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Honda have confirmed that their 2017 engine will contain revised architecture and a new layout, in an attempt to push the engine's abilities further.
Honda re-entered Formula One in 2015 as an engine supplier to McLaren. However the relationship has been a troublesome one with the engine being slow and unreliable.
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"The token system that was applied to engine development for the past few seasons has been discontinued," technical director of McLaren Tim Goss said.
"For 2017, the Honda engine architecture and layout have been altered to serve both for performance and packaging needs."
"The new power unit takes much of the learning from the past two seasons, but has been specifically redesigned for this season."
It has been speculated for quite a while now that Honda will revise their engine for 2017, and now the curtain has been lifted on this rumour.
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Replies (3)
Login to replymclarenfan1968
Posts: 1,027
..said the same thing for 2016 as well, we all saw how well that changed, pretty much nothing.
Kevin
Posts: 5,393
They never said they would build an entirely new engine concept for 2016.. they couldn't due to the token system.
mclarenfan1968
Posts: 1,027
During the 2015 season Mclaren+Honda claimed they understood exactly what they needed to do and blabbered on about how many tokens they had left for 2016. Come 2016 it's the same old story as 2015.
When Honda came back in 2015 they bragged about their vaporware as some kind of groundbreaking tech. They sure broke something, it wasn't the ground or the rival's backbones trying to match them, it was Honda's own engines.
Mclaren/Honda should really put a lid on it and get to work.
Read the regulations for the engine, the changes are not as wide ranging as for aero for 2017. What they can do is improve within existing regulations, they haven't been able to do that for any of the major components despite having 20 tokens in 2016. Shows they haven't gotten to the bottom of their problems, either that or they are admitting engineering force on Honda's side is pants.
The token system seems misunderstood by most, it is not to mean that one token is just for one atomic component from any area of the engine. The engine IC unit is for example is 3 tokens but that IC component is made up of numerous elements. So if they really understood some issue they had the chance to change all of that in one go and still use just 3 tokens. They did and it brought them some measly improvements.
In 2017 it's back to the old days, you can throw money at the problem and keep developing ideas, but if they don't work none of that matters. There is no radical change for 2017 on the engine side save for the KERS and HERS areas. Infact the funny part is that cost reduction aspects are more severe, so on the one hand FIA has opened up the arms race in engine development but on the other hand engine makers cant sell the customer units for exorbitant amounts anymore. There is a progressive decrease in engine costs for every year starting 2017 till 2020. This will automatically curtail any excessive engine developments unless the engine maker wants to foot the bill themselves for all the extra budgeting to try ideas they aren't even sure will even improve things.