2026 F1: I have to wonder: will they let Honda redesign their power plant knowing what it could mean...

I have to wonder....

With "vibrations that can cause nerve damage if driven a full race distance" and the only way to fix it is a complete redesign...

I am looking forward to seeing how this is regulated. Manufacturers are allowed a certain amount of redesign based on their competitiveness but a complete replacement of the engine is almost an infinite amount of redesign. How can they make this fair for other teams? They would have to let everyone have a second take based on the first year of racing.

Not cost effective but maybe it is what the sport needs. Mercedes played it super smart and I'm looking forward to what the change in june bring (compression testing based on hot and cold temperatures). That is the last data set that Honda will need in order to vault to the front especially with the chassis design hype we read about all winter. Unless everyone can pull a reset I doubt next season will be any more fair than this one.

If the FIA allow them to start from scratch without giving the other teams the same opportunity: I guarantee they will come back with a truly formidable engine. They have all the race data from their competitors. I would not call it freely available information but it is out there and would not take a lot of engineers to reverse engineer what everyone else has and is doing. (I'd love to know how much of each teams budget is reverse engineering what the other teams are doing)