As much as this makes me happy to hear, I will admit I am very surprised that the Honda engines are so unreliable..for 2 years running. I confess I may be ignorant here, but Honda was known for reliability in the past yes? I know racing engines are totally different animals then production engines, but I mean - this is a far cry from Honda F1 engines in the 80's yes?
Agree. Until they are defeated on track, they are the champs and it has to be taken from them. Thus far Ferrari is proceeding in the right direction.
We are going on year 4(2017). The first year(2014) the new engine formula was problematic for most teams but not for MB as they had a jump on this Hybrid-PU formula and they won. But by year 2 most of the bugs were worked out...except for Honda. Year 3(2016) Honda was still having issues and now(2017) during testing....they changed more engines than tyres at one point I believe. As David Coultard said not long ago and I quote: " this is not Formula Excuses, its F1. In the 80's was a different story as the engine then simple compared to now. Honda trying to relive the glory days of old but this current PU-Hybrid is so complicated and complex that Honda has poured so much money into it($100 million +) that they cannot get it right. They face more shame closing shop and heading back to Japan RATHER THAN stick it out and face media and fan humiliation. Mclaren is in talks with Mercedes currently.
thank you Joe for the context. Appreciate your thoughts and the background. It's crazy how bad the failure rate, this was even worse then a couple years ago with Renualt engines right?
...and IIRC Ferrari poached engineers for the V10 engine design for their championship winning cars of the 2000's era. What the heck happened....?!?!
Well I beg to differ in that Renault stumbled for a little over a year and a half and towards the end they got right 2016. This year(2017) will prove interesting as the top 3 "SEEM" to have a fight...so it seems...until Melbourne and maybe a couple of GP's as most of us here believe MB are "sandbagging" BIG TIME. Since the intro of this Hybrid-PU, it was for "cost-reduction"....which was/is not the case. This is all at the expense of one of manufacturer for their ultimate goal....MB for road car use. This is not what F1 is suppose to be about it.
Agreed, sorry I was unclear in my previous post. I meant as in Honda is worse then Renault from 2 years ago!
Yes they are.....its unfortunate the state Honda and Mclaren are in. Mclaren "looks" to be at the bottom 3 of the pack for the moment....it will be quite the drama going forward between Honda, Mclaren and Alonso these next several GP's.
yes, I was amazed at how many engines failed in testing. Also a noob question to the group - I assume a team is allowed to do testing before Barcelona? Or are they not able to?
they are NOT able too....they must wait till Barcelona. HOWEVER, there are ways around testing with different components as in "mule" cars. THEY CANNOT test the whole parts and components and electronics with the whole car UNTIL Barcelona....make sense? they can bench test an engine if thats what your referring too???
Thank you so much, I think understand. Makes total sense. You can test the individual parts on test cars, but the complete car, you have to wait until Barcelona... I really appreciate the education! Cheers
If you have time to read....I would suggest reading most of BAS JASKI's, and WILLIAMS articles as there insights and context prove useful if you want to catch up or get some history of the sport....there are others as well DF1, NURSCUD, THE MAYOR to name a few and off the top of my head.
^^^ Good for Renault and RB! We need a challenge for the all conquering Mercs to come from somewhere. Saturday can't come soon enough. That will give us our first true indicator or relative speed through the grid. Forza Ferrari, and failing that, Forza RedBull!
