Idle thought about Hondas woes
Discussion
Given the various "loop holes" that have been closed regarding novel methods of fuelling the engine etc, I am beginning to wonder if Honda's problem is a cultural one...
They are primarily based in Japan, almost a vacuum of F1 experience there really.
In short, are they struggling because they will not, in any way bend or break the rules?
The established, experienced teams and manufacturers develop a new method, discover that cannot work within the rules and so look for a way to legally justify its use; I strongly suspect the same approach would not happen in Japanese culture.
Just my musings.
They are primarily based in Japan, almost a vacuum of F1 experience there really.
In short, are they struggling because they will not, in any way bend or break the rules?
The established, experienced teams and manufacturers develop a new method, discover that cannot work within the rules and so look for a way to legally justify its use; I strongly suspect the same approach would not happen in Japanese culture.
Just my musings.
I think the problem is definitely one of culture. But not that they won't bend the rules as such, but rather that they have not been prepared to accept any outside assistance to help move development along. They are of the view that all problems should be solved internally without need for help from third parties or contractors.
Ross Brawn has said as much when leading the Honda team previously. Everyone is afraid to make a snap decision so inevitably decisions take days or weeks as they're contently 'moved' upstairs. Some decisions about money or spending on new parts apparently reached board level and took 3-4 weeks to be signed off. That and they have a habit of bringing in new engineers and removing others. They see it as a definite learning experience for their Engineers so there's a regular cycle of experienced guys leaving and new guys coming in, taking months to get up to speed and then being recalled back to Japan after 12-18 months. Ross said it drove him crazy. From what I've read they're still very like that at the moment with decisions taking days or weeks to be made.
MissChief said:
They see it as a definite learning experience for their Engineers
I think this is the nub of it really. All the other manufacturers are driven primarily by the marketing worth that comes from F1 and so throw the best people they can get, regardless of where they are from, to develop a unit to the highest level. Engineering insight is a clear benefit but this is as a consequence of..not the reason for involvement in F1.There's a long history of the negative aspects of corporate culture in F1. I think it was in one of Steve Machett's books where he mentioned a mechanic for the then Jaguar team who got hauled over the coals for going to a local B&Q to buy a replacement tool that had broken because B&Q were not an approved Ford supplier. When the same tool broke again, they ended up waiting three weeks for a replacement to come (which cost three times more than the one at B&Q), thus delaying what they were working on.
carl_w said:
The turbo cheat was Toyota Team Europe, based in Cologne.
A friend has close links with TTE. Japan called the shots, so it was never good enough to know that something did not work. Japan had to carry on with research in order to fully understand why something did not work. Money was never an issue. This philosophy, when everything is done in Japan, is inevitably going to be even more disastrous.As the saying goes, if you always have one foot on first base, you never make progress. In F1, if something does not work "out of the box", you need to find another solution, quickly.
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