Mclaren MP4-30 Honda

[frosty125]

Looks like they went back to the wing with extra winglet today.

[Redragon]

The newborn Honda PU must look something like this at this stage with so many leaks

[mg5904]

The newborn Honda PU must look something like this at this stage with so many leaks

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i ... e_4594.jpg

Hydraulic, water, and oil leaks, what happens when the baby starts leaking?

[Redragon]

The newborn Honda PU must look something like this at this stage with so many leaks

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i ... e_4594.jpg

Hydraulic, water, and oil leaks, what happens when the baby starts leaking?

Let's hope that it farts well

[bill shoe]

Small glimmer of hope for McLaren performance this year. It's my understanding that Circuit de Catalunya is the quintessential very-smooth European track. McLaren claims to have made big changes to drivable/useable aero as opposed to wind-tunnel aero. So at a more typical less-smooth track the McLaren pace may be better than what pre-season testing showed.

Of course, running thru a session without stopping on track would be nice.

More hope via history?-- Remember the first race of 1989 when the new Ferrari was not able to consistently move under its own power in practice? That was the first year of the big new 3.5L non-turbo motors, and the Ferrari also had John Bernard's trick new paddle-shift gear change. I think Ferrari considered withdrawing from the event but decided to carry on because dropping out in the first lap or two would be less embarrassing than withdrawing. Of course, come race day the fickle car ran perfectly and Ferrari (Mr. Mansell?) won the race.

[max_speed]

Small glimmer of hope for McLaren performance this year. It's my understanding that Circuit de Catalunya is the quintessential very-smooth European track. McLaren claims to have made big changes to drivable/useable aero as opposed to wind-tunnel aero. So at a more typical less-smooth track the McLaren pace may be better than what pre-season testing showed.

Of course, running thru a session without stopping on track would be nice.

More hope via history?-- Remember the first race of 1989 when the new Ferrari was not able to consistently move under its own power in practice? That was the first year of the big new 3.5L non-turbo motors, and the Ferrari also had John Bernard's trick new paddle-shift gear change. I think Ferrari considered withdrawing from the event but decided to carry on because dropping out in the first lap or two would be less embarrassing than withdrawing. Of course, come race day the fickle car ran perfectly and Ferrari (Mr. Mansell?) won the race.

i do not have such hopes. my take is that in absence of engine running on full power they might not have even collected all data that is required to fine tune even aero setup and generate pointers for future development , so even if suddenly they have reliable engine running at full power by that time other teams would have developed more on aero side. this season i have given hope . i do believe in miracle but it wont happen here.

[OO7]

A shame in some ways because the older diffusers were probably better car-porn, at least to my eye.

Couldn't agree more, but I'm talking early to mid 90's.

[3jawchuck]

I'm just wondering if Honda would have used something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuleS9rnzc to test their engine? And if so, how close to reality are this style of dyno's results.

Of course nothing compares to actual running in the chassis it is designed to run in. But surely it helps iron out the seemingly silly problems they're having?

[ian_s]

I'm just wondering if Honda would have used something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuleS9rnzc to test their engine? And if so, how close to reality are this style of dyno's results.

Of course nothing compares to actual running in the chassis it is designed to run in. But surely it helps iron out the seemingly silly problems they're having?

that still wont replicate the gforces an f1 engine endures, not even close.

[Vasconia]

Wouldn't surprise me if the intended to run a pre Melbourne Pack today but decided against it due to limited running. Somewhere Boullier i think was quoted that teh Car is still in Launch Spec, so there is much more to come.

This is an unsurprising fact taking into account the lack of running. If you dont run you cant check new parts.

[GoranF1]

Crofty from SKY says MP4-30 is 3 seconds plus off pace at the moment.

[Mesteño]

Crofty from SKY says MP4-30 is 3 seconds plus off pace at the moment.

That is what anyone can read from times of Montmeló, but I can't find that realistic.

[Abarth]

I'm just wondering if Honda would have used something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfuleS9rnzc to test their engine? And if so, how close to reality are this style of dyno's results.

Of course nothing compares to actual running in the chassis it is designed to run in. But surely it helps iron out the seemingly silly problems they're having?

that still wont replicate the gforces an f1 engine endures, not even close.

True, but Mclarens and Hondas problems started earlier. They were not even remotely being able to leave the garage with a car that works sufficiently, in order to check these real world g forces on circuit. Not last year in Abu Dhabi, and not in the first tests this year. And this had nothing to do with dynamics, g forces and such.
We heard about cabling issues, about interfacing different electronic systems, and things like that.

I'd rather have used a test rig to test the complete car mockup in factory. Not a dynamic one, which of course would even be better, but just for static tests.
A first iteration of car/engine was ready last year in Abu Dhabi. Putting such an experimental car on a simple rig, with two electrical motors / generators, a four quadrant inverter drive and appropriate cooling ventilators would have done the job to grossly check cooling, cabling, even braking / recuperating and what not. Go look at drives for cable cars / chair lifts. Engines with 500+ kW, driven by modern inverters, gearboxes to adapt for rpm if necessary. All off the shelf, almost. Can't really be a problem for companies like Honda / McLaren. Yet I have read (AMuS) that part of the issues are blamed on the late arrival of complete car test benches for dynamic testing.
I think, before any dynamic testing on bench, do some simple static functional tests, in order to be able to at least leave the garage in the morning....
The electricity generated could even be sold to their local power company

Looking at what problems they encountered, plain and simple (or not so simple...) installation/integration problems, those can only be found when testing a more or less completely assembled drivetrain, in a real chassis, with real cooling.
I bet nothing had been done in this regard.

Contrary to what Mercedes did last year, for sure.
That's the difference between a really professionally executed project which involves 100' ds of millions of dollars.
And how Honda / McLaren executed it.

With this, i'm not saying by any means that they will not be competitive.

[alexx_88]

I think there's a very simple answer to all that you've said: lack of time. You can bet your house that both Honda and Mclaren own several engine and chassis dynos. However, any hour that you spend testing a certain PU configuration is an hour wasted in improving its performance. What I think happened is that, after seeing the numbers of the Mercedes PU from 2014, they had to do several redesigns of their own PU, thus getting to the testing phase very late in the year. As simple as that. It is quite naive to think that there are people in Honda and Mclaren that can design an extremely complex hybrid PU, but nobody thought about testing it.

I've just seen Ask Crofty with Toto Wolf and he said that they started testing with about 300 critical issues and now they are down to about 12 that were marked as non-solvable. And that's for a PU that appeared to be flawless during the 12 days of testing. Just try to imagine the effort of managing tenths of people working to fix a list which is probably a number of times larger than the one that Mercedes has. It's a massive task.

Even from 2014 it was clear that Mercedes' operation was on a whole other level compared to Renault and Ferrari. Bigger budgets, started earlier, completed everything almost with time to spare.

[mclaren111]

Seems they were testing small things: different Goose Neck at the rear:



Expect to see quite a few changes in FP1 & FP2 in Australia