That's true, but maybe because they were not always patient enough to reach their goal. If I compare F1 with MotoGP, Honda is rather slow to reach the top when it enters a new series, but when it get there, it often dominates. Honda doesn't have a team of racing designers as such. The company policy at Honda has been to groom young engineers in the racing department before promoting them to the road car division. Designing F1 power units is the anti-chamber before the R & D department. Success don't usually come all at once, unless you are particularly lucky (?) or if you choose a discipline where there is no opposition. Most of the time success comes as a result of persevering long enough to reach it. Honda and Toyota (as teams) failed last time mostly because they were still in their learning curves and pulled out too early for corporate reasons. The financial climate wasn't brilliant in Japan at the time I believe and both companies decided to concentrate of their market, rather than motorsport. Now the economic conditions are better, and Toyota (WEC and WRC) and Honda (F1) are back. I see Honda winning a title again within 5 years.
Maybe in motoGP! (And based on the first race of the season, that might not be so easy!). In F1, I'm not convinced! Winter testing and the start of the season will have come as a massive shock to Honda. They will have assumed that they were going to be at least as competitive as Ferrari and Renault, with a view to being the first to push on to challenge Mercedes. Renault are very poor, performance wise at the moment and Honda are nowhere near them! - Let alone being close to Ferrari or Mercedes. This means that Honda are starting from a long, long way back. They may catch it up, there again, they might not. The thing is, even if they catch up on performance to Mercedes (and maybe Ferrari too!), that's still no guarantee that they will be able to beat them! My monies on Honda falling short season after season and eventually walking away from F1 yet again.
Many thought Mercedes would be unbeatable all season this year, and look what happened already in only the second race. If it weren't for a tire puncture, Kimi could have even finished on the podium too at Malaysia. Lets not forget Mercedes, how they were a failure from 2010-2013, even at the hands of the great Michael Schumacher. Also, look at the 4x champion Red Bull, how they have fallen. Anything can happen in F1.
Im very keen to see them getting theyre ERS up and running on full steam. The word is that the motor unit is located between the gearbox and rear diff. AS opposed to others where its mounted between engine and gearbox. When/if they get temps under control and Can run it on full power, then they should have an advantage over the rest with their ERS.
Weren't Jensen and Alonso running mid pack last race until they retired? If so that is a huge improvement in just one race. The most important thing in regards to Honda (cars) is they have a real old peoples image at the moment and if I was CEO, I'd be worried about that and it needs to change. Being competitive in F1 will definitely help that. But yes they did not make a good job of the 2.4 v8 ... Pete
Yes, they were running mid pack, and with a lil bit of luck they could have been fighting for points. I have a feeling they will not go pointless this year.
1.6 seconds in two weeks is massive. I expect once we get to Europe they'll be battling red Bull. Their lap times when they retired were within a few tenths of them already. That said.....maybe they were running low fuel during the race to look competitive and calm the sponsors/potential sponsors and just packed it in early claiming a possible ers issue?
I believe it was Alonso that had an overheating (ERS?) problem and Button had a turbo problem. I agree though, 1.6 seconds in two weeks is massive, they just have to sort out their reliability issues.
At the first GP, Marquez got pushed off the track at the first corner and found himself last. He fought back and finished 5th (or is it 6th?). As for Pedrosa, he is suffering from "arm-pump" and receive surgery since. I put Honda's bad performance at the last MotoGP down to drivers errors/problems, and not to mechanical failure. Honda has an excellent palmares on bikes, with multiple titles going back to the 60s, in spite of several changes of formula.
My money is on Honda powering several teams in years to come, gathering more data because of accumulated testing time, developing their unit to a winner and lifting one title in 5 years at most. Honda has to up his game, McLaren has to design better cars and recruit new drivers; the present duo (Alonson- Button) will be well past its "sell-by" date when the combination chassis-PU will be ready.
I surely hope F1 gets more competitive. It is boring when one team is almost unbeatable. Regarding Honda's advance, Remember when Toyota was spending more money than the rest and never was successful.
Money alone doesn't bring a solution, but it's surely a good place to start. To succeed, a new team needs time. Toyota started from scratch (it didn't buy a previous team) and forming a new team of engineers, designers, technicians and mechanics takes time. Most of the mechanics recruited came from ... rallying! Why ? Toyota would have obtaine better results and eventually won if it had persevered, but it didn't. The management and drivers changes didn't help. I wonder why Toyota chose drivers without experience, and never recruited a top-notch engineer. Finally, the board couldn't defend the project to the shareholders and closed the show. Toyota never sold its installations, which are now used for WEC and rallying next year. So, although Toyota abandonned F1, it never left motorsport.
+1 Marquez fought from the very back to finish 5th ahead of Pedrosa after being pushed off the track at T1 of the start. Aoyama is to replace Pedrosa at the US and Argentina GPs. It might be too late for Alonso/Button by the time Honda creates a PU on par with Mercedes, but I would hope they could pull it off in 1-2 years. Of the younger drivers, I would love for Bottas to win a WDC in the future with a car powered by Honda. True, sometimes throwing more money won't create results. Toyota never achieved what Honda has in F1. I think their best results were finishing 2nd in a handful of races, and 4th in the WCC.
I have tears in my eyes from laughing I really feel for Ron ...... NOT !!! May many more bad days be upon RD and his lot
I can identify with these sentiments. I dislike Ron for his deception of, and presiding over Stepneygate. I resent the fact that they were never really punished. However, I respect the team Bruce McLaren created. I also recognize that F1 needs iconic teams like McLaren. So part of me likes seeing that people believe everything is ok at McLaren and they just need more of the same. But in the end, McLaren disappearing into oblivion doesn't help F1.
Honda make LAWN MOWERS. Perhaps they can get involved in lawn mower racing and win! Gonna be a while for an F1 win. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.
McLaren/Honda will be mid pack by mid season and running with Mercedes and Ferrari by the end of the season. Look at Ferrari, they've been in F1 for 60 years and could not compete for the last couple of years until this past weekend. McLaren/Honda have won championships before and will do it again. Just ask Ron Dennis.
I consider finishing the season in the top 4 competing. Ask those teams lower down if they are not envious of Ferrari. When was the last time Ferrari did not finish the first two races of a season due to mechanical failure?
$100 million fine is 'never really punished'? Stripped of constructor points for the season, and thus any share of CVC revenue splitting to the teams, is 'never really punished'? Wow, I'd hate to see what you consider punishment. It's also interesting that you think Ron precided over Stepneygate, when it was determined by the FIA in their investigation (and you know Mosley would have loved to pin something on Ron more than anything in the world, well, except a Nazi hooker orgy) that Ron was a dupe who didn't know what was going on behind the scenes in his own company. He certainly didn't come out in a positive light, but he was definitely not presiding over the stolen data. How do you feel about Renault, who were actively using stolen McLaren data to a far greater extent and for longer, but got off with zero punishment? You should really resent them!
You have to be very gullible to think RD had NO idea what was happening , the guy is a flipping control freak and gets stuck into his IT people if the computers aren't ALL exactly the same colour. They should have been banned from F1 for what they did which was tantamount to industrial espionage
....and if you live with god? Where do you think the devil came from, according to the bible/torah/quran?
Give it a rest man, they all have each others designs ... and again the pissed off Ferrari employee took the designs to anybody that was interested. Copying should be encouraged in motorsport as it was in the previous years, it is how ideas become better ideas. Alan Jones would not have won the WDC without it, as Williams copied the Lotus ground effect idea ... Pete
