Guest wrote:
Reca,
I have a related question. Just how much can a driver influence the reliability of an engine?
a very simple question...
actually that’s a long debated argument, and surely I don’t have a definitive answer, just some thoughts and some info from articles interviews etc.
First of all you have to separate the "immediate" failure from a reduction of the duration. The former, given the amount of electronic protections, is very difficult, but the software isn’t infallible, it could give unpredictable results in case of a particular combination of readings from the sensors and then in a few situations the electronic protection could be useless anyway. (Example, the official motivation for the Massa’s failure in Australia is that he over revved a few times during the spins)
Then you have the other aspect, the reduction of lifetime and here in my opinion a driver could have more responsibility, mainly indirect, because of the settings. There are so many parameters you can adjust that maybe, simply selecting a different map results in putting more stress on the engine compared with another set of parameters and that leads to a reduced lifetime.
A couple of years ago Gené said that Ralf and JPM have a different driving style especially in braking, JPM uses a lot more engine braking and he was setting the automatic downshift at higher rpm than Ralf, up to 700-800 rpm more, putting more stress on the engine. A BMW man confirmed that JPM is (or at least, he was at the time) more rude with the mechanics (I remember he said that JPM used also a more aggressive setting for the TC) but he also specified that it’s not the driver job to respect the car, it’s the team that has to work to allow him to drive as he wants without reliability issues.
Button opinion is a bit different since he said recently that in the years he learned how to preserve the car improving his reliability record.
The search for reliability is a very hard task, and the driver (and his driving style) is a further parameter to consider amongst the others, the different team of mechanics is another one (although the engine is most of time a sealed box for the race team). But if the Sato driving style is the only reason explaining why he had 4 engine failures and Button 0, well that’s very difficult to say.