Honda Power Unit Hardware & Software

[hemichromis]

Christian Horner in an interview on the 6th of April answered this question

"Q: From what we’ve seen so far, the Toro Rosso youngsters may well give your two drivers a hard time this year. Is their 2015-spec Ferrari engine still superior to the 2016 Renault power unit?

CH: We estimated the gap in Melbourne to be 0.8 seconds [per lap] between the power units."

Is the 2016 Honda slower than 2016 Renault PU???
As if yes according to Christian Horner Honda would be even further behind.

That 0.8 seconds was first uttered by Christian Horner before the first winter test.
The comparison must have been 2015 Ferrari to 2015 Renault NOT this years Renault.

Feb 17th or earlier Christian Horner: "Toro Rosso has bolted in 0.8 seconds into their car through a different power unit,”

[godlameroso]

Dry and Wet. Those are throttle pedal maps. Power unit itself has a million different settings.

"Overtake" does not allow for "750 more rpm" by any regulation. If the the teams want to rev high it's entirely up to them (none do it, pointless anyway). What it does is probably pump more fuel for brief periods and dumb the battery into mgu-k.

Probably more like it drives the K and the H directly from the battery, you have no restriction to how much power you can send to the MGU-H, only 4 mj of energy from the ES and 120kW for the K, the H is unlimited.

I'd presume this rarely happens in race situations.

Yes probably not an engine setting you could use for consecutive laps, if only they had a way to quick toggle this engine mode so the drivers could only use it when they had to, for example when trying to overtake, or defend, maybe we can call this button the use maximum deployment and engine power button, but that'd take too much room on the steering wheel.

[Sasha]

2016 Honda ICE is about 60hp less than 2016 MB ICE.

To add to that...

it's diveability needs to be improved(peaky engine) and they are behind on ERS Deployment mapping.(delay because of the ERS Deployment problems last year)

Fixes that need to happen ASAP!

1)better Combustion(MB's secret sauce)
2)bigger compressor(move from the tricky one they use now to a big pancake style one)

[Senna77]

Christian Horner in an interview on the 6th of April answered this question

"Q: From what we’ve seen so far, the Toro Rosso youngsters may well give your two drivers a hard time this year. Is their 2015-spec Ferrari engine still superior to the 2016 Renault power unit?

CH: We estimated the gap in Melbourne to be 0.8 seconds [per lap] between the power units."

Is the 2016 Honda slower than 2016 Renault PU???
As if yes according to Christian Horner Honda would be even further behind.

That 0.8 seconds was first uttered by Christian Horner before the first winter test.
The comparison must have been 2015 Ferrari to 2015 Renault NOT this years Renault.

Feb 17th or earlier Christian Horner: "Toro Rosso has bolted in 0.8 seconds into their car through a different power unit,”

The article is from April the 6th pasted on the official F1 website. Comparing the 2016 Renault engine in melbourne to the 2015 Ferrari spec engine in Melbourne the gap is till .8 seconds. Go and check it if you do not believe me. This is according to Christian Horner. Who knows!
Honda looks to be behind Renault still. Renault claims big update is coming around Montreal. Has Honda made an announcement of any time frames when their next updates are coming?

[hemichromis]

So we are to believe that the Renault power plant hasn't improved since 2015 inspite of all we have seen?

[DiogoBrand]

Of course Renault has improved, now they're even able to complete a race without blowing to pieces. But I still believe they're behind 2015 spec Ferrari.
And Honda is even further behind, both on raw power as well as driveability.

[hemichromis]

Of course Renault has improved, now they're even able to complete a race without blowing to pieces. But I still believe they're behind 2015 spec Ferrari.
And Honda is even further behind, both on raw power as well as driveability.

But not by 0.8 seconds even Honda isn't that far behind.

Doesn't anybody else find it unusual that the figure is exactly the same?

[bigblue]

2)bigger compressor(move from the tricky one they use now to a big pancake style one)

This is a bit odd, didn't they enlarge this in the off-season to fix the energy recovery problems ? If they did, then why did they make it bigger but not ultimately big enough ?

[GoranF1]

2)bigger compressor(move from the tricky one they use now to a big pancake style one)

This is a bit odd, didn't they enlarge this in the off-season to fix the energy recovery problems ? If they did, then why did they make it bigger but not ultimately big enough ?

they made it as big as possible in the V of ICE...then some internal staff and direction changed in Honda,and now they aim to take compressor out of V (most likely at the back) and make it even bigger.

[bigblue]

2)bigger compressor(move from the tricky one they use now to a big pancake style one)

This is a bit odd, didn't they enlarge this in the off-season to fix the energy recovery problems ? If they did, then why did they make it bigger but not ultimately big enough ?

they made it as big as possible in the V of ICE...then some internal staff and direction changed in Honda,and now they aim to take compressor out of V (most likely at the back) and make it even bigger.

