[tharian]

Listening to the Honda engine note from the camera on Alonso's car, it sounded so rough and strained even without comparing it to another cars sound.
There was one turn where the downshift was almost after the turn was complete and it felt like a gear slip on some old car.

Sad state for a company which otherwise makes brilliant engines.

[ecenandu]

More on the tyre pressure saga,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0daJ2Q8ovvk

[ecenandu]

The Red Bull Formula 1 team will not run Renault engines next season, AUTOSPORT understands.

Renault and Red Bull's relationship has become fractious during the last two seasons following a string of reliability and performance problems.

Red Bull has a contract with Renault that runs until the end of 2016, but AUTOSPORT sources are adamant the relationship will not continue next year.

Source:http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/120696

Rumours getting stronger, Toro Rosso going for Ferrari.

[jfxavier]

My takeaways from Monza.

• Pole, race and fastest lap (not to mention all FPs) goes to Hamilton. Story of 2015 F1 season in a nutshell. Nico can say goodbye to his 2015 title dreams.
• Kimi did a better job compared to many other races this year. Maybe he was waiting for his engineers to tell him what to do at the start when everyone else pulled away. He is looking a bit slow to embrace changes.
• The mighty Mercedes engine can fail, if pushed. Reliability hits can happen to Merc. as well while introducing engine upgrades. Arai could claim same reliability standards as Merc. after Monza
• FIA looks toothless race after race. At Spa they could not enforce track limits, where as in Monza, all the fuzz about tyre pressures.
• Lack of testing/ development through the season. Is it good or bad for F1? More and more people are looking upset about the restrictive rules. Looks like a 2 tier championship now. Exactly what the restrictions on development wanted to avoid. Now the only difference is that the advantages are cemented in for years, instead of months. What's with the aggressive questioning of Arai san? Somebody better question Bernie and his buddies at the FIA as well.
• Looking at what happened with Montoya, Lewis better stay away from Juan Pablo for the whole of 2015.

[sgiitk]

There was some worried chit-chat between Hamilton and the pits. The commentators thought it may be leaking hydraulics. Raikkonen stalling at the start was bad. What happened? I am sure he would have overtaken Hamilton and then things could have been different.

[Hatari]

Honda getting a lot of stick this weekend. I empathize with motorsport fans to a degree.
What we are seeing is embarrassing from the engine maker that at one point produced the best turbo engine.

BUT, Renault and Ferrari have risked little, opted for more conservative solutions and they still had their problems. As motorsport fans, we are all tired of this boring Mercedes domination, therefore, if you want them beaten, we must understand it required a solution completely radical, which Honda have attempted.

Had it been easy or with no risk, Ferrari and Renault would have done the same. So, personally I will give them the long rope for trying and if they fight for podiums next year and the WDC in 2017, it will be worth the wait.

[thehighwayman]

Lets just hope Mercedes do not supply engines to Red Bull next year on-wards because if they do , we can expect another boring season of Red Bull dominance.

[avdhesh15]

Honda is really struggling and it's really a pain for someone like me who has been a big Alonso fan so see him and Button struggle so much. It's unbelievable that 10+ races down the line they still haven't been able to sort out their stuff.

They were supposed to be faster than Renault this weekend but seeing Button unable to overtake the Renault powered car despite having DRS down the main straight said it all.

McLaren should bite the bullet - get back to Mercedes and give these 2 world champion drivers a change to reclaim lost glory.

F1 is getting boring with the "Lewis-era". Something needs to be done...

[gtonsing]

Boring race. I actually went away for the first half of the race. It became interesting, slightly, when Bottas upped the game.
Good Job by SFI!!!

[autobahnjpr]

It must have been very frustrating for KIMI when his car stalled during start. Imagine being 2nd on the starting line and seeing everyone rushing past you. But he drove a great race and finally finished fifth overtaking everyone on the way.
It would really have been a very interesting race had his car not stalled and hamilton would have been pushed hard to defend his lead.

[Fullrevs]

Originally Posted by jfxavier

Attachment 1411401
[*]The mighty Mercedes engine can fail, if pushed. Reliability hits can happen to Merc. as well while introducing engine upgrades. Arai could claim same reliability standards as Merc. after Monza

Wasn't Rosbergs engine from the old batch? I don't think he ran the new spec engine after the problem during FP3.

The race was OK, was definitely good to see a Ferrari on the podium. Has to be the best podium on the calendar with all those spectators flocking to the main straight for the celebrations. Italy really loves its F1.

Hopefully singapore will be a lot more exciting as its not much of a power circuit. We should be able to see Red Bull in the mix and Mclaren fighting for points.

[dustom_99]

I don't see McLaren into points even in Singapore. There chassis seems to be OK , but OK is bare minimum, with merc , ferrari ,red bull,Williams , top 8 are almost sealed even in Singapore. Last 2 places and lot of good cars and good drivers eager to take them.

