REDEMPTION SONG
Honda’s return to F1 with Mclaren was an unmitigated disaster, but having come back from the brink of quitting grand prix racing again Honda has finally returned to the winner’s circle with Red Bull. This is the story of that remarkable transformation
September 27, 2015. Suzuka. Fernando Alonso, a Mclaren, and the ultimate insult. Embarrassment and anger intertwined as Honda reeled from Alonso’s “GP2 engine” barb over team radio. The first year of Honda’s Formula 1 comeback was gut-wrenchingly difficult. To be so publicly shamed on home soil by Alonso, who said he was “embarrassed” by the performance, was something from which Mclaren-honda never recovered. They divorced two years later, leaving Honda on the brink of exiting Formula 1 altogether.
June 30, 2019. Spielberg. Max Verstappen, a Red Bull, and redemption. Tears rolled down the faces of Honda staff members as the RB15 crossed the line to win the Austrian Grand Prix. Honda’s first win since its return. Its first win since 2006. All at its new partner’s home race. “Maybe the place it can only equal was Suzuka,” smiled Honda’s F1 managing director Masashi Yamamoto. “But there is nowhere else.”
Honda has transformed from laughing stock to race-winner in less than four years. It took longer than anyone in Milton Keynes and Sakura wanted, but there were many who thought it might never happen at all. Which would have been the case had Honda taken the opportunity to flee grand prix racing when its poisonous Mclaren union finally dissolved in 2017.
They make them stubborn in Japan, and they needed to. Alonso’s GP2 comment was just the beginning. In 2016 we were told Mclaren would have won races with a different engine supplier. In 2017 we heard more than once that its chassis was the best through the corners. The cracks that appeared may have fundamentally been Honda’s doing, but Mclaren played its own part in how quickly and fatally they spread.
The twisted irony for Mclaren is just as it pulled the plug, all the tools were there to create what it wanted. Ahead of 2017, Honda switched to a Mercedes-style engine layout that required an oil tank redesign. Honda got this wrong thanks to problems that didn’t emerge during dyno testing. The same went for a combustion engine tech change that was causing a loss of torque when upshifting, creating driveability problems. Honda’s problem was the oil tank cost it crucial pre-season testing mileage, so it took even longer to properly identify and solve the other limitations of its new package.
Once this was ironed out, a steep development curve followed. That is why Red Bull is now the team taking all the gain without going through any of the pain Mclaren went through. The rot set in deep with Mclaren-honda, and completely new foundations were required to build something that would last. Toro Rosso, and subsequently Red Bull, had what was lacking at Mclaren to translate Honda’s promise into reality.
Honda’s F1 project leader Yusuke Hasegawa stepped down in December 2017 and Honda split his responsibilities between two people: Toyoharu Tanabe took charge of trackside operations as Honda’s F1 technical director, while Yasuaki Asaki was tasked
with heading up the development work at Sakura in Japan.
Asaki, originally a 1980s Mclaren-honda R&D bod who became a Honda road-car guru, gave Sakura immediate focus on one project. Tanabe, a former F1 chief engineer and head of Honda’s Indycar project, ensured nothing was rushed to the track without being utterly proven beforehand.
This new philosophy was a shift from the rushed, underpressure environment that characterised the Mclaren years. It gelled well with the fact Honda had no major engine design overhaul planned for 2018, but there were still obvious reliability and performance gains to be made too.
Its dyno testing had let it down 12 months earlier but, thanks to Red Bull Technologies, Honda now had access to rig facilities that would let it simulate the real-world impact of the engine being fitted to a car. Once the testing-spec engine was ready, an intensive run of bench work was completed, and is believed to have identified a couple of problems that Honda would otherwise have missed. Thus, the stage was set for the 2018 revival with Toro Rosso that convinced Red Bull to ditch Renault.
But Honda’s innovation and progress did not stop in early 2018, otherwise it would not have won races this year. Two crucial upgrades in the last 12 months have roots in the company’s jet engine technology.
