This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: The Honda factor Tyre War - Round One

The Honda factor

When Craig Pollock announced Honda's return to the sport with BAR, the collective Formula One establishment audibly drew breath, and mentally prepared for an onslaught.

It was ironic, then, that their first year back with the BAR team was a real let down, while Jordan were able to win races running the out-dated and overweight Mugen-Honda customer unit one year earlier, demonstrating the power of a competitive team and chassis. Even the brand new engine by BMW proved more of an eye opener, propelling the Williams team to third in the Championship.

So, for 2001, Honda gave Jordan factory status, in order to make a double pronged attack on the sport. Mercedes looked ahead to a tough season, with some concern, already expecting to struggle from the move to drop Beryllium from the sport. Despite noise from Renault returning with a revolutionary engine, they anticipated the Honda challenge as one to watch. Ferrari were more open minded, seeing the new BMW powered (and Michelin shod) Williams as a threat, but mindful that Honda were expected to close the power gap through the season.

So they were surprised when it never happened: even Jaguar's Cosworth engine was rated as more powerful, though it was not always easy to tell from their results. The Honda challenge never materialised.

Heading into 2002, Honda's excellent reputation is starting to look battered. They have been back for two years, with only two podiums to their credit. Despite maintaining the Mugen-Honda factory presence in their absence, it has been clear that their return to the sport is overshadowed by the very successful BMW entry; and now Renault's return is looking set to push them even further from the limelight.

This is not exactly news. Last year, Jordan, politely, made it clear that the engine was a disappointment. The team was having a tough year anyway, facing up to disappointment in the chassis and race performances, as they failed to convert reasonable qualifying positions into decent points.. Honda could find solace from the qualifying sessions, even as they faced up to the effort that would be required in order to tackle the front runners: as the year drew to a close, it was leaked, Honda would be producing a new, wide V, lightweight engine, in order to take their challenge forward.

It appears that the Honda board has finally realised the scale of the challenge to surpass the front runners, and committed to the task. Bringing on this new engine, rather than developing the old one, is not a cheap process, but the alternative was to drop down the grid: as it is, the Honda powered teams finished behind Sauber, running a year old Ferrari unit.

Background noise from BAR and Jordan hold that the new engine is a good step forward from last year's unit. Power output is marginally better, but the new design is not particularly reliable yet, and vibrates a lot at high revs, so don't be surprised to discover that the cars qualify fairly well, but struggle when the tolerances are increased, and top revs reduced, for races. The new layout and reduced weight makes it better to package. However, there are still issues. Power is still down on the front runners: Cosworth have made a bigger step forward in the off season, and Renault are looking pretty useful too. Pre season feedback shows that, rather than progressing up the grid, Honda's new engine is going to start, at best, where it left off last season.

Then again, this year, it's a whole new ballpark: this engine is at the start of its development cycle, reliability is improving rapidly, and there is an aggressive development programme taking place. And, even more importantly, instead of Jordan or Richards going to Japan to ask for more horsepower, the Honda board not only have a clear picture of the task ahead, but are driving the project forward themselves.

Tyre War - Round One

The first serious battle of the 2002 Championship has been fought already, with Bridgestone coming out victorious.

In designing tyres which were in strict compliance with the rules - namely, that they are symmetrical about the centre of the tyre, and tapering uniformly from top to bottom - Michelin took a stance which the FIA, and Bridgestone, disagreed with. Whilst the groove taper, literally, was uniform, it was not symmetrical on the groove itself, leaving one side with a steep and the other a shallow gradient.

When Max Mosley decreed the introduction of grooved tyres, this was not what he had in mind at all: from his perspective, "uniformly tapered" was also intended to be read as "symmetrical about the centre of the groove." Or in other words, they should all be the same as they were last year.

Last year, Michelin's tyres suffered a significant disadvantage when compared against their Bridgestone rivals. For sure, they were quicker in warmer climates, and arguably at least as fast regardless at the end of the season. But the performance faded strongly after a couple of laps, before coming back in a dozen or so laps later. This 'feature' of the rubber led Michelin shod teams to lose huge tracts of track time as they worked to scrub tyres for the race. This gave Bridgestone teams an effective advantage, as they could concentrate on car setup instead whilst the Michelins were still being scrubbed in.

So, Michelin put their research and design heads together to look at the problem, isolated a key issue with the way their tyres wear. As the tyre is stressed on the circuit, significant heat is built up; the tyre's adhesion and wear is directly associated with that heat, and the contact with the ground; Michelin discovered that each side of their grooves was running at a different temperature, causing the grooves to degrade asymmetrically. This, in turn, affected the contact patch, and performance.

As it turns out, there is a relatively simple way to even out that temperature. As surface temperature is a factor of the forces applied to the tyre at the surface, and its resistance to deformation based on the construction around it, balancing the groove temperature is achieved most simply by changing the shape of the groove.

In testing, the new Michelin tyre was a very interesting step forward. On the same compound and basic construction, there is, initially, little performance gain. However, it quickly became apparent that as the tyre wears, the performance drop off was better than beaten. There was still a dip after a couple of laps as the surface of the tyre "cured", but a couple more laps saw the tyre recover just about all of that loss. In terms of racing results, it would have meant that as the car's fuel loads dropped, overall performance would be sustained, or potentially improve.

Considering the FIA see tyres as a route to limiting speeds, it's no surprise that Michelin's advance is being frowned upon as outside the spirit of the rules. Nor would it be surprising to discover that bringing their new development to Melbourne would have resulted in a swift "rule clarification" to make them disappear again.

So, after thousands of miles of testing and development, one of Michelins biggest improvements will be staying at home, much to the relief of Bridgestone!