Honda needed to address the “severely compromised” reliability of its Formula 1 engine for the two Red Bull teams for 2023.
After re-establishing itself as a race winner with Red Bull, Honda made an enormous step with its 2021 engine in the final full-scale development programme that would be carried out before Honda formally quit F1 at the end of that season.
It was the result of an intense development project that Honda was planning for 2022 but brought forward because of its impending exit, and centred around major changes to the internal combustion engine that Honda bullishly described as a near-miracle.
The changes helped Max Verstappen win the drivers’ championship in 2021 and Red Bull to win both titles in 2022 and that engine is the basis for what will be used in the engine freeze period to the end of 2025.
But there were other changes for 2022, in line with the switch to a 10% ethanol fuel mix, which Honda has now revealed created some previously unknown reliability issues.
Tetsushi Kakuda, Honda chief engineer and F1 project leader, has admitted Honda found itself “severely compromised” on reliability last year because the adjustments it made to accommodate the new fuel led to a significant increase on the engine’s internal load.
“We made every effort to recover the performance loss due to the E10 fuel,” Kakuda said.
“But as a result, the internal load to the engine increased significantly compared to the previous years and the reliability was severely compromised.
“As a result, several problems surfaced during the 2022 season.”
Honda’s reliability was solid in terms of race finishes last year but Kakuda is adamant there were problems that needed to be resolved.
While this will not result in a Ferrari-like ability to run the engine with more power, it will help with some marginal performance gains, especially when aligned with some gains on the software side.
Changes to the engine are permitted during the freeze for reliability reasons, and manufacturers also have one new software version they can introduce each year for the management of the internal combustion engine and the energy recovery systems respectively.
“Improving the reliability is not going to help improve the other power of the power unit itself,” said Kakuda.
“And also by regulation there’s only a certain type of development we can do with a power improvement.
“So, talking about reliability improvement, if that can be improved, this is going to help with giving more options from a strategic perspective and how you can use the power units.
“That is why we’re going to be working in collaboration with the team to adopt the best strategy for the power unit.”
Kakuda said that Honda made a good step last year in understanding the software side of the engine, namely the control of the V6 and the energy management, and even went as far as declaring this resulted in a “clear advantage” in its control of the MGU-K.
“Not only we must improve the areas where problems have become apparent but also we have been preparing ourselves to have wider strategies by identifying the limits of each part and maximising its potential,” he said.
“In addition to improving reliability, we deepened our understanding of our PU to further optimise the control and energy management.
“We have also matured ourselves in the electrification technologies, where we had a clear advantage last year, especially the [control of] MGU-K deployment.”
Honda’s F1 operation has been stripped back in Japan since April last year when Honda started to assign many members of staff to non-racing areas in pursuit of the company’s carbon neutrality goals.
It has essentially kept enough staff engaged in F1 to build the engines, run real-time support from mission control on race weekends, and deal with addressing any reliability concerns with the current power unit in the engine freeze period.
“Fortunately, we did not have any critical problems with the PU during the season, and the remaining team members were able to deal with problems that we encountered,” said Kakuda.
He added: “We have continued to work with our suppliers to improve the precision of parts in terms of manufacturing, quality inspection, governance, as well as the precision power unit assembly.
“HRC Sakura has been making an all-out effort for this coming season.
“We believe we are fully prepared for the pre-season tests starting this week.”
