Honda F1 project leader Yusuke Hasegawa has outlined a number of reasons why Honda has been struggling so badly in the beginning of the 2017 Formula One season. He confirmed that lots of problems were not discovered while running on the dynamo meter.
That's when you start bumping up the compression ratio to compensate?stevesingo wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 11:05The whole formula is efficiency based. The more energy extracted from each gram of fuel the better and the earlier you can extract the energy the better. Efficient ICE is fundamental, coupled with efficient MGU-H. The MGU-K side is fixed at 120kW, so the only potential gains there are through the efficiency of the CE in converting the ES energy to the MGU-K and vica versa.
If/when Honda make gains in ICE efficiency, they will lose a proportion of heat energy they can recover from the exhaust and the pressure is then on the turbine and MGU-H to be more efficient.
“It was of course very challenging,” Hasegawa-san says. “Honda started very late compared to the other manufacturers, so it was a big disadvantage. While I think we are doing a very good job from a development point of view, from a competitiveness point of view, we are behind.
“I am still very proud of our job. We keep progressing, we never give up and we have never stopped our development. We have kept going at maximum speed for all three years. But this is a competition and from the outside it is obvious we haven’t been getting results, which is of course disappointing.
“It was a necessary challenge for us to take on. Although we showed some decent performance last year we knew it wasn’t good enough to break into the top three, so we needed to change the engine concept," says Hasegawa-san. "There is no doubt that this was the right direction but we just couldn’t complete the package in time for the start of the 2017 season."
“That meant we had to solve many issues at the Grands Prix instead. But unless we tried those modifications there was no chance of going forward in the longer term. So that’s why we decided to change. I have no regrets in taking that decision.”
“Of course we have been challenged from the outside by McLaren throughout, which is very good. We had so many experiences with them, so obviously from an organisation point of view - both technically and as people - we have all grown, there is no doubt.”
“A new challenge and making new relationships with people is always exciting. From an experience point of view, for this era of Honda, it will be the first time we have changed team and we’ll get a better understanding of what a normal situation is. "
“We only know things as the McLaren-Honda way, but this will be another opportunity to expand our understanding and experience of a different way of working.”
“I think we needed the change. From a technical point of view it’s good for us to know more about other things, like new cooling situations or how the top speed of a different car design is affected by drag. It is very important to understand what the standard is.”
“Toro Rosso is also a very good team and they are very open with us. Compared to their position - in terms of size and resources - they are actually very competitive. I don’t know how the rest of the Paddock looks at Toro Rosso but we’ve had many meetings with them and they are technically very professional.”
While initial work with Toro Rosso has been ongoing since the announcement of the new partnership, the winter will see the collaboration taking on the challenge of preparing a new car ahead of pre-season testing in February.
“The installation is the biggest job for us, to get the engine to fit to the chassis. We need to make many modifications, which is a big job, especially in this limited amount of time. Honda and Toro Rosso - from both sides - are doing a very good job.”
“We’ve been the ones making the majority of requests so far, but it’s fair to say this will be a more equal partnership than it was with McLaren in terms of leadership. And that’s not just because of the size of the team. Obviously Honda as a company is huge but we had little recent F1 experience - so from that point of view McLaren was still leading us. That won’t be the same with Toro Rosso.”
“We are working quickly to swap teams. We have to prepare things before February, so it will be a very busy winter. Development is ongoing on the power unit. It will remain the same power unit concept from this year, so we are able to use the current one as the starting point.”
“That’s the biggest agenda we need to discuss. From a championship point of view, Franz Tost always said it is down to the drivers. So we have to provide Brendon and Pierre with the performance they need. Of course they are very good drivers but they are also rookies in F1 so it’s too early to say what we can target from a Constructors’ Championship point of view."
“People tell me we’ll have much less pressure at Toro Rosso but I don’t think that’s true. In my mind we simply need to prepare the best engine and nothing is going to slow that down.”
http://en.hondaracingf1.com/newsroom/in ... rosso.html
When you are running on less fuel you are lowering the energy requirements, so, the MGU-H deficit on energy coming from ICE is somehow compensated by the lower weight of the car. That's why I think Mercedes are able to run more strategies depending on the circuits and the stage of the race.stevesingo wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 11:05The whole formula is efficiency based. The more energy extracted from each gram of fuel the better and the earlier you can extract the energy the better. Efficient ICE is fundamental, coupled with efficient MGU-H. The MGU-K side is fixed at 120kW, so the only potential gains there are through the efficiency of the CE in converting the ES energy to the MGU-K and vica versa.
If/when Honda make gains in ICE efficiency, they will lose a proportion of heat energy they can recover from the exhaust and the pressure is then on the turbine and MGU-H to be more efficient.
So next year they'll do things "the Honda way" at 100%, if I read it correctly. I hope they can produce a good power unit.HPD wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 15:22“It was of course very challenging,” Hasegawa-san says. “Honda started very late compared to the other manufacturers, so it was a big disadvantage. While I think we are doing a very good job from a development point of view, from a competitiveness point of view, we are behind.
“I am still very proud of our job. We keep progressing, we never give up and we have never stopped our development. We have kept going at maximum speed for all three years. But this is a competition and from the outside it is obvious we haven’t been getting results, which is of course disappointing.
