The history of Honda in his last experience at the Formula 1 being, up to the moment, a compendium of bad decisions, many of them related to the bad judgment at the time of determining the complexity of a challenge as the hybrid engines currently in use in the category.
Honda underestimated its complexity at the start of the project, which resulted in a season 2015: disastrous. When the motor was beginning to reach an acceptable level in the following year, Honda determined that the potential development was already very limited and decided to go for a concept similar to that of Mercedes -with the turbo split in two at each end of the engine block – for 2017.
And, again, again underestimated a concept that even Mercedes came to admit that involved considerable complexity. “From the point of view of the concept, yes, I take it for granted. While it has taken us time to get settled, we understand that it was a phase that had to be overcome, was very hard. We thought that we had enough preparation time, and that’s why we started with the engine this year in may, but a year is not enough”, said Yusuke Hasegawa in a statement to Autosport.
We are focusing mainly on the combustion, but also in the rest of areas. We try to find more power
The highest officer of Honda F1 says that they know what level of performance you must achieve to be competitive because the opposing teams have similar concepts. “we Know what your goal is because other teams have already achieved. We know that most of them are using the same concept of our engine, but obviously we do not know the solution, and the design is accurate, if we can achieve the same level of performance”.
Yusuke Hasegawa believes that Honda has already passed the worst, but acknowledges that there is still much room for improvement.
The third specification of the engine which made its debut in Azerbaijan has been setting up to offer your best side in Hungary, where the team McLaren was able to finally complete a Grand Prix without mechanical problems and managed to score with their two cars.
specification 4 is on the way and Honda expects to exceed the performance of the Renault engines at the end of the year, but Hasegawa acknowledges that they have not yet decided which components will be the first to be used in competition. “we Know the direction to take and some of the components that will allow us to get that performance, but we have not yet concluded what elements we introduce. We are focusing mainly on the combustion, but also in the rest of areas, the consumption of fuel, the parties auxiliary, we try to find more power”.
Finally, Hasegawa acknowledges that, although Honda has progressed in the last few months, there is still much to do to catch Mercedes. “In theory, we have already made good steps, we are in the middle of our goal, but we need more to reach out to the leaders”.
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