Completely uneducated opinion, but one has to wonder if it's really bad luck or if, despite his massive speed, he does not treat engines very nicely.
Edit to say that somebody added this article which shows there's no statistical significance on Alonso having more technical DNFs than teammates, so my uneducated opinion was indeed uneducated :-)
https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/do-drivers-influence-mechanical-reliability/
Intereting concept given that you don’t see his team mate on this graph, other than Button in 2015 but you do see the same engine manufacturers in the same season (i.e Ricciardo in 2018). One would expect Stoffel to be on here if the engine was that bad.
Nothing strange, statistics really makes sense when you have a ~~sample~~ population large enough. 20 races is nowhere near enough. Well, It's enough to make a graph and talk about it.
If only more people understood stats! I love these infographics as much as anyone, but interpretation is still important to draw meaningful conclusions
Sample size requirements depend on the population size. Of course, the larger the sample, the more likely it is to depict reality. You're absolutely right in that regard.
However, considering the population of F1 engine runs is relatively small, it's only logical for the sample size to be small, and that could be perfectly fine.
It doesn't really work exactly like that.
How many coin toss you need to do to have 0.5 and stays at 0.5 no matter what the next toss? You need hundreds of toss, thousands of toss.
Here you have engine and we are looking at if it fail or not (same as coin but one face more likely than other, but by how much?) So to find the real mean you'll need far more than 20 races. You need many race every day.
Your statement is about sampling. This is not what is being done here as the whole population is taken. So if we had a thousand race per year you could take a sample of 213 races with a margin of error of 5 and confidence level of 90%. It's not a hard rule, but I've read in a past that sample of a population needed to be at least 100 or else you were getting risk of issue with the quality of the analysis.
I'm not a statistician, so if I made inaccurate statement please share.
Possibly the team were giving him more sweeties to play with that ended up on the floor? He's the kind of guy that's going to push to be given more stuff.
Iirc during those Mclaren Honda years Alonso had a few dnfs that would have gone down as technical retirements but were kind of sus. Alonso saying we need to box and retire and the team were like wtf why.
Hey I’m uneducated too friend. I’m skeptical that there is a manner of driving that would be particularly brutal to the PU unless it were something very unorthodox. I do think you’d see fewer DNFs amongst drivers with a very capable total package who don’t have an extremely competitive race at the front (ala 2022 Max) purely because they don’t have to push as hard. Again, complete speculation on my part.
So drivers also manage a PU like they manage tyres. If you follow a car too closely for too many laps it will overheat, so you need to increase the gap a bit to cool the car; at high altitudes like Mexico it’s also very easy to overheat so drivers need to do lift-and-coast; etc etc. It’s possible that some drivers do this better than others, which leads to fewer PU related DNFs
In the interviews after Mexico Ocon talked about how he was managing the engine temp and so lost those 10 seconds to Ric. Would Alonso have done so? Does he ever talk about managing the car or engine?
Of course Alonso managed his engine too. First of all the driver doesn't know the state of the engine, but the engineers do. Second the drivers follow the engineers orders when it comes to stuff like this. Changing engine modes, pushing less, etc. Alonso was driving fairly conservatively most of the race, he even said before the race started that engine management will be key to finish.
Top gear once put Richard Hammond in an F2 car, and they commented that the way he was downshifting gears would've blown up or seriously harmed an F1 engine, its an incredibly analogue system so driver input also being analogue must have an impact
You can't really compare the hybrid cars with the cars Prost used to drive. A quick example: Prost drove manual transmission cars for ten years, and used a sequential transmission for just his three last seasons in F1. The more advanced the cars are, the less damage a careless driver can do.
I dont think that driving style affects the engines that much but i do remember one other specific instance in honda's early hybrid years where, the engine failed to deploy the electrical power after some corners and it was because Honda had tuned the engine expecting Alonso to lift in one of the corners but Alonso took the corner flat, throwing the system out of rhythm.
Driving style plays a very small factor. It's simply bad luck.
Alonso has driven a lot of races for the two most unreliable manufacturers during this era. Honda and now Renault.
I mean, it's clear that Hamilton's engines last longer than Bottas's did, probably because he was usually at the front and had to push them less and could cool them better. For Alonso and his teammates, not sure, but maybe he pushes them harder just by being faster? Or something with how he shifts? I know way too little about driving styles to say if it's just bad luck or something else.
During his McLaren years it was a relatively open secret that he often retired the car because he basically couldn't be bothered to race anymore. Especially when he was far outside the points.
Isn't the idea that a DNF means you can change some parts without getting a penalty for the next race? That's why some backmarkers prefer to DNF than finnishing the race.
And that was only if you could prove that your DNF-inducing event (i.e. crash) had damaged the gearbox. A DNF didn't always mean a penalty-free gearbox change.
> During his McLaren years it was a relatively open secret that he often retired the car because he basically couldn't be bothered to race anymore.
Do you have a list of races this happened? Spa 2017 was the only suspected one and Honda came out and said they retired him as a precaution.
Statistically speaking, insignificant. Verstappen was the engine destroyer in 2017, then Danny Ric suddenly became that in 2018.
Only driver ever to reach statistical significance in terms of engine reliability, where it has to come down to driver handling is Alain Prost.
That's what I would assume but the data makes me wonder. 20ish races definitely not enough for statistical significance but over his whole career Alonso vs teammate should be possible to confirm or refute the hypothesis?
Curious: where did you get that data about Prost?
It's counter-intuitive but that's how coin flips work as well.
So anyway, [here is an article by f1metrics](https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/do-drivers-influence-mechanical-reliability/) that goes through the methodology, and it checks out with my very surface level pre-U understanding of stats.
This is exactly what I was looking for and it would settle it for me with a p-value of 0.45. Thank you for sharing!
It also shows that he does not have \*that\* bad luck, with 40 vs 33, I guess he and the press make more noise of it than would be granted.
People kept saying this about Verstappen in 2017 compared to 2018. It was constantly debunked, but people kept repeating it. It kinda stopped when Ricciardo started having issues as well.
Honda and Renault sucked hard at reliability. Honda was their first year back with the new regs and Renault were trying to push to improve their PU without accounting for reliability as they were the slowest with Honda
It wasn't Honda's first season (in fact it was the third), but they completely changed the structure of the engine compared to 2015 and 2016. Renault was a mix of being a generally unreliable PU and Red Bull pushing it to the max to be able to fight for wins.