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by Fullrevs

Wasn't Rosbergs engine from the old batch? I don't think he ran the new spec engine after the problem during FP3.

Rosberg had a six race old engine and it gave up the ghost when he started pushing aggressively to catch Vettel (maybe he tried the famous Merc. quali mode).

His new engine was replaced due to leaks. Such high standards were set by Mercedes that one such incident means the driver not affected by the problem effectively secures the WDC.

[jfxavier]

Originally Posted by Tanmay K

Sad to see Alonso struggling so much in spite of being one of the better drivers around right now.



Source: BBC

Originally Posted by mayankk

Mclaren. Oh Mclaren. Whither art thou?
What is wrong with this Honda association. A behemoth like Honda is getting it's engines from lada, what? One full season of Mclaren DNA, two world champions, multitude of championships, the current and future champion who cut his teeth here, and it's being treated like an extended testing session? It's becoming ultra disappointing.

Originally Posted by tharian

Listening to the Honda engine note from the camera on Alonso's car, it sounded so rough and strained even without comparing it to another cars sound.
There was one turn where the downshift was almost after the turn was complete and it felt like a gear slip on some old car.

Sad state for a company which otherwise makes brilliant engines.

Originally Posted by avdhesh15

Honda is really struggling and it's really a pain for someone like me who has been a big Alonso fan so see him and Button struggle so much. It's unbelievable that 10+ races down the line they still haven't been able to sort out their stuff.

They were supposed to be faster than Renault this weekend but seeing Button unable to overtake the Renault powered car despite having DRS down the main straight said it all.

McLaren should bite the bullet - get back to Mercedes and give these 2 world champion drivers a change to reclaim lost glory.

Originally Posted by dustom_99

I don't see McLaren into points even in Singapore. There chassis seems to be OK , but OK is bare minimum, with merc , ferrari ,red bull,Williams , top 8 are almost sealed even in Singapore. Last 2 places and lot of good cars and good drivers eager to take them.

Honda is in such deep trouble that they cannot get themselves out of it using the tokens that are remaining this season. The development game at the moment is heavily tilted towards Mercedes/ Ferrari and others are bound to end up taking more risks to catch up with them.
.
The first engine updates introduced at the Canadian Grand Prix, aimed at improving the reliability of the motor generator units should probably have been approved as reliability upgrades. But the way F1 regulations are presently set up, a unanimous approval from all rival manufacturers is required for a reliability upgrade and unfortunately Honda could not secure everyone's approval & had to use tokens to make reliability upgrades to their inefficient MGUs. Talk about kicking someone while he is down. The MGU designs & layout are to be changed again before the next year using the 25 tokens available at the end of 2015.

I think what really surprised them was the necessary changes to the combustion chamber, intake and exhaust for reducing stress on other engine components. There were some critical faults in the internal combustion chamber design that was having a knock on effect on the other components by placing undue stress on them. After spending the tokens required to fix the combustion issues, they just don't have enough tokens left.

I hope that the design validating processes and dyno testing and feedback processes in their factory have been questioned internally as this kind of problem is something that should have been picked up quite early during the testing of the PU. Hopefully Honda will come out stronger through these issues.

After fixing the ICE part of the PU, the main issue is the ERS part for which they do not have enough tokens left this year.

Wonder what if Honda could demonstrate a PU running in their factory with all necessary changes and then call for a change in the rules. Seems highly unlikely as they are said to have dismissed a proposal from Renault in the Technical Working Group that the FIA seemed ready to accept and would have allowed the two manufacturers to develop the power unit during the 2016 season, to retrieve the technical gap that separates them from Mercedes and Ferrari.

They seem like wanting to do it the hard way. Probably victory will taste sweeter like that. There is also the philosophy of "Win at all costs", which the European manufacturers are following by poaching staff from other teams which they are reluctant to follow. In any case, Honda will soon open their research and development center in Milton Keynes and advertisements have already appeared looking for staff. Looks like they are not in a hurry where as McLaren and their fans want to win yesterday.

It is understood that solutions to the energy recovery deficit will need a rethink of certain key components – which are believed to include the compressor.

Such changes cannot be made during the campaign because of the tight engine homologation regulations.

Arai said therefore that progress would be limited this year, even with development tokens left to use, but suggested that bigger changes for 2016 were already being prepared.

“We already found what is the weak point for the power unit, so we have already started work on next season development,” he explained.

“We are in a good direction, but the results are not so good,” he said. “I hope we do our best for the rest of the season. We want to use our tokens for the next few races.”

Source : http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ho...hange-for-2016

[dustom_99]

Arai - what other reply could he muster except - we have found the problem ,In future we will have better engine.
Isn't it the same thing they have been saying all this while, in different words.
Just like Honda say they have found some key component to improve , so will other manufacturer and they will improve too.
But science of Hope says- we are gonna improve enough to overhaul the gap and then some.