So I know that there are atleast a few motorsports fans on here, and I've had this idea for awhile and figured I would go through with it. Last year marked Honda's return to Formula 1 since 2008, and that is something that we should all be excited about. It seems Honda as a company has finally found it's way again and has adhered to the Soichiro quote "without racing, there is no Honda".

Last year was very tough if anyone followed, and Mclaren Honda dealt with serious ERS (energy recovery system) deployment issues which forced them to the back of the pack most races. This year though, with a working ERS and good reliable base, the team is making strides and working it's way up the midfield. We have arguably the two best drivers on the grid in world champions Alonso and Button, and a future star in Stoffel Vandoorne (who was the first Mclaren driver to score points in 2016 last weekend with Alonso out and Button's DNF).

The engines are incredibly complex, 1.6 liter turbocharged V6 hybrids, with about 700 to 800bhp just from the ICE and another 160bhp from the MGU's. The power unit as a whole has to work in tandem flawlessly and when they do, overall efficiency is higher than its ever been. This has been the fun part for me personally, learning more about the technology and seeing my favorite company work from the ground up in developing an F1 PU. It's rumored that Mercedes has over 1,000 bhp in quali trim, and they are leagues ahead of every other team save maybe Ferrari, who seem to have reliability issues themselves so far this year. Honda is a year or more behind on development, but the engineers at the Sakura factory have been working extremely hard to close the gap. It will be fun to watch and see how close they can get it within the regulations this year, and build off of that for the years to come. Mclaren Honda will dominate again!






MP4/29H 1x1: This car was built by Mclaren late in the 2014 season in preparation for the new partnership with Honda. Originally this car ran the Mercedes PU, but Mclaren used a filming day to do system and integration checks on the new engine in a Mclaren chassis. The car was tested in at Yas Marina Circuit and now resides in Honda headquarters in Japan.








MP4/30: 2015 was a teething season for Mclaren Honda...rumours were that Honda was persuaded to enter F1 a year earlier than originally planned, and it showed. It was the worst season for Mclaren in decades, and it just turned out to be one long testing year running around at the back of the grid. Very frustrating for a team with the drivers and resources Mclaren has at their disposal.







RA615H: 2015 Honda PU. Suffered reliability issues, especially at the first part of the season, causing grid penalties for both drivers. I think Alonso alone used around 15 or 20 engines, and regulations only allow 5 to be used all year.






MP4/31: No one knew what to expect after the hard times last year, but this year's car is already 5 seconds (!) faster than last years...crazy development curve. The rest of the paddock is watching what Honda can do, still being down around 50bhp to the other cars. With a great chassis which is also under constant development by Mclaren, big steps should be made this year.


The Chinese Grand Prix is next weekend, hopefully Fernando will be back in the car and can extract that bit more from it and show us where we actually stand. China is an everything circuit with a tight infield and long straights, so it will be a good measuring stick for all facets of the cars characteristics and abilities.

Other than F1, there is BTCC, WTCC, MotoGP, IMSA, and lots of other series' Honda is participating in (and dominating at times). It's finally racing season again, let's start the hype train!

 

Honda's PU is still a good ways off Merc/Ferrari & Renault seemed to have made huge strides in both reliability and basic drivability. This season is shaping up to be a good one.

Vandoorne looks like a special commodity out there, I'm rather glad Alonso is sitting out for a couple races, though I hope he heals well.

Marquez just won last weekend in MotoGP, so a solid weekend for them with Vandoorne scoring in Bahrain.

Now we just wait to see Honda's continued struggles in SuperGT.

 

The Renault update set for Canada scares me a bit...it seems each engine supplier is going for sparkless ignition, if they don't already have it yet. Red Bull says they will gain half a second with the upgrade...hopefully Honda can match that at some point with spending the rest of their tokens. It's rumored they will change the compressor size so we'll see..

We need Alonso though...Stoffel clearly has talent but I still believe Nando is the best driver on the grid, even at 34 years old. The amount of performance he can extract from a less than perfect car is crucial at this stage of development. Hopefully Mclaren can fund a B-team like Haas and Manor to find Vandoorne a seat and collect extra data...it'd be a win-win.

Also can't believe I forgot about Super GT...that will be interesting to watch this year too as I dabbled a bit last year with the series.

 

Another fantastic weekend for MM93 at his playground of Austin earlier this morning (4am race time for me). He absolutely destroyed the field in the race and could have easily won by at least 10 seconds if not 12+, but he let up just enough so as to not lose concentration and stuff it, but even on the final lap he really let up and it allowed JL99 to pick 3 seconds back up, but still lost by about 6 seconds. And Honda still have lots of work to do with the inferior Magnetti ECU. With a now 21pt lead after just 3 races, it is looking quite good, though way too early to call anything yet.

Onto F1, I will be attending the Catalunya race in a few weeks time and really hoping and looking forward to some upgrades being brought along to kick off the European season for JB and FA. I really like JB as a driver, but I have a feeling he might just hang up his shoes in F1 come the end of this season (as it is his 17th right now), unless miraculously the 2nd half of the year the team is actually fighting the team from Brackley. Though will RD not force SV47 into one of the cockpits regardless if JB wants to stay put. Quite the conundrum to be in for McLaren, because all 3 drivers have what it takes without question. Though I'm sure some do question JB as his driving is so damn smooth it looks as though he is not really trying all that hard at times. Anyways, really hoping for some more gains, but it's still an unknown as to how much Mercedes might actually be holding back, playing their cards close to their chests because still not really being pressured even with Ferrari's gains that look like just might be losses overall with the current reliability issues.