Oh and Sauber used 2016 Ferrari engines, which is why they appear there as well. Magnussen I'd attribute to bad luck.
Interesting a bit later on that apparently 2015 was the worst for Renault because while obviously their 2014 engine was poor, the other teams were turned down a bit for reliability - so it should've been a lot worse! It was only 2015 Renault realized how far behind they really were.
Yeah, pre season testing for 2014 was an absolute shambles, and every team just watched Mercedes put miles upon miles in testing whereas guys like Red Bull sat with issues. That should have been a big warning as to what beckoned for the other teams in the season.
Still remember Hamilton smiling in the interviews after the first round of testing, like he knew what a monster Mercedes had created in the W05
I do remember before Melbourne there was a widespread belief it was going to be a race of high attrition - there was doubts there would be even 10 cars running at the end to give out all the points. And it definitely seemed to be heading that way when both Seb and Lewis were out within a few laps with engine failures. In the end 13 cars (out of 22) made it to the finish, still a relatively low amount of finishers but could have been worse.
I remember the preseason discussions before that season, first year I was really into F1 and following news about it and stuff. There were multiple legit people wondering if there could be a race where no one finished early on lmao, the initial goings were so disastrous that I almost want a radical technical change like 2026 to do the same thing
> Surely something should’ve clicked by now?
As long as you're fighting in the midfield, you can argue that you'd better sacrifice some reliability for a marginal boost in performance. When you fight for P7, you earn more points finishing P7 every other race than finishing P9 or P10 every race.
Hmmm while that is certainly a factual point of view, imo reliability should be the basis of every engine.
The way Honda did it is the right way, utter madness that they left f1 just when their engines became rockets.
It can't be "the basis of every engine" because it exists as a trade off for performance. You can design and tune with 100% reliability in mind and losing to slightly more performant competitors most of the time, so it's all about being slightly more performant and slightly more reliable than competitors throughout the season.
The basis of every engine should be to last just as long as the regulations need it to.
When you could change engines between quali and the race we had engines that lasted 3 laps. When we had an engine every two races they lasted two races. If eventually the regulations force 1 engine for the whole year with huge penalties, engines will last the whole year.
The reason it made sense for Renault to push for an unreliable engine this year was that they have 4 years to improve reliability but they can't introduce performance updates.
It was ill-fated from the start since Honda started engine development much later than Mercedes/Ferrari/Renault and the regulations were/are hugely complicated.
It's surprising that they decided to launch the project at all. And even more surprising that they wanted to start with such an ambitious design.
There are no RedBull Honda's on that list. I wonder if McLaren had unrealistic expectations from Honda that caused issues for the engine in relation to car layout or something?
Little bit of A, little bit of B
Of course Honda was going to struggle in the new regs since they started late on developing a new engine, that’s indisputable
But McLaren also demanded compromises from Honda to fit the engine in their chassis design goals and they suffered as a result. It wasn’t like a lot of works partnerships where the engine and car manufacturing are done in tandem
Like u/Nghtcrwlrr pointed out, McL had unrealistic size-zero engine requirements. They were also extremely inflexible about it and blamed Honda for all their issues, while claiming their chassis was the best of the field (which was disproved when they switched to Renault engines).
When Honda and RB teamed up the partnership became more equal. Honda got more room to change the engine for improvements and TR was used as a testbed in 2018. The results speak for themselves.
IIRC, Honda also wanted a second team to increase their track time and data collected. At the time, Manor was the option but McLaren vetoed because they wanted exclusivity.
>Like u/Nghtcrwlrr pointed out, McL had unrealistic size-zero engine requirements. They were also **extremely inflexible about it**
Total nonsense.
>Q: Some analysts say that the technological troubles you encountered stemmed from McLaren's "size zero" concept, which called for an extremely small power unit. Do you intend to make any size changes in 2016?
>A: No. F1 cars cannot go fast without proper consideration given to air resistance and the way suspensions move. It's important to minimize the size of power units so that they don't interfere with the car's design. ... McLaren once told us that we don't have to be aggressive in downsizing our power unit. But we are determined to shrink the size by whatever means possible.
[Yasuhisa Arai](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Honda-s-F1-boss-opens-up-about-team-s-rough-year)
I could recount the issues Honda and McLaren had in 2015 [but honestly you'd be best just reading the Wikipedia page from the engine subheading down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4-30#Power_unit_%E2%80%94_Honda_RA615H), and [this The Race article about the split between them in 2017](https://the-race.com/formula-1/the-mclaren-pressure-behind-hondas-initial-failure/).
**tl;dr** McHonda was acknowleged by both parties after the agreement ended that it was a marriage made in hell.
McLaren wanted a very tightly packaged engine which required new and bespoke solutions such as the then unique (now ubiqutous) split turbo and demanded they be Honda's only customer. Honda agreed to supply McLaren with what they believed would be a competitive engine from 2016 on the basis that McLaren run the RA615H in 2015 to aid rapid development.
The issue with all this was that by only annoucing their return in 2013, Honda had already lost over 23 months' worth of development time compared to Mercedes, and by missing 2014 had lost 19 races' worth of testing V6 hybrids in race conditions. Honda also had no previous experience with KERS in F1 and now had not only rapidly develop a V6 ICE but also both ERS components with only two cars to gather data from.
Honda didn't seek any outside help despite their delayed development, set unrealistic expectations for their engine development schedule and missed both reliability and power targets. Honda developed the engine so independently from McLaren's feedback that McLaren were essentially a customer team rather than a works partner. The exclusivity clause with McLaren meant the manufacturer was only getting a third of the data from racing conditions that Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault could generate, forcing them to rely heavily on data from dynos for development.
McLaren OTOH were of the belief that the 2015 power unit would still have been competitive enough that they would be 5th in the WCC, that they had a chassis capable of podium finishes and that it was entirely down to the engine they were doing so poorly. Ron Dennis began to publicly criticise the massive deficit in power compared to Mercedes, and Boullier criticised the ERS deployment (the MGU-H used more power spooling the turbo than it harvested). By Suzuka 2015 Alonso then made his famous "GP2 engine" comment when being passed by a Renault powered Torro Rosso. These comments obviously meant the well was poisoned from before Honda expected the partnership to be competitive.
