Honda: 'New engine smaller than 'size zero' and better combustion'

In the final year of the current regulations, Red Bull Racing is doing everything possible to give Max Verstappen a serious chance of the world title. Not in the least by Honda, who have come up with a serious update for 2021.

For this update, Honda has obviously worked on the two basic aspects in which you can improve a power unit: reliability and power. However, in order to get the best performance out of it, the powerunit must also be tailored to the chassis in which it is placed.

Honda engine smaller, more efficient and more powerful

Toyoharu Tanabe explains to The Race how they improved this package this season. “What we wanted to do is make it more compact, and also improve the combustion. To improve the combustion means you need a new cylinder head design. This gave us a lower and smaller cylinder head area."

The power unit is now said to be even smaller than the Size Zero concept Honda made its entry into the hybrid era with in 2015. Due to huge reliability issues, they pushed this concept aside in 2017, but now they seem to have surpassed their original philosophy in a roundabout way.

The update would also ensure that more power is extracted from the combustion engine without sacrificing power provided by the MGU-H. The MGU-H depends on the exhaust gases from the combustion engine for its power. If the latter becomes more efficient, you lose that gain. Honda would now have found a way to still produce more exhaust gases with an efficient combustion engine.