The power unit produced by Honda F1 has now been successful to win a double title under the name of Red Bull, and is eager to return to F1 in 2026. However, Honda’s fourth business in F1, which began in 2015 to revive the legendary McLaren Honda, started with a big setback.
Honda’s engine performance in 2015, his first year back in F1 with McLaren, was so bad it jeopardized the entire programme.
It was an embarrassment for Honda F1 and a frustrating technical failure for McLaren, ultimately damaging their relationship for a long time and leading to a major break.
McLaren F1 driver Jenson Button and new hire Fernando Alonso have battled in Q1 qualifying all season, with the car averaging around 2.7 seconds behind the leaders on their qualifying pace and the team just passed Manor a low budget. Championship.
The technical cause of the disaster was a dramatic lack of energy that took more than half of the season to fix. One reason is that it was very unreliable in the early days, requiring the engine to run at significant de-runs to keep temperatures under control.
But there was a political backstory behind the glitches. Crucially, McLaren’s Ron Dennis, keen to transition from Mercedes customer team status as soon as possible, lobbied Honda to enter a year earlier than originally planned. Furthermore, the two partners have agreed on a number of very ambitious goals.
Given the complexity of engines in the hybrid era, the extremely compact packaging ultimately limited the powertrain development potential with McLaren’s ‘size zero’ concept. It was a storm of adversity that began with a series of repeated ERS-K seal failures during winter testing, drastically reducing test mileage. Even after the issue was resolved in time for the first half of the season, ERS could not be used at full power etc. without serious overheating problems.
At this stage, McLaren and Honda F1 have shown courage, underlining how new the project is and noting that it is essentially two years behind the development curves of the other power unit manufacturers.
Equipped with a Honda RA165H powerplant, the McLaren MP4-30 was first conceived by former Red Bull aero boss Peter Prodromou. It has a very different aero philosophy to previous McLarens and Jenson Button has been very positive about the overall balance.
“It has a great front end,” said Jenson Button.
“If you roll, add steering lock, and have multiple front ends, that’s always a great seat and that’s what we try to achieve in every debriefing session.”
“Previously, the Pirelli-powered McLarens, even the fast ones, had a big front end into the first corner, some rear end movement and understeer at the apex. This is very smooth without understeer. It’s a sensation.”
“You can brake well and you can be sure you’re stable when cornering.”
However, the McLaren Honda were 5.1 seconds off the pace at Albert Park which was the stage for the opening round F1 Australian GP.
A key part of the concept to achieve the ambitious engine downsizing was to mount the turbocharger inside the vee of the engine. This not only gave a shorter rear overhang than the traditional Ferrari/Renault turbo placement (which opened up room for aerodynamic development), but also placed the supercharger at the front of the engine just behind the cockpit. the engine as rearward as the Mercedes split-turbo concept it was equipped with.
Honda F1’s solution was the best in terms of layout compactness. But it brought an insurmountable problem.
The supercharger was smaller than its rivals to fit the V. In theory, you could compensate for this by simply turning it faster and giving it the same boost. But it didn’t actually work.
Initially, the MGU-H, which ran on the same shaft as the turbo, could not run at the required speed due to vibration problems. This placed an artificial limit on the speed of the supercharger. The small, slowly rotating supercharger significantly dampened the engine’s power.
It was assumed that once the vibration issue was resolved and the turbocharger could run at design speed, the engine would suddenly become competitive, or at least close to it.
But this did not happen: as the speed of the compressor increased and the frictional resistance increased, its energy inefficiency decreased. The balance between increased supercharger boost and the resulting increase in pressure from the exhaust created a very modest spot for power upgrades. This limited the amount of energy that could be supplied to the ERS loop.
Therefore, the battery cannot be recharged as quickly as other power units. At Spa-Francorchamps, for example, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso were only able to use the extra 160PS of electric thrust on one of the two straights. There was one section of the whole lap where I was 200bhp behind the other cars.
Yasuhisa Arai, Honda F1’s project leader at the time, said: “Midway through the August season, we realized our weakness in a more concrete way. The weakness of the package was the deployment of MGU-H and ERS.” I get it, but I was having trouble identifying the cause. Fortunately, in August, it all came to light and the situation was completely remedied.”
“This discovery had a big impact on us as we realized that we needed more energy to actually use the deployment in racing and testing. And it’s very difficult to change everything because I don’t think you can change that mid-season. so we were aware of it, but we couldn’t change it.”
Eric Boullier, McLaren’s F1 team principal at the time, barely hid his frustration at Monza.
The problem was compounded by the engine swap restrictions of the time, but in essence the zero size concept was fundamentally wrong and got worse and worse as time went on.
The optimal size of turbos in Formula 1 grew as the efficiency of power electronics and MGU-Ks increased rapidly through development. The more efficient it became, the bigger turbo size it could justify. As early as 2015, the optimum turbo size was larger than could fit inside the V-engine, a limitation only exacerbated by further developments.
It didn’t take long before the partners were shooting at each other in frustration. McLaren insisted that the bodyside was excellent and that they would be favorites if they had a competitive power unit.
“The mechanical grip and aerodynamics of the car are not very good. Compared to Red Bull, there is still a big gap,” said Yasuhisa Arai.
“We checked the GPS data. The chassis and aero package need some fine-tuning on weather, wing angles, ride height, suspension settings, etc.”
It’s easy to imagine the reaction to this statement at McLaren…
At a particularly tense press conference in Monza, Yasuhisa Arai was asked if he would apologize to McLaren’s two world champion drivers for the lack of a competitive F1 engine…
There was a general feeling at McLaren that Yasuhisa Arai lacked any sense of urgency to improve his performance. Yasuhisa Arai, on the other hand, knew that next year’s engine was ready and he couldn’t make any major changes. This factual communication angered McLaren.
There was certainly a communication and cultural gap between McLaren and Honda F1, with little sense of collaboration at any stage.
Years later, Honda F1 was delighted with how open the small Toro Rosso team was about how the engine worked. And Honda responded by giving key members a glimpse into the depths of the Sakura research project, a place no one at McLaren has ever set foot.
McLaren F1 team principal Eric Boullier showed little anger during a press conference at Monza.
“The McLaren brand is not damaged yet,” said Boullier.
“But if we find ourselves here again next year, it would be a direct loss of revenue as the business is driven by sport.”
Honda F1 may have countered that McLaren’s revenues were greatly boosted by the budget and free engines provided. Neither would be in this position if McLaren hadn’t insisted on tighter timelines and size requirements.
The situation has improved, but not enough. Failure in this relationship was already doomed.
Category: F1 / Honda f1 / mclaren
