McLaren boss confirms long term relationship with Honda unaffected.
thejudge13
F1: Daily International News roundup, inside whispers and insight together with thoughts and opinion
McLaren boss confirms long term relationship with Honda unaffected.
Any other option would be foolish
I’ll bet that Honda are associated with McLaren longer than Zak Brown is.
Zak is clearly out of sorts for that whole interview. Bet he wishes his rrrrs hadn’t landed in that Macca chair. LOL
ZB: thats what McLaren do (ie see out contracts).
Hmm, I recall they had a long term contract with the exploding Peugeot in 1994 as well.
Ignore history at your peril 🙂
If history has taught us anything, it is that history can be ignored.
Wow Bruznic, damn deep thinking for a Friday 😉
Fully agree, any contract can have an escape clause. The thing is, McLaren have a 100mil cash cow in Honda, it would be financial suicide for the team to take another supplier. Like it or not,both parties need each other. Whether Honda stay the course is another story altogether. They cut and ran last time things got a little tough….Maybe McLaren could do a Brawn??
True. That’s why I was one of the very few who doubted honda from the beginning. And look where we are now 😁
What I can’t work out is why Honda have these failures. Honda are not just another engine builder but are THE engine builder. It really can’t be doing their corporate image any favours. I know you shouldn’t live in the past but after all this time you would think that they would know how to machine something..Then again..Harland and Wolff knew how to build ships😇
They tried their hands on some german engineering. They should have known that japs and germans dont match 😉
People view Honda in the 1st turbo era with rose-coloured glasses. They think of McLaren with Senna and Prost who completely dominated. They do forget that Honda started with the Spirit team in 1983 where the engine almost always went bang. It almost always went bang with Williams in 1984 and either won or went bang with Williams in 1985. It wasn’t until 1986 that the engine was reliable enough to challenge for a WC. And that was in an era where unlimited testing was allowed and Honda where allegedly spending over $100M a year on that engine program. From the end of the 1st turbo era until now Honda haven’t produced a anywhere near a stellar F1 engine.
“The thing is, McLaren have a 100mil cash cow in Honda,”
Brown said one of his main priorities was to get a title sponsor for McLaren. Would you like to be their title sponsor now? And the longer this fiasco with Honda goes on, the more dependent McLaren become on Honda’s cash because no one is going to pay anywhere near what McLaren get from Honda.
Agreed Cav, no sponsor would slap a sticker on the last few days performance. Maybe the AA or RAC breakdown service could give it a try😁
And as we write..Mchonda have their second stoppage of the day. Alonso looked a tad miffed as he walked away from the car. He really did need to stay at Ferrari 😁
I wonder if C. Horner is going to send R. Dennis a Christmas card thanking him for the favour of keeping all the Honda engines? Being a Renault fan, I can’t say I mind too much; being an Alonso fan, I wonder what improvements could have been realized with RB’s help.
And a lifetime supply of red Bull as well ast the card! It will be interesting to see if Honda can do in a few months what it took Mercedes 3 years to develop though it would have helped had they copied the Merc design two years ago instead of waiting to fail with ‘size zero’. They should be able to catch up but they may need some European expertise to do it and that would stick in the craw for Honda with its traditional values of doing engines in house.
I posted on twitter just a few moments ago today’s Ask Crofty. and apparently the problem with the Honda engine is that when run flat out, there is a massive vibration in the engine which is shaking the electrical system apart, hence all the electrical issues. To get rid of the vibration the engine has to be run significantly down from full power, which is why Alonso was down 30KPH on the straight. Croft suggested that there is no real fix other than a massive redesign or even a new design. He also suggested that from what he has heard the engine issues will likely come to a head some time next week. Stay tuned.
Dang, if that’s the case then Honda have some real issues. Wondering what the imbalance is caused by? I have just cast my mind back to some very early engines and I wonder if they are trying to go down the compression ignition route? Failing that it sounds like a pretty big design flaw considering that these units would or should have been bench tested way before they saw the back of a car.
If they do have a vibration problem my money would be on the turbo/compressor shaft on the split design. It reportedly took mercedes some time to perfect this.