 

Agreed on all counts 555, I personally feel that there isn't any questioning whether JB WANTS to stay put. I remember an interview from the end of last season maybe where he was very excited talking about the 2017 changes and the cars being 5 seconds faster, and being eager to drive them. Also kind of unrelated but his marriage did just end too...maybe that is making the fuel burn a bit longer and stronger. However, it may not even be up to him anyway and Ron Dennis and McLaren have a long history of poor driver management.

It's almost sad how much advantage Mercedes has right now with performance and reliability, but hopefully the token system being axed next season will help Honda and Renault catch up fast. Ferrari is almost there and without tokens they would possibly be able to fix their reliability issues quickly and continue to develop from there.

I think with the V8's it was about four (or five?) years before diminishing returns started kicking in and each engine was more or less the same as far as outright power output. This and next year should change things a good bit, but all we can do is hope. No team in F1 has dominated like this for 3 years straight...hopefully that doesn't change this year.

As for Honda catching Brackley this year...it just doesn't seem to be in the cards. I believe the best case scenario for us is by Abu Dhabi we are the third best car behind Merc and Ferrari, and for the gap to Maranello to have been closing fairly quickly up to that point.

 

Marquez was DOMINANT yesterday.

 

Boredom while browsing the Temple of VTEC boards' archived threads led to me finding this:


Don't know how to embed videos but holy shit the feels at around 1:30..

 

Got a nice package from Monaco, France via DHL this morning.



After last night's (because Japan) race, granted a double points finish was a gift for McLaren-Honda, you have to finish to collect those gifts. Honda really needs to work on its fuel consumption, this is what is really holding the team back, because towards the end of the race, Alonso for 2 laps let the beast shine and ended up with the 5th fastest lap of the race and that was on old softs. Button has already stated they are expecting nothing for Catalunya and for it to be even harder. Which is disheartening, because I was really hoping something was going to be produced for the opening EU races.

 

Very jealous 555.

It does seem like the PU is too thirsty, for that 5th fastest lap he was only around a second behind Rosberg's fastest. The pace is there to be had, obviously they just need to make strides for better consumption. Not sure if they can improve in this area with tokens but we'll see.

Good news is it looks as though some new major aero bits are being fast-tracked for Spain, so again let's hope it brings better balance, less tire degradation and ultimate pace.

 

Lewis coming at Nico & Marquez leading the championship?

GOOD.

 

4 points off Nico but he's already through his last engine, and will start at the back of the grid at Spa. It will be a fight to the end though, no doubt. Interesting to see Merc having so many reliability issues this season..

Also, Honda slowly but surely spending tokens here and there and making progress...can't wait for the big upgrade, the car finally looks competitive now.

 

Odd that so many of the issues have hit Lewis & relatively little for Nico.

Meanwhile, at West Michigan Honda Meet this weekend:





They're going to run a spec Fit class next year. Intake, exhaust, suspension, 200 TW tires.

 

Remember the last few years though? It seemed Nico was the only one having the issues, now it seems it's Lew's turn.

Also that's awesome, I wonder if it would only be GD spec? Or would GE's be able to compete as well seeing as how they have a bit more power and stiffer chassis?

 

Lewis had a good amount of issues early in 2014, similar circumstances to this year.

GE's are able to compete, though they will be required to put in some ballast, apparently GE's are noticeably quicker with the same mods. I will be driving the event next year in my AP1, I'm more protective of my Fit than it

 

I guess I just remember Nico's failures from that year being more critical as far as the standings were against Lewis back then. Either way it's clear Lewis is faster over a hot-lap when he's on (and he's on more frequently than Nico) and the egde in race-craft between the two goes to Lewis easily in my opinion. These Alonso-to-Merc rumors scare me as a Honda fan, but as an F1 fan that would be just awesome, HAM-ALO battle round 2.

Also I would love to see the comparison in lap times between a GD and GE, equally modded. Would be really interesting to see.

 

ALO to Merc would be interesting. I think at this point Lew is faster & makes very little in the way of mistakes (unlike in 2007) with the exception of struggling from a dig.

McHonda would get to promote Stoffel & maybe another young Honda guy, which could be great.

The GD's were FLYING. One with stock drivetrain (except LSD IIRC), Koni shocks w/ GC and RS3's was running a second a lap faster than my friend in his EM1.

Though the guy driving the Fit was also crushing all of the NA S2000's in his NA EG hatchback

 

Just for clarity's sake, Hammy is just a single point off of Nico and should overtake him after this weekend's race in Hungary. Though anything can happen. Mercedes is not so confident in Nico's mission for this weekend, but I'm guessing they rather not take a grid drop here in Hungary as it is not the easiest circuit to pass on and hope it lasts the weekend.

In MotoGP news, well old news as it was almost a week ago already, the hornet MM93 and HRC had a terrific race after choosing the wrong wet tire up front. He left Sachsenring with a 7 year run of poles and wins through the 3 classes of bikes and doubled his lead in the championship to 48 points over Lorenzo. Hate to look back, because the past can't be changed, but if he would have settled (though I kind of hate that and really appreciate the gung-ho attitude) with the numerous 2nd places (6) versus trying to get the upper step, he would of easily won the championship last year and looking pretty for a 4th straight on a bike that is still not as good as the instrument makers.

 

MM93 is one of the most impressive athletes I've seen in my years watching motorsports. I really think he could go down in history as Rossi's superior (though only if his speed holds up for anything near as long).