Dear Honda...

The Power of Dreams?

Dear Honda,

I respect you guys about as much as I respect any other car manufacturer that doesn't particularly pique my interest. I don't love your cars, but I certainly don't hate them either. My mother's Honda Civic lasted her fifteen years. Your cars are known for their reliability.

Which begs the question: what the heck is going on with your racing engines?

Now, I understand your early struggles. You re-entered Formula One in 2015, the second year of the V6 engine era. Mercedes, Ferrari, and Renault already had a year's worth of experience off of which to build. You showed slight improvement in 2016, but were still well off the pace, never making it onto the podium for the second straight season.

There's no excuse at this point though. McLaren make a good chassis. They have good drivers. As Fernando Alonso stated in March, there is "only one problem: that is the power unit."

And it's quite a big problem at the moment. So much so that Alonso basically said, "Forget it, the season's already lost so I'm gonna go run the Indy 500."

Now, it seems you guys create durable, strong engines over in IndyCar. At least, that's what you bragged about in 2010. But there were a few Honda engine issues in practice, so reliability was not a sure thing this month of May.

Alonso did quite well, running up front until about twenty laps to go when he dropped out because, what else, his Honda engine failed.

Come on. Really? Even in IndyCar, where you have far more recent experience than your Chevrolet counterparts, Alonso can't trust you guys?

I'm just going to keep this short and sweet, Honda: get your act together.

Alonso is a pure talent. Unfortunately, largely thanks to your engines, that talent is being wasted at the moment.

Notes while I was gone

McLaren's latest Indy entry...until this year (Photo: McLaren)

It's been a while. I've been busy with schoolwork, other real life chores, and another blog for a trip to Mexico. A lot has happened since my last post, so I'll cover the highlights one by one.

Fernando Alonso is running the Indy 500. Sorry Nico Rosberg, your absence on the grid is no longer the biggest shocker of the season. Ironically, Alonso will be driving another McLaren-Honda. The team will get support from IndyCar powerhouse Andretti Autosport, however, so expect them to be competitive. If Manor F1 refugee Alexander Rossi can win the race as a rookie, who's to say a double world champion can't do the same?

On that note, Jenna Fryer owes Alonso a major apology for this column, entitled, "So What that Alonso is Racing in the Indy 500?" Well, Jenna, maybe it's because the F1 season for McLaren is lost, so what do they have to lose? Also, the reason he hasn't scored any points with McLaren this season has been because, well, to put it lightly, his car is terrible. Seriously, Alonso hasn't even finished a race yet! And do you really think Tony Stewart or Danica Patrick would have provided more buzz? Maybe in the States alone, sure, but now the whole world will be watching to see what Alonso to do. I have to give you props, though. When you make Mario Andretti livid, you've accomplished something.

Sauber look to be headed to Honda engines in 2018. That's cool for Honda, I guess, but I'm not so sure about Sauber. I'm sure there's some behind-the-scenes financial reasoning that makes this deal make sense, but McLaren have been so dreadful this year that their $40 million driver has decided to skip their biggest race of the year to go run, well, another biggest race of the year. I'm not convinced that McLaren chassis is all that great either, but Honda still has a lot of work to do as an engine supplier...

Finally, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is retiring after this season. It honestly makes sense, given his expiring contract, but also his health concerns the past few seasons. Personally, my early pick for his replacement is Alex Bowman, but I've been wrong before, so we'll see what Hendrick does.

Opinion: We Have a Title Fight on our Hands

The finger is back. (Photo: CNN)

I finally have some time to myself, so I'll go ahead and put in another post.

I live on the east coast of the United States, so the Australian Grand Prix went lights out at 1 AM my time. But come on, this was the first Formula One race in nearly four months. There was no way I was going to sleep through this one.

I went to bed around 8:00 and set an alarm for midnight, giving me a chance to watch F1 Countdown on NBCSN. Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs and Steve Matchett are better than ever. No wonder Sports Illustrated listed them among the honorable mentions for best broadcast team in 2015.

The race itself started off interesting enough, with Daniel Ricciardo's car getting stuck in sixth gear before the start. He would eventually recover to start the race two laps down, only to retire with similar issues after 25 laps.

