Barcelona testing

[knighty]

Originally Posted by wnut

Honda's culture seems to be changing from hubris to pigheaded stupidity!

yep, but as I implied above, for McLaren to lose Honda would be a financial-suicide type nightmare, whereby McLaren get free engines, and Honda pay the wage bill for Alonso, the combined value of both must be in the region of 40-50 million $ per year......therefore McLaren need to adapt their most political and "team-work" type attitude to make it work with Honda.......just like RedBull were forced to with Renault.........honestly I think if McLaren lose Honda, they will not last for long as costs will catch up with them quite quickly, as there is hardly any sponsors on the car.......and to lose McLaren from F1 is almost unthinkable......

[F1Guy]

Originally Posted by JeremySmith

Honda are in deep trouble aren't they ..

Yep... Vandoorne's Honda engine just popped!

[BertMk2]

Originally Posted by F1Guy

Yep... Vandoorne's Honda engine just popped!

Oh dear. So they're going to lose a few more hours of testing time whilst that's swapped. How many engines did Honda bring I wonder?

Should also mention that Red Bull broke at least one, possibly two engines yesterday (or at least bits of the combined power supply).

[JeremySmith]

Originally Posted by F1Guy

Yep... Vandoorne's Honda engine just popped!

Dear ohh dear ...

[S griffin]

No pony from Fred, just says it how it is. You have to admire his bottle to keep going after season by season of disappointment, he obviously is still hoping it could be his season sometime soon

[BertMk2]

Apparently both McLaren stoppages today were electrical rather than engine.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by BertMk2

Apparently both McLaren stoppages today were electrical rather than engine.

This does remind me of a line out of The Engine Builders Book of Excuses (which I must write someday).
"The car retired from the race with an electrical problem" - technically correct, a con-rod went straight through the alternator!

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by knighty

As for Honda sacking Gilles Simon, they were deluded to hire him in the first place, he was from a past era of normally-aspirated engine design in the V10 and V8 era, the track results have shown that he knows nothing about pressure-charged engines, the adaptation of the axial-flow exhaust turbine was a shocker in itself.

If Honda have any sense they will give Mario Illien a call, Ilmor have loads of pressure-charged engine experience from the Indy-car days, and its benefiting their GM IRL program to this day. But there seems an cultural reluctance in Honda to use european consulting companies, this is their overall problem......I'm sure behind the scenes McLaren will be heaping pressure upon Honda so immediately fix the situation.

Well you sort of can't have it both ways. You give Honda grief saying they are averse to hiring outside consultants and then in the same breath complain that they are hiring the wrong outside consultants! They clearly are willing to look outside even if it is not natural to them.

Regarding Illien, apparently he is no longer working with Renault, but I would assume that as part of that engagement with Renault they probably put in place some type of gardening leave clause. I would be surprised if he is totally free to jump into the Honda program and bring with him whatever solution he provided to Renault plus whatever he may have learned about Renault that he didn't already know.

I have given Honda plenty of grief over the past few pages, but I think it is very admirable that they use their racing programs in a way that they rotate through younger internal engineers. Does this make it harder for them? I am sure it does, but it also has to absolutely be a huge benefit for them in the long run when it comes to their core business which is making engines (road cars, bikes, offroad, generators, watercraft, aircraft) and to a lesser degree automobiles.

The alternative is how everyone else seems to do it which is to have a rotating cast of characters who specialize in race engines and are probably generally isolated and lumped into special engineering centers that are unlikely to ever be integrated with the rest of the companies engineering team. And then... just slap the corporate name on the resulting engine. Good or bad, those Honda engines are more "Honda" than the Mercedes is "Mercedes" IMHO. Granted the Honda philosophy may not win you races.

Originally Posted by BertMk2

Apparently both McLaren stoppages today were electrical rather than engine.

There is still a large amount of speculation as to what is going on. Earlier reports of electrical issues were thought to maybe be a face saving cover for ICE issues. But maybe there is some truth. Some speculation around internal insulation and grounding issues. That the issue is deep inside which triggers engine changes. And it's likely they are having multiple issues with the electrical being just one of them.