The F1 R&D team at Sakura have worked with their jet engine counterparts for two years now, and this collaboration paved the way for a major breakthrough with the reliability of Honda’s MGU-H when it introduced an engine upgrade late last year, and its turbocharger with another update in 2019.
The MGU-H and turbo are part of the complex nature of contemporary V6 turbo-hybrid F1 engines, and had been an enduring Honda weakness. Asaki saw an opportunity to use the expertise from the award-winning HA-420 Hondajet aircraft to address this, with part of the tech transfer being the design of the turbine blades inside the two core F1 hybrid components.
The turbo and MGU-H spin at up to 125,000 revolutions per minute. Honda has previously struggled to get both components to operate at that intensity reliably. As well as being a reliability risk, that deficiency has cost it overall engine performance and limited the quality of its energy recovery. The overall effect of a high-efficiency turbo is an optimised engine package that has a global benefit: better combustion, more electrical energy, more recovery and better driveability.
Around these jet-assisted gains have been further advances on the internal combustion engine, but the turbo and MGU-H breakthroughs are the foundation on which Honda has pushed for performance without severely compromising reliability.
Red Bull and Honda have had to be patient for this upgrade, but it has paid off. As has the relentless effort to improve reliability. Verstappen’s win in Austria came in very hot temperatures that even Mercedes couldn’t cope with, he was a threat to Mercedes at the power-sensitive Silverstone circuit too, won again in Germany, took pole in Hungary and beat both Mercedes in Singapore. Red Bull’s chassis prowess has done a key part of the job at some of those circuits. But, as Yamamoto says: “We are not sure if we can call it fear, but the negative feeling towards power circuits is getting less and less.”
Once, Honda’s cycles were negative: an engine failure, a grid penalty, an upgrade, and repeat. Now it is something much more productive: a podium, a harder engine mode, a win, another upgrade, a new energy management strategy.
“The victory in Austria gave all of us a very positive attitude towards the races,” adds Yamamoto. “Now we can think, ‘how can we win?’ – that kind of attitude brought us a good result in Germany, in the UK as well, pole
“THE VICTORY IN AUSTRIA GAVE ALL OF US A VERY POSITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE RACES, NOW WE CAN THINK, HOW CAN WE WIN?” MASASHI YAMAMOTO
position in Hungary. Those kind of things are happening after Austria. We changed our attitude, that we can win.”
There was another crucial benefit to Honda’s victory in Austria: it coincided with a high-ranking contingent from Japan attending the race and preceded a board meeting in which Honda’s F1 future was discussed. At the time of writing, no decision had been made. But the victories have surely nudged the board in the right direction.
So, it is not just that Honda could have quit F1 two years ago and now it is winning everything is fine. That renewed commitment demanded better results. Why keep trying, spending money, taking those punches, if there is no improvement? Fortunately, Honda has proved up to the task.
“It’s quite in accordance with my plan, what I had hoped,” says Yamamoto. “There is not much we could do more than this. What we’ve kept saying is we wanted to exceed last year’s Red Bull result. We didn’t say we want to win five races but we want to exceed the points Red Bull scored last year and maybe five wins is possible.”
Though Honda did not want to set specific targets for 2019, for 2020 there is only one goal: Red Bull expects to fight for the title. It will have its own part to play in this, for its chassis has been weaker than Mercedes’ at times this season and at its usual strong hunting ground, Singapore, it was surprisingly outgunned by Ferrari, which has been weak on highdownforce tracks all year.
Verstappen called that race a bit of a “wake-up call” for the team. If Red Bull and Honda settle for good enough, it will not be good enough. As Renault discovered, there is a world of difference between being a racewinning manufacturer and one that can win a title. That is why the joy of victory in Austria was fierce, but short-lived. It is, Tanabe admits, “one of the milestones – but our target is higher. I’m very happy, but we don’t stop. Always another, another, one more. The goal is the championship. We are still far from winning the championship.”
One year ago, though, Honda was still far from winning a race. Yet in 2019, it headed to its home grand prix in Japan expecting to be in the hunt for victory. The next time Honda heads to Suzuka, the hope – no, the expectation – will be that it does so as a bona fide championship contender.