I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the controls in the F1 car. for instance, when I see alonso moving his left thumb on a little wheel breaking into turns, that is his brake bias, yes?
anyway, I see drivers sometimes reaching down off the wheel with their left hand and moving some kind of device. i notice some driver's do it more than others. what is this thing?
here's a clip of Schumi and Vettel driving split screen. it seems they both do it although Michael does it much more. (start around 55sec in)
the regulations state that brake bias cannot be electronically controlled. As such, it cannot be a button/dial on the wheel, which is electronic. The reason for this is that it makes it possible to effectively police the rule banning ABS.
as such, the adjustment mechanism for brake bias is usually mounted down inside the cockpit to place it closer to the master cylinders. This is what Michael/Sebastian are reaching down for. It is, to me at least, pretty obvious that the merc drivers tend to make more bias changes than anybody else.
When a driver reaches to adjust something away from the steering wheel, that's him adjusting the brake bias. The regulations require that such adjustments be purely mechanical, i.e. no electronic assistance. Schumacher does it for pretty much every corner.
The thumb control you mentioned is likely one that controls settings for the differential to change the way it behaves during the different events that occur while the car is cornering.
EDIT: Day late and a dollar short. Story of my life.
I have heard Andrea Stella talking to Alonso over the radio about brake balance though - "Use the rotary if you are out of adjustment with the lever" - indicating some sort of rotary knob to control brake bias.
He's probably talking about the differential. The Ferrari is not known for balance, so it's very likely that it requires more than one or two adjustments to bring it level.
it is more than plausible that hes asking him to play with the differential, particularly as hes asking to do it only after he has run out of room to play with in the bias adjustments.
bhallg2k wrote:He's probably talking about the differential. The Ferrari is not known for balance, so it's very likely that it requires more than one or two adjustments to bring it level.
Possibly - overcoming brake imbalance with diff adjustments? That was in 2011 btw, though I can't remember which race.
I don't think Ferrari's produced an "easy" car since at least 2008.
Being "out of adjustment" with the lever - brake bias - doesn't necessarily mean there's no more room to adjust it, it could easily be that any further adjustments will simply cause a wheel or two to lock up, which is both slower and kills tires. In that case, you'd want to adjust the differential to achieve the desired dynamic. But since the differential cuts power in a manner of speaking, or at least how power is applied, I imagine a driver wouldn't want to make adjustments there if it can be avoided.
EDIT: By the way, I'm starting to get the idea that this time of day is our "shift" here on F1T.
have you seen that clip of alonso holding up the wheel while he does a lap in his head. he adjust that little thing with this thumb between at least two corners. so he's changing the diff or brake balance for those particular corners.
anyway, what about that lever down in the cockpit they adjust with their left hand like in that clip i linked to? i've seen Kimi using it a bunch in the Barcelona race two weeks ago too. WHAT IS IT?!?
Lycoming wrote:it is more than plausible that hes asking him to play with the differential, particularly as hes asking to do it only after he has run out of room to play with in the bias adjustments.
It could even be a KERS recharge rate knob, as KERS will affect rear braking.
EDIT: Didn't read all the thread, post above beat me to it
Well I just watched a video of Schumi explaining the steering wheel of his W03. He didn't say anything about brake bias per se, so I'm gonna assume this is a brake balance deal. I can't find a nice picture of it either. Maybe it's a couple things.
Schumacher at Mercedes uses the Brake Bias Lever to ballance the car much more than any other item. However at Ferrari he did use it more latteraly in 05 and 06 he only did so about once a lap. With the Mercedes cars he needs to change bias about 3 or 4 times a lap to get the optimal lap time. Jenson when he was at the team under the Brawn name was the pioneer of this and he did so a couple of times a lap. Rosberg and Rubens use the bias lever, however not as much as Michael or Jenson.
The Mercedes lever is usually a 5 posistion lever with the the level towards the front of the car being as much as 70/30 towards the front and the rear one being 40/60 towards the rear. However this changes track to track. Each posistion is pre determined on the Mercedes car in order to to get a optimal lap time.
As for Fernando, he is a Diff Jockey, he uses the differencial entry, whitch is the same as a Diff Deceleration control, it controls the engine braking that he gets, Fernando uses the brake bias lever, but only as a small tuning device, he uses his engine braking more than brake bias tuning. In his Renault days he didnt use it as much, but with the Ferrari cars he uses it more. McLaren didnt entertain him this way, as the McLaren didnt have a great rear end on it then, and Fernando would have spun alot, and McLaren dont like you using multiple engine braking maps.
Its all down to driver style, Vettel is more of a straight up lets race guy, Hamilton is the same. However they do change maps and diff settings, however they do so when they are told to, they dont have as much freedom in this regaurd, However the freedoms they are given is where they go for tyre maps, Vettel and Hamilton have maps avalable for them for whitch stage the tyre is on, and this changes the diff accordingly, however they seem to change every 2-3 laps, and dont change their multi map or brake settings every lap.
Its no surprise as the best racer this season is Alonso, and over a race distance he is the quickest due to his active changing of diff settings. However when it comes to a single lap, Hamilton and Vettel are the best.
Its all down to driver preference really, and how he works with his team to extract the most from his car over a single lap and over a race distance.