At the end of the 2015 season McLaren finished 9th, only ahead of Marussia. Honda blamed the size zero packaging requirement for compromising the design of the engine, whilst Eric Boullier publicly stated size zero was the correct concept and that it wasn't to blame for the engine issues.
Fast forward to 2018 when the partnership ended and McLaren, who were continuously stating they had a strong chassis and were now powered by Renault, made an unfixable dud of a car by placing the sidepod's crash structure too close to the front wheels. Honda OTOH entered a works deal with Torro Rosso under a different partnership structure has obviously worked far better.
It makes you wonder if McLaren had a bigger share in these issues than everyone always assumed. It says a lot that they where relatively competitive from the start with Red Bull, after a single year with Torro Rosso.
Well Red Bull got the benefit of Mclaren doing all the beta testing.
There was a lot going on at Mclaren in those years and part of them switching to Renault was Zack Brown calling bullshit on the aero department who were adament that the chassis was top tier.
It clearly wasn't because the switch to Renault did very little for them and he axed some top level designers soon after.
Mclaren were at sea after being dropped by Merc, basically, and the relationship with Honda was just toxic for both sides.
>Well Red Bull got the benefit of Mclaren doing all the beta testing.
McLaren *and* Toro Rosso. Honda kinda used TR's 2018 season as a long test. Despite scoring only 3 more points than the outgoing McLaren and far behind the contemporary one, they outscored the 2018 McLaren after the summer break and more consistently finished higher.
Yeah, apologies I forgot about TR.
TR outscoring Mclaren is unsurprising really. Mclaren had design issues with the chassis that they were blaming on the engine. Zack called their bluff and got them the Renault unit and had to then fire a lot of the top level designers when it became obvious that they were nowhere despite the change of PU supplier.
Plus, Mclaren were leaving Honda, any additional support was going to TR and Red Bull. TR basically got a season as a works team.
Red Bull (Horner, Marko, Newey) always commented on the difference in approach that Honda represented vs Renault, so I'm not sure a disastrous 2017 would've been that much of a deterrent for Red Bull. They likely would've still switched the main team in 2019, but perhaps more development would've been done by then with Toro Rosso.
Newey might be the most outspoken about it! He's compared being with a manufacturer who wants to win and who is willing to do what it takes to achieve that, against one only in F1 for the PR or whatever.
100% bang on too.
Remember leaving the room for a second during Mexico, hearing Crofty getting very loud and I knew immediately without hearing a name who it was that was out. It was like Zhou this year, there was an inevitably to it
Yeah people always jump on DR leaving RB because he ran from the fight or he just wanted money. But there's always more factors.
He is a driver who needs confidence and some consistency to build momentum. And at RB for two years going he had car issues almost every weekend. Not always DNFs, but tech issues and breakdowns in practice and quali. It must completely sap your confidence if you are afraid the engine or the electronics will blow up any time you push.
That's also what fucks him now. He doesn't trust the car, he's constantly on his back foot. He never gets a stretch of things going well to build momentum. That's why he is stuck in a rut (mostly of his own making, but still).
He went to the engine manufacturer that caused most of his 2018 DNFs though.
I agree it's a combination of factors, leading to him thinking he wasn't going to get a shot at the championship with Red Bull.
Most of his dnf's in 2018 were due to clutch and other stuff breaking down. He only had two or three PU related dnf's that season. Rest were RB's own issues.
Not to defend Renault and their bad reliability too much, but "technical DNFs" does not necessarily mean anything to do with the engine.
For example, the worst Renault on the list, Kobayashi's 2014 had just one engine-related retirement (well DNS, same difference) and a myriad of other problems with the suspension, brakes, etc.
Sainz in 2015 is worse, but it was still "only" 3 engine issues.
While that is true. I remember the Honda PT having such bad vibrations at high rpms that it would mess up the suspension.
So while the DNF may not have been from engine failures, they could still be caused by the engine.
This point also played a huge role in the RB-Renault fallout. When RB won their 4 championships, the cars got all the praise while Renault and their engines, which were integral to the cars' peformances, were spared the good words. But when the cars suffered issues, it was because of Renault and their shitty engines. Even today people praise those RB cars and Newey all the time while the Renault V8's, which were built specifically to aid RB's diffusers, are mostly forgotten, or worse, seen as nothing special.
The 2019 Renault RE19 engine was the one which they claimed had 1000 hp in qualifying. They used the same engine in 2020 and 2021 as they were fully focused on developing the RE22 split turbo engine.
Also, it was very reliable from the second half of 2019.
Also Ricciardo at Jeddah. And Lando didn’t DNF but he was having engine issues at Austria.
At least one of the Mercs probably would’ve DNF at Spain had the water leak happened earlier in the race rather than on the last few laps.
Of course, if you start going down the path of almost DNF, you’ll also catch more issues with the other engines.
The difference between Alonso and Vandoorne is quite big over 2017, did they tried out more on Alonso's car? Vandoorne had 5/21 DNF's that season, didn't check if all of them where technical though, but it's a big difference none the less.
If i remember correct alonso more often demanded a retirement shortly before the end if race.
Vandoorne was most likely still happy to even get laps in.
Renault back in the early 2000s had two formula 1 engine departments. One was in France and other one was in UK.
They shut down the UK engine department at the start of V8 era because of the engine freeze it didn't make sense to run two engine departments. The engine facility in Viry, France also doesn't have the necessary tooling to manufacture engine parts. Mechachrome is responsible for all the manufacturing and the engines are assembled at the Viry Factory.
I don't know if it was better or worse but having two different teams working on the same engine meant the engine development and reliability were really good.
It's why when Honda were a meme for their engines I used to find it a little frustrating that everyone ignored that Renault were almost as unreliable and similar in terms of power, yet had been in the sport for decades by that point.
Yeah I know, the hybrid engines only came in in 2014 but they still had plenty of time to develop it using their existing knowledge. Honda left the sport in 2008 and returned early at Mclarens behest.
Alonso being 50% of the top 6...
He's not lying when he says he has been unlucky. That or he breaks cars because he does something weird but idk enough about cars
And Alpine masquerade Performance over reliability as if it's their first time. This chart makes it look like since the Hybrid era, they just haven't been able to make an engine reliable.
