General
Honda loses thousands of hours on the test bench due to new cost savings
- GPblog.com
The development of the engines has always been helped in recent years with an enormous amount of hours on the test bench in the factories of the respective engine suppliers. In an attempt to save costs, this is now being put to an end as well.
The new rules for limiting the time an engine manufacturer may spend on the test bench are not easy. For example, there are different limits for a different speed at which testing is allowed. The biggest cost savings are made by limiting the number of hours an engine can be tested at 7500 rpm in so-called racing conditions.
Normally, current engines can maintain this for about 5000 kilometres before they are written off. Under the engine regulations the teams are allowed to use 24 engines per season, but if you add the engines on the test bench it will very expensive.
Hours are drastically reduced
This is of course a considerable expense, which is why the number of hours on the test bench is limited. From 2021 manufacturers will be allowed to test the engines for a maximum of 800 hours at 7500 rpm and in the following years this will even be reduced to 700 hours. For the electric motors there is an even stricter limit of 400 hours per year.
To illustrate how drastic these measures are: According to Auto Motor und Sport, Honda has run more than 4,000 test hours per year in recent years. Because this testing costs around 1500 euros per hour, you can see how much money that will save. Honda in this case about five million euros per year.