OK, fair enough. May even have been work due to the fabled parallel development / rogue / old-timer team (delete as appropriate for what you believe !). I guess the decision on the trade-offs changed - would have been good if this was figured out earlier (I'm assuming it's going to help noticeably), but let's see what they do next

[NL_Fer]

2)bigger compressor(move from the tricky one they use now to a big pancake style one)

This is a bit odd, didn't they enlarge this in the off-season to fix the energy recovery problems ? If they did, then why did they make it bigger but not ultimately big enough ?

Maybe the chassis team cannot handle such drastic changes for the size zero coke bottle back.

[OviJohn]

So Andy Cowell was right all along about the turbo needing to be "unrestricted" in order to achieve future developements/ performance. Here´s an extract from an interview last February concerning this subject:

When asked if it was logical that as efficiency improved, the turbine got bigger, Cowell said: "Yeah. Two areas are going to improve, the efficiency of the ICE is going to go up and up and up every year, and the efficiency of that turbo is going to go up.

"That means the turbine sizing number is going to go up as long as it is not stealing from the engine."

In Mercedes' case, Cowell confirmed that its turbine had got bigger year on year – helping deliver more power.

Had that compressor and turbine size been restricted to the inside of the engine, like the Honda is, then the scope for making it larger is not there – as it will no longer deliver the advantages that size zero supposedly brings along.

It is clear that Mercedes' vision of what's needed in F1 and what Honda believes is right are very different.

But the answer to who is right will have to wait until the cars hit the track.

In any case, if this is indeed the "true development path" for future PU iterations, will the remaining 14 tokens be enough to make the neccesary layout/size changes of the turbine and compressor?

Full interview:

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/analy ... pt-672435/

[Thunder]

First they will work on the Combustion. Then comes the TC. I don't think the tokens left will be enough to go even bigger this Year than they already have. Note: Honda HAS a bigger Turbo this Year.

But we already had that discussion since the Article you posted is from February.

[OviJohn]

First they will work on the Combustion. Then comes the TC. I don't think the tokens left will be enough to go even bigger this Year than they already have. Note: Honda HAS a bigger Turbo this Year.

But we already had that discussion since the Article you posted is from February.

Yes, I am aware Honda increased the turbo and compressor size within the V, as shown on the video stills from Japan national TV. But, from what Sasha and GoranF1 are stating in the posts above, that incrementation is not enough, so in order to further improve the PU they need to get the compressor out of the V.

In any case, Honda will be very aware of the "token vs performance" implications as they proved last year. They´ll systematically pursue the changes that are most benefitial for the package as a whole with the available tokens. Hasegawa in his last interviews has already pointed to the ICE and combustion development to achieve top end speed, so maybe the next phase will focus on MGUs updates for further ERS improvements. Don´t know if they´ll have enough tokens available afterwards.

So taking all this into account, I believe Honda will most likely build up on the current, yet apparently flawed, layout of increased TC within the V and extract the maximum gains possible out of that package. Come next year the token system expires and maybe they´ll have much better understanding and on track data to pull off their ideal TC changes and PU design to present us their very first winning PU. [-o<

[turbof1]

First they will work on the Combustion. Then comes the TC. I don't think the tokens left will be enough to go even bigger this Year than they already have. Note: Honda HAS a bigger Turbo this Year.

But we already had that discussion since the Article you posted is from February.

Yes, I am aware Honda increased the turbo and compressor size within the V, as shown on the video stills from Japan national TV. But, from what Sasha and GoranF1 are stating in the posts above, that incrementation is not enough, so in order to further improve the PU they need to get the compressor out of the V.

In any case, Honda will be very aware of the "token vs performance" implications as they proved last year. They´ll systematically pursue the changes that are most benefitial for the package as a whole with the available tokens. Hasegawa in his last interviews has already pointed to the ICE and combustion development to achieve top end speed, so maybe the next phase will focus on MGUs updates for further ERS improvements. Don´t know if they´ll have enough tokens available afterwards.

So taking all this into account, I believe Honda will most likely build up on the current, yet apparently flawed, layout of increased TC within the V and extract the maximum gains possible out of that package. Come next year the token system expires and maybe they´ll have much better understanding and on track data to pull off their ideal TC changes and PU design to present us their very first winning PU. [-o<

If it needs to get out of the V, then probably even not 32 tokens will do. You are looking at changes at the turbo, exhausts, ICE, and probably also to the ERS systems as you do not want the space in the V go to waste.

However, as it looks now the token system might be dropped next year. The implication is that you could come up with a completely new PU at the beginning of the season or even during the season.