diffuser wrote: ↑20 Jul 2026, 00:47
F1RAM wrote: ↑19 Jul 2026, 20:15
Ashwinv16 wrote: ↑19 Jul 2026, 18:16
You can't be down on power on the electric systems as the power generated by it is regulated. They simply don't have enough power on the engine to recharge the batteries thus not enough to deploy and so more superclippng. The engine was 90 hp down at the start it's now like 60 hp. It also clear 60% of the deficit is coming from the car itself.
How does it work tho?? If they are like 40-50hp i.e, within 10pct down on ICE power, how much are they down with the battery n recovery?
Let's say it takes 500 HP to get an F1 car to 300 km/h. Car A has an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) with 500 HP, while Car B's ICE only has 450 HP.
Assume there are two straights with no opportunities to recharge between them. The first straight is just long enough to reach 300 km/h. The second straight is much longer—so long, in fact, that it exceeds the battery deployment capacity of both cars.
On the first straight, Car B deploys 37.3 kW (50 HP) for 3 seconds to match Car A's baseline engine power. This consumes exactly 0.1119 MJ, which does not sound like much.
On the second, longer straight, both cars go for maximum strategic deployment to punch through the air:
- Car B has 8.3881 MJ left in its energy pool. It uses absolute full deployment (the maximum regulated 350 kW / ~469 HP), which it can sustain for 23.97 seconds. This brings its total output during this time to 919 HP (450 HP ICE + 469 HP MGU-K).
- Car A wants to match Car B's blistering 919 HP total output. Because its engine is already stronger, it only needs to pull 419 HP (~312.5 kW) from its MGU-K. Because it is drawing less power from its completely full 8.5 MJ pool, its battery deployment stretches out to last for 27.20 seconds.
Consequently, after 23.97 seconds, Car B completely runs out of battery, and its power output drops instantly to just its 450 HP ICE. Meanwhile, Car A will continue flying down the straight with its full 919 HP combo for another 3.23 seconds.
With a massive 919 HP, the cars could theoretically achieve a top speed of 366.8 km/h (about 227.9 mph). Because of the cubic law of aerodynamic drag, nearly doubling the horsepower from 500 HP to over 900 HP (an 84% increase in power) only yields about a 22.3% increase in top speed.
In the real world of F1, that extra electrical power is mostly used to get the car up to that 360+ km/h mark incredibly fast down the straight, rather than just trickling upward slowly. This is precisely why Car A would completely overpower Car B at the end of a long straight once Car B's battery goes dead!
so the main problem of Honda is the ICE. How good is the battery part of Honda then? There were few rumours early in the season that the engine struggles to even harvest 250kw of energy.
