The Official 2017 F1 thread

Looks like the Mac / Honda marriage is over, with Honda going to Toro Rosso and Renault coming to Mac.

It is a shame on both parts. Honda just can seem to find their way, although it seemed to make progress as of late, just not enough.

Maybe it will rain in Sinapore, and Alonso puts Mac on the top step of the podium! Wouldn't that be the stuff?
 
i few years ago, when i heard of the Honda/Alonso/McLaren deal, i had hoped to watch Alonso win at Monaco in that car on the 75th anniversary. instead, he wasn't even there (and had absolutely no reason to be)... :frown:
 
You may have read that Honda is almost signing a deal with the junior red bull team for 3'years. We are told negotiations always assumed that should the powerplant prove to be good and promising in 2018 (now with Ilmor's involvement), Marko would seriously consider Honda for the main red bull team. Well, now that the deal is very close, Porsche comes out and seriously talks (already working on an engine) of getting together with red bull, possibly buying into (or outright) the team. Poor Honda, not is it difficult enough to prove your might with a junior team (chassis and resources), the promise of front row glory is yet again very far off.
 
Seriously though, lets step back a second from our Honda love stage and think. Three full years of research and development with one of the best equipped and financed constructor with seemingly no financial restrictions, more than 50 GP's of testing and nothing much to show for it? Granted, the technology is very complicated (just listen to Mercedes explaining their new F1-road car) but Honda has constantly struggled to get ahead both with hybrid road cars and F1. Their salvation may be the possibility of 2021+ rules that would simplify power down to V6 with combo turbo's.
 
...but they would win the constructors personal jet race.....:tongue:
 
I agreed with you 100%...but we are going by their past achievements, and we are hoping they can achieve those types of gains and dominance.

Let's keep our hopes UP

bram
 
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Without trying to make excuses for Honda, for they truly did underestimate the size and complexity of the challenge, and thus have f*^@#d up badly, they really did set themselves an almost impossible task.

The other 3 manufacturers had a 3-5 year lead in R&D on Honda, and of the other 3 manufacturers, only Mercedes got it right on the first go [and not the least reason for that was a certain Mr. Brawn who knocked together a dream team of engineers solely devoted to producing the best PU].

Then in it's first couple of years of competing they were ham-strung by the Token regulations, which restricted their development potential. During which time they discovered they had gone down the wrong development path with regards to energy recovery and the turbo charger requirements for optimum efficiency. Indeed the whole energy recovery side was a failure. The nail in the coffin for their original design was the CCI combustion technology that Mercedes and Mahle had developed, which has meant not only did they have to develop a whole new architecture for the engine, but they found that the head design for this sort of technology is a black art, to which they were not privy.

This year they are having to put out the bush fires of unreliability that are a result of the very immature technology they bring to the track, on a race by race development schedule! This is all compounded by the need to develop new lines of code to optimise the power harvesting and delivery of the PU, with each new development they bring to the track!! I know how stressful a normal CLUB race meeting is, I can't begin to fathom how stressful it must be for the whole team [McLaren side included] to keep on top of developments as they unfold on an F1 race weekend!

So, embarrassed as I am about Honda's abject failure in public, I see it as a sort of achievement in how far they've actually come. Let's remember, when Renault showed up for the first preseason test in 2014 they did little more running than Honda achieved in 2015. And if you consider development and R&D time in the equation, today's Honda PU is at the stage that everyone else was at the start of the 2014 season.

I still shake my head on remembering all the lyrical "a jewel of an engine" talk back in 2014! Talk about getting it wrong Mr Dennis. So in a sense, Honda's re-entry into F1 was doomed to failure from the onset. But while we can sheet some of the blame to McLaren, and their insistence that Honda show up in 2015 with their PU, I blame Honda's brass the most, for agreeing to such an impossible engineering schedule.
 
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Thank,you Sadlerau, that was very insightful and of course does touch on the reality of Honda's failure so far but historically the race to catch up on technological innovations in F1 and in the automotive world in general is much shorter than the "race" for development. In the small world of F1 engineering, backmarkers frequently find a way to speed up their developments by snatching information, sometime people from the front . I have been following up F1 since the mid 60's and always observed that fact. Ferrari in particular was notoriously good at the practice. I beleive Honda with all its manpower and funds, is justifiably guilty of lagging behind in an arena where large OEM's cannot afford to be at the back of the pack for years without a sign of real improvement.
 
