MOTORSPORT: Hybrid hope for Red Bull, McLaren

Formula 1 is rife with talk that Red Bull Racing has found a solution that will put an engine behind Daniel Ricciardo next year.

The line is that, despite the perceived collapse of the nine-year marriage between Renault and the energy drink company’s team, the RB12 car will have an internal combustion engine from the French company while RBR will add the rest of the hybrid power unit.

Mario Illien, the Swiss engineer who co-founded Illmor Engineering that previously built engines for Mercedes when it supplied McLaren and who has been consulting to RBR for a year, reportedly will oversee the creation of the turbocharger and the kinetic energy recovery system.

AVL, an Austrian company we have previously mentioned here as a potential player in  solving RBR’s dilemma, also is figuring in the reports which began late last week but are yet to be confirmed.

The first word of the solution appears to have been on F1 website thejudge13.com, which claimed its report to be “exclusive”.

It said that RBR was confident that the Renault internal combustion engine combined with the Illien additions would mean, for the start of next season, “a power unit producing in excess of a 40bhp advantage” over this year’s Renault.

Red Bull tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz had set the end of October as the deadline for RBR management find a suitable engine supply for next year.

Mateschitz was forced to extend that deadline to next weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix after Mercedes and Ferrari refused to give RBR power units of the same specification as their front-running factory teams.

Honda’s apparent willingness to supply its unit to RBR was vetoed by McLaren chief Ron Dennis.

Mateschitz has been unhappy that RBR has not continued to be F1’s top team in the two seasons of the 1.6-litre V6 hybrids after winning the constructors’ and drivers’ titles in the last four years of the previous V8 era, 2010-2013.

He has threatened to withdraw the team from the sport if RBR can’t find a suitable solution, but quitting would cost Red Bull $US100 million a season for five years under a contract with F1’s management company.

Renault has had an upgraded power unit available for RBR to use at the past two GPs, in the US and Mexico, but the team opted not to install it – perhaps because of the exceptionally wet conditions in Texas and the extremely thin air in Mexico.

However, it is likely that one of the RB11s will be fitted with the latest unit, designated the ‘D-spec’, at Sao Paulo’s Interlagos circuit next weekend, although it is not clear yet whether it will be Ricciardo’s car or that of his Russian teammate Daniil Kyvat.

It seems that Red Bull’s other team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, does not have access to the ‘D-spec’ because it already is clear it is switching to Ferrari customer engines next year.

Meanwhile, Renault is expected to confirm its takeover of the Lotus team at the final GP of the year in Abu Dhabi on November 27-29.

That team, which has Mercedes power this season, is expected to retain the Lotus name next year before reverting to Renault, which previously owned it when it was run by the colourful Flavio Briatore.

Off-season Honda’s chance to advance
Honda needs to make even more improvement than Renault with its F1 power units, especially its hybrid system.

While the Japanese company’s return to F1 with McLaren in the second year of the hybrid era has been massively disappointing, there were a couple of positives at the recent Mexican GP – and there are grounds for hope of major improvement over the off-season.

Despite Fernando Alonso retiring on the opening lap in Mexico and Jenson Button finishing only ahead of the Manor cars that have not scored a world championship point, the MP4-30s were just 0.3 seconds slower than the mighty Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg through the twisty second and third sectors of the circuit in qualifying.

And, while Button was 17kmh slower than the fastest car on the long main straight (Pastor Maldonado’s Williams-Mercedes, clocked at 366kmh), Britain’s 2009 world champion said the McLaren-Honda’s speed in the last sector during the race was “something to enjoy – but not the [race] result”.

The BBC website’s chief F1 writer, Andrew Benson, has been the pacesetter in reporting on the sport’s hybrid power units and, in his latest article on the subject, said that “Honda is contributing a net US$100 million to McLaren’s budget, as well as the money it spends on developing its engine, which will be at least that amount again”.

Benson said the Honda power unit “at its best is at least 80bhp down on Mercedes and at its worst, when the hybrid boost shuts down part-way along the straights, in the region of 250bhp down”.

