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A FINE BALANCE BETWEEN POWER AND ENERGY RECOVERY
On the current breed of V6 turbocharged power units, the turbine drives both the compressor and MGU-H. If it is hard to produce electricity from the turbine, then the exhaust gas flow gets slowed down, which creates a back pressure that ultimately hurts ICE (for internal combustion engine) efficiency.
“With this power unit if you improve the recovery you lose power, so you need to work on both,” McLaren-Honda Eric Boullier told Autosport. “If you increase the pressure at the exhaust to have more energy recovery, you need to also work on improving the ICE.”
After reviewing and tweaking the MGU-H, Honda looked to improve its ICE, which remains at the heart of the performance cycle and where the biggest improvements can be made. The Japanese manufacturer spent a couple of tokens ahead of the British Grand Prix in a bid to increase combustion efficiency.
On the latest specification (top image), one can spot three ducts on the side of the engine. These serve to channel air to the combustion chamber lodged within each cylinder. As you can see on the bottom picture, they did not feature on the pre-Silverstone model.