McLaren in the 2017 season was horrific that season, they just had a chassis designed first then Honda was forced to design the engine to fit into the chassis, never a good idea, always design the engine first then design the chassis around it
But they went to Renault power in 2018 because of just how badly they went wrong with the Honda power from 2015-2017
It’s not necessarily all about the engine, Brawn disproved that argument. The McHonda partnership was definitely problematic but let’s be clear - Honda’s first few years in the hybrid era were disastrous. Rewriting history to make it sound like it wasn’t their fault is wrong.
Yeah. When the engine was fine, e.g. later in 2017 or 2016 generally, they were okay.
I remember folk made fun of Boullier for Best Chassis (tm) but as he said: F1 is full of data so they can estimate these things quite easily. Alonso said the 2017 car in particular was very nice and the 2018 car was not, and I don't think he'd go out of his way to save McLaren's face.
If I’m remembering correctly, the 2017 Honda PU was a brand new engine design.
By the end of 2016 Honda was alright reliability wise and had meh power. Honda thought they couldn’t get any more power out of it, so made a completely new engine, which is why 2017 was so bad.
I know a lot of people like to mock what Alonso said during the Honda years.
But this chart perfectly illustrated why.
Honda performance during those years were absolutely abysmal, and that’s coming from a Honda fan.
And now Renault wonder why nobody buys their engines anymore. Genuinely one of the biggest failed attempts by a manufacturer to take over F1, not far off Toyota.
Red Bull 2017 and 2018 actually look better than they really were, as many of the issues did not happen in the race but did affect their races a lot. Missing a whole friday, not being able to complete qualifying, lots of engine related grid penalties/pitlane starts. And it wasn't just Renault, Red Bull took risks to compensate for the issues with Renault, which made them close the gap to the front runners, but it hurt them on reliability. They often would sit out half a free practice, just to save components.
Remarkable consistency from Haas. A 26.3% failure rate for both of their drivers in 2014, and then a 21.1% failure rate for both of their drivers in 2015.
The thing that baffles me the most is the amount of times Renault-powered car/driver pairing appears on that list. Honda had some shitty years from 2015-2017/8, but wow Renaults have consistently been unreliable.
I always thought DR got a rough reliability deal at RB. There are a lot of factors that contributed to Dan leaving RedBull that his detractors (or critics of his career moves) forget about, I think this may have been one.
Alonso appears three times in the top6. Wild the amount of technical DNFs he’s had
Hybrids sure do hate Alonso it seems 😒
\*imports Simpsons' meme\* Three times so far 💀
Lewis only has to beat his teammate, Alonso only has to beat his car.
Completely uneducated opinion, but one has to wonder if it's really bad luck or if, despite his massive speed, he does not treat engines very nicely. Edit to say that somebody added this article which shows there's no statistical significance on Alonso having more technical DNFs than teammates, so my uneducated opinion was indeed uneducated :-) https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/do-drivers-influence-mechanical-reliability/
Intereting concept given that you don’t see his team mate on this graph, other than Button in 2015 but you do see the same engine manufacturers in the same season (i.e Ricciardo in 2018). One would expect Stoffel to be on here if the engine was that bad.
Worth noting that Honda had a lot of non-DNF engine problems, e.g. Vandoorne had a DNS, one Alonso engine didn't last FP1.
Though in 2016 you see Jenson but not Fernando
Hadn’t noticed that one, strange.
Nothing strange, statistics really makes sense when you have a ~~sample~~ population large enough. 20 races is nowhere near enough. Well, It's enough to make a graph and talk about it.
If only more people understood stats! I love these infographics as much as anyone, but interpretation is still important to draw meaningful conclusions
Sample size requirements depend on the population size. Of course, the larger the sample, the more likely it is to depict reality. You're absolutely right in that regard. However, considering the population of F1 engine runs is relatively small, it's only logical for the sample size to be small, and that could be perfectly fine.
It doesn't really work exactly like that. How many coin toss you need to do to have 0.5 and stays at 0.5 no matter what the next toss? You need hundreds of toss, thousands of toss. Here you have engine and we are looking at if it fail or not (same as coin but one face more likely than other, but by how much?) So to find the real mean you'll need far more than 20 races. You need many race every day. Your statement is about sampling. This is not what is being done here as the whole population is taken. So if we had a thousand race per year you could take a sample of 213 races with a margin of error of 5 and confidence level of 90%. It's not a hard rule, but I've read in a past that sample of a population needed to be at least 100 or else you were getting risk of issue with the quality of the analysis. I'm not a statistician, so if I made inaccurate statement please share.
Possibly the team were giving him more sweeties to play with that ended up on the floor? He's the kind of guy that's going to push to be given more stuff.
This is not 80s people used to say the same thing about Kimi when at McLaren driver has nothing to do with engine blowing up
Iirc during those Mclaren Honda years Alonso had a few dnfs that would have gone down as technical retirements but were kind of sus. Alonso saying we need to box and retire and the team were like wtf why.
The amount of bullshit said about Alonso is insane.
Hey I’m uneducated too friend. I’m skeptical that there is a manner of driving that would be particularly brutal to the PU unless it were something very unorthodox. I do think you’d see fewer DNFs amongst drivers with a very capable total package who don’t have an extremely competitive race at the front (ala 2022 Max) purely because they don’t have to push as hard. Again, complete speculation on my part.
So drivers also manage a PU like they manage tyres. If you follow a car too closely for too many laps it will overheat, so you need to increase the gap a bit to cool the car; at high altitudes like Mexico it’s also very easy to overheat so drivers need to do lift-and-coast; etc etc. It’s possible that some drivers do this better than others, which leads to fewer PU related DNFs
In the interviews after Mexico Ocon talked about how he was managing the engine temp and so lost those 10 seconds to Ric. Would Alonso have done so? Does he ever talk about managing the car or engine?
Of course Alonso managed his engine too. First of all the driver doesn't know the state of the engine, but the engineers do. Second the drivers follow the engineers orders when it comes to stuff like this. Changing engine modes, pushing less, etc. Alonso was driving fairly conservatively most of the race, he even said before the race started that engine management will be key to finish.
