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With Lewis issues at the weekend, are their regulations on what you can automate on a car? If there is an issue could you make it so the engine will rectify the problem automatically with the best possible way according to a set of heuristic?
I too have been wondering about this.
Of course I don't know much about the specifics of these many engine modes they have, but it irks me when a commentator or punter says "these engines are too complicated" because the rules don't say the engine needs to be complicated. The rules don't say "3.1.7 The steering wheel must have at least 18 switches on it." The complexity is made by the design and engineering team - it's a human decision to have that many modes and switches. It seems there's a gulf in usability between the engineer's and driver's understandings. That same design and engineering team should make some effort to remove the complexity, too.
The engines are very automatic already, figuring allot of things like boost pressure and mixture themselfs. The button is not called mixture or boost, it's called STRAT, for Strategy. So drivers can select the best engine strategy, taking account how the whole race is going to develop.
My road car already figures out boost and mixtures - that is given as standard.
But Lewis had to hunt for a solution. Surely a better design would be 'Warning - <Engine Issue X> occurred. Strategy Mode N auto-selected.' Then Lewis could then decide if he needed to change from the safe mode to a slightly riskier mode.
Smokes wrote:they banned two way telementry to engine in the late 90's that was when the engineers could tweak or fix the engine during the race.
This is nothing to do with 2-way telemetry.
The topic is to do with pre-programming workflows into the ECU so the ECU will know what to do in the case of error scenarios. For example if the KERS or ERS is failing or not running to full capacity, then the engine might switch to a lean mixture mode to preserve fuel so the car can make it to the end of the race.
(PS maybe we should move this to Engine Tech forum).
Picture this: You are on the straightway doing 300+ Km/h, corner approaching really fast. You have to focus on the braking, downshifting, keeping the car balanced, modulating brake and throttle, and also you have to adjust the differential, brake balance, etc. Then something goes wrong and you lose power. So you have to do all that plus check which dial or switch is on the wrong mode while trying not to loose to many positions. And when you try to use the radio, the engineer can only say "I can't tell you more". Makes you want to go back to the pits and get off the car.
Cars should have the least amount of buttons: Pit lane speed limiter, radio, brake balance, drink and a couple more for rain mode, DRS, tires and things like that so drivers can really focus on driving instead of flying Spaceship One. The engine should be as automated as possible, with some kind of A. I. that would change strategy depending on different factors like fuel load, power demand, temperature, etc.
A Mercedes engineer confirmed that the team incorrctly calibrated the maps wrong. I think they mean the engine/ers strategy related to tyre wear and the weight of the fuel getting lower during the race. Calibration would be programmed specific for each race, race strategy and the driver. Altough with current technology an automated algorithm would be possible, but a calculated one by team engineers would always be better and more precise.
Since f1 is a race about tenths of a second, the hand calculated one would always be prefered.
Why not limit the number and/or scope of switches available to the driver as part of the regulations, so he can concentrate on doing the basics to his very best?
As I understand it the Mercedes energy strategies are adaptive, the code learns from the actual conditions and adjusts to compensate for things that are different from those predicted. It is possible that other than switching modes Hamilton's best option was to leave the switches alone and let the car sort itself out. Perhaps that's what happened.
Meanwhile, whilst the complexity for the driver is high any attempt to help replace the advice previously available from the engineers in the pits will simply mean another group of engineers will get involved adding on board programming to supplement the efforts of the drivers. Its already happened with more on wheel information. The simple truth is that F1 is a team game played principally by engineers with assistance by the drivers. In my opinion attempts to change that under the current rules are futile and, in terms of entertainment, counter productive.
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