Power Unit Tag

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Romain Grosjean’s run of bad luck continued today when his Ferrari power unit began puffing smoke almost immediately after leaving the Haas F1 Team garage for his first run in Q1. The smoke billowed and the Frenchman was forced to stop his VF-18 before even leaving the pit lane. Despite Haas competing with Renault for best of the rest honors at most of the races this year, Grosjean has yet to score a point this year and sits at the back of the drivers standings withRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor McLaren has made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2017, mostly due to their incredibly unreliable Honda supplied power units. The team did somewhat casually reach out to Mercedes about supplying them for the future, but for the time being they are under contract with Honda and are forced to make lemonade from lemons. The best long term strategy, one I have written about several times, would be for them to invest funds from McLaren automotive, their successful road car operation, into creating their ownRead More

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor Fernando Alonso is not happy. After just 6 days of pre-season testing, McLaren-Honda has had more power unit failures, changes, and technical problems than any other Formula One team and he is laying the blame squarely on Honda. With echoes of his “GP2 engine” remarks, the two time champ berated Honda when he spoke to the media today. “We have only one problem: that is the power unit. There is no reliability and there is no power. I think we are 30 km/h down on every straight.Read More