But the story of the day was Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari, who used pit strategy to their advantage to take the victory in the opening grand prix of the season. The Mercedes men of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas finished second and third respectively. Vettel, however, proved that this season may not be a walk in the park for Mercedes like they've been used to the past three years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was voted Driver of the Day in a landslide.

(And yes, I went back to bed after F1 Extra and slept in until 8:00am. I actually got a full eight hours of sleep.)

I still want to be cautious with the belief that we could see a legitimate battle for the championship this season. (Keep in mind, Ferrari and Vettel have won early season races before.) But Vettel's pace matched Hamilton's when it mattered most, and a brilliant strategy by Ferrari won them one of the most thrilling races we've seen in a long time. Personally, I cannot wait for China!

Also, in other news, McLaren's Fernando Alonso has just announced his immediate retire...alright, you get the joke. Happy April 1st.

Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark

Photo: Motorsport.com

All Hamlet references aside, something is definitely rotten in Honda's 2017 power unit.

McLaren driver Fernando Alonso insists that McLaren's preseason testing struggles can be deduced solely from the team's Honda engines, which have struggled to keep pace with those of Mercedes, Ferrari, and Renault. When asked about McLaren's current situation, Alonso replied, "I don't think we are too far back in terms of chassis side. We have only one problem: that is the power unit. There is no reliability and there is no power. We are 30 km/h down on the straight, every straight."

Since their power unit switch from Mercedes to Honda in 2015, McLaren have struggled mightily and have yet to record a single podium with their new engine partner. While the team's performance has improved somewhat since the change, McLaren still are not the team that they once were.

One has to wonder if Alonso's patience is wearing thin. The double World Champion will be 36 this summer and is in the final year of his current contract with McLaren. While a bad year may not force him out of Formula One, it may force him into joining a new team if he wants a chance to win a third World Championship.

UPDATE: Well, here's further proof the situation is rotten: McLaren's troubles have left Honda 10,500 km behind Mercedes in terms of distance logged this preseason. Of course, Mercedes supplies engines for three constructors (Mercedes, Williams, Force India) while Honda only supplies for McLaren, but it's still a staggering number that represents just how much trouble Honda has endured so far.

Update: Manor Finally Closes Down

Photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

All of 2010's three new Formula One entries are officially dead.

Manor Racing announced yesterday that the team will almost certainly not race in 2017 after failing to find an investor, making their shutdown imminent.

To be honest, I thought this would not happen. Manor were in a very similar situation after the 2014 season and were able to make it through the administration process. ESPN F1's Kate Walker argues that Manor's demise was perhaps "inevitable" given the way prize money is structured in F1 these days. Walker does note that there is still (very) slim hope that an eleventh team will be on the grid next year, though it's very unlikely at this point.

"While the likelihood is remote, it remains possible that Manor could once again be saved at the eleventh hour. The team's entry in the F1 World Championship was held by a separate entity which has yet to enter administration or be declared insolvent. Should an interested party wish to pick up an F1 slot at a rock-bottom price, now is the time to do it."

The other big news that I was unable to write about this week (real-life work always comes first) is that Liberty Media have finally completed their F1 takeover. Furthermore, Bernie Ecclestone has stepped down from F1 entirely. One of the first things Liberty needs to do is reform the payout structure. Ferrari were the highest-earning team after 2015 despite finishing second in the championship to Mercedes. Ecclestone claimed: "We pay more money to Ferrari because they've been around a long time. Ferrari is Formula One and they deserve whatever we pay them."

Sorry Bernie, but that's not how it should work. Ferrari cannot get extra money for being Ferrari. As Autosport notes, McLaren received the fifth-highest amount of money in 2015 despite finishing ninth (of ten teams) in the championship. If that's the system in place, it's a miracle Manor survived as long as they did.

No Respect: My Response to Mike Guy's Criticism of Nico Rosberg's Retirement

Photo: Firstpost.com

Yesterday, TheDrive.com's Mike Guy published an article slamming 2016 Formula One World Champion Nico Rosberg and his decision to retire. Guy called Rosberg "the Biggest Disappointment of 2016." As a whole, the article has not been well-received (judging by the comment section), nor was it well-received by me. Listen to some of the absurdity here...