Richard

[BertMk2]

Originally Posted by VIVA GT

This does remind me of a line out of The Engine Builders Book of Excuses (which I must write someday).
"The car retired from the race with an electrical problem" - technically correct, a con-rod went straight through the alternator!

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

There is still a large amount of speculation as to what is going on. Earlier reports of electrical issues were thought to maybe be a face saving cover for ICE issues. But maybe there is some truth. Some speculation around internal insulation and grounding issues. That the issue is deep inside which triggers engine changes. And it's likely they are having multiple issues with the electrical being just one of them.

It is possible the 'electrical issue' is something like - "the wiring loom has melted". So yes "electrical problem" doesn't really give us much info

On the plus side Honda have said they're not changing the engine - but that could just mean they've run out of engines. They've used what? 7? How many do you think they brought with them?

[Mike Harte]

Richard, although I would not entirely disagree with you about Honda's philosophy on the engineering workforce and that the Honda PU is more Honda as opposed to the Merc PU being a Mercedes. However, it does need to be acknowledged that Mercedes do also rotate their engineering staff through different divisions, and they are the first to acknowledge that the reason that they hit the ground running with the new generation PUs is that some of their road going engineers had been working/researching on this type of unit prior to the 2010 decision to introduce them.

As a result, they brought those engineers into the racing team, and we have been witnesses to how effective their staff management system must be.

[knighty]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Richard, although I would not entirely disagree with you about Honda's philosophy on the engineering workforce and that the Honda PU is more Honda as opposed to the Merc PU being a Mercedes. However, it does need to be acknowledged that Mercedes do also rotate their engineering staff through different divisions, and they are the first to acknowledge that the reason that they hit the ground running with the new generation PUs is that some of their road going engineers had been working/researching on this type of unit prior to the 2010 decision to introduce them.

As a result, they brought those engineers into the racing team, and we have been witnesses to how effective their staff management system must be.

Ironically a few weeks back I was having dinner with a Japanese customer, who works for a major OEM in advanced powertrain development, and he said the Honda F1 operation is full of young and inexperienced engineers, there are not many well seasoned motorsport or hard-core powertrain engineers involved, and the 2017 season was looking bleek for them already, I remember him saying it and thought he was being a bit harsh on Honda, but now seeing the testing results it does appear to make a lot of sense.

I am obviously confusing consultants with individuals, apologies about that. Gilles Simon is an individual "one-man-band", companies like Ilmor, Ricardo, AVL, FEV are consultants, Honda need to engage with the latter.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by knighty

Ironically a few weeks back I was having dinner with a Japanese customer, who works for a major OEM in advanced powertrain development, and he said the Honda F1 operation is full of young and inexperienced engineers...

sort of a side thought then...do you guys think their best engineers/r&d spending are still being directed towards projects like F1 engines or are the bulk of their resources going towards other areas like electric and self driving vehicles?

several years ago the logic would have been different, but given Honda's later start and a rapidly changing auto market i am curious, in the grand scheme of things, how important of a project is F1 for Honda?



also about Mclaren, Alonso is out there saying the chassis is fine its just the engine that is an issue...while there has been some turnover at Honda, the much bigger shake up has been within Mclaren.

totally in hindsight, but surely a large part of the issues here has to fall on the internal displacement that has happened at Woking during the off season.

[knighty]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

sort of a side thought then...do you guys think their best engineers/r&d spending are still being directed towards projects like F1 engines or are the bulk of their resources going towards other areas like electric and self driving vehicles?

several years ago the logic would have been different, but given Honda's later start and a rapidly changing auto market i am curious, in the grand scheme of things, how important of a project is F1 for Honda?



also about Mclaren, Alonso is out there saying the chassis is fine its just the engine that is an issue...while there has been some turnover at Honda, the much bigger shake up has been within Mclaren.

totally in hindsight, but surely a large part of the issues here has to fall on the internal displacement that has happened at Woking during the off season.

