Extra power from oil additives during the race.

All that has to do with the power train, gearbox, clutch, fuels and lubricants, etc. Generally the mechanical side of Formula One.
J.A.W.
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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gruntguru wrote:If you set out to deliberately cheat by introducing something via the oil, surely it would be an illegal additive that would have a significant effect in small quantities - Tetraethyl Lead for example.
A Pb 'contaminant' lubricant compound from 'legal' oil consumption, even if it acts as a very efficacious fuel-burn catalyst,
- would not be "cheating" - as such gg, since the rules do not explicitly forbid it, no?
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matt21
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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I would try to get the oil into the intake air via the turbocharger.
If you have a controlled oil pressure pump for the turbo, you can use the leakage to get in more or less.

Brian Coat
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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We discussed TEL in June '16 and there would be some big challenges ...

You need loads of it. The amount actually getting to the chamber would be hard to meter. It's easy to detect. It may affect the primary function of oil - lubrication.

Last year FIA tested Merc's oil and found fuel in it. There's always some fuel in the oil (blowby etc.) For a quali-lap benefit, a special 'oil' blend could be exploited, don't you think?

Not saying it was, though ...

Facts Only
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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I'm amazed that people have managed to put a puff of turbo oil smoke together with Red Bulls usual wingeing to come up with an entire story and strategy for using the engine oil as fuel. I've never read so much complete guff.

Of you look in the MercW08 thread there is a pic of the Merc pulling away in testing with a puff of smoke. It's just a well lubricated engine burning off some excess oil in the exhaust.
Last edited by Facts Only on 13 Mar 2017, 10:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Brian Coat
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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Evening, FO.

Yes of course there's a lot of guff in this thread :D

People are just mulling the plausibility of RB's "J'accuse" by applying a few "what if?"s.

J.A.W.
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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Brian Coat wrote:Evening, FO.

Yes of course there's a lot of guff in this thread :D

People are just mulling the plausibility of RB's "J'accuse" by applying a few "what if?"s.
Or, in another way of putting it, the 'loophole' of unregulated lubricant consumption as a potential performance advantage /fuel additive 'free for all/can of worms', which was duly noted here by the O.P., 'bout a year back,
- has now been belatedly used by R-B, as a 'why didn't we think of it 1st' - whinge factor..
"Well, we knocked the bastard off!"

Ed Hilary on being 1st to top Mt Everest,
(& 1st to do a surface traverse across Antarctica,
in good Kiwi style - riding a Massey Ferguson farm
tractor - with a few extemporised mod's to hack the task).

Brian Coat
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Joined: 16 Jun 2012, 18:42

Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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I'm not sure that is correct.

FIA investigated oil composition of Merc and Ferrari in early June '15, nearly two years ago and I've assumed that RB/Renault were the complainants/agitators.

If that is right, this pre-dates the OP by ~9 mo ...

J.A.W.
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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B-C, I was referring to the 'complaint' cited in the 'General Chat' section..
.. per R-B's allegations, viz: "RB claims..." dated late last month...
"Well, we knocked the bastard off!"

Ed Hilary on being 1st to top Mt Everest,
(& 1st to do a surface traverse across Antarctica,
in good Kiwi style - riding a Massey Ferguson farm
tractor - with a few extemporised mod's to hack the task).

hardingfv32
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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I was under the impression that oil getting past the piston rings was a major cause of detonation in high compression/pressure race engines.

I have never seen anything written about any type of oil additive that might reduce detonation. Without such a feature it does not seem possible to use engine oil as a carrier of a performance additive.

Brian

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PlatinumZealot
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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Brian Coat wrote:We discussed TEL in June '16 and there would be some big challenges ...

You need loads of it. The amount actually getting to the chamber would be hard to meter. It's easy to detect. It may affect the primary function of oil - lubrication.

Last year FIA tested Merc's oil and found fuel in it. There's always some fuel in the oil (blowby etc.) For a quali-lap benefit, a special 'oil' blend could be exploited, don't you think?

Not saying it was, though ...
You could get away with not having to mix it in the engine oil if you had a simple chamber machined inside the crank case with a suction channel connecting to the intake. Only problem is passing fuel past the flow meter is a clear breach of the rules no matter where it comes from : oil, a chamber, the air filter...


Edit:

How could I not realise that any such cheating is easily caught by the FIA! All they have to do is request the AFR logs, the fuel flow logs, injector logs, MAP or air flow meter (if equiped?) logs and they can easily tell if you are burning excess hydrocarbons. What do you guys think?
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gruntguru
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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PlatinumZealot wrote:How could I not realise that any such cheating is easily caught by the FIA! All they have to do is request the AFR logs, the fuel flow logs, injector logs, MAP or air flow meter (if equiped?) logs and they can easily tell if you are burning excess hydrocarbons. What do you guys think?
Agree. Which is why I believe any "cheating" of this nature would involve "trace elements" that produce performance benefits at low concentrations as opposed to "extra hydrocarbons" per se.
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hurril
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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If there's still oxygen in the exhaust (from the very lean burning) then a leaking at the exhaust valve site could feed the turbine a little more.

Brian Coat
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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I don't agree that it is necessarily easy to detect low levels of unmetered fuel flow using existing engine telemetry, at least not with sufficient accuracy to provide a "smoking gun".

toraabe
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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Facts Only wrote:I'm amazed that people have managed to put a puff of turbo oil smoke together with Red Bulls usual wingeing to come up with an entire story and strategy for using the engine oil as fuel. I've never read so much complete guff.

Of you look in the Merchant W08 thread there is a pic of the Merchant pulling away in testing with a puff of smoke. It's just a well lubricated engine biting off some excess oil in the exhaust.
The new Renault engine also does the same.

Facts Only
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Re: Extra power from oil additives during the race.

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toraabe wrote:
Facts Only wrote:I'm amazed that people have managed to put a puff of turbo oil smoke together with Red Bulls usual wingeing to come up with an entire story and strategy for using the engine oil as fuel. I've never read so much complete guff.

Of you look in the Merchant W08 thread there is a pic of the Merchant pulling away in testing with a puff of smoke. It's just a well lubricated engine biting off some excess oil in the exhaust.
The new Renault engine also does the same.
Auto-correct really did a number on my original post. The Merchant Biting off some oil!

Anyway, I posted a long while back that I was more surprised that the Renault and Ferrari engine weren't smoking on initial fire up rather than that the Mercs were.

If the Renault's now are as well I suspect that it's a product of them following a similar turbocharger startegy to Merc which will inherently lead to more leakage.
"A pretentious quote taken out of context to make me look deep" - Some old racing driver