Apparently the Honda guy post qualifying said that they were running , well
Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai said that although they were running their hybrid at full power, improvement was still needed across all the components.
from sky sports article. Does that mean the entire engine was run at full power or just the hybrid/ers parts, I can't imagine he'd use the word hybrid without talking about the entire engine or the bits people think of as hybrid, ie, not the ICE.
If they have turned all that up to full power, the bits they were supposedly lacking the most in for Australia... and they are still miles behind, that is really bad news.
Ultimately our only yardstick is going to be cars in qualifying at the time they have to use max power. Cars fighting to get into Q2 show their absolute top pace in Q1, Merc/Ferrari weren't remotely showing their cars till Q3. In Australia Hamilton Q3 time vs Button Q1 time, they were 4.1 seconds down, since being less conservative and apparently using full hybrid power, the same comparison is 3.7 seconds difference. That to me looks like an incredibly small amount of improvement.
A few guys in f1technical and reddit I see talking about being 1.7 seconds down to Ferrari's absolutely taking it easy time in Q1 or effectively trying to compare themselves really trying to get as high as possible to Mercs not even turning the engine up or using the medium freaking tire.
Yes track probably gets a bit faster but same would hold true for Australia. If they've turned the ers up and gained very little, with the what I think were waste gate noises like Ferrari was making last year(they had that turbine whine as well but they also had that deep farting noise Mclaren have now
), I really think they are in the same position Ferrari were in last year, under specced electrical power, and worse because it's rushed the reliability has been crap.
Is their mgu-h really fundamentally flawed and needing a full redesign/change of placement and shaft change... or is that a complete excuse. Because ultimately that is what Ferrari had last year, fixed this year, and their electrical power went from nowhere to pretty damn good. They've apparently been told that their request to change it under reliability reasons is an absolute no go, but I think the reliability thing was both an excuse to attempt to get it changed for free, and to not admit they utterly boned it.
