Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

All that has to do with the power train, gearbox, clutch, fuels and lubricants, etc. Generally the mechanical side of Formula One.
dialtone
dialtone
121
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:31 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

TNTHead wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 9:02 pm
gshevlin wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:24 pm
From a view of Carlos' steering wheel after he stopped, the transmission was saying it was in 2nd gear, but it sounded like a boxful of neutrals to me as he tried to make the corner.
Charles' failure sounded like an ICE failure. Suddenly the ICE is running down from accelerating, blue oil smoke everywhere, out of the exhausts and airbox, with no power to get the car back to pit lane. KMag had similar smoke coming out of his airbox and exhausts.
I think the ICE was unable to survive the Baku race duty cycle profile.
If it indeed is the ICE than Ferrari is in big trouble. Fixing that is not easy, especially if you don't want to reduce efficiency and power output.

Because LEC was able to drive to the pits I am not sure it is the ICE thought. Normally with a dead ICE you can't run very long. Therefore I wonder whether the ICE may be undamaged, but may be the turbo or MGU-H or died because of overheating.
Yeah, I think it's again TC or MGU-H, because MGU-H is still the first one and TC because after all the second one blew up.

MGU-K or ICE failure the car stops right away and battery doesn't smoke like that.

mzso
mzso
65
Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:52 pm

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

dialtone wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:18 pm
Also Ferrari has already gotten one reliability upgrade done for PU2, so the process isn't impossible.
Any real evidence of that? I only saw journalists' rumors.

dialtone
dialtone
121
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:31 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

mzso wrote:
dialtone wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 8:18 pm
Also Ferrari has already gotten one reliability upgrade done for PU2, so the process isn't impossible.
Any real evidence of that? I only saw journalists' rumors.
Binotto has been talking about it since pre season, i would need to look for links to interviews and such.

User avatar
organic
1056
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:24 am
Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

https://www.formu1a.uno/ferrari-pu-lecl ... -montreal/

Says Charles' PU is not repairable and explains that the engineers fear that Sainz's retirement could be related somehow. Suggests overheating could be root cause.

Hybrid upgrade will be pushed back later into the season (presumably to the deadline) to focus on the reliability issues

It could be that early in the season the lower temperatures were hiding the gremlins of the PU.

AR3-GP
AR3-GP
365
Joined: Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:22 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

Don't they have climate chambers for the Power unit dyno?
A lion must kill its prey.

User avatar
organic
1056
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:24 am
Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

On PC now so I'll post the translation:

https://www.formu1a.uno/ferrari-pu-lecl ... -montreal/
The double retirement in Baku officially opens up the reliability issue as far as the Ferrari Power Unit is concerned. This topic, however, is not something underestimated in Maranello, where they have always been confident that they have met their performance targets, while the PU2 reliability upgrade is not yielding the desired results.

The Baku Grand Prix ended as badly as it could have for Ferrari, with two retirements and a Power Unit gone up in smoke. Saturday had confirmed the F1-75's progress after the upgrades in Spain, which had also worked best here and provided further positive answers to the Maranello technical team. The rear wing made its debut brilliantly, giving Ferrari a speed some 7km/h higher than the specification used in Jeddah and Miami - as analyzed after Qualifying.

Unfortunately, all the positive assumptions literally went up in smoke with the retirement of the two Ferraris. An alarm bell had already sounded when Carlos Sainz was forced to park his F1-75 in Turn 4, but everything came crashing down when Charles Leclerc also had to retire, as race leader, with a smoking engine. Two very different technical problems, which do not reassure Maranello, but which are not a total surprise to those who studied, worked out and developed this project.

Objective number 1 was to regain performance.

Already during the winter on these pages we had talked about how Maranello's focus was all about improving the internal combustion engine in order to reduce the gap from the top teams - Red Bull and Mercedes in 2021 - if not even create an advantage at the engine level. Last year the gap was around 15-20hp during the season - between the debut of the PU and the later upgrade of the hybrid. The goal has fully succeeded because today, with the units frozen in the thermal part, Ferrari enjoys an advantage of around 5/10hp over its nearest competitor, namely Honda.