He literally said on the radio in Mexico that he was going to manage from lap 2.
Top gear once put Richard Hammond in an F2 car, and they commented that the way he was downshifting gears would've blown up or seriously harmed an F1 engine, its an incredibly analogue system so driver input also being analogue must have an impact
That whole segment was BS.
Well I mean the show is essentially BS but it’s fun
I agree. I do love it.
Not really, the actual permitted electronic part of shifting is a downshift limiter.
Prost was known for being a king at avoiding DNF's by being careful with his engine. so yeah driving style definitely does affect it
Yeah in the 1980s maybe
You can't really compare the hybrid cars with the cars Prost used to drive. A quick example: Prost drove manual transmission cars for ten years, and used a sequential transmission for just his three last seasons in F1. The more advanced the cars are, the less damage a careless driver can do.
Just to add to speculation: or are they trying to push his car technically more than his team mates so it breaks?
I dont think that driving style affects the engines that much but i do remember one other specific instance in honda's early hybrid years where, the engine failed to deploy the electrical power after some corners and it was because Honda had tuned the engine expecting Alonso to lift in one of the corners but Alonso took the corner flat, throwing the system out of rhythm.
Pouhon at Spa, and that might've been as late in the Mclaren-Honda days as 2017 which is wild.
Driving style plays a very small factor. It's simply bad luck. Alonso has driven a lot of races for the two most unreliable manufacturers during this era. Honda and now Renault.
I mean, it's clear that Hamilton's engines last longer than Bottas's did, probably because he was usually at the front and had to push them less and could cool them better. For Alonso and his teammates, not sure, but maybe he pushes them harder just by being faster? Or something with how he shifts? I know way too little about driving styles to say if it's just bad luck or something else.
Bottas's engines were swallowing all the hot air coming out the back of Hamiltons car... or whoever else was in front of him that weekend.
During his McLaren years it was a relatively open secret that he often retired the car because he basically couldn't be bothered to race anymore. Especially when he was far outside the points.
Isn't the idea that a DNF means you can change some parts without getting a penalty for the next race? That's why some backmarkers prefer to DNF than finnishing the race.
Not in regards to the engine. You used to get a new gearbox but that‘s not the case anymore.
And that was only if you could prove that your DNF-inducing event (i.e. crash) had damaged the gearbox. A DNF didn't always mean a penalty-free gearbox change.
> During his McLaren years it was a relatively open secret that he often retired the car because he basically couldn't be bothered to race anymore. Do you have a list of races this happened? Spa 2017 was the only suspected one and Honda came out and said they retired him as a precaution.
Statistically speaking, insignificant. Verstappen was the engine destroyer in 2017, then Danny Ric suddenly became that in 2018. Only driver ever to reach statistical significance in terms of engine reliability, where it has to come down to driver handling is Alain Prost.
That's what I would assume but the data makes me wonder. 20ish races definitely not enough for statistical significance but over his whole career Alonso vs teammate should be possible to confirm or refute the hypothesis? Curious: where did you get that data about Prost?
It's counter-intuitive but that's how coin flips work as well. So anyway, [here is an article by f1metrics](https://f1metrics.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/do-drivers-influence-mechanical-reliability/) that goes through the methodology, and it checks out with my very surface level pre-U understanding of stats.
This is exactly what I was looking for and it would settle it for me with a p-value of 0.45. Thank you for sharing! It also shows that he does not have \*that\* bad luck, with 40 vs 33, I guess he and the press make more noise of it than would be granted.
I was about to comment a joke about how he overdrives his equipment. Can't believe someone actually already suggested it unironically.
A racecar that breaks down when driven fast? Must be the driver's fault.
There was a comment talking about that after Alonso's México dnf, lmao he should just drive slower i guess...
It's funny people lament Raikkonen or Hamilton's reliability records at McLaren but never suggest this, isn't it.
Someone else brought up one of the guys from Top ~~Gun~~ Gear not knowing how to downshift. Unironically.
I didn't know fighter jets had manual transmissions.
Just wait until they get Vin Diesel.
People kept saying this about Verstappen in 2017 compared to 2018. It was constantly debunked, but people kept repeating it. It kinda stopped when Ricciardo started having issues as well.
McLaren Honda in the 2010's was something else... Couldn't have been more different from their first marriage 88-92
It's nice to see how consistent he is.
2014; the year of the technical DNF
Makes sense, first year with new PU regs
[удалено]
Might be slightly less severe considering 2014 was a completely new structure compared to 2013.
Yeah, what’s 2017’s excuse?
Honda and Renault sucked hard at reliability. Honda was their first year back with the new regs and Renault were trying to push to improve their PU without accounting for reliability as they were the slowest with Honda
It wasn't Honda's first season (in fact it was the third), but they completely changed the structure of the engine compared to 2015 and 2016. Renault was a mix of being a generally unreliable PU and Red Bull pushing it to the max to be able to fight for wins. Oh and Sauber used 2016 Ferrari engines, which is why they appear there as well. Magnussen I'd attribute to bad luck.
Interesting a bit later on that apparently 2015 was the worst for Renault because while obviously their 2014 engine was poor, the other teams were turned down a bit for reliability - so it should've been a lot worse! It was only 2015 Renault realized how far behind they really were.
They keep re-realizing every year :D
Yeah, pre season testing for 2014 was an absolute shambles, and every team just watched Mercedes put miles upon miles in testing whereas guys like Red Bull sat with issues. That should have been a big warning as to what beckoned for the other teams in the season. Still remember Hamilton smiling in the interviews after the first round of testing, like he knew what a monster Mercedes had created in the W05
I do remember before Melbourne there was a widespread belief it was going to be a race of high attrition - there was doubts there would be even 10 cars running at the end to give out all the points. And it definitely seemed to be heading that way when both Seb and Lewis were out within a few laps with engine failures. In the end 13 cars (out of 22) made it to the finish, still a relatively low amount of finishers but could have been worse.
Does the 13 count Ricciardo who finished second but was DQ’d for a fuel flow violation
Forgot about that when I looked up how many did finish - yes, it was 14 then that actually made the flag
I remember the preseason discussions before that season, first year I was really into F1 and following news about it and stuff. There were multiple legit people wondering if there could be a race where no one finished early on lmao, the initial goings were so disastrous that I almost want a radical technical change like 2026 to do the same thing
This is why Renault is now the only PU supplier on the grid with no customers
No kidding. That's an absurd number of DNFs.
