zac510 wrote: ↑02 Apr 2017, 13:09
I don't think it's fair to blame the FIA. Only with hindsight can you blame the FIA. Nobody at any time prior to testing of 2014, that I can recall, thought that the rules were bad at all. The equalisation of the V8s worked so well and all engine makers - Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault - seemed so professional that nobody thought they'd do anything but create new V6 hybrid engines of an equally high standard and competitiveness with the new rules.
I'm not doubting that the rules were short-sighted, but at the time we had a lot of faith in the 3 manufacturers and no reason to doubt the rules.
Only with hindsight? Not only, with hindsight you can blame Honda for not choosing 'the right path'. But that same goes for FIA, that gave us 2 full miserable years of absolutely retarded token systems, which resulted in Mercedes having a ginormeous advantage, and Renault in a complete mess, which destroyed their relationship with RedBull. If we were to look into that, then FIA has destroyed both Renault and Honda for that matter, and then i'm not even mentioning Ferrari wasn't in best of shapes either.
Mercedes did their job better for 2014, sure. But the problem was that there was no way Renault or Ferrari could advance thanks to the rediculous token system. Remove the token system and all of a sudden Ferrari is right there with Mercedes. Renault is still slightly behind somehow and then there's Honda. The problem with Honda is exactly like Andres125sx has mentioned.
Whilst Ferrari and Mercedes and Renault were working on that unit years prior to 2014, Honda only became an option or motivated when the relationship with Mercedes and Mclaren ended, and Mclaren somehow convinced Honda to step in.
When Honda concidered stepping in, they were already atleast a year behind, probably more compared to the competition, and add to that, that all along, the competition was participating in F1 whilst Honda wasn't.
Then Honda misfired with their intitial engine prototype and saw them needing to fix that under the token system = impossible. Then next year it went a lot better but then also not, still, under the token system.
They decided to go with a totally different design this time around, only this is the first time you can't directly blame the token system - mind you, FIA's sins compile of more than just the token system , but let's focus on this right now - though indirectly, they had their hands tied in 2015 and 2016 thanks to exactly that, and lost precious time.
So really, this time around is really the only time you can really look at Honda, and that's exactly what's happening. Meanwhile, Mclaren has put enormeous pressure on Honda and we're going to find out in a couple of races what the result will be.
Let's hope it will be a mighty result, but keep in mind that that result must be made despite the FIA's rediculous system, which includes the last 3 years of token system nonsense.
Because however you put it, like claiming 'yeah but Merc and Fer and Ren also had the token system', is shortsighted, as that may be true, but Honda still was years behind to that and also had that token system issue. Ferrari, Renault and Mercedes had a couple of years more of development under their belt than Honda, and i'm 100% sure that their V6 engines were already steadily under development somewhere in 2012 for sure, not so much for Honda.
which means that you could wonder in what shape the Merc engine would have been if you catapulted that to the track mid 2012 or early 2013 in a hurry. That's what we're seeing at Honda.
but they are not a small company iam sure they will be competitive this exact year of 2017 before the season end.
