Zak Brown: "no Merecedes or Ferrari engine for McLaren in 2018"

It's not about feeling bad for them.

But from my point of view, it's pretty daft for what was once a top team to carry on with such a handicap and just make the numbers up at each GP.
If I was them, I would cut my losses and pack up.

 

So F1 has made it too expensive an icon of the sport to be competitive. F1 is first and foremost a racing series, not an environmentally correct transportation laboratory. They could deliver more exciting racing and fan interest with engines costing 20% the cost. Would the EU permit such a thing?

 

Well....not so fast

Remember when Honda said they were going to enter F1 and the other makers complained Honda had "unlimited track testing time" while they didn't?

How did that work out for Honda?

 

Agreed.

I suspect Alonso might well just go to IndyCar full time or maybe WEC like his good friend Webber.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Somehow listening to Zak whining that the other teams won't help him is rather delicious.

 

Well, if Honda pulls out, the rules say that one of the remaining engine manufacturers MUST supply engine to any team that is left without PU. I think it says the manufacturer that supplies the least engines has to step it. That would be Ferrari, no ?

 

Renault would do it. But they don't want Renault.

 

Renault supplies Renault, Red Bull and Toro Rosso.

Mercedes supplies Mercedes, Williams and Force India

Ferrari supplies Ferrari, Sauber and... who else ?

 

Haas

 

Do they have a choice? The rules don't say you can choose your supplier, just that one of them must make PUs available to you.

A Renault engine is 10 times better than a Honda.

Just look since 2015, Ricciardo and Verstappen have been winning something like 6 GPs with them.

 

Touché !!

That means the 3 constructors already supply 3 teams each.

That's a difficult one ...

 

That assumes they have engineers with enough technical knowledge at the competitive F1 level to be able to iterate to a sufficient power and reliability level. At this point after 3 or 4 years of failure, I don't believe Honda actually has the engineering know-how in house to build a competitive engine, and no amount of testing will fix that.

They need to poach (ie hire at outrageously high salaries) some powertrain engineers from Mercedes AND Ferrari, and set up a new engine design, test, manufacturing operation in England. After that, within 12 months, they might be able to build a competitive engine. With their current staff - it's now obvious that they're not capable of doing that.

 

Honda will never catch up. McLaren is screwed big time,

And since McLaren seems unable to secure another supply of engines, my suggestion that they pull out of F1 altogether doesn't look so stupid.

McLaren has already endured 3 years of total humiliation; so why should they take more of it? There is nothing to gain from being constantly at the back of the field ,suffer reliability issues and become a joke.

It's a good job I am not CEO at McLaren; I don't suffer fools gladly and I would have kicked the Honda engineers all the way to Japan. Whatever the result !!

 

OUCH!!!!

?As an engine supplier in F1, Honda is an embarrassment? | Auto Express

Mike Rutherford thinks Honda need to exit F1 and instead spend its billions more wisely

I think of Honda as an old and much-loved friend. It’s possibly the nicest firm on Planet Automobile. And its heart is in the right place. As is mine. The company has often hosted me in Japan – at Formula One circuits, test tracks, research centres and at the Tokyo Motor Show.

Also, I feel genuinely honoured that Honda afforded me precious time – at races, social gatherings and in driver coaching sessions – with a handful of its Formula One pilots. I even got to race an NSX against one Honda F1 driver, while another made it a three-way duel by flying a helicopter overhead. Naturally, I came last.

Although it hurts me to say this, the firm’s now a shadow of its once glorious self. Truth is, as an engine supplier to McLaren-Honda in F1, Honda is an embarrassment, must exit the sport and instead spend its billions more wisely on things like its largely underwhelming road car range.

The rationale at Honda is that F1 showcases world-class engineering talents, innovation and overall cleverness. Fair enough. But the only thing the firm is showcasing this year is the inability of McLaren-Honda F1 cars to finish races. Then even when they’re running ‘trouble-free’ they’re too slow. Mercedes has accrued 330 points at this halfway point of the season, while Ferrari’s scored 275, making them the equivalent of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the football world.

Meanwhile, over the same period, McLaren-Honda has acquired just two meaningless points and sits at the bottom of the F1 standings, making it the equivalent of Leyton Orient. If it doesn’t immediately abandon its humiliating sleepwalk into F1, Honda will continue to seriously harm the reputation of and confidence in the brand and the showroom products. Current and potential buyers want to be associated with success, not failure.

Not that McLaren is an innocent player. It should never have entered into yet another marriage with Honda, as it just can’t rely on a third party engine supplier these days. The Mercedes and Ferrari F1 teams are true greats of the modern GP scene, not least because they use their own powerplants.

If McLaren craves the same levels of global success and respect – and it desperately does – it must bite the bullet and somehow install its own engines in its own F1 cars. The engine design and build process, plus the Honda divorce proceedings need to start, like, yesterday.

