The FIA have completed an exhaustive review and process to determine if engine parity has been achieved or if tweaks need to be made with the current hybrid power unit. The result of that complex review is that the top three power unit manufacturers are within a 3% parity range and no additional changes will be made to promote parity amongst the power units.
This comes as unwelcome news to Red Bull who aren’t convinced that their Renault engine is within 3% of Ferrari and Mercedes but FIA race director, Charlie Whiting, explained.
“It is something that they all signed up to and agreed with the methodology – and that is the most important thing,” he said.
“The four engine manufacturers sat down for hours and hours and thrashed out this rather complex method.
“Obviously this was done among the power unit manufacturers not the teams.
“I think there may be a little element of surprise about this.
“But we do have convergence as defined by this system.
“We cannot renegotiate it.
“It is something that has been in place for a year or so now.
“They have all known how it was going to be done and that is how it has been done. And those are the results.”
There was an article I read earlier int eh week that the FIA an other engine manufacturers might be able to help Honda out with their deficit due to this regulation review process and that Honda may even be able to avoid grid penalties for using more than four components in their engine during the season. It seems that the concept of helping anyone out is only for the top-3 power unit makers and as Honda are not in the top three, they get no help…which seems antithetical if you think about it for any amount of time.
“It wasn’t a matter of helping anybody,” said Whiting when asked about the Honda situation.
“It was a matter of establishing that the measures that had been introduced, losing the tokens and all those sorts of things that were aimed at helping convergence, had worked.”
Surely Honda would be a team to help at this point? Seems like Charlie suggests that the exercise was more about the actual exercise working and completing the methodology than it was about actually identifying off-the-mark manufacturers and helping them reach parity.
Hat Tip: Autosport
I look forward to Franz Tost’s response to this finding, after the earlier article about RBR bailing out of F1 if they can’t get a competitive p.u.
https://theparcferme.com/f1-news/red-bull-could-leave-f1-if-engine-format-isnt-sorted-this-year/
Now the FIA have concluded that the Renault/TAG is a competitive p.u, it must be the chassis and aero that are their problem.
Is Franz going to turn his guns on the RBR technical team?????
It’s not just the management of Red Bull who believe the Renauult is down on power. After Perez made a statement that Ferrari and Renault had caught Mercedes, Verstappen suggested that he try racing the Red Bull and see if he was of the same opinion.
That could be Verstappen holding the ‘party line’, or a bit of bravado.
But maybe with this information, we should be looking a bit differently, to see if there are indications that the p.u performance is on par, and there are other reasons that RBR is off the Mercedes and Ferrari pace. After all Williams and Force India have the Mercedes p.u and are further off Mercedes pace than RBR.
Does anyone know how a system for achieving parity excludes Honda?
The “system” does not exclude Honda/cannot exclude Honda as Honda was part of the system agreed upon.
Re the recent headline that a “particular engine manufacturer” from on the present grid could or is about to help Honda solve their technical problems was TOTAL FROM THE USUAL MEDIA HOGWASH.