“It was a necessary challenge for us to take on. Although we showed some decent performance last year we knew it wasn’t good enough to break into the top three, so we needed to change the engine concept," says Hasegawa-san. "There is no doubt that this was the right direction but we just couldn’t complete the package in time for the start of the 2017 season."
“That meant we had to solve many issues at the Grands Prix instead. But unless we tried those modifications there was no chance of going forward in the longer term. So that’s why we decided to change. I have no regrets in taking that decision.”
“Of course we have been challenged from the outside by McLaren throughout, which is very good. We had so many experiences with them, so obviously from an organisation point of view - both technically and as people - we have all grown, there is no doubt.”
“A new challenge and making new relationships with people is always exciting. From an experience point of view, for this era of Honda, it will be the first time we have changed team and we’ll get a better understanding of what a normal situation is. "
“We only know things as the McLaren-Honda way, but this will be another opportunity to expand our understanding and experience of a different way of working.”
“I think we needed the change. From a technical point of view it’s good for us to know more about other things, like new cooling situations or how the top speed of a different car design is affected by drag. It is very important to understand what the standard is.”
“Toro Rosso is also a very good team and they are very open with us. Compared to their position - in terms of size and resources - they are actually very competitive. I don’t know how the rest of the Paddock looks at Toro Rosso but we’ve had many meetings with them and they are technically very professional.”
While initial work with Toro Rosso has been ongoing since the announcement of the new partnership, the winter will see the collaboration taking on the challenge of preparing a new car ahead of pre-season testing in February.
“The installation is the biggest job for us, to get the engine to fit to the chassis. We need to make many modifications, which is a big job, especially in this limited amount of time. Honda and Toro Rosso - from both sides - are doing a very good job.”
“We’ve been the ones making the majority of requests so far, but it’s fair to say this will be a more equal partnership than it was with McLaren in terms of leadership. And that’s not just because of the size of the team. Obviously Honda as a company is huge but we had little recent F1 experience - so from that point of view McLaren was still leading us. That won’t be the same with Toro Rosso.”
“We are working quickly to swap teams. We have to prepare things before February, so it will be a very busy winter. Development is ongoing on the power unit. It will remain the same power unit concept from this year, so we are able to use the current one as the starting point.”
“That’s the biggest agenda we need to discuss. From a championship point of view, Franz Tost always said it is down to the drivers. So we have to provide Brendon and Pierre with the performance they need. Of course they are very good drivers but they are also rookies in F1 so it’s too early to say what we can target from a Constructors’ Championship point of view."
“People tell me we’ll have much less pressure at Toro Rosso but I don’t think that’s true. In my mind we simply need to prepare the best engine and nothing is going to slow that down.”
http://en.hondaracingf1.com/newsroom/in ... rosso.html
I think it means that they will work as a united team.
I want to remind you what Hasegawa san had said about efficiency. He was saying "when we improve ice efficiency energy recovery drops so much you can not imagine..."j.yank wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 10:48It seems that on this track Honda were forced to do heavy fuel savings, suggesting that they run with heavy fuel load. Look at laps 43-45: suddenly Alonso was able to run at the pace of Red Bull's Verstappen and 0.5 sec quicker than Perez.
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page ... rgio Perez
If the problem was in their energy harvesting/deployment, they will not able to maintain such speed for three consecutive laps. I think that the weakest point of Honda is the efficiency of ICE. If sorted out, I guess that they will run much lighter thus improving dramatically their pace.
As Techman would say (in the opposite direction), there will be no excuses next season, they´ll be exposed and if not performing they can´t say "hey the team forced us to do it this way"
How do I expect they to overtake Williams on the straights? What did you read or what were you thinking about to make such a flawed conclusion?j.yank wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 10:35Williams and Force India have minimum downforce and drag coefficients that make possible to have better speed traps even than their works team, while McLaren maybe have the biggest drag and downforce coefficients. How do you expect they to overtake Williams on the straights?Andres125sx wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 09:52And did you see all the previous laps before the pitstop with Massa moving away from the McHonda even when Alonso was into his slipstream and with DRS?
Each team has lap simulation software which is used to predict lap times, sector times etc with different car configurations. As the aero efficiency only varies by a few percent from car to car, teams use GPS data from competitors to estimate DF and drag levels by analyzing corner speeds. Once drag has been established, they use acceleration data to estimate power.rogazilla wrote: ↑27 Nov 2017, 17:48Mod: please feel free to move to separate thread since this is a bit OT.
A lot of discussion on GPS data. In my limited knowledge, that's speed at any given part of the track. How do you determine PU performance and Separate that from Aero/Chassis? Wouldn't you just have the comparison from one car to another?
For meaningful comparison, you will assume all Merc teams runs the same PU with same mapping then you can have a meaningful discussion on the Aero/Chassis between the Merc teams. Same can be said for Renault Powered teams. I have a hard time to see it as a meaningful comparison without a constant to make the comparison using GPS data. Obviously I picked PU as constant since it is much less likely to have Aero/Chassis as constant. The only team that can make some good analysis will be Mercedes since they probably know all the PU parameters running a merc engine. Same as the Renault to know PU in all the Renault powered team. However to compare between Merc and Renault, then there must be some 'Assumptions' being made. Am I missing something?
On the Monkey seat ?
