2019 Aston Martin Red Bull Racing - Honda F1 Team

[Bill]

Next year Pirelli will produce one of their new masterpieces so it's not forgone the field will be competitive.we could have another Mercedes domination while everyone is trying to figure out how to best use tires. The frustration with fia and liberty is when things become interesting they change the rules which costly and become boring with field spreading.

[GPR-A]

Mercedes and Ferrari should be worried, next year the Honda engine will again take a step up, and it is now very close in terms of power and efficiency to the Mercedes. If the Red Bull puts a little more peak downforce on the car, and the engine improves they'll be right up there.

And the others would be relaxing? I don't know why you keep hyping up things here. Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd. Their factories are working on Spec 1 for 2020 since july, from the time when the Spec 3 of 2019 went into production. By the time they arrive for winter testing next year, they would have spent over 6 months for the Spec 1. That is a huge amount of time. Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

[etusch]

What I see in these season is that if Redbull car works better than others like Mercedes did this season and all engine manufacturers improve at same level for next season, Redbull can win and this is not a miracle to expect. If Honda makes big jump like ferrari did but Redbull stuck like Ferrari then it is impossible to be wdc/wcc.
I don't know why Mercedes so early started for 2020 spec 1? Are they completely change the concept?
If you say it about cars it is true. Mercedes knew their car from start of season but Redbull are not. That make difference. On the Engine side I also believe that honda will be closer or same level at least.

[SF Engineer]

Mercedes and Ferrari should be worried, next year the Honda engine will again take a step up, and it is now very close in terms of power and efficiency to the Mercedes. If the Red Bull puts a little more peak downforce on the car, and the engine improves they'll be right up there.

And the others would be relaxing? I don't know why you keep hyping up things here. Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd. Their factories are working on Spec 1 for 2020 since july, from the time when the Spec 3 of 2019 went into production. By the time they arrive for winter testing next year, they would have spent over 6 months for the Spec 1. That is a huge amount of time. Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

I agree with you in regard to the fact that the others won't sit still, and it will not be easy for Honda to pull ahead.

However, I have to question the thinking that would lead you to insinuate that the others have an advantage by beginning work on next year's spec 1 early, versus developing further specs of the 2019 engine as Honda has done. Since there are no major changes to engine regulations for 2020, it follows that the engines will be developments of the 2019 units. In this case, it is actually beneficial to develop incrementally and race new units as they are developed (assuming your championship position allows it), as opposed to only developing away from the circuit and bringing one big upgrade to testing in 2020 (where you have more unknown variables [new chassis, possibly new tyres, colder weather, etc.]).

In my opinion this year's engine development seems something like what I have shown below (I have not researched the exact dates of when manufactures brought engines, so please cut me some slack). My key points are that the 4 manufacturers are starting to converge more than in the past (due to time and stability of rules), and that the increments of improvement moving forward are likely to be smaller:

Mercedes: 87----->89------>91------------->2020?
Ferrari: 85----->87--------->92---------->2020?
Honda: 83-->86-->87-->89--->91------>2020?
Renault: 84----->85------->90------------>2020?

[Wouter]

Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd.

Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

Maybe you should think a little more when you post.

Honda is using his spec 4, not spec 5.
Spec 5 was ready, but they didn't use it, because spec 4 was strong enough.

[izzy]

Honda have more or less caught up, i hope they're not going to spoil it now with fretting about cost. The others will be loving that! When they were all talking about a new spec of pu Andy Cowell said HPP would do 100 prototypes! Mercedes and Ferrari can spend like that all the time, because they focus on the benefit and they know F1 is worth literally billions to them, a hundred mil of cost is fine no problem

[Capharol]

Mercedes and Ferrari should be worried, next year the Honda engine will again take a step up, and it is now very close in terms of power and efficiency to the Mercedes. If the Red Bull puts a little more peak downforce on the car, and the engine improves they'll be right up there.

And the others would be relaxing? I don't know why you keep hyping up things here. Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd. Their factories are working on Spec 1 for 2020 since july, from the time when the Spec 3 of 2019 went into production. By the time they arrive for winter testing next year, they would have spent over 6 months for the Spec 1. That is a huge amount of time. Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

I know, i know.... i shouldn't react but sorry doing it any way although its not worth it .....

