Mclaren Chassis Vs Honda Power Unit

[tom101]

Dont forget Mercedes and RBR have nice tricks like soft rear, or maybe active suspension.

If this is not be forbidden next year, will McLaren use it?

[mrluke]

I have updated the charts again to include Mexico.



Again the divergence between RBR and Mclaren's performances continues, the season can be split into 3 parts.

Part 1: Australia to Canada
Part 2: Canada to Singapore
Part 3: Singapore to Mexico

Parts 1 and 3 show a clear divergence between Mclaren and RBR while Part 2 shows a good correlation.

Mexico has actually been one of the best tracks for Mclaren this year in contrast to the USA which was one of their worst.

For Mclaren USA was nearly as bad as Italy while RBR were much more competitive at USA. It is therefore clear that lack of power cannot be the cause for Mclaren's poor performance in USA.

I wonder if we are seeing everybody gain on Mercedes since Malaysia as they detune for reliability?

Separately I am going through all of the qualifying sessions from 2014 onwards to get a full picture for all of the teams, I am particularly interested in how STR compare this year against Mclaren.

Below chart shows how Mclaren have performed vs RBR

[Pierce89]

I have updated the charts again to includei Mexico.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... rmat=image

Again the divergence between RBR and Mclaren's performances continues, the season can be split into 3 parts.

Part 1: Australia to Canada
Part 2: Canada to Singapore
Part 3: Singapore to Mexico

Parts 1 and 3 show a clear divergence between Mclaren and RBR while Part 2 shows a good correlation.

Mexico has actually been one of the best tracks for Mclaren this year in contrast to the USA which was one of their worst.

For Mclaren USA was nearly as bad as Italy while RBR were much more competitive at USA. It is therefore clear that lack of power cannot be the cause for Mclaren's poor performance in USA.

I wonder if we are seeing everybody gain on Mercedes since Malaysia as they detune for reliability?

Separately I am going through all of the qualifying sessions from 2014 onwards to get a full picture for all of the teams, I am particularly interested in how STR compare this year against Mclaren.

Below chart shows how Mclaren have performed vs RBR

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... rmat=image

I think that one that is lost in this discussion is that McLaren(Ferrari also but that's irrelevant here) has clearly failed to extract the full performance that the car is capable of at some tracks ,whereas Red Bull has followed this aero concept/philosophy(roughly) since '09, and always gets the best out their car

[mrluke]

If one teams car is more difficult to setup then another teams car I think it is fair to include that in the assessment of their performance.

The teams make a conscious decision as to how peaky the cars performance is, if it is very "peaky" it can have a much higher theoretical performance but be very difficult to actually achieve in practice. Other teams may take a more compromised position whereby they "give away" peak performance but end up with a car they are more likely to get working at its best at each weekend.

By making an adjustment to only compare the peaky cars when they are perfectly setup is to distort the true picture.

[mrluke]

To be honest I think this chart says it all



Mclarens best performances against RBR include Monza and Spa while their worst are Monaco and Austin.

I therefore suggest that the Honda PU is pretty competitive with the Renault (which is probably still a distance behind the Merc and Ferrari units)

[PlatinumZealot]

The Renault is strong now and has be been getting stronger proportionally with each race since their latest update. I put the Renault no more than 10hp less than Ferrari. Maybe 20hp down on Mercedes. The Honda is 80hp weaker than Mercedes.

[mrluke]

The Renault is strong now and has be been getting stronger proportionally with each race since their latest update. I put the Renault no more than 10hp less than Ferrari. Maybe 20hp down on Mercedes. The Honda is 80hp weaker than Mercedes.

Do you have anything to support this assessment?

If the Honda is 60bhp down on Renault then why do Mclaren catch up RBR on all of the power circuits but lose time on the chassis circuits?

[Pierce89]

The Renault is strong now and has be been getting stronger proportionally with each race since their latest update. I put the Renault no more than 10hp less than Ferrari. Maybe 20hp down on Mercedes. The Honda is 80hp weaker than Mercedes.

Do you have anything to support this assessment?

If the Honda is 60bhp down on Renault then why do Mclaren catch up RBR on all of the power circuits but lose time on the chassis circuits?

Because Mclaren have stated over and over that this season,due to lack of power, aero development has focused exclusively on efficiency at the expense of total downforce. Red Bulls advantage is in max downforce so they're draggy on your "power" circuits.

[PlatinumZealot]

They catch up Mercedes too. That is just down to getting the set up right.

Honda has claimed at halfway through the season to be equal or slightly better than the Ferrari 2015 power unit.

Franz Tost has claimed to be 80hp down on Mercedes. These two pieces of info are enough to make a good estimate.

Then as for Renualt.

Christian Horner has claimed to be 37kW (58hp) down when they just did their Monaco upgrade. (Note they have increasingly gotten more power out of the engineer after each race). In Singapore they gained another 15hp (according to an Insider) and they have gained more thru tuning thereafter. In the last three races RedBull have displayed similar top speeds and at the same time cornering speeds as Mercedes.

Ferrari are are very coy, not making any claims at all. So once they are not complaining you know they are close. Guys like Niki Lauda said that Ferrari was just about there in power terms as well. The Japan onboard video comparison between Kimi and Nico show how much power the Ferrari has even through the esses.

Not forcing anyone to accept them, but I am fairly satisfied with these estimates.

[mrluke]

So the teams that make their own engines are not complaining about them and the teams who have engines supplied by others are blaming them for holding them back.

I don't think that is a surprise to anybody.

The question is to what extent can we believe their claims?