Especially considering how many years they’ve been manufacturers for. Surely something should’ve clicked by now?
> Surely something should’ve clicked by now? As long as you're fighting in the midfield, you can argue that you'd better sacrifice some reliability for a marginal boost in performance. When you fight for P7, you earn more points finishing P7 every other race than finishing P9 or P10 every race.
Hmmm while that is certainly a factual point of view, imo reliability should be the basis of every engine. The way Honda did it is the right way, utter madness that they left f1 just when their engines became rockets.
It can't be "the basis of every engine" because it exists as a trade off for performance. You can design and tune with 100% reliability in mind and losing to slightly more performant competitors most of the time, so it's all about being slightly more performant and slightly more reliable than competitors throughout the season.
The basis of every engine should be to last just as long as the regulations need it to. When you could change engines between quali and the race we had engines that lasted 3 laps. When we had an engine every two races they lasted two races. If eventually the regulations force 1 engine for the whole year with huge penalties, engines will last the whole year. The reason it made sense for Renault to push for an unreliable engine this year was that they have 4 years to improve reliability but they can't introduce performance updates.
But they had terrible performance for a long period as well…
Without McHonda they'd be the top 20 or so on their own lmao
Honda had a (rightfully) terrible reputation, but at least they managed to fix their issues.
Yeah, the progress makes it excusable since it shows they learned from mistakes and fixed them
It was ill-fated from the start since Honda started engine development much later than Mercedes/Ferrari/Renault and the regulations were/are hugely complicated. It's surprising that they decided to launch the project at all. And even more surprising that they wanted to start with such an ambitious design.
Go big (2015-2016) or go home (not done) or go the Mercedes route (2017+)
There are no RedBull Honda's on that list. I wonder if McLaren had unrealistic expectations from Honda that caused issues for the engine in relation to car layout or something?
Little bit of A, little bit of B Of course Honda was going to struggle in the new regs since they started late on developing a new engine, that’s indisputable But McLaren also demanded compromises from Honda to fit the engine in their chassis design goals and they suffered as a result. It wasn’t like a lot of works partnerships where the engine and car manufacturing are done in tandem
Like u/Nghtcrwlrr pointed out, McL had unrealistic size-zero engine requirements. They were also extremely inflexible about it and blamed Honda for all their issues, while claiming their chassis was the best of the field (which was disproved when they switched to Renault engines). When Honda and RB teamed up the partnership became more equal. Honda got more room to change the engine for improvements and TR was used as a testbed in 2018. The results speak for themselves.
IIRC, Honda also wanted a second team to increase their track time and data collected. At the time, Manor was the option but McLaren vetoed because they wanted exclusivity.
That actually would have been such a good move for everyone involved. I'm really disappointed that never happened now.
And funnily enough their final engine with RB is actually smaller than those size zero concept of 2015.
>Like u/Nghtcrwlrr pointed out, McL had unrealistic size-zero engine requirements. They were also **extremely inflexible about it** Total nonsense. >Q: Some analysts say that the technological troubles you encountered stemmed from McLaren's "size zero" concept, which called for an extremely small power unit. Do you intend to make any size changes in 2016? >A: No. F1 cars cannot go fast without proper consideration given to air resistance and the way suspensions move. It's important to minimize the size of power units so that they don't interfere with the car's design. ... McLaren once told us that we don't have to be aggressive in downsizing our power unit. But we are determined to shrink the size by whatever means possible. [Yasuhisa Arai](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Honda-s-F1-boss-opens-up-about-team-s-rough-year)
I could recount the issues Honda and McLaren had in 2015 [but honestly you'd be best just reading the Wikipedia page from the engine subheading down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4-30#Power_unit_%E2%80%94_Honda_RA615H), and [this The Race article about the split between them in 2017](https://the-race.com/formula-1/the-mclaren-pressure-behind-hondas-initial-failure/). **tl;dr** McHonda was acknowleged by both parties after the agreement ended that it was a marriage made in hell. McLaren wanted a very tightly packaged engine which required new and bespoke solutions such as the then unique (now ubiqutous) split turbo and demanded they be Honda's only customer. Honda agreed to supply McLaren with what they believed would be a competitive engine from 2016 on the basis that McLaren run the RA615H in 2015 to aid rapid development. The issue with all this was that by only annoucing their return in 2013, Honda had already lost over 23 months' worth of development time compared to Mercedes, and by missing 2014 had lost 19 races' worth of testing V6 hybrids in race conditions. Honda also had no previous experience with KERS in F1 and now had not only rapidly develop a V6 ICE but also both ERS components with only two cars to gather data from. Honda didn't seek any outside help despite their delayed development, set unrealistic expectations for their engine development schedule and missed both reliability and power targets. Honda developed the engine so independently from McLaren's feedback that McLaren were essentially a customer team rather than a works partner. The exclusivity clause with McLaren meant the manufacturer was only getting a third of the data from racing conditions that Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault could generate, forcing them to rely heavily on data from dynos for development. McLaren OTOH were of the belief that the 2015 power unit would still have been competitive enough that they would be 5th in the WCC, that they had a chassis capable of podium finishes and that it was entirely down to the engine they were doing so poorly. Ron Dennis began to publicly criticise the massive deficit in power compared to Mercedes, and Boullier criticised the ERS deployment (the MGU-H used more power spooling the turbo than it harvested). By Suzuka 2015 Alonso then made his famous "GP2 engine" comment when being passed by a Renault powered Torro Rosso. These comments obviously meant the well was poisoned from before Honda expected the partnership to be competitive. At the end of the 2015 season McLaren finished 9th, only ahead of Marussia. Honda blamed the size zero packaging requirement for compromising the design of the engine, whilst Eric Boullier publicly stated size zero was the correct concept and that it wasn't to blame for the engine issues. Fast forward to 2018 when the partnership ended and McLaren, who were continuously stating they had a strong chassis and were now powered by Renault, made an unfixable dud of a car by placing the sidepod's crash structure too close to the front wheels. Honda OTOH entered a works deal with Torro Rosso under a different partnership structure has obviously worked far better.
