then see if they can steal a podium in a high attrition race.

I'm not sure why you find that funny. I see nothing from the 31 to suggest it is ahead of

Merc
Ferrari
Williams
Red bull
Toro rosso
Force India


That puts it in the bottom half.

What we have is people from within Honda and Mclaren saying that it's not fast enough and not reliable enough.

[bonjon1979]

very bad news today about honda 2016 engine.......no power and the worst......no new evolutions in the near future.

I think there will be evos and power gains but those grid penalties will hurt.

And don't they have development tokens for the season? And isn't there over half of testing still to go?

They had tokens last year too. What we seem to be seeing is that these engines are very hard to turn around when there's a problem. We have rumours of different engines designed by different engineers in Honda, so we may see a different story when the 'Melbourne spec' engine arrives but I shan't hold my breath.