Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

I just want to point out that this headline is wrong and out of date already. After pulling out of F1, Honda has announced that they&#x27;re going to be an engine supplier for Indycar. Technically, it&#x27;s a different division of Honda (Honda USA) but this greenwashing of why they left F1 leaves a bad taste in my mouth.<p>They&#x27;re leaving because they&#x27;re not successful and they&#x27;re dumping a bunch of money in the sport.<p>Edit: I made a mistake they&#x27;ve recommitted to supplying engines under the new hybrid rules that indycar is adopting in 2023.

F1&#x27;s problem is that it is a technological marvel that is simultaneously obsolete. Like the XB-71 Valkyrie project of the US AirForce, the technology powering modern F1 hybrid power trains is just outstandingly brilliant. However, just like the XB-71 was made obsolete by the advent of ICBMs, the hybrid power train&#x27;s future for road cars has been overtaken by the advent of Tesla and battery electric vehicles. The metaphorical comparison with XB-70 ends when performance is concerned. F1 hybrids are still far superior to pure battery electric vehicles. So F1 is essentially stuck in the upper-left corner of the price-performance envelope. They are too good to move to pure electric, but their tech is obsolete for road cars. In a few years battery electric vehicles will get to the performance levels of current F1 hybrids, but by that time the mantle of the pinnacle of auto-racing will have been taken by FormulaE. Not a good place for F1 to be. In effect Tesla killed F1.

F1 isn&#x27;t what it used to be last century. Races were nail biting epic contests, cars visibly improved every season, drivers were international celebrities dicing with real life ending risk, and passionate fans filled the stadiums. Modern races are just a procession of the same few people each weekend in global rich social events.

F-1 has always baffled me as a sport. Not that it&#x27;s inherently bad or boring, just that there are so many motor sports that make it look that way. Same with NASCAR. I don&#x27;t understand how an audience for those exists when, for example, rally races exist.

I think there&#x27;s more to it than the carbon-free tech for Honda(or any other manufacturer for that matter). F1 is getting eaten from the inside with politics and corruption. It takes a lot of effort to stay out in front. For the past half a decade no one has managed to give Mercedes a run for their money and expecting something to change with the new regulations is a huge leap of faith. Meanwhile costs and complexity is through the roof. Remember when a year or two ago Porsche was considering to supply engines for F1? Sure, they don&#x27;t have a good record as far as F1 goes, but let&#x27;s not fool ourselves - the engineers at Porsche are absolute gods when it comes to making small capacity, high power engines and hybrid systems. And realistically the main reason why they decided not to move forward was the huge leap of faith considering the exact complexity and costs I mentioned earlier. So there&#x27;s a good chance the whole thing isn&#x27;t paying off for Honda.

Think about this scenario for a minute:<p>You are top designer at an F1 team. You&#x27;ve got an idea that will (maybe) make the car go faster. Say it is a different profile rear wing. So you get the lads to build one up (you have your own carbon fibre maufacturing facility on site) and you mount it on the current car and then arrange for the team to rent (say) Brands Hatch for the day, run the new wing, compare sector times, get feedback from the driver, etc - something any technical person would expect to do.<p>Problem: this is completely against the rules. Can&#x27;t just take the car out to the track and run it between races when you want. That&#x27;s why these insane chassis dynos exist, everything is a simulation now, even wind tunnel time and the number of CPUs in your CFD cluster are being regulated. This is all in the name of reducing expenses of course, but it has the opposite effect.<p>I saw my first F1 race in 1979, it was really something. The sport I see now has almost nothing to do with those times - in some good ways (safety!) but mostly bad (see above).<p>I&#x27;m out.

&gt; By my count, this is the fifth time that the Japanese automaker has quit F1<p>Makes you wonder how serious one should take this announcement.<p>&gt; our current goal of &quot;electrifying two-thirds of our global automobile unit sales in 2030&quot;<p>Sounds ambitious, but we know by now that nobody - no company, no government - has ever met any of their climate pledges.

