Formula None wrote:It just amuses me how it's so optional. What's the point? Spending millions of dollars to develop something you can only use for a few seconds while at the same time limiting testing and engine rev's in the name of cost cutting. I'll say it again, I wouldn't be bothered by KERS if the teams could actually use their investment to full effect.
I highely doubt anyone would have bothered using any kers at all if they'd known it was going to be effectively banned for '10. In fact, I'm fairly certain McClaren and Ferrari made a conscious decision to hurt themselves a bit in '09 in order to try and gain an experience advantage for future years. Remember, it was widely assumed kers would be much more powerful by now.
Kers was clearly a disadvantage during all of '09. You can make a very good claim that it ruined both teams seasons and also make a reasonable knockon claim that ignoring it was a major part of both RB's and Braun's success.
I keep hearing journalists claim Kers is worth 3/10's a lap, but I keep seeing teams looking ambivelant about it, and sometimes claiming it's a wash. In any case, all other things being equal (as in equal laptimes) being faster on the straight is more important than being faster in the corner.
Calling Horner a liar is going way too far. Very few team owners in any sport have any technical knowledge of how their sport works. F1 is a bit unique in that several owners came up through the ranks decades ago when that was still possible. But Horner is clearly not one of them. He's a soft drink guy, and it would be entirely expected for him to say something clueless. That doesn't mean he couldn't be lying, only that there's a much simpler explanation.
Some of you are far too convinced of Red Bulls cleverness. You seem to start from the premise that whatever RB did was best and try to work out why it's the best. They've had exactly 1 season of dominance, and that was much more the result of all the other teams falling down at some point during the season than anything they did. You keep trying to read between the lines of whatever Newey says like some biblical scholars. All he really said was he's not a big fan of kers.
A startline only kers violates one of the rules of competition. Never put something on your car that adds complexity unless it provides a clear advantage. Never mind the weight or volume issues, having any form of kers on your car is going to eventually cost you a race. It will break, and it can break in a way that will screw you up, therefore it will cost you a race. What if the motor/gen refused to decouple from the engine? It probably seizes up in a lap or 2 and what are your chances then? Why on earth would you risk that for a couple of car lengths at the start? Even if it gave you a place, which is very hard to guarantee, I'd say it wasn't worth it.
You never saw variable valve timing on a F1 engine, even though the tech was available for years before it was banned. It's clearly a theoretical advantage, but in an area of engine performance that does almost nothing for laptime. So it's added complexity for no real gain and that makes it a no go.
Horner mentioned that Newey compromised RB's kers in order to conform to the aero shape he wanted. This runs counter to what most of the other teams seem to have done, as they mention having to make other compromises in order to fit kers. As I mentioned above, Horner is hardly a technical person and whatever he says should be taken with a grain of salt, but it does seem to fit with what you might expect from an aero guy who doesn't really like kers anyway. If this is true then you would expect RB's kers to be at least slightly less effective than others, and you would expect RB to gain the most advantage from removing it.
The simplest explanation is that RB's kers had problems and that kers in general still isn't much of an advantage. Since RB has less experience with kers than most major teams, this isn't surprising. It's also not at all surprising that a guy who is faced with a troublesome part he doesn't believe in anyway would choose to remove it.
It's far, far too early to be acting like RB is light years ahead of the rest of the field. I'm not at all claiming that won't prove to be the case, but given the major problems faced by both Ferrari and McClaren I'd say the sky isn't falling quite yet. It's also worth noting that when a RB has problems it doesn't look like anything special either.
Connaly and Fil, it's not a myth at all. There's no good reason to use any sort of kers whatsoever until your car becomes traction limited. It's tough to judge exactly when that happens, but one F1 engineer said a couple of years ago that midway through second gear was the breakpoint. Using kers before that point is just saving a tiny bit of fuel.