 

They've got a huge amount of engine staff, and ran many different engine configurations on their rig. But that doesn't translate to the real world and most engines vibrated themselves to death.

It's too late now, the Honda engine won't be a force to be reckoned with, they simply don't have the time. By 2020 when there'll be new, simpler engines, that what they should focus on really. Just get this engine into somewhat acceptable terms of power, and better build a truly competitive engine for 2020.

 

With Ron gone I can see McLaren pulling out of F1. But if they ever want to get back in it costs a small fortune ...

But F1 is becoming more irrelevant in the motoring world and soon McLaren road cars will be all electric, so it would make some sense to chuck it in in F1 and go to FE.
Pete

 

Bernie would fight tooth and nail to keep Mac in F1

I don't think Liberty would care.

 

Two world championships are on the skids at the moment: WEC where the factories are deserting LMP1, and F1 where the current formula seems to have a very negative effect to the sport.

It's strange, but most of the teams deserting WEC seems to head to Formula E which doesn't seem to have problem attracting constructors (Audi, Mercedes, Renault, Mahindra, Jaguar, Porsche, etc..._; I wouldn't be surprised if some F1 teams follow, and McLaren could be one.

 

I'm with you Bob !!

Honda had all that time with no limits and the illuminati on this forum were saying that Honda will clean up

They can't build an engine for this series after ALL that testing and several years of looking like a goose , AND now they want help ??!!

There's the door , see ya ..... go and enrol in Ferrari's engineering school and get a clue

 

See the problem with FE is...maybe they don't have problem attracting constructors, but they sure have a problem attracting viewers!

Liberty has to be careful about teams leaving, or very quickly it could end up like LMP1: Ferrari and perhaps a couple of other teams. Suddenly we have 6-8 cars on the grid. Oh joy!

Liberty/F1 HAS to convince FIA to make for a more attractive formula that a) saves money b) grows viewership significantly c) entice younger viewers as long term fans. I've a pretty good idea how to do it.

 

If Formula E adopts more liberal technical rules and comes off the specs series format, it will attract more constructors, and they in turn will draw a larger audience. But it will take time.

Re. F1, Liberty can only suggest rules, no?

It's the FIA that has the last word on what goes.

Todt wants advanced technology and "relevance" to keep F1 as the pinnacle, so I don't expect the next formula to be significantly cheaper.

Plus the future ban of ICE vehicles in France and Germany (only hybrid or electric allowed) will push manufacturers to invest quickly in research, and F1 may be seen by some as the ultimate benchmark to validate their findings.

I don't believe a cheap "back-to-basic" atmospheric formula has any chance of coming back in this climate.

 

The audience will grow but won't be anywhere near F1 even at it's current low levels.

Yep, hence why I said Liberty needs to convince FIA, not the other way round.

True, but Todt is a ****ing idiot. None of the teams competing road cars have any better hybrid technology than non competing teams, so it's a fad.

We've had the discussion plenty of times now, if manufacturers where so keen on developing their Hybrid engines they'd be knocking on F1 and LMP1's doors. They're not. Quite the opposite in fact. So your logic is quite simply not true.

Let them play scalextrick in Formula E all they want, F1 as a sport needs to be saved. And no it's not just a back to basic engine that's needed. It's many more things. But an exciting engine is a step that needs to be taken.

 

But they have!!
They just don't think they all need a sustained effort, because they use motor racing for research and commercial ends, not for the fun of it.

Mercedes, Renault, Ferrari, Honda (in F1), plus Audi, Toyota, Nissan and Porsche (in LMP1), that covers the main players in the car industry, bar Ford and GM, but in their country they don't believe in harmful pollution, the climate change, etc...

With these manufacturers, you have most of the European and Japanese car industry involved, directly or indirectly through ramifications, in the hybrid technology.

 

Audi left, Nissan left, Porsche Left. Toyota will leave.

Ferrari was forced into it. Mercedes had a great concept and forced it, Renault thought they did but did not.

Climate change is real, but it's been happening for billions of years. It's a continuous cycle.

 

Like I say, they leave when they have found what they were looking for in terms of technology, once their engineers have been trained to design complex hybrid systems, and for some when they have achieved the exposure they were looking for.

Each major automotive group needed to develop a new culture, create its own library of data, train a core of engineers who will pollinate their design office, using some form of motor racing where competition forces you to move quickly. Of course, if the competition vanishes, the progress will stall, and you stop learning.

Renault, Nissan, Infinity, Samsung and Dacia will share the same information, just like what Audi and Porsche have found will radiate at VW, Skoda, SEAT, Bentley, Lamborghini.

I would be surprised if Ferrari wasn't solicited by the FCA group in future to share their findings, etc... Hybrid technology which was inexistent not so long ago will be widespread before long. The same will happen with electric vehicle in future, when several forms of motor racing will adopt it.