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Geoffrey Harris20 Jan 2015
NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Honda gets F1 power unit concession

FIA allows Japanese manufacturer to make some changes during its first season back in GP racing, while a veteran and a teenager star in NZ

Honda has had a win already in its return to Formula One
The Japanese manufacturer, which is re-entering F1 in the second year of the sport's hybrid era in association with the McLaren team, had been concerned at being disadvantaged in comparison to existing power unit makers Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari.

Development is limited by the regulations of the governing Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), supposedly to contain costs – although the expense of these power units is astronomical.

They comprise three elements – 1.6-litre, V6 internal combustion engines, turbochargers and energy recovery systems. Fuel capacity and the fuel flow rate are limited and rigorously policed.

Honda feared its new hybrid unit would effectively remain a year behind the development of the three original suppliers, so senior executives of the company flew from Japan to Europe last week to voice their concerns. And they gained some concessions.

It had seemed that Honda would be prevented from any changes to its power unit beyond February 28, as the other three were last year.

Until recently it also seemed that those three manufacturers would have to make any changes for their second season with the hybrids by the end of next month, but Ferrari unearthed a loophole in the regulations.

Now that trio will be allowed the whole season to make the allowable changes, which amount to 48 per cent of the components. And Honda will be allowed to make changes throughout the year based on an average of the amount the other three manufacturers have not made by the end of February.

As part of the introduction of the hybrids last year the FIA has a system of 'tokens' assigned to parts of the power units based on their influence on performance. Mercedes, Renault and Ferrari can use 32 of the total 66 tokens for changes this year.

"If the three 2014 manufactures have eight, seven and five unused tokens respectively at the start of the season, then the new manufacturer [Honda] will be allowed to use six during the season [the average rounded down to the nearest whole number]," said FIA race director Charlie Whiting.

Honda has had three previous stints in F1. The second of them was its best, dominating the sport with McLaren in the late 1980s and early '90s with drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

It abruptly ended its third campaign in the sport when the global financial crisis hit in 2008.

It had assumed full ownership of a team that had been started as British American Racing out of the demise of the old Tyrrell team.

The car designed for 2009 as a Honda was rapidly adapted to accept a Mercedes V8 engine and, under the ownership of British engineer Ross Brawn, the team took Jenson Button to the world title.

Mercedes bought out Brawn at the end of that year but success eluded it, even with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement for three years, until the German company produced the benchmark power unit for the start of the hybrid era, winning 16 of the 19 races last season.

Renault and Ferrari were variously reported to be 40 to 70 horsepower down on Mercedes last year. While the French and Italian companies have prioritised improvement in their power units this year, Mercedes has the same scope for changes and is expected to remain the benchmark in the season starting in Melbourne in mid-March.

Apart from the factory team with reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as its drivers, the rejuvenated Williams, Force India and struggling Lotus will have Mercedes power units this year.

Ol' Kenny still of King of F5000, teen's stroll in the park
Something old and something new from across the Tasman. Well, someone old and someone young.

The 73-year-old New Zealander Kenny Smith won all three races in the Tasman Cup Revival and the first round of what is being called the Formula 5000 World Series at Hampdon Downs, the modern circuit between Auckland and Hamilton.

About 50 F5000 cars from the 1970s and '80s are there for the annual NZ Festival of Motorsport, which continues next weekend and this year is paying tribute to Kiwi ex-F1 driver Howden Ganley.

Smith races a Lola T332.

On NZ's South Island the country's premier modern open-wheeler championship, the Toyota Racing Series, got underway at the Ruapuna Park in Christchurch with new F50 chassis housing the 1.8-litre engines.

The five-week, five-round series of 16 races has a field of 20 with drivers from 12 countries. Only four of the drivers are Kiwis.

Canadian teenager Lance Stroll won two of the three Ruapuna races (and Frenchman Brandon Maisano the other, while Australian Thomas Randle was acclaimed for a charge from 17th to sixth in the feature race and finished third in another).

The 20-lap feature, won by 16-year-old Stroll, was for the country's famous Lady Wigram Trophy. Stroll, who became the youngest driver to claim that trophy, won last year's Italian Formula Four Championship and has been part of the Ferrari Development Academy for four years.

His father, Lawrence, is a fashion industry billionaire with a collection of about 25 Ferraris, including a 330 P4 (a sports racing model of which only three were built) and a 275 GT Spider for which he paid US$27.5 million.

Stroll Senior and a partner financed the development of the Tommy Hilfiger clothing brand and he owns the Mt Tremblant circuit which hosted F1 GPs and CanAm sports car races in the late 1960s and early '70s. He has been touted as a likely F1 team owner – and even as a potential buyer of a 12 per cent stake in the F1 business.

Stroll Junior is associated with the Prema team in Italy with which Australian Ryan Briscoe won the 2003 European F3 Championship. That is Stroll's intended category for this European season, while Ferrari Development Academy engineers are preparing his car in NZ – one of six entered by M2 Competition.

Stroll's father attends all his son's races, although he claims to remain at arm's length in the garage.

They are travelling in NZ in what Christcurch's The Press newspaper called "an enormous motorhome shipped over from Europe" and "ill-suited to NZ roads".

Australia's V8 Supercar driving standards observer Jason Bargwanna won all three of his races at Ruapuna in the TLX category of the NZ V8 Touring Car Championship. Bargwanna drives a Toyota Camry in the races.

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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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