Power Unit 2 is not meeting expectations regarding reliability

Ferrari's start to the season was very promising, but at Maranello they never deluded themselves or relaxed after the good feedback the first few races brought and continued to work tirelessly. The results were seen with the aerodynamic upgrades in Barcelona, while the failures have caused the Redhead to lose huge amounts of points in these last races. Charles Leclerc in fact between Spain and Baku left 50 points on the field. In this case Carlos Sainz also paid the price in a weekend that was finally seeing him gain more confidence with the car that instead betrayed him after very few laps, in which he had limited himself to tire management and was ready to push. Not a lucky moment for him for sure, but for both Ferrari drivers.

The dilemma at Maranello now, however, concerns the Power Unit 2 that was introduced at Imola on Carlos Sainz and in Miami on Charles Leclerc's car. Ferrari, with the approval of the FIA, had intervened on the ICE component to improve reliability, which has always been an internal issue within the team, but which has now come out forcefully and is not only hurting the factory team, but also the customer teams, who have not hidden a bit of discontent in the last few rounds. As Binotto said post-race, cases should always be analyzed individually as some of them may not be strictly related to the power unit.

Since the introduction of this new element there have been as many as two retirements - due to overheating in Spain while here we will have to wait to analyze at home. The Power Unit 2 will reportedly no longer be recoverable for Charles Leclerc.

Ferrari will take its time to proceed with the analysis after this back to back; time is short and the cars will be sent directly to Montreal where of course the engine will be replaced. In Canada, in fact, Ferrari will use the third unit, albeit with a doubt: will it be specification 1 or the specification with reinforced ICE, which, however, is not yielding the desired results at the moment?

Charles Leclerc's problem seems to be related precisely to the ICE, while as for Carlos Sainz's premature retirement, here the engineers' attention shifts to the brake-by-wire and the hydraulic part of the car that stopped the Spaniard. Something, however, that we are told also involved the gearbox.

Some engineers are concerned that the various faults may also be part of a single theme, namely overheating. The Pu1 in fact, as long as it has been used, has never run in the hot conditions found for example in Miami, Spain or here in Baku. In Bahrain the race time helped, as did in Jeddah. While in Melbourne everything went according to plan, however, the data are insufficient to have a clear answer on the issue.

ERS upgrade postponed to work on reliability

The latest problems that have arisen push Ferrari even more to confirm what was a long-standing decision. The upgrade to the ERS-that is, to the hybrid part of the engine that will undergo the freeze in early September-will be postponed as long as possible in order to now focus on solving the problems on the current engine.

It was always clear in Maranello that performance was not an issue, but that reliability could be. So, at the factory, they are using all available dyno time and every resource to get to the goal.

In Ferrari they had already decided at the beginning of the year to accept the penalty and take advantage of 4 engines to approach the season aggressively. It is evident having arrived at this point that the decision will be confirmed, with the use of even an additional PU then during the course of the season, going more and more to 'emulate' what was the Mercedes strategy in 2021 to extract the maximum potential from their engines, which were suffering from degradation.
Translation by DeepL
Last edited by organic on Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Big Tea
99
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2017 7:57 pm

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

Thanks for the Translation.

I am surprised to read this part.

The upgrade to the ERS-that is, to the hybrid part of the engine that will undergo the freeze in early September-will be postponed as long as possible in order to now focus on solving the problems on the current engine.

I would not have though the same people or department would be working on both parts, so why suspend it rather than work in parallel?
When arguing with a fool, be sure the other person is not doing the same thing.

