ADUO: Why Honda’s options are still limited

(Motorsport-Total.com) – Perhaps the least surprising aspect of the FIA’s controversial decision on Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) last week was the confirmation that Honda’s Formula 1 engine lags behind the competition. This has been obvious since the start of the season.

Read more ADUO: Why Honda’s options are still limited

ADUO, the ranking that no one wants to lead in Formula 1, is a prime example of unintended consequences. The FIA was prepared to include significantly more parameters in its performance assessment, but teams and manufacturers advocated for a simple and lean solution. Now at least one of them has harmed itself with it.

While Red Bull loudly protests against the classification – CEO Oliver Mintzlaff met with FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem in Paris last week, escalating the matter to executive level – Honda is working in the background to make the most of the opportunity.

In a similar vein, Honda’s chief engineer Shintaro Orihara responds to the question of whether the official FIA rankings align with their own expectations. “I think RBPT [Red Bull Powertrains] has done a great job, and I respect what they have done. The numbers we received from the FIA are quite fair to us.”

“I cannot disclose details beyond what the FIA has published. But we have received certain values,” says Orihara, who explains: “Now we are focusing on further developing engine performance over the summer.”

“We are working on improved combustion and reducing frictional losses to increase performance,” he says, emphasizing: “This will help us improve our performance.”

A special feature of the ADUO system is that while the internal combustion engine forms the basis of the performance assessment, the released development opportunities go beyond that.

Honda’s focus on combustion efficiency and frictional losses shows where the greatest gains are expected – and not in the electrical system, although deficits are known to exist there too.

Manufacturers who are up to two percent behind the reference engine (in this case Red Bull) are allowed to further develop a power unit component that is otherwise frozen until 2028. Those who are more than four percent behind receive two upgrades.

The sliding scale also includes more dyno time and permission to exceed the budget cap. The additional allowances range in stages from four to six percent, then six to eight percent, and finally eight to ten percent.

For manufacturers more than ten percent behind, there are additional regulations, including the possibility of bringing forward up to eight million US dollars from future budget periods in extreme cases.

Not only the Honda engine is the problem

However, it is assumed in the paddock that Honda’s engine is about six to eight percent behind the reference value. In addition, Aston Martin’s chassis and gearbox are also said to contribute to the lack of competitiveness.

At the start of the season, things sounded different, when Adrian Newey indirectly blamed Honda in a remarkable press conference before the Australian Grand Prix.

In the months that followed, however, it became clear that numerous design decisions – including some that Newey himself had pushed through relatively late after joining the team – contributed to the problems.

The extremely compact packaging in the rear area, aimed at improving aerodynamics by Newey, required several compromises. One of them was a “double-deck” battery design, which proved susceptible to vibrations in the chassis.

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Another was the unusual position of the electric motor – in front of the internal combustion engine instead of in the vicinity of the gearbox. Although the engine was initially blamed for the vibration problems, Honda emphasized that these did not occur on the test bench.

Subsequently, an AMR26 chassis was sent to the research and development center in Sakura for further investigation. It is believed that the engine triggered a resonance in the chassis above a certain RPM.

That’s why Aston Martin has not brought any updates to the track since the start of the season and is instead focusing on a B-version of the car, which is to be introduced in the summer.

The realization that they must first solve their own problems should help avoid an escalation with the engine partner – as happened, for example, between McLaren and Honda in 2017. At that time, the separation led to McLaren only fully recognizing the weaknesses of its own overall package with a different engine.

Car undriveable? Every lap for Alonso ‘a gamble’

Since the Canadian Grand Prix, both Aston Martin drivers have consistently emphasized that the biggest problem is drivability, particularly due to the lack of synchronization between the power unit and the gearbox.

This leads to “random” downshifts and a handbrake effect, which severely impairs confidence in the car. “We say the same thing every weekend,” Fernando Alonso explained after qualifying in Barcelona.

“It’s tiring. We are last, we know it, and we have no problem admitting that,” said the Spaniard. “We are waiting for the second half of the season, and hopefully we can improve a bit with the new car.”

“Until then, we are just trying to make the weekends as pleasant as possible, with as few problems as possible, without damaging the car, so that we don’t jeopardize the budget cap,” he says, emphasizing: “Everything is constantly repeating itself.”

“In some corners, it felt like pulling the handbrake – complete lock-up on the rear axle. In others, I felt like I had only half throttle when braking, and then you just drive straight.”

“Right now, every lap is a gamble,” says the two-time world champion. “We have a very bad engine – the worst. We have very poor energy delivery. We have gearbox problems and aerodynamic problems.”

“We are working on everything, and hopefully we can offer something to the fans in the second half of the season,” he says. In elite sports, it’s about controlling what you can control. However, with the AMR26, certain compromises are inherent in the design, for example with the battery and electric motor.

How strongly these factors cause the deficits in energy delivery is difficult to assess from the outside. However, it is clear that these aspects cannot be changed in the short term. Therefore, it seems sensible for Honda to focus on comparatively easily accessible improvements such as combustion efficiency and frictional losses.

However, caution is advised: if progress is too great by the next ADUO assessment, fewer development allowances and smaller budget margins could be available in the future.

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