RENAULT driver line-up 2009

[Ciro Pabón]

Ross Brawn on KERS:

"The theoretical advantage of having KERS is perhaps two or three tenths a lap, but you have to carry 20 or 30kg extra for that.

But there are other negative aspects in relation to KERS, for instance the control over the amount of braking at the rear end. KERS will be powered by the rear axle and the brakes, but the torsional moment of the rear axle could change as soon as the storage element is fully charged. That’s one of the difficult points you have to deal with. So you win two or three tenths, but you lose in terms of weight, packaging and torsional moment at the back. There in any case is no clear decision on KERS.

I think it will take a while before we can eliminate the disadvantages. There will be a number of versions of KERS - and perhaps there will be more versions that we haven’t thought of so far. For us the system only starts to work when we overcome the disadvantages."

So, the advantage will be to get ahead of the competition for 2010, but I don't know about curve 1.

[pipex]

Ross Brawn on KERS:

"The theoretical advantage of having KERS is perhaps two or three tenths a lap, but you have to carry 20 or 30kg extra for that.

But there are other negative aspects in relation to KERS, for instance the control over the amount of braking at the rear end. KERS will be powered by the rear axle and the brakes, but the torsional moment of the rear axle could change as soon as the storage element is fully charged. That’s one of the difficult points you have to deal with. So you win two or three tenths, but you lose in terms of weight, packaging and torsional moment at the back. There in any case is no clear decision on KERS.

I think it will take a while before we can eliminate the disadvantages. There will be a number of versions of KERS - and perhaps there will be more versions that we haven’t thought of so far. For us the system only starts to work when we overcome the disadvantages."

So, the advantage will be to get ahead of the competition for 2010, but I don't know about curve 1.

As the control systems and implementation advances, i think that this could be solved. At least in the paper industry there are very complex algorithms to control the motors to prevent stretching and cutting the paper sheets. Maybe the application of this type of state of the art algorithms in a KERS application is not too well understood right now, but i'm sure that this will be implemented sometime in the future. In fact, the Mitsubishi EVO MIEV doesn't implement the complex mechanical devices to prevent wheelspin and improve traction, but nothing prevent the posterior emulation of these mechanical devices by software means. The control of AC/DC machines is already a well understood topic, and the precision of the algorithms is very good. But i'm no F1 engineer and i don't know more than Ross Brawn for sure, so what i said could be pure BS xD
This could be one of the advantages of the electrical systems, the fact that you could implement changes in the control algorithms in software to add new functionality. KERS system engineers will have a lot of fun (work)...
Another problem is that the system is incapable of modulating the braking action. I don't know this is forbidden by the current rules... i think so. This poses the problems of the KERS disconnection too. How to disconnect the system?. Cut the power, or use some kind of "soft" mechanical brake/regenerative brake function...

Edit: I forgot that traction control is forbidden