Lotus said that in 1986, completely convinced the Renault engine was inferior to the Honda. They convinced Honda too. What a shock to them to find that the Honda did not come with coolers, ducting and fuel system, as the Renault did. They got our fuel pump details from Honda and our radiator details from our French supplier (by lying to them). At the first test they had over 0.1 bar worse pressure difference between boost and exhaust backpressure, and 0.1 bar less inlet pressure at the same car speed, due to their poor air intake design and lossy pipework. They had to use 0.2 bar less boost than us (60bhp) to get the same fuel consumption.
All the senior Honda engineers started the Rio test in the Lotus garage, we just got the junior race engineers and a couple of mechanics. After the first hour of running one of the senior Honda engine designers was in out garage measuring (the wrong detail of) our turbo air intakeā¦
By half way through the test we were doing all the evaluations whilst they tried to get the Lotus going properly.
Lotus did OK lap times in testing but were slow at race-able fuel consumption all year even after copying our diffuser.
So in 1987 they were relatively less competitive with the Honda than they had been with the Renault.
Hondaās 1984 engine was rubbish, the 1985 engine was very powerful but had bearing problems, the 1986 engine was pretty well the 1985 engine with 1mm wider main and big-end bearings, so lost a bit of power in friction but was reliable. It was a bit heavy though, having a cast iron block 20mm thick in places. Subsequent engines were minor mods of this one.
Having done a similar type of assessment at McLaren in 1997 (and a much more detailed assessment at Honda in 2007), I have no doubt that despite the current powerplants being far more complicated, McLaren will have the technical capability to objectively make these kind of assessments.
However, there are complications; firstly with these powerplants it will take a lot of time and resource to do the job to a high level of confidence, and secondly, in general Merc did not push their powerplants in 2016, as they had no need to do so and so it would be difficult to know what their outright race pace would have been.
This is one of the things I love about F1. There is nothing new under the sun. Team āAā (or in this case Team A, B & C) gets a jump on Team Wayward and Team Wayward, instead of trying to understand and develop, simply send in their lawyers to stop those with better ideas.
āPlus ca Changeā I hear you say. But it does go some way to explaining why Ferrari is in the mess itās in.
Probably thinking along the lines of āfuck, everybody can replicate in wind tunnels what I can see with my mindās eye. So letās give the advantage back to me.ā
Exactly, it would benefit Adrian Newey more than other engineers!
The Mercedes approach would still work but no other team has demonstrated that they have a very efficient aero development process to compete with Mercedes or RBR.
26 March Australia - Sky only 9 April China - Sky only 16 April Bahrain - Sky + Channel 4 30 April Russia - Sky + Channel 4 14 May Spain - Sky only 28 May Monaco - Sky + Channel 4 11 June Canada - Sky only 25 June Azerbaijan - Sky + Channel 4 9 July Austria - Sky only 16 July Great Britain - Sky + Channel 4 30 July Hungary - Sky only 27 August Belgium - Sky + Channel 4 3 September Italy - Sky only 17 September Singapore - Sky + Channel 4 1 October Malaysia - Sky + Channel 4 8 October Japan - Sky only 22 October USA - Sky + Channel 4 29 October Mexico - Sky only 12 November Brazil - Sky only 26 November Abu Dhabi - Sky + Channel 4
While admin is often a way of someone getting a team on the cheap, staff have been told to expect to have to find new jobs: doesnāt sound too good
If only - for the sake of the Manor staff, if not my sanity - there were an egomaniac ex team boss who used to employ quite a few of Manors senior staff who a scratch to itch
āOver the coming weeks I intend to undertake a thorough and objective review of each of our businesses with the intention of optimising every aspect of our existing operations, whilst identifying new areas of growth that capitalise on our technologies, and where appropriate further investing in them. During February, I will articulate a new Group strategy and implement the organisational structure best suited to achieving it.ā
Hopefully itās a coded message for Bernieās bung to be reduced allowing them to not run it at a loss.
However with other countries paying significantly more alreadyā¦