The unforeseen issue Honda faced even after its second F1 power unit enhancement

After an unexpectedly successful Formula 1 weekend in Malaysia, Aston Martin entered the Singapore race with elevated hopes, considering that the AMR26 was expected to perform well at this track.

Unfortunately, the realities at the Marina Bay Street Circuit turned out to be disappointing, with Fernando Alonso mentioning issues related to the Honda power unit post-race, especially regarding its driveability.

In response, Honda dispatched both its engineers and power units back to Sakura for thorough examinations. These assessments did not uncover any particular hardware faults. Instead, it was revealed that the Japanese manufacturer was mainly dealing with turbo lag – the delay in turbo response, which affects the time between pressing the accelerator and experiencing the turbo’s effect.

This is not a new challenge. In fact, it was among the factors that affected driveability with the new power unit specification that debuted at Zandvoort. It was precisely for this reason that Honda utilized its second ADUO token of the year in Madrid to introduce a new turbocharger aimed at resolving the issue.

However, when questioned by Motorsport.com, Honda's chief trackside engineer Shintaro Orihara indicated that unexpectedly, it became a problem again in Singapore.

“Although we implemented a new turbocharger to address turbo lag, we still faced difficulties managing that lag in Singapore due to the unique layout of the track and the energy-rich conditions. This resulted in some unpredictable acceleration for the driver,” Orihara conceded.

When asked if the turbo lag could be partially mitigated by adjusting the MGU-K deployment, Orihara clarified that while this could help to some degree, it had also contributed to the problem in a different manner.

“MGU-K deployment can alleviate [the issue of] turbo lag, but not sufficiently to fully compensate for it,” he explained. “At energy-rich tracks, we typically utilize MGU-K harvesting to offset turbo lag. If we have sufficient MGU-K harvesting capacity, the engine can operate at a high level during off-throttle segments.

“That aids in managing turbo lag and is beneficial, but at energy-rich circuits, it can be challenging to achieve enough MGU-K harvesting due to the energy-rich conditions. In such cases, the engine's operational mode isn't adequate to control turbo lag, which is why we faced challenges in Singapore.”

The fact that Honda did not identify any specific issues during its evaluations at the Sakura facility might raise some concerns. It suggests that a similar problem could resurface when Aston Martin competes on another energy-rich circuit.

Nevertheless, Honda emphasized that valuable lessons have been learned, resulting in new strategies – not involving hardware changes, but rather focusing on how Honda manages the power unit through software and settings.

“Yes, we have gained insights from Singapore, and we are preparing countermeasures for the future,” Orihara stated. “We recognize the need to enhance our control over turbo lag. Currently, our control does not align with the drivers' expectations, so we are implementing some countermeasures. However, we still need to evaluate how effective those are on our power unit.”