F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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dans79
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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Andres125sx wrote:
dans79 wrote:
alexx_88 wrote: Until then, they need to experiment and test within the 8-engine and 12-days limits.
Excuse me? I haven't seeing anything in the rules preventing them from purchasing as many engines as they want.
Yes, they can test as many engines as they want on a test bench

But you just have to look at Honda to realice how useful is testing an engine out of the car, they tested his engine on dynos quite a lot and it was supposedly prepared, but once they put it into the car... #-o
It wouldn't surprise me if The Merc engine is so reliable, because their dyno mimics and actual car as realistically as possible without breaking the rules.
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Andres125sx
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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But they´re not that reliable, they suffered several problems last season. Otherwise they´d have win 19/19

This season is another story, I guess they centered their efforts to improve this aspect since perfomance was far from a problem

alexx_88
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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@dans79: Well, if they'd be able to do that, the benefits would be immense. Imo, there are three main areas:
1. Simulate the load and conditions from the track. That's very easy to do and I presume everybody does it. Pre-program the dyno and simulate the control inputs in order to recreate specific track sections and situations.
2. Cooling: This is not trivial at all. Other than mounting the engine in a chassis and putting it in a wind tunnel, there's no easy/legal way to do this. From what I remember, Red Bull did such a thing last year and it got all over the news, when they went and used AVL's dyno.
3. Effect of G-forces. This seems pretty much impossible to simulate to a desired accuracy without putting a car on a track.

To that extent, the only way in which you could tick boxes '2' and '3' would be to put the PU in a mule car and race it around a track of your choice. It helps if you have a hypercar lying around, like Ferrari. :) Besides the cost of doing this, the main problem is the image penalty. As the spirit of the rules say that testing is limited to reduce costs, doing this is clearly against that.

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dans79
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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Andres125sx wrote:But they´re not that reliable, they suffered several problems last season. Otherwise they´d have win 19/19
Last season they had 5 engine related issues total. Lewis in Aus, Lewis & Nico in Can, Lewis in Hun, & Nico in ABU. That's not that bad when you consider the performance they had.
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SectorOne
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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alexx_88 wrote:What would be the point and what would they say? That Mercedes doesn't put Williams' needs above those of the works team. That Mercedes AMG HPP doesn't give them access to Mercedes F1's team engine mappings? It would be pointless, these are things that you accept when you are a customer team.
You have made the assumption that A, Williams are totally ignorant when it comes to engine maps, B, the base mapping is provided to all customers, C, Williams only do minor tweakings to the maps.
alexx_88 wrote:Every gain helps. 1% difference in laptime and maybe 2% in engine power doesn't count as lightyears. Also, then why is everyone in F1 saying that being a works team is better? Cost is much higher than being a customer and it also forces you to stick to your supplier even if it's totally crap (look at RB). Also, this is what the Merc bosses had to say on the subject:
Mercedes is confident that being able to develop the engine in tandem with the chassis has given its team an advantage this year.

"I think so, yes," managing director of Mercedes High Performance Powertrains Andy Cowell said. "The Mercedes power unit is designed in close collaboration with Bob Bell the technical director [of Mercedes], and has been right from the release of the regulations. Every nut, bolt, washer and cable is designed around this car. That provides an advantage."
Mercedes executive director (technical) Paddy Lowe said working closely with the engine team based in Brixworth had allowed his team to tightly package the rear of the car to maximise downforce.
"That's been one of the big challenges because there's been so much extra equipment to fit in, particularly cooling," he explained. "Bigger hybrid system cooling is required and then the charged air cooling to cover, so everything was pushing towards a bigger package at the rear end. The big area of research was to try to find our way through that to prevent growth. That's where we come into the territory where the combination of effort between the teams at Brackley [chassis] and Brixworth [engine] has been very, very helpful."
"has given its team an advantage this year."
"Every nut, bolt, washer and cable is designed around this car" (W05)