Rodak
Rodak
37
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 2:02 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

MGU-K or ICE failure the car stops right away and battery doesn't smoke like that.
I can think of a number of engine issues that wouldn't prevent a smoking drive to the pits; burned piston, piston ring failure, etc.

gshevlin
gshevlin
5
Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2017 6:33 pm

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

Charles Leclerc never made it back to the pits. He stopped at the pit lane weighbridge, with the car likely to get in the way of every other car in pitlane because it was rolling so slowly. He had no motive power once the ICE failed, and the ICE cut out as he coasted down the pit lane entrance road. This suggests to me it was not a single piston issue, or a turbo failure. In both cases there might be some power available.
From watching the video, the failure occurred under acceleration in 7th or 8th gear near the top of the ICE rev range. You hear the revs suddenly drop significantly, stabilize for 2-3 seconds, then the ICE sound becomes ragged and it starts to run down.
I reviewed the Carlos Sainz video, and I wonder if he also suffered an ICE problem. Normally with many instances of hydraulic failure, the transmission suddenly cannot find a gear, but the power unit is revving freely. With the Sainz failure, the ICE suddenly runs down and sounds very spluttery, then it cuts out altogether, although as Sainz sits in the escape road, everything on the steering wheel is still live, you can see that the transmission thinks that it is in second gear.

User avatar
F1NAC
170
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2013 9:35 pm

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

Big Tea wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 11:56 pm
Thanks for the Translation.

I am surprised to read this part.

The upgrade to the ERS-that is, to the hybrid part of the engine that will undergo the freeze in early September-will be postponed as long as possible in order to now focus on solving the problems on the current engine.

I would not have though the same people or department would be working on both parts, so why suspend it rather than work in parallel?
could postpone mean budgetwise postpone, or could mean it was some serious flaw that could hamper functionality of hybrid part.. We won't know for some time.

I doubt that LEC failure started with turbo or H, because with those you can hear the sound when spinning element suddenly stops. With Lec it sounded like cylinder gave away. And he managed to put it in N to crawl back to the pitlane.

dialtone
dialtone
121
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:31 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

F1NAC wrote:
Big Tea wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 11:56 pm
Thanks for the Translation.

I am surprised to read this part.

The upgrade to the ERS-that is, to the hybrid part of the engine that will undergo the freeze in early September-will be postponed as long as possible in order to now focus on solving the problems on the current engine.

I would not have though the same people or department would be working on both parts, so why suspend it rather than work in parallel?
could postpone mean budgetwise postpone, or could mean it was some serious flaw that could hamper functionality of hybrid part.. We won't know for some time.
Engine isn't part of budget cap. I think Binotto wants all hands on solving this issue ASAP and I would do the same. Put people to work on multiple options and quickly figure out which one is more promising.

FDD
FDD
81
Joined: Fri Mar 29, 2019 12:08 am

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

dialtone wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 8:14 am
F1NAC wrote:
Big Tea wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 11:56 pm
Thanks for the Translation.

I am surprised to read this part.

The upgrade to the ERS-that is, to the hybrid part of the engine that will undergo the freeze in early September-will be postponed as long as possible in order to now focus on solving the problems on the current engine.

I would not have though the same people or department would be working on both parts, so why suspend it rather than work in parallel?
could postpone mean budgetwise postpone, or could mean it was some serious flaw that could hamper functionality of hybrid part.. We won't know for some time.
Engine isn't part of budget cap. I think Binotto wants all hands on solving this issue ASAP and I would do the same. Put people to work on multiple options and quickly figure out which one is more promising.
But they have limited hours on engine test bed

keroro.90
keroro.90
1
Joined: Mon Jul 01, 2013 8:32 pm

Re: Ferrari F1-75

Post

Is it still possible to homologate 2/3 complete PUs in a single GP? like in the Honda times? or they remove this loophole?

User avatar
organic
1056
Joined: Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:24 am
Location: Cambridge, UK

Re: Ferrari F1-75

Post

keroro.90 wrote:
Mon Jun 13, 2022 5:04 pm
Is it still possible to homologate 2/3 complete PUs in a single GP? like in the Honda times? or they remove this loophole?
They removed that loophole after 2016 iirc

michl420
michl420
19
Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2010 4:08 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

Post

AR3-GP wrote:
Sun Jun 12, 2022 11:20 pm
Don't they have climate chambers for the Power unit dyno?
I think an engine don`t care what climate it is. water and oil temperatur it is what count. And of course cylinder pressure.