Mercedes' data shows Toro Rosso has least powerful engine in F1

"You may not know this, but the engine with the least power on the grid is actually the Ferrari in the Toro Rosso," Mercedes technical boss Paddy Lowe told ESPN. "The Renault and the Honda are not so far behind the Ferrari Mercedes, so there is not a lot of difference now between the power units."

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/151 ... -engine-f1

dated 5 April 2016 - Immediately following Round 2, Bahrain.

I don't think we can really take teams quotes at face value. We have a lot of data available to us now, what does it show?

So far we appear to have established that Mclaren perform better at the engine tracks than the chassis tracks but this is because they have designed the chassis of their car to only be good at the engine tracks.

Honestly I am struggling with that logic.

[ME4ME]

They catch up Mercedes too. That is just down to getting the set up right.

Honda has claimed at halfway through the season to be equal or slightly better than the Ferrari 2015 power unit.

Franz Tost has claimed to be 80hp down on Mercedes. These two pieces of info are enough to make a good estimate.

Then as for Renualt.

Christian Horner has claimed to be 37kW (58hp) down when they just did their Monaco upgrade. (Note they have increasingly gotten more power out of the engineer after each race). In Singapore they gained another 15hp (according to an Insider) and they have gained more thru tuning thereafter. In the last three races RedBull have displayed similar top speeds and at the same time cornering speeds as Mercedes.

Ferrari are are very coy, not making any claims at all. So once they are not complaining you know they are close. Guys like Niki Lauda said that Ferrari was just about there in power terms as well. The Japan onboard video comparison between Kimi and Nico show how much power the Ferrari has even through the esses.

Not forcing anyone to accept them, but I am fairly satisfied with these estimates.

In your whole analysis, you do not account for any progress made by Mercedes.

[Andres125sx]

So far we appear to have established that Mclaren perform better at the engine tracks than the chassis tracks but this is because they have designed the chassis of their car to only be good at the engine tracks.

Exposed as you did it looks like nosense, but it really is not

What they say is their chassis was designed with efficiency in mind instead of peak downforce, so total downforce is some way compromised, and that means on chassis tracks they will not perform as good as other teams who went for total downforce, for example STR

Efficiency means drag must as low as possible, even if that means lower downforce. If drag is reduced further than downforce that means improved efficiency. Lower downforce means they´ll struggle on chassis tracks as we´ve confirmed ourselves, but since drag is even lower than downforce, on power tracks they have an advantage because their airbrakes (aka wings ) are, aerodinamically speaking, smaller.

Less drag and more power have exactly same effect, so we outsiders can´t know if that good perfomance on power tracks is due to a powerful PU or a slipery chassis/aero. But we know Honda stated theirselves they´re still down Renault, and we also know McLaren said their chassis was designed for efficiency instead of total downforce, so I think we got enough info to solve the equation, they perform on power tracks because of their low drag, not because of a powerful PU

[mrluke]

Racecar engineering have an excellent article this month on the Honda PU.

They attribute the following quote to Andy Cowell (managing director of Mercedes-Benz AMG HPP)
"The GPS data told us that Honda was 50 to 60bhp down on us. I'm not saying at what point in the season that was, but they then did enough for us not to discount them, The rate of development of the Honda in 2015 was really really good."

And to be absolutely clear that power reference refers to the 2015 season and not to 2016.


Andres, while I completely agree that top speed in f1 is overwhelmingly a factor of drag rather than power. I struggle to comprehend how or even why Mclaren have made a chassis that only performs at power tracks. Even assuming this was true it seems like a complete waste of time and effort for two reasons. Firstly their chassis is never going to be good enough to overcome a power deficit at a power track and beat the other cars with more power, they would be better off focusing their effort on the chassis tracks where they could overcome the power deficit and potentially get on the podium. Secondly when the Honda power unit does "catch up" with Mercedes and Ferrari, they would sorely regret not being able to perform at the chassis tracks.

With that said, I am currently pulling together a comprehensive sheet including all qualy times for all drivers over the last 3 years. Once it is complete I will share the complete data set for all interested parties to interrogate as they see fit.

It will be interesting to compare Mclaren's performance this season with William's last season. Williams clearly ran a very low drag setup and their most competitive venues last year should supposedly match Mclaren's best performances this year, assuming they do indeed have an excellent low drag setup.

[Andres125sx]

Andres, while I completely agree that top speed in f1 is overwhelmingly a factor of drag rather than power. I struggle to comprehend how or even why Mclaren have made a chassis that only performs at power tracks. Even assuming this was true it seems like a complete waste of time and effort

For this season, yes. For 2017, maybe not.

McHonda project is a long term project, there´s no reason to waste time and efforts to perform in 2016 when we all knew beforehand McHonda would never perfom this season. Add to that there´s a huge rule change next season and the nosense would be wasting resources to perform in 2016.

With 2017 changes in mind there will be a big increase in drag with wider tires and wings, and downforce will be higher with longer diffusers too, so maybe efficient aero may be the route to go next season instead of total downforce, as downforce will be high anycase. Maybe that´s the reason they spent this season developing efficient aero solutions

This is pure spectulation on my side obviously, but to me it makes sense

[Juzh]

Even if renault is only 20 bhp behind on total power, their sustained power (even in quali) is nowhere compared to mercedes. In mexico FI and mercedes were getting up to 350 kmh on their own lap after lap. Ferrari and red bull managed around 340 and STR managed around 330. Renault factory team was on average a few kmh down even on red bull.
Honda is difficult to judge because they were in traffic almost all the time, but they were at around 355+ kmh with drs most laps, but needed an obvious charging lap every few laps where they'd peak at 345 even though they were in close slipstream.