Honda changed their PU more to close the gap to Merc, therefor they needed more PU's .... and you know what Red Bull and Honda knew that and were ok with it because this was a transition year as they [RB & Honda] have told from the beginning....
and now that they are on par with Mercedes they can develop at the same rate and planning to only use 3 PU's per season.
and as Wouter already told you its a Spec 4 in the Red Bull and not Spec 5
so it helps digging into the materie of a team

[Pyrone89]

Honda have more or less caught up, i hope they're not going to spoil it now with fretting about cost. The others will be loving that! When they were all talking about a new spec of pu Andy Cowell said HPP would do 100 prototypes! Mercedes and Ferrari can spend like that all the time, because they focus on the benefit and they know F1 is worth literally billions to them, a hundred mil of cost is fine no problem

Worried about that too. Just when they are getting close they are pulling the handbrake. If you do that just leave the sport all together. Either you are full in or you are out. And Honda has a history of bailing just when success is about to come. Remember the now ultra dominant Mercedes team was Honda’s factory team until they stopped at the end of 2008, just when it turned out they had built an ultra monster which won the championships the next year running under the name of the underfunded Brawn team (sold at the end of the year to Mercedes)

[GPR-A]

Mercedes and Ferrari should be worried, next year the Honda engine will again take a step up, and it is now very close in terms of power and efficiency to the Mercedes. If the Red Bull puts a little more peak downforce on the car, and the engine improves they'll be right up there.

And the others would be relaxing? I don't know why you keep hyping up things here. Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd. Their factories are working on Spec 1 for 2020 since july, from the time when the Spec 3 of 2019 went into production. By the time they arrive for winter testing next year, they would have spent over 6 months for the Spec 1. That is a huge amount of time. Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

I agree with you in regard to the fact that the others won't sit still, and it will not be easy for Honda to pull ahead.

However, I have to question the thinking that would lead you to insinuate that the others have an advantage by beginning work on next year's spec 1 early, versus developing further specs of the 2019 engine as Honda has done. Since there are no major changes to engine regulations for 2020, it follows that the engines will be developments of the 2019 units. In this case, it is actually beneficial to develop incrementally and race new units as they are developed (assuming your championship position allows it), as opposed to only developing away from the circuit and bringing one big upgrade to testing in 2020 (where you have more unknown variables [new chassis, possibly new tyres, colder weather, etc.]).

In my opinion this year's engine development seems something like what I have shown below (I have not researched the exact dates of when manufactures brought engines, so please cut me some slack). My key points are that the 4 manufacturers are starting to converge more than in the past (due to time and stability of rules), and that the increments of improvement moving forward are likely to be smaller:

Mercedes: 87----->89------>91------------->2020?
Ferrari: 85----->87--------->92---------->2020?
Honda: 83-->86-->87-->89--->91------>2020?
Renault: 84----->85------->90------------>2020?

Fair enough. What we know is where Honda stands with their Suzuka special upgrade that came in at the end of September and what we don't know, is where Mercedes and Ferrari stands with their progress. While Red Bull was not a championship contender, it was easy to for them to keep experimenting with their PUs and bolt on whenever they wanted.

On the other hand, if a manufacturer wants to overhaul their current architecture and bring in major changes to the PU architecture, where they have newer concepts that give better yield, then having more time away and not having to waste time in production (to make a PU race ready) would be a big help. So, in that sense, there is an opportunity to go for bigger growth. Every architecture has a performance sealing and unless there is major overhaul in the concept, new gains can't be made. To that extent, it is quite possible that Honda have most likely hitting their sealing, just like Mercedes has done?

There can't be too many incremental gains beyond a point and all the manufacturers have seen reliability issues also, which would take away a good chunk of R&D time to find the root cause and fix it. Some of those fixes might actually require a bigger change and you can't simply get that ready in an iteration.

The most important factor this year for Mercedes, has been that they could run their PU more aggressively in races and keep relentlessly attacking cars ahead and get wins without having ultimate power to get pole, which is probably their major gain this year. While Honda seems to have converged with all their impressive development in qualifying, race modes aren't still as strong as Mercedes' are.

My point is, it's not a given that Honda can eternally add performance with their current architecture and would hit the sealing as others and when that happens, they would have to overhaul and can't bring the incremental changes like they have done so far. If they start the next season with being in contention for championship, then they can't simply bring too many upgrades and it would be a compromise between upgrade and letting championship points to by taking penalties. So, to say Honda would outperform Mercedes and Ferrari, is simply too far fetched.

