avada wrote: ↑14 Jul 2026, 19:44
diffuser wrote: ↑14 Jul 2026, 19:16
You forget they only decided in late 2013 that they were going back into F1 and we're begged to go in for 2015 by McLaren, when Honda wanted to wait another year. McLaren, who's Merc contract had expired in 2014, needed a PU.
More like early 2013
this article is from may 16, referring to a recent announcement. But of course this is just the announcement, the agreement happened some time before this.
But even if they only had 2014 to develop, with the unlimited development the result would still have been well below acceptable.
IIRC, Honda's philosophy then (and maybe still today) was to promote their most talented young engineers to its flagship programs. This resulted in a lot of inexperience for the F1 project, and it was also initially a smaller group of people compared to the number of employees Mercedes and Ferrari had working on their engines. Honda management at the time admitted that they underestimated the challenge of the project.
Regardless, Honda was still at a huge time disadvantage compared to Mercedes because they started their hybrid program as early as 2010. It would not matter if Honda started development in 2013 or 2014 as they could only obtain a limited amount of data with that time frame.