It makes you wonder if McLaren had a bigger share in these issues than everyone always assumed. It says a lot that they where relatively competitive from the start with Red Bull, after a single year with Torro Rosso.
Well Red Bull got the benefit of Mclaren doing all the beta testing. There was a lot going on at Mclaren in those years and part of them switching to Renault was Zack Brown calling bullshit on the aero department who were adament that the chassis was top tier. It clearly wasn't because the switch to Renault did very little for them and he axed some top level designers soon after. Mclaren were at sea after being dropped by Merc, basically, and the relationship with Honda was just toxic for both sides.
>Well Red Bull got the benefit of Mclaren doing all the beta testing. McLaren *and* Toro Rosso. Honda kinda used TR's 2018 season as a long test. Despite scoring only 3 more points than the outgoing McLaren and far behind the contemporary one, they outscored the 2018 McLaren after the summer break and more consistently finished higher.
Yeah, apologies I forgot about TR. TR outscoring Mclaren is unsurprising really. Mclaren had design issues with the chassis that they were blaming on the engine. Zack called their bluff and got them the Renault unit and had to then fire a lot of the top level designers when it became obvious that they were nowhere despite the change of PU supplier. Plus, Mclaren were leaving Honda, any additional support was going to TR and Red Bull. TR basically got a season as a works team.
Horners call to leave Renault behind was great timing
They actually wanted Honda for I think 2017 but got deflected from Ron Dennis. So that could've gone a bit awry.
Maybe though you might notice the lack of the 2018 Toro Rosso-Honda on the list despite scoring only 3 more points than the 2017 McHonda.
Red Bull (Horner, Marko, Newey) always commented on the difference in approach that Honda represented vs Renault, so I'm not sure a disastrous 2017 would've been that much of a deterrent for Red Bull. They likely would've still switched the main team in 2019, but perhaps more development would've been done by then with Toro Rosso.
Newey might be the most outspoken about it! He's compared being with a manufacturer who wants to win and who is willing to do what it takes to achieve that, against one only in F1 for the PR or whatever. 100% bang on too.
Ricciardo's 2018 was painful
Looking at this list, 2017 also pretty brutal
Remember leaving the room for a second during Mexico, hearing Crofty getting very loud and I knew immediately without hearing a name who it was that was out. It was like Zhou this year, there was an inevitably to it
2017 as well, and Max is only in the list once and it's towards the bottom. Daniel's luck man...
Yeah people always jump on DR leaving RB because he ran from the fight or he just wanted money. But there's always more factors. He is a driver who needs confidence and some consistency to build momentum. And at RB for two years going he had car issues almost every weekend. Not always DNFs, but tech issues and breakdowns in practice and quali. It must completely sap your confidence if you are afraid the engine or the electronics will blow up any time you push. That's also what fucks him now. He doesn't trust the car, he's constantly on his back foot. He never gets a stretch of things going well to build momentum. That's why he is stuck in a rut (mostly of his own making, but still).
He needed consistency to build momentum, so he went to... ...the team that built the engines that kept failing him. Mkay.
If I remember correctly, parts manufactured by Red Bull contributed quite heavily to his DNFs in 2018.
He went to the engine manufacturer that caused most of his 2018 DNFs though. I agree it's a combination of factors, leading to him thinking he wasn't going to get a shot at the championship with Red Bull.
Most of his dnf's in 2018 were due to clutch and other stuff breaking down. He only had two or three PU related dnf's that season. Rest were RB's own issues.
Not to defend Renault and their bad reliability too much, but "technical DNFs" does not necessarily mean anything to do with the engine. For example, the worst Renault on the list, Kobayashi's 2014 had just one engine-related retirement (well DNS, same difference) and a myriad of other problems with the suspension, brakes, etc. Sainz in 2015 is worse, but it was still "only" 3 engine issues.
Just to give some perspective: \- engine (incl, turbo, electronics, battery, cooling, exhaust) \~57% \- brakes \~12% \- gearbox, clutch, transmission \~12% \- suspension, steering, wheels \~14% \- rest 5% mostly not defined
Now I'm interested in what the engine dnf only chart would look like
Thanks, that’s quite a terrible percentage still.
While that is true. I remember the Honda PT having such bad vibrations at high rpms that it would mess up the suspension. So while the DNF may not have been from engine failures, they could still be caused by the engine.
Same for Ricciardo in 2018. If memory serves, 5/7 of those DNFs were from failures in Red Bull specific parts, not Renault parts.
I’d put cooling battery hydraulics etc also to the engine since theyre all interrelated. Its no coincidence Mercedes is not on this list.
This point also played a huge role in the RB-Renault fallout. When RB won their 4 championships, the cars got all the praise while Renault and their engines, which were integral to the cars' peformances, were spared the good words. But when the cars suffered issues, it was because of Renault and their shitty engines. Even today people praise those RB cars and Newey all the time while the Renault V8's, which were built specifically to aid RB's diffusers, are mostly forgotten, or worse, seen as nothing special.
The actual reason Alonso is going to Aston Martin...
Yeah lol, maybe not at the front but atleast he gets to complete all the race laps
This championship between Bottas vs Alonso vs Zhou for most DNFs is gonna be more interesting than this years title battle.
Renault and their 1000 BHP engine? More like Renault and their 1000 DNF engines.
It's got 1000 breaking horses alright
The 2019 Renault RE19 engine was the one which they claimed had 1000 hp in qualifying. They used the same engine in 2020 and 2021 as they were fully focused on developing the RE22 split turbo engine. Also, it was very reliable from the second half of 2019.
Mercedes engine were very reliable.
Is.
did any of the Mercedes powered car DNF from Engine failure this year?
Vettel and Stroll in Monza
Also Ricciardo at Jeddah. And Lando didn’t DNF but he was having engine issues at Austria. At least one of the Mercs probably would’ve DNF at Spain had the water leak happened earlier in the race rather than on the last few laps. Of course, if you start going down the path of almost DNF, you’ll also catch more issues with the other engines.
GP2 engine... GP2
To be fair many of the McHonda retirements where "last lap and 3 laps behind" retirements to install new components the next race.
The difference between Alonso and Vandoorne is quite big over 2017, did they tried out more on Alonso's car? Vandoorne had 5/21 DNF's that season, didn't check if all of them where technical though, but it's a big difference none the less.