I think you are right on both counts.......whatever Honda are doing, they are doing it wrong, my contact said Honda-F1 rely heavily upon simulated CAE based work, but it was not properly validated with real results during each step, if this is the case then they only have themselves to blame, quite how true this is I dont know, but he is pretty well connected.

Yes McLaren have just gone through a big top level shake up in leadership, but the engineering side should be quite stable, and this is the 2nd year for the main aero guy Mr Promrdou to shine, so you would like to think the chassis is quite capable.

[Inigo Montoya]

Seb on the ultrasofts very close to getting into the 1m18's today (1m19.024) and visibly sandbagging in the last sector. Could it be that we actually will have some competition at the front this year?

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Inigo Montoya

Seb on the ultrasofts very close to getting into the 1m18's today (1m19.024) and visibly sandbagging in the last sector. Could it be that we actually will have some competition at the front this year?

It's hard to not potentially be excited about the Ferrari this year (or really that someone other than Mercedes might be quick). The question is if everyone who is running reliably... are they showing their true pace.

Richard

[BertMk2]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

It's hard to not potentially be excited about the Ferrari this year (or really that someone other than Mercedes might be quick). The question is if everyone who is running reliably... are they showing their true pace.

From what I've read (across various sources) - Mercedes seem to be ahead still but the gap may not be as big as last season. Ferrari look to have genuine pace and the Red Bull looks there or thereabouts too.

Williams look ok when Massa is in the car but Stroll is some way off the pace. Force India are ok but possibly not as strong as was first thought (I think the talk of finishing higher in the constructors championship has largely been dropped). Renault have improved pace over last season - but they (and all the Renault powered teams) have got reliability concerns.

Haas look to have taken a step forwards but have reportedly has similar braking issues to those they had last year. Torro Rosso have had reliability concerns over and above the Renault problems, Sauber are about where people expect them to be.

McLaren - oh dear, slow and unreliable - again it's hard to tell how good the chassis is because the engine is so poor. They've also done no really long runs (let alone a race distance) so they're probably still trying to understand the chassis and aero (they're basically on their day one / two plan for the first test). They've caused another 2 red flags so far today....

[F1Guy]

Looks like they're listening. Link to LIVE Facebook streaming from Barcelona below.

https://www.facebook.com/Formula1/vi...2164069607244/

It's only during the lunch break with interviews, reviews, etc. but it's a start nonetheless.

[old man]

Reading the comments about Honda I am encouraged to quote something heard this week. I was involved in a "Technology Tournament" through Rotary Clubs and schools sent teams in varying age classes to build an apparatus of their own design from a box of materials. We ask for feedback on the days event and it always brings up a good quote. One team of 12/14 year old students said in answer the the question "what did you learn?" - "Everything works well until it needs to, then it breaks!"

[F1Pete]

Kimi lays the hammer down this morning. I can only assume the cars will be faster this afternoon.


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[S griffin]

Enjoying the testing so far, Ferrari look a big threat and not just Seb, but Kimi too. If only McLaren could get their problems sorted out, for both Fred and Stoffel's sake

[MGDavid]

Kimi's car just broke, before the end of the full race simulation he was doing.

[Inigo Montoya]

Originally Posted by MGDavid

Kimi's car just broke, before the end of the full race simulation he was doing.

Yep... Wheels locked up with a sick sounding engine.

[sparkione]

Fernando – leg it. You might just as well be driving a McLaren baby-buggy. They don't deserve you, so take the year off and let them flounder in peace. Then be ready with your pen in '18...

[F1Pete]

With Kimi laying down the fastest time in testing I strongly sense he will win the championship.


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[Richard C]

Originally Posted by F1Pete

With Kimi laying down the fastest time in testing I strongly sense he will win the championship.

Intercepted Ferrari radio communications during testing...

Pit: Kimi, slow down. Don't show our true speed.
Kimi: Leave me alone, I know what I am doing.



Richard