In 2015, the fact that Mercedes put in all this work to balance chassis and engine is nothing but a benefit to a customer team.
Because you see, all the engines go in F1 cars comprised of the same components.
alexx_88 wrote:I said you were trolling because you asked how could the PU be optimized for the aero of the works team. I thought that such an established member of a technical F1 community would not ask how the PU influences packaing, thus aero and how the works team is able to get more information than a customer team.
It´s already been over a year! The engine is nothing new to Williams anymore.
they know the engine by now and can optimize the chassis (and aero) around it. Read the bolded part above.
The question you should ask is for example why Force India and Williams has gone a different direction in terms of say coolers.
That´s quite a big piece of equipment stuck in the sidepods.
alexx_88 wrote:I said that the software is different, as in the maps of the PU are different and that is a very valid assumption to make. Control strategies are heavily influenced by temperature which is heavily influenced by cooling choices. Secondly, working closely with the engine team allows you to push the maps a little bit closer to the edge. How can you do that as a customer team in a formula with a limited number of engines per season.
Again, base mapping is provided to which Williams add their own flair to.
Nowhere does it say Mercedes has a completely different engine mapping and it would make little sense since they both are running the exact same engine.
alexx_88 wrote:Honestly, I can't understand what kind of evidence you're looking for. I'd like to be able to show you maps from Williams and Mercedes, but that's not possible.
so we´re left with assumptions then. Which in reality has zero weight behind it.

It all stems from the assumptions that tweaking the engine maps for the engines is super hard in F1 terms, that engine manufacturers do not do anything for their customers even though it´s in their best interest to do literally everything to make sure their customers have the best engine they could possibly have.
And that there´s zero collaboration between the customers and the engine manufacturer.


It´s like people have this notion that engines are dropped off by FedEx and just come with an IKEA manual.
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ChrisM40
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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How exactly could they go about equalisation of the engines anyway? They cant just tell Mercedes to cut 50hp or run worse mapping, it would have to be with a rule change, and there is still no guarantee Renault would do any better under the new rules.

Correct me if im wrong but the changes that affected RB were more about 'clarifications' than rule changes. They were stretching, to breaking point, the rules as they stood. There is no evidence Mercedes are any closer to the edge of the rules now than Renault are, they were just better prepared.

Moose
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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ChrisM40 wrote:How exactly could they go about equalisation of the engines anyway? They cant just tell Mercedes to cut 50hp or run worse mapping, it would have to be with a rule change, and there is still no guarantee Renault would do any better under the new rules.

Correct me if im wrong but the changes that affected RB were more about 'clarifications' than rule changes. They were stretching, to breaking point, the rules as they stood. There is no evidence Mercedes are any closer to the edge of the rules now than Renault are, they were just better prepared.
The way they did it with the V8s was to let Renault develop their engine, but not Merc or Ferrari.

ChrisM40
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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Moose wrote:
ChrisM40 wrote:How exactly could they go about equalisation of the engines anyway? They cant just tell Mercedes to cut 50hp or run worse mapping, it would have to be with a rule change, and there is still no guarantee Renault would do any better under the new rules.

Correct me if im wrong but the changes that affected RB were more about 'clarifications' than rule changes. They were stretching, to breaking point, the rules as they stood. There is no evidence Mercedes are any closer to the edge of the rules now than Renault are, they were just better prepared.
The way they did it with the V8s was to let Renault develop their engine, but not Merc or Ferrari.
I cant see that being allowed now, and in this more complex era its still no guarantee.

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FoxHound
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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Regarding engine parity...

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/118139?
(Autosport)

Pat Symmonds(Williams)
"We have no doubts over the parity of the engines from Mercedes during the Australian Grand Prix
We have a great working relationship with all the team at Brixworth and know how hard they pushed things to the limit to bring the best performance to Australia. HPP are constantly checking the data and all the power units are exceptionally close in performance. Our aim now is to continue developing the car to ensure we can fight Ferrari."

Bob Fernley (Force India)
"Yes, and the contract states that(equality), All fairness to Mercedes, they have always been straight with us"
Let's bury this, and move on.
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alexx_88
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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They talk about hardware specs and that's what the regulations refer to. If I'm not mistaken, Williams is using Petrobras this year, so that alone makes it impossible to run the same maps as Mercedes. Other than that, you're free to believe the PR machine as apparently PR can trump science. :) There are a LOT of voices in the paddock that say the same thing as I.

LE: Apparently Petrobras couldn't develop their fuel and Williams still using Petronas in 2015, as well? In any case, the idea remains, if the fuel between the two differs, they'll have to alter their mapping.

Because the engines were frozen during that period, it was quite easy for Renault to be given the chance to catch up. However, the current crop of PUs is supposed to stop being developed somewhere around 2019, so they really can't do anything right now. Law of diminishing returns says that, presuming the same rate of development, Ferrari should start to close in on Mercedes, but probably never overtake them in PU output.

