THE POWER OF HIGH SPEED STRESSES
- “We have been learning from Azerbaijan. To be honest our cars were overtaken on the very long straight. One of the reasons was our energy management strategy, so we are relying a lot on the results of Azerbaijan to revise that.”
- “It’s a difficult question which is tougher! To be honest both have different characteristics, but the long straights mean you are flat out consistently and that leads to higher temperatures, not only in the combustion chamber but also in other parts of the drivetrain. In Monza it’s flat out and then stop, flat out and stop, and then flat out again. So it’s very difficult to manage from a reliability point of view.
- “For example, we use some of the motors under heavy duty conditions - such as high temperatures - and going flat out, stop, flat out means a very short time for the cooling phase. That means you get high temperatures, a little bit of cool down and then increase the temperature again. It’s very difficult.
- “In Spa, of course the long straight is very tough for the power unit but after that we have some more cool down time because there are shorter straights and longer corners. So the two tracks have different characteristics from a power unit point of view.”
- “As I’ve mentioned, the amount of time you spend flat out affects reliability. High temperatures mean a high chance of a knocking situation, when the air-fuel mix explodes in the combustion chamber and we have to ensure we can manage that at the end of the straight, as it can be harmful to the ICE.
- “So of course we prepare on the dyno for that situation, using what we learned on the long straight in Baku. Basically we can simulate running on any circuit on the dyno. If we want to check for cylinder pressure damage then we would just run the dyno flat out, like driving down a straight. But the main purpose is to run it as a circuit simulation, so if you were listening to the power unit it would sound like it’s doing a lap of one of those tracks.”
- “For electrical power - the ERS - of course we have some radiators and heat exchangers that are not only for cooling but also for power management. So sometimes we reduce the deployment of power or the harvesting of power, so it’s a similar situation between the internal combustion engine and the ERS.
- “Of course, making apertures in the bodywork bigger has an impact on the lap time, particularly at the high power circuits like Spa and Monza. So in development we learn how to deal with high temperature situations to try and avoid that.”
http://en.hondaracingf1.com/insights/th ... esses.html 
Understand the innner workings of engine first and try to correlate that with testbeds. Material science and its durability must be nightmare from scientific point of view. How to measure it, how predict the wear etc. 