[Pyrone89]

And the others would be relaxing? I don't know why you keep hyping up things here. Honda is on their fifth spec and both Mercedes and Ferrari are on 3rd. Their factories are working on Spec 1 for 2020 since july, from the time when the Spec 3 of 2019 went into production. By the time they arrive for winter testing next year, they would have spent over 6 months for the Spec 1. That is a huge amount of time. Besides with Spec 5 and new fuel, Honda is at best on par with Mercedes who are on Spec 3, with 9th race on that PU.

Honda has made great progress, but the way you keep hyping up things here and that doesn't turn into anything big, should make you think a little more when you post.

I agree with you in regard to the fact that the others won't sit still, and it will not be easy for Honda to pull ahead.

However, I have to question the thinking that would lead you to insinuate that the others have an advantage by beginning work on next year's spec 1 early, versus developing further specs of the 2019 engine as Honda has done. Since there are no major changes to engine regulations for 2020, it follows that the engines will be developments of the 2019 units. In this case, it is actually beneficial to develop incrementally and race new units as they are developed (assuming your championship position allows it), as opposed to only developing away from the circuit and bringing one big upgrade to testing in 2020 (where you have more unknown variables [new chassis, possibly new tyres, colder weather, etc.]).

In my opinion this year's engine development seems something like what I have shown below (I have not researched the exact dates of when manufactures brought engines, so please cut me some slack). My key points are that the 4 manufacturers are starting to converge more than in the past (due to time and stability of rules), and that the increments of improvement moving forward are likely to be smaller:

Mercedes: 87----->89------>91------------->2020?
Ferrari: 85----->87--------->92---------->2020?
Honda: 83-->86-->87-->89--->91------>2020?
Renault: 84----->85------->90------------>2020?

Fair enough. What we know is where Honda stands with their Suzuka special upgrade that came in at the end of September and what we don't know, is where Mercedes and Ferrari stands with their progress. While Red Bull was not a championship contender, it was easy to for them to keep experimenting with their PUs and bolt on whenever they wanted.

On the other hand, if a manufacturer wants to overhaul their current architecture and bring in major changes to the PU architecture, where they have newer concepts that give better yield, then having more time away and not having to waste time in production (to make a PU race ready) would be a big help. So, in that sense, there is an opportunity to go for bigger growth. Every architecture has a performance sealing and unless there is major overhaul in the concept, new gains can't be made. To that extent, it is quite possible that Honda have most likely hitting their sealing, just like Mercedes has done?

There can't be too many incremental gains beyond a point and all the manufacturers have seen reliability issues also, which would take away a good chunk of R&D time to find the root cause and fix it. Some of those fixes might actually require a bigger change and you can't simply get that ready in an iteration.

The most important factor this year for Mercedes, has been that they could run their PU more aggressively in races and keep relentlessly attacking cars ahead and get wins without having ultimate power to get pole, which is probably their major gain this year. While Honda seems to have converged with all their impressive development in qualifying, race modes aren't still as strong as Mercedes' are.

My point is, it's not a given that Honda can eternally add performance with their current architecture and would hit the sealing as others and when that happens, they would have to overhaul and can't bring the incremental changes like they have done so far. If they start the next season with being in contention for championship, then they can't simply bring too many upgrades and it would be a compromise between upgrade and letting championship points to by taking penalties. So, to say Honda would outperform Mercedes and Ferrari, is simply too far fetched.

Except they can, by using Torro Rosso as a testing mule during the 2020 year if the main team is indeed occupied with a title fight.

[Wouter]

[Bill]

Albon needs to do better Bottas started at the back he should at least finish in front that Redbull has pace

[Capharol]

Albon needs to do better Bottas started at the back he should at least finish in front that Redbull has pace

the RB didn't have the pace like the Mercs

[auv]

After a close fight with Mercedes in Brazil, 16 sec behind them today. A hardly explainable perfomance contrast...

[Capharol]

After a close fight with Mercedes in Brazil, 16 sec behind them today. A hardly explainable perfomance contrast...

it isn't .... mercs don't like the Brazil air alltitude (nor the mexican) and they love the Abu Dhabi air