Haha Red Bull, back to Renault.

Auto racing will just never be the same. I don’t even think EV racing will evolve the sport. The golden days of auto racing involved real innovation like creating super chargers, turbos, certain efficiencies, and improvements in potting, etc. There was a time when we just didn’t know what could be done to build an engine that could run near the edge without blowing.<p>I don’t think EV will ever have its equivalent. Just not the same as taking an ICE and tweaking it through mechanical engineering to find new performance gains.<p>End of an era but that’s progress. Maybe fully mechanical cars will find a way to exist as a sport. But I imagine people will lose interest over a few generations. But then, horses still race.

Some of the best motor racing I&#x27;ve personally seen was open class motorcycle racing. It was the 90s, so you had road legal GSXR1100s with the lights taped up, mixing it with 125cc Grand Prix bikes.<p>I don&#x27;t get why you couldn&#x27;t do similar with F1. Make it open slather: if it passes scrutineering, carries a driver, and is safe to be near on a track (no rockets) then go nuts.<p>Surely part of the expense in F1, and part of the fact that it is increasingly technologically irrelevant, is the incredibly tight restrictions on engineering and testing?

I highly highly highly doubt this is the explanation is true.<p>F1 is way over regulated with ridiculous rules, crushing innovation and free thinking. Honda knows just as well as everyone else that the technology developed there has trickled down into consumer ICE engines and made them superior in terms of carbon expenditure.<p>Hell of a marketing spin.

I have a theory that F1 is motorsport for people with no interest in motorsport. You can&#x27;t possibly watch it for the racing, in a series where 90 minute races routinely end with over 25 seconds between each podium car. Where the fanbase fanatically opposes things like simplified powertrains, simplified aero and control parts, which would all result in far better, closer racing but would (in their minds) erode the prestige of the prototype series. Personally I think prestige comes from winning hard-fought races, not driving a Mercedes to yet another cruising victory.<p>It boggles my mind that people bother, when there are such incredibly close series like MotoGP, GT World Challenge [Europe|Asia|America], V8 Supercars, etc... The only explanation is that the fans simply don&#x27;t care about the racing itself.

Honda as an electric company has sucked. Fuel cells continue to be total nonsense and have no viability for the market, yet Honda is one of those companies still investing.<p>Honda barley produces an EV and in the US seems to want to use GM platform, not even have its own. Meaning that GM will capture the majority of the value.<p>At some point the competitiveness of ICE will be incredibly clear and Honda is one of those companies who is not even close to being ready. They are good candidate for consolidation in the future.

Hmm, I wonder whether there’s a fight going on at HRC over the MotoGP budget?

Call me cynical but I doubt all those companies claiming they&#x27;ll go &quot;green&quot; or &quot;100% electric&quot; in X years really do that for the environment or are really serious about it.<p>There is no economical reason to do so dude to the fact that electric cars cost too much, mainly due to the batteries for which the price can only increase if there is a market of a billion users. And except for the high end market which Tesla occupies the most, nobody has the money for that.<p>Not to say I&#x27;m against the idea, coming from a place where hydroelectricity is king I just can&#x27;t wait to get my first electric car, but I am skeptical.

F1 is just obsolete. The tech is just so mind-breaking and insanely fast that you can&#x27;t actually get faster without killing people.<p>They&#x27;ve already had to modify tracks as it causes physical damage to spine cords and vertebrae.<p>What we need is something else which isn&#x27;t tone death about economic inequality and climate change.<p>The thing is that it has to be a SPORT so people watch it and it gets as much funding as F1

That is awesome! Honda, you rock.

This is a strong message.

Really good news :)

I hope F1 removes the driver completely and changes the rules that it is allowed to fire of rocket launchers, drop land mines and all the other ridiculous military toys Oil money can buy and put it to use. I would like to watch a full on war battle between teams every weekend.

Honda is like a decade behind Tesla and 5 years behind GM and VW on BEV so they definitely need to invest (as does Toyota)<p>I doubt there is actually a link to dropping F1, however.