I, like you, have been following F1 for far too long, Jim Clark's death brought tears to my eyes, as he was my boyhood hero!

Honda have always been guilty of moving to the beat of their own drum, just read any of the stories told by those who have worked with them in motorsport - such as Ron Tauranac, and Michael Doohan just to name two. But that was then and today it doesn't work so well.............

At least they have now taken on-board more "western" consultants to help them through the mire of this era's PU witchery! I say "more" because with all the furor about Honda's unwillingness to use foreign consultants, most everyone forgets that Honda had employed Gilles Simon [who was employed by the FIA to be part of the team that wrote the regulations for the current PUs!] from day 1. That didn't work out too well it seems, as they recently let him go back to the FIA. I wonder how much of Honda's initial wrong direction was due to the influence of the Frenchman??
 
based on what i know of Honda's inner workings, i wouldn't blame anyone else for their stubbornness...

Stubbornness doesn't come into the equation till much later, if you start off with the wrong numbers to aim for, and take the wrong direction in how you create that power?

Remember it's not just about the ICE's power, it's also about how much of the resultant heat energy is used to generate electrical energy and how it's stored, all against the backdrop of maximising fuel consumption. Simon was brought on board because Honda wanted a short cut into the background research on what could be expected from these types of PUs. Once they chose a path they were locked into a very conservative development path due to the Token system. Stubbornness would have had little to do in this scenario?
 
Not arguing the stubbornness part at all, just I don't think it played a big part at the beginning of their current predicament. But then I'm only guessing, and it will be an interesting read if it's ever written about. What is known for sure is how fiendishly complicated these PUs are!
 
The beginning was the only time of big spectacle, the rest was ultra-boring.

Very dumb move of Vettel to pull over to the left so early, knowing that Verstappen has nothing to loose and is a hotspur per se. Funny to see Raikkönen rolling down the straight like a bowling ball for someone else to hit. Too bad it was Alonso who had a formidable start. Really a shame!

If Vettel looses the championship (and I guess/bet he will) he knows where and has to say: mea culpa.
 
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Both Ferrari Drivers were at fault in MHO, they were worries about the Max, beating them to the first corner.
Love the way Lewis just drove around the cars, as they were crashing into each other...

Bram
 
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Both Ferrari Drivers were at faulty in MHO.

Bram

i don't think Kimi did anything wrong. he had a lightning start and was going down the inside. if Vettel wasn't coming over it would have all worked out...

Very dumb move of Vettel to pull over to the left so early, knowing that Verstappen has nothing to loose and is a hotspur per se. Funny to see Raikkönen rolling down the straight like a bowling ball for someone else to hit. Too bad it was Alonso who had a formidable start. Really a shame!

that really was a shame. could have been an epic race for Alonso (pretty unlikely as it dried out), Raikkonen or Verstappen. was hoping Ricciardo was gonna get in there and mix it up with Hamilton, but strangely it wasn't to be. turned out a bit boring as goldNSX said...
 
was hoping Ricciardo was gonna get in there and mix it up with Hamilton, but strangely it wasn't to be. turned out a bit boring as goldNSX said...
Was hoping for that too but Ricciardo was said to have gearbox problems and was lucky to finish at all.

Not sure but I guess that Red Bull will play a significant role in the championship this year. There are six races left, some tracks favor Mercedes, some Ferrari, not sure about which track for which team. One similar fault can egalize or mess it all up. Ferrari/Vettel is now in tie-break disadvantage. I'm on the side of Ferrari this year as Mercedes has won too much in the past. :)
 
Nothing Iceman did wrong. He's just an innocent victim. It was stupid of Vettel not to realize that others may outperform him at the start and start squeezing the Dutch that much. Sure he's four times world champion but the more I look at him the more I observe inmaturity. Counter to #44 . It was funny when Vettel mentioned it's not a big deal and we should move on. Yes you should except that move alone might have cost you this year's title.
 
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