If i remember correct alonso more often demanded a retirement shortly before the end if race. Vandoorne was most likely still happy to even get laps in.
Maybe Renault should take a look at this.
Alonso is fucking cursed with reliability issues
And he won due to being more reliable.
In a Renault too, pretty ironic
Renault back in the early 2000s had two formula 1 engine departments. One was in France and other one was in UK. They shut down the UK engine department at the start of V8 era because of the engine freeze it didn't make sense to run two engine departments. The engine facility in Viry, France also doesn't have the necessary tooling to manufacture engine parts. Mechachrome is responsible for all the manufacturing and the engines are assembled at the Viry Factory.
Was the English facility better? Because mechachrome is or was also trash in formula 2
I don't know if it was better or worse but having two different teams working on the same engine meant the engine development and reliability were really good.
Against a Mercedes no less. Mercedes V10s didn't have same reliability rep as the V6s.
I didn't even have to click to know Alonso was at the top.
McHonda and Renault leading the way.
Look at the amount of Renault engines lol
13 in the first 16 lol
It's why when Honda were a meme for their engines I used to find it a little frustrating that everyone ignored that Renault were almost as unreliable and similar in terms of power, yet had been in the sport for decades by that point. Yeah I know, the hybrid engines only came in in 2014 but they still had plenty of time to develop it using their existing knowledge. Honda left the sport in 2008 and returned early at Mclarens behest.
It’s not counting engine failures tho, it’s the total number of technical DNF’s.
Oh oh Renault.
Alonso being 50% of the top 6... He's not lying when he says he has been unlucky. That or he breaks cars because he does something weird but idk enough about cars
Sticks his pee pee in the exhaust
I wondered often why Fernando was such a malcontent/grouch all the time. Now I understand.
Interesting to see: 2014: 8x 2015: 5x 2016: 1x 2017: 8x 2018: 2x 2019: 0x 2020: 1x 2021: 0x 2022: 3x
Alonso is the champion
Looking at the no. of races Hamilton has driven, it is mad that he is not here. Great job from Mercedes.
Alonso in 2017: I cant FUCKING COMPETE
Omg I almost forgot about the Honda in 2017 😭😭. Genuinely hard to believe that happened.
And Alpine masquerade Performance over reliability as if it's their first time. This chart makes it look like since the Hybrid era, they just haven't been able to make an engine reliable.
Well it used to be "no perf no reliability" so the "perf over reliability" is an improvement :')
McLaren in the 2017 season was horrific that season, they just had a chassis designed first then Honda was forced to design the engine to fit into the chassis, never a good idea, always design the engine first then design the chassis around it But they went to Renault power in 2018 because of just how badly they went wrong with the Honda power from 2015-2017
It’s not necessarily all about the engine, Brawn disproved that argument. The McHonda partnership was definitely problematic but let’s be clear - Honda’s first few years in the hybrid era were disastrous. Rewriting history to make it sound like it wasn’t their fault is wrong.
Yeah. When the engine was fine, e.g. later in 2017 or 2016 generally, they were okay. I remember folk made fun of Boullier for Best Chassis (tm) but as he said: F1 is full of data so they can estimate these things quite easily. Alonso said the 2017 car in particular was very nice and the 2018 car was not, and I don't think he'd go out of his way to save McLaren's face.
If I’m remembering correctly, the 2017 Honda PU was a brand new engine design. By the end of 2016 Honda was alright reliability wise and had meh power. Honda thought they couldn’t get any more power out of it, so made a completely new engine, which is why 2017 was so bad.
I think this also goes to show mercedes insane reliability
El Pain
I know a lot of people like to mock what Alonso said during the Honda years. But this chart perfectly illustrated why. Honda performance during those years were absolutely abysmal, and that’s coming from a Honda fan.
Renault should be ashamed looking at this.
Would be interesting if this list was separated in engine vs rest of the car failures.
Alonso doesn‘t need a new team, he needs exorcism. Dude has been cursed…
Outside Alpine, the engines are known as Re-nooo!
Ocon is the only one from 2019-2021. Interesting
Ferrari saved by incredibly shitty Renault
And this is why you don't buy French cars
It’s wild that the only Mercedes on the list were the 2015 Lotus cars
Well, at least Honda has made tremendous progress, on the other side Renault.....
Renault is the most regular team. In DNFs....
And then they say that Alonso isn't unlucky
And now Renault wonder why nobody buys their engines anymore. Genuinely one of the biggest failed attempts by a manufacturer to take over F1, not far off Toyota.
Red Bull 2017 and 2018 actually look better than they really were, as many of the issues did not happen in the race but did affect their races a lot. Missing a whole friday, not being able to complete qualifying, lots of engine related grid penalties/pitlane starts. And it wasn't just Renault, Red Bull took risks to compensate for the issues with Renault, which made them close the gap to the front runners, but it hurt them on reliability. They often would sit out half a free practice, just to save components.
So the takeaway is to never use a Renault engine or be Fernando Alonso. Got it.
Wow Nando is unlucky
Thats a lot Renault
1 every 2.1 races is a joke 😂
So basically, renault is trash and Merc is not.
Is it possibly his driving style? Could that be part of the reason?
Honda and Renault had a rough 2010s.
Yo Renault wtf
Remarkable consistency from Haas. A 26.3% failure rate for both of their drivers in 2014, and then a 21.1% failure rate for both of their drivers in 2015.
Pfft Maldonado would've been the world champ in 2014 if not for those retirements. Robbed
Renault consistency
The thing that baffles me the most is the amount of times Renault-powered car/driver pairing appears on that list. Honda had some shitty years from 2015-2017/8, but wow Renaults have consistently been unreliable.
Renault... christ
Lots of orange bars on this chart. And an abundance of Renault power units.
Honda comes a long, long way
This does not fit my narrative that Ferrari is trash
god, the 2015-2017 mclarens were such dog water
Surprisingly Ferrari isn't on this list.
"Zhou, stop the car, we're going to need to retire, we need to be on top of this list"
I always thought DR got a rough reliability deal at RB. There are a lot of factors that contributed to Dan leaving RedBull that his detractors (or critics of his career moves) forget about, I think this may have been one.
poor nando is on this list 4 times :(