"Nico Rosberg, the soft-handed Monagasque semi-royal born with a silver racecar in his mouth, hasn't just walked away from the sport—he's disgraced it by declining to defend a title bestowed upon him by a vastly superior car and, frankly, a whole lot of luck."

Um...

"These pundits don’t have the guts to call out Rosberg for what he is: a semi-royal too spoiled grind it out, too coddled to stick around and protect a championship that was handed to him by Paddy Lowe and deep-pocketed Team Mercedes AMG Petronas. Paddy & Co. built a car so completely dominant that any F1 driver could have driven it to a podium finish just about every week."

First off, this car was not handed to him. Not just any driver can get a ride at a team like Mercedes. Furthermore, Rosberg (along with McLaren's Jenson Button) was the longest-tenured F1 driver on any team. He had been with Mercedes since their return to F1 in 2010; this was his seventh year with them. He helped build the team when he was teammates with Michael Schumacher. If anything, Lewis Hamilton was handed the dominant car after stepping in when Schumacher retired. As Ross Brawn noted earlier this week, "Michael, for sure, contributed to the organization and structure that has gone on to achieve success at Mercedes." And since Rosberg was with the team at the same time, the same must be said for him.

He goes on...

"It’s telling that his dazzlingly talented teammate, Lewis Hamilton, ended up on the cover of Time last month. He’s the real face of F1 because he combines talent with an inexhaustible, you-gotta-kill-me-to-get-me-outta-the-cockpit need to race. That Hamiton [sic] lost to Rosberg in 2016 is because he had really [censored] luck: his ERS system failed twice, his engine blew out once, failed once more, and his hydraulics [censored] the bed in Singapore. All told, the reliability issues probably cost Hamilton 40 points in the race to the Driver’s Championship. Rosberg beat him by 5 points."

Mike, let me tell you something: every driver on the grid is going to have good and bad fortune in a given season. Rosberg was in the wrong engine setting in Spain, which led to the opening lap crash. He was passed on the final lap of Monaco by Nico Hülkenberg, falling to seventh. He spun out battling Max Verstappen in Canada. He drove into Hamilton in Austria (a race Hamilton himself won), falling back to fourth when the worst he should have finished was second. He was demoted from second to third due to an absurd radio rule violation, which would have been legal in the second half of the season since the FIA change the rules every twenty minutes. He spun out on the first lap at Malaysia and (miraculously) recovered to finish third in a race he surely would have won, given the fact that Hamilton lost his engine and that he drives, in your words, a "vastly superior car."

That's a lot of championship points lost if you ask me, not to mention that fact that Hamilton can only blame himself for all the botched starts he had this season.

Also, let me remind you that if you argue like that, you must admit that the only reason Hamilton won the title in 2008 is because Felipe Massa drove away from the pits in Singapore with his fuel hose still attached to his car. Or that he retired from the lead in Hungary after an engine failure. Or that Timo Glock's slick tyres just couldn't hold up in the damp conditions in Brazil. If the field were frozen at the time Massa crossed the line in Brazil, he would have been the champion. That's how close it was.

Yeah, Hamilton's been on both sides of the coin...

Continuing on...

"Rosberg knows all this, and he’s getting out while the getting’s good. The chassis on the F1 cars will change significantly this coming year, which will place added emphasis on aerodynamics, and could chip away at Mercedes’ massive horsepower advantage."

No, Mike. He's getting out to step away from the stress of the sport and spend time with his family, not because he's scared Mercedes might not have as big of an advantage next season.

And finally...

"And Valterie [sic] Bottas, the [likely] incoming Mercedes driver, will easily fill Rosberg's small shoes with his prodigious talents."

Okay, I have to laugh at you here. "Valterie"? "Hamiton"? Really? If you can't spell the names of two Formula One drivers correctly, what business do you have criticizing Rosberg for making a difficult decision that he believes is best for him and his family, let alone calling it "betrayal"? Did you even proofread your article?

To argue that Rosberg is "betraying" Formula One is absurd. He is a great story and a great champion for the sport, and he doesn't need to be on the grid to keep serving that role in 2017.