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F1's Fernando Alonso gets 35-place penalty for latest Honda engine change

MONZA, Italy — McLaren's Fernando Alonso will collect a 35-place grid penalty for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix after Honda announced changes to his car's power unit. The penalty means the double world champion, whose future at McLaren remains uncertain due to the team's continuing engine woes, will start at the back of the 20-car grid for the last European race of the season. His chances were limited anyway at Monza's 'Temple of Speed,' the fastest circuit on the calendar where engine performance is crucial. His Belgian teammate Stoffel Vandoorne suffered a similar fate when he was handed a 65-place penalty for his home race at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend. Such meaningless penalties incurred through no fault of the driver have come increasingly under scrutiny in Formula One with some saying the system has got out of control and must change. "I hate the fact that we're having to affect the racing because of the technical issues," Formula One managing director Ross Brawn, a title-winning former team principal and ex-Ferrari technical director, told motorsport.com. "I know you can say if a car breaks down in a race that's a technical issue and you've affected the race, but I think the fans understand that. "For a fan to stomach that his hero is on the back of the grid because he had to change the engine, that's not great sport," added the Briton. Brawn suggested a different form of penalty, or removing it altogether, but acknowledged that the sport might have to wait until 2021 when new engine regulations will come into force. The current Formula One regulations stipulate that each driver may use no more than four power units during a championship season, with that number due to be reduced to three next year. Each power unit is made up of six separate elements; the engine, the motor generator unit-kinetic (MGU-K), the motor generator unit-heat (MGU-H), the energy store, turbocharger and control electronics. Grid penalties are imposed if a driver uses more than four of any one of the elements during the course of a season, and for successive breaches. Honda said Alonso was now on his seventh engine and MGU-K, his ninth turbocharger and MGU-H, his sixth energy store and fifth control electronics. Alonso retired from the Belgian Grand Prix but some components of the power unit used there will be run again in Friday's second practice after Honda said they could find no obvious problem.

Honda is first Japanese carmaker to be a net-exporter from US

Over the last decade or so, many foreign automakers have challenged the idea of what defines an "American car," but Honda took things a step further last year by exporting more cars out of the US than it imported in. Reuters is reporting that in 2013, a total of 108,705 Honda and Acura models were exported from the US with only 88,357 being shipped in. This gives Honda a net exporter status here, and makes it the first of such among the major Japanese automakers.
Honda's US imports have been dropping over the last five years while its exports have been steadily increasing. In 2008, the report indicates that Honda shipped 187,000 vehicles to the US and exported only 20,000, and even by 2012 Honda still favored imports with 136,000 imports and 74,000 exports. The article says that US-made Honda and Acura vehicles were exported to 50 countries with most ending up in Mexico, but the big news is that the Honda's US production set a record in 2013 with 1.3 million units built.

McLaren working on P15 supercar to slot between 650S and P1

McLaren has been busy these past few years. It launched the MP4-12C in 2011, the 12C Spider in 2012, the P1 in 2013 and (most recently) the 650S in 2014. But it's not about to stop there. It's got an "entry-level" model in the works, set to take on the Porsche 911, and - according to information reported by Car and Driver and confirmed by McLaren in correspondence with Autoblog - a new flagship model, too.
The project is internally codenamed P15, and it calls for a new flagship that will cap the company's lineup once the P1 finishes its limited production run, but carry a price tag in the neighborhood of $500k to slot in between the P1 and the new 650S.
Just how, you wonder, can McLaren possibly develop another supercar each year? Simple: underneath, they're all essentially the same. (Only we're sure it's anything but simple.) That is to say they're all based on the same carbon monocoque structure and powered by the same 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission driving the rear wheels. What differentiates them is what the engineers in Woking build around that monocoque and how they tune the engine: +/- 600 horsepower in the 12C (depending on the year it was built), 640 hp in the 650S, or 727 hp in the P1 (with another 177 from the electric assist). The 911 fighter would likely develop in the 500hp range, and the P15 will probably land in the upper 600 (or lower 700) range.