On the actual topic, let's be fair. Both the engine and aero development done in F1 is pretty much useless in the real-world. To that extent, an engine-orientated formula has the big problem of tying the customer teams to a certain level of PU performance without any actual means of getting out of that situation. While big teams can moan, sometimes get the rules changed, but survive in any case, a small team choosing the wrong engine supplier (which for some teams is a choice dictated by anything other than performance) can lose tenths of millions and in the end shut down. I don't think that's the correct approach.
Last edited by alexx_88 on 21 Mar 2015, 19:53, edited 1 time in total.

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Andres125sx
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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Moose wrote:The way they did it with the V8s was to let Renault develop their engine, but not Merc or Ferrari.
What, IMHO, was a fraud

F1 became spec series engine related, but with different manufacturers to let people think there was some manufacturer battle, when there wasn´t. The supposed pinacle of motorsports, with frozen and artificially paired enignes.... what a joke


If you want to equalize some component, do it with aero, wich is the part no manufacturer is interested on developing, and also the part wich makes overtaking so difficult. If equalized, competitiveness would be much better. But equalizing engines on a top motorsport series is not serious. Also, costs of aero departments are probably much higher than engine ones. Costs wich, btw, doesn´t have any real world use, while engines, even when not directly aplicable to real world, could bring some innovation wich could be used in future real world

I really can´t understand how they allowed frozen engines but continue with free aero development. Aero should be first department to be frozen, and probably the only one

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FoxHound
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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alexx_88 wrote:They talk about hardware specs and that's what the regulations refer to. If I'm not mistaken, Williams is using Petrobras this year, so that alone makes it impossible to run the same maps as Mercedes. Other than that, you're free to believe the PR machine as apparently PR can trump science. :) There are a LOT of voices in the paddock that say the same thing as I.

LE: Apparently Petrobras couldn't develop their fuel and Williams still using Petronas in 2015, as well? In any case, the idea remains, if the fuel between the two differs, they'll have to alter their mapping.

Because the engines were frozen during that period, it was quite easy for Renault to be given the chance to catch up. However, the current crop of PUs is supposed to stop being developed somewhere around 2019, so they really can't do anything right now. Law of diminishing returns says that, presuming the same rate of development, Ferrari should start to close in on Mercedes, but probably never overtake them in PU output.

On the actual topic, let's be fair. Both the engine and aero development done in F1 is pretty much useless in the real-world. To that extent, an engine-orientated formula has the big problem of tying the customer teams to a certain level of PU performance without any actual means of getting out of that situation. While big teams can moan, sometimes get the rules changed, but survive in any case, a small team choosing the wrong engine supplier (which for some teams is a choice dictated by anything other than performance) can lose tenths of millions and in the end shut down. I don't think that's the correct approach.
You keep coming back to the maps etc... well from what we have been told from both Williams and Force India is that they are near as dammit identical to the factory teams engines in terms of figures.
So the onus is on you to disprove 2 recipient's of the Mercedes engine, who are both privy to figures and information you do not have access to.

To call this PR is ludicrous. Force India even went to the lengths to state that equality was a contractual obligation. This will also extend to maps which naturally have a big influence on engine performance.
Unless you are suggesting Mercedes are intentionally misguiding their customers to obtain an advantage, thereby breaking their contract?

Is this your position? If so what evidence are you bringing to the table?
Mclarens story is obsolete now, as we know they are contracted to Mobil and use their lubricant.
This is not related to Mercedes supply fairness, that is a problem Mclaren and Mobil needed to overcome.
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alexx_88
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In the last TP press conference, Bob Fernley from FI admitted that there are developments that happen on the works team first and only after they are passed down to the customers: https://youtu.be/EOxvLHxi30c?t=658 . I think that's as much proof as we'll be able to get from the official channels.

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SectorOne
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So in the end they all get the same exact stuff as per the contractual obligations. Case closed then.

edit: even the software issue was the same according to your own link. Case closed there too.
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alexx_88
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Re: F1 now & then: engine vs aero formula pro/contra

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So you missed the part where he said that he understands that works teams get some developments first, because, guess what, it's something that comes with being a works team.

Indeed, case closed. :D

PS: There is no point in continuing this discussion further. I've brought the proof that some people wanted, you've said your part and I don't really have the time to get involved in useless arguments that don't bring anything new.

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