While McLaren’s chassis was “not as competitive as the best on the grid, the Mercedes and the Red Bull, the Honda engine’s lack of performance is believed to account for in the region of 80-90 per cent of the lap-time gap to Mercedes (up to 2.5 seconds at some circuits)”.

Benson said that, even after an upgrade introduced at the US GP, Honda’s internal combustion engine was believed to be about 30bhp down on Mercedes, while “far more significant is the shortfall in the hybrid system, which cannot harvest sufficient energy and runs out of deployment well before the end of the longer straights”.

“The lack of performance is rooted in a problem with the design of the turbocharger and the inter-linked part of the energy recovery system (ERS) called the MGU-H – the motor-generator unit-heat,” Benson wrote.

“Honda's engine has a similar layout to that of the Mercedes, with the compressor situated forward of the turbine, and the MGU-H in between.

“The difference is that Honda's compressor sits within the vee of the six cylinders, rather than at the front of the engine like Mercedes’.

“This means Honda’s compressor is smaller than Mercedes’ – the idea being to keep the engine compact to aid the car’s aerodynamics.

“But the Honda engine’s turbo-MGU-H system is inefficient – both in the amount of exhaust-gas energy it can pull in and the ability of the compressor to compress the air.

“Although Honda understands what is wrong, it cannot make the necessary changes to the design this year because the restrictions on development within the rules did not give enough freedom to modify the fundamental architecture of the engine.”

The head of Honda’s F1 project, Yasuhisa Arai, said that improving the efficiency of the turbo and compressor were “the first objective” of fundamental changes planned for next season, but that keeping the unit compact was important too.

However, Arai said that the size of Honda’s compressor would increase to “probably about the same size more or less as Mercedes”.

Benson estimated that Mercedes’ power advantage over Ferrari is now 10-15bhp, with Renault still about 60bhp behind Mercedes.

NASCAR heartbreak for Penske pair
While there was V8 Supercar joy for DJR Team Penske in New Zealand yesterday with Scott Pye’s first podium, Autoweek.com branded the latest round of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup in Texas the “Heartbreak 500” for Roger Penske’s stock car drivers.

Until recently 25-year-old Joey Logano was favourite to win the championship but at Texas Motor Speedway today he lost 67 laps for repairs after an early tyre blowout badly damaged the left rear of his Ford Fusion.

Logano ultimately finished 40th and now must win at Phoenix next weekend to have a shot at the title a week later at Homestead-Miami in Florida.

“We aren’t out of it,” Logano vowed.

Penske’s other NASCAR star, 2012 champion Brad Keselowski, led 312 of 334 laps at Texas but lost the lead four laps from the chequered flag to six-time champion Jimmie Johnson, who is not a contender for the crown this season.

Defending champion Kevin Harvick finished third in Texas after two cut tyres and having to hold his Stewart-Haas Chevrolet in gear in the closing stages.

Harvick is third in the standings behind Jeff Gordon (Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet), the only certain challenger for the title, and Kyle Busch (Joe Gibbs Toyota).

The front splitters of three Joe Gibbs Toyotas were confiscated before the race and the team – which also has Carl Edwards in the championship hunt – faces investigation this week.

Harvick has won the past four Sprint Cup races at Phoenix.
The top four drivers after next weekend will fight out the championship in Florida on November 22.

Sprint Cup driver standings – 1. Jeff Gordon (Chevrolet) 4082 points; 2. Kyle Busch (Toyota) 4080; 3. Kevin Harvick (Chevrolet) 4079; 4. Martin Truex Junior (Chevrolet) 4076; 5. Carl Edwards (Toyota) 4069; 6. Brad Keselowski (Ford) 4057; 7. Kurt Busch (Chevrolet) 4048; 8. Joey Logano (Ford) 4013.

Brazilian on top in Formula E
Brazilian Lucas di Grassi won the second round in the second season of Formula E electric open-wheeler racing at Malaysia’s Putrajaya street circuit after six other drivers struck trouble while leading.

Di Grassi, who drives for the Abt Audi Sport team, now leads the series ahead of first-round winner Sebastien Buemi, the Swiss driver representing e.dams-Renault.

Britain’s Sam Bird (Virgin team) and Dutchman Robert Frijns (Andretti team) were second and third in the carnage-riddled Malaysian race.