00:00Last week we looked at Honda's proud record in Formula 1, which stretches back into the
00:041960s and peaked with world champions like Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in the turbo era.
00:15Now the company provides sealed engines to not one but two Formula 1 teams,
00:20middle-ranking Jordan and underperforming BAR.
00:23The engines are designed and built in Japan, but Honda Racing Developments or HRD in the UK
00:32looks after maintaining the engines, stripping, rebuilding and if necessary upgrading them on
00:37a regular basis throughout the season. HRD also has race engineers and technicians attached to each
00:46team, but the internal secrets of the engines are known only to Honda personnel. They deliver
00:51sealed units to Jordan and BAR team headquarters where the cars are designed and built more
00:55or less around the Honda engines.
01:25At the team factories, some components are added to the engine which are unique to the
01:31car the team has designed and built.
01:42The job of assembling and later removing a Formula 1 engine is handled by the engine
01:46kitter. In Jordan's case, that's Ian Marchant.
01:50This engine I'm working on now is Jarno Trulli's engine which did the race. So we'll de-kit it,
01:57take all our stuff off of it. As you can see, it's more than just a V10. There's a lot of Jordan
02:04stuff that goes on it that we fit. So we've got to take all that off, box it up and send it back to HRD.
02:11Normally I'll do it in the morning or an afternoon. Trucks normally get back on a Tuesday lunch time,
02:17and then by Tuesday evening we'll have them boxed up. I'm on the way back to Honda. But sometimes we
02:24have a T car engine to do as well, which makes it a bit tight, but I can just about do it.
02:32Notwithstanding any dramas, there's an orderly routine to the Formula 1 maintenance process between
02:37races, which includes tasks like cleaning out the radiators.
02:45We have a lot of servicing of radiators to do. It's obviously during the sort of two hours or so
02:50that they race around. If they're stuck in traffic behind other cars, there's a hell of a lot of
02:54rubber shredded off from the cars in front. Just usually generally like that after every race.
03:00But we will pressure wash all these and clean that up. They'll be okay. They've got a 4,000
03:06kilometre life expectancy on them. So obviously if we don't get enough air into the radiators,
03:11it becomes hot very quickly. And we don't have a viscous fan like you would do on a road car. So
03:16we can't sort of just add extra cooling to it. It basically relies on the car moving. And if it
03:20stands still for too long, it could be a big problem for us. Between races, there are often testing
03:26sessions where modifications to car or engine are tried out away from prying eyes. With the massive
03:33costs involved in running a Formula 1 car, testing is made as efficient as possible. But the Honda
03:38and team technicians will spend many hours together over the course of a year.
03:44Do the European technicians learn anything cultural from their Japanese colleagues?
03:48We do, yeah. Not necessarily good words, but they find it quite amusing.
03:55They all speak pretty good English actually. It's strange because within Jordan we've got
04:00quite a few nationalities. So we're a sort of multi-national team really with English, Irish
04:06and Japanese. So their food is a little bit different to ours. So I don't think any of the
04:15lads have ever got their heads around the Japanese cuisine yet. But the business of Formula 1 is
04:21about racing and about winning, something that Honda hasn't done much of with either of its partners.
04:27Honda's racing involvement also extends to Champ Cars and its many motorcycle activities.
04:32Eddie Jordan, the charismatic ex-banker who set out to take on the giants of motorsport,
04:36doesn't underestimate the might of British American racing.
04:39They have emerged over the last couple of years as a serious contender. They can fight very hard.
04:46Is there animosity? I don't believe so. I think we've got over the situation of
04:51poaching each other's staff and things like that, which inevitably happens.
04:55BAR are one of our enemies, but there are nine others. And from that perspective,
05:01I think it would be foolhardy for us to be just looking at what BAR are doing. And I'm sure,
05:06likewise for them.
05:11How many of these million dollar engines has Honda had to build to keep both teams provided with fresh
05:16power?
05:18We have three cars at the race. Only two cars can be used on a Friday. So Friday evening,
05:23we would change two engines. So for the first day, we have three engines in the cars. Second day,
05:29there's two fresh engines in the race cars. So that puts it to five. And then for the final day,
05:36eight engines again. So during the weekend, we will actually use a minimum of eight engines.
05:41Honda have two or three spare engines for each day available as well. The same cycle happens
05:47with the testing. I mean, an engine normally is in a test just for one day.
05:52I'm not quite sure what the life of this one is, but sometimes ex-race engines will do
06:08another races Friday practice session. It may be a couple of races away before we see this one again,
06:14unless they've got some sort of development work to do on it. You sort of sit here and although you
06:19work on the engines all day long, we don't actually get involved in what's inside that engine. So
06:23you sort of see the numbers and you see them come round again. You see like number one we had in
06:28Melbourne and it's cropped up again a couple of times. You think, oh, hello, seen that again. And
06:33there might be a subtle change on the outside that we can see, but you know, it might be a big change
06:37on the inside. We're not sure yet, because obviously it's a sealed unit that Honda deal with.
06:41But they do, they do come round again. They do get used again. I think the life of them's about 400
06:47kilometres. So they'll do just over 300 in a race. And that'll be probably, I should think this one
06:53will be stripped again more likely because it did do the full distance at Magni-Corp and rebuild it
06:58again, jack it over or even throw it away. Who knows? In the competitive world of Formula One,
07:05nothing remains constant. Honda will have different partners in the future. Just one reason why it keeps its
07:10secrets of its engines under wraps.
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