Whatever, sounds like denial, 1.6 sec deficit around Spa sounds super-extremely favorable to Honda to me.
And 60% Honda 40% McLaren overall performance deficit. Well, lets just say I was wiping coffee off my laptop after I read that.
Except its not 1.6, its 1.87 as the car being forced to run trimmed out is due to a power shortfall. So, the 1.6 and 0.27 are both down to the PU. It's just how things are right now and while not great, its reality and to a large degree understandable. If Mercedes, Ferrari or Renault were forced to run after only 18 months of development, they would likely be in the same boat as Honda, if not worse. The 0.8 is interesting but more likely than not a product of McLaren going through their changes last year, as I've mentioned previously, this car is a hybrid of two different design teams and is evolving constantly - McLaren have brought updates to every race and those updates have (from what we've heard) worked due to a good coloration with with the wind-tunnel/CFD/Simulator. The line of discussion about the car not developing or of development being slowed by Honda are dead ends, McLaren haven't stood still - the flow of parts shows this; they have however been hampered in running these parts to test that they work. The fact that the McLaren chassis has shown the most improvement across the course of the year however suggests that they are on a good development path and that the pace of their development is once more great. The same dead end if being pursued with regard to the car being draggy, the McLaren is draggy because the Red Bull is draggy. The McLarens under Newey/PP were draggy too. While I am sure they can knock a few clicks off this, this line of development is always going to be higher drag than that of Williams for instance - but we will kill them in the corners overtime - just as Red Bull have been doing for years for the self same reason.
F1 rules:
So, MGU-H can directly feed MGU-K.
Also it can store energy in ES for later feed of MGU-K
Lets take in account:
- All in all given that MGU-K can harvest upto 2MJ per lap
- ES can feed to MGU-K upto 4MJ per lap
- rumours say Honda PU could use ERS approx half of the time at Spa
It seems that MGU-H is not working at all. Or at least it can't feed ES, at max it can feed MGU-K directly but it can't store the additional 2MJ per lap allowed by rules.
Or (alternative) it stores enery to ES but is unable to feed -K at same time due to unique positioning of PU elements.
I vaguely remember that in the beginning there were some problems with turbo breaking - could it be that Honda went too aggressive connecting MGU-H/turbo/MGU-K without gears or... whatever is used , and trying to use it the proper way on track conditions simply breaks something. And in order to fix it they have to move/change too many parts even if only for reliability
The MGU-H has to be directly connected to the Turbo spindle - they aren't allowed to pass that force through gearing from what I understand.
Just think of it in general F1 context.
Look how much Lotus has improved this year so far, and how much running they've had? Same goes for RBR, STR, FI etc.
Look at 2013 Sauber, or whatever, the list is forever.
Now think about how little running McLaren had. And what would have been if they had PU that's at least working ok (last at least one full GP) since Australia or winter testing for that matter.
Arai has always been apologetic about PU unreliability causing lost track time for chassis development, setting and all that.
Some people seem to think that "car has deficit = car is not good, McLaren has done subpar job". It's not. Just simplest fact that it takes time to understand car and develop further, or conversely more mileage better the car will be. Simple fact is they had so little, and disrupted running. Cause: PU's poor reliability.
Again, I think this is a bluff - they've had good coloration all year with the factory, and McLaren and its staff know how to make fast racing cars. The comments earlier in the year about running was for testing parts - not developing them, and this is where the good coloration with the wind-tunnel etc. have paid off. They initially suffered in the area of set-up due to lack of running, but this has since passed as they've gotten a lot of track time since - but this theory of the car being slow due to lack of development/time is a bluff, just as the comments about traction etc. are a bluff.
The same is could likely be said of this 'size zero' - in looking at the car, its not that much different in terms of packaging to the Red Bull and the Honda engine in terms of width looks similar to the Mercedes they ran last year. The major packaging difference seems to be in terms of height as the compressor/Turbo sit lower. The 'size zero' would still be possible if this weren't the case as the airbox on the McLaren is quite large, bigger than the FI, TR and Ferrari for sure. I've said before that if these heat issues were a result of the car packaging, then they would have been solved before the start of the year as PP was around at Red Bull when they did just that the year before. Honda's heat issues is a design issue with the block, not the chassis, and like the MGU-H problem is a factor of their lack of development time, its not that they never hired in, or that they don't know what they are doing, or that McLaren did this that or the other - its just a lack of time. With that in mind, we should be impressed with what they have managed to achieve given that the engine isn't that far off what Renault and Ferrari had last year with far more time in R&D - the same with McLaren who have managed to turn around a slow decline in car design in under a year to produce something as good as they have.