Thing is, although they refer to it as "160bhp for 33 seconds" I think the rules refer to it in kwh and a big part of that is, I assume, going to be taken up by the leccy turbo's doing their thing.

Perhaps the idea is that it'll be the sort of thing that needs figuring out during FP, where a team will do a bunch of laps, decide how much leccy the turbo is using and then set up the "KERS" so the driver can use whatever the surfeit is in the traditional manner, as a "boost"?

Might prove interesting if, say, as tyres become worn the cars will have less traction and use more leccy turbo-boost on the exits of corners and then drivers will find themselves without enough remaining leccy to use as a "boost" or, if they do use a dollop of leccy as a "boost" they might find they don't have enough juice to power their turbo to the end of the lap.

With the turbo's harvesting power and using it and the KERS doing the same, and both systems feeding to and from each other as well, it seems like it's going to be hellish complicated policing it all too.

Mystic Si predicts that by mid-season there'll be allegations of some team fiddling their ERS usage.

Indubitably!

The tech. regs. seem pretty watertight to me, but there are greater and more devious minds than mine working on the subject. It's the punishments of such rules breaches that worry me. if caught in flagrante delicto the results would vary enormously:

McLaren - sh@t upon from a great height.
Red Bull - the rules would be changed.
Ferrari - found not guilty.

As for the lesser (in previous years) teams, the fiscal considerations could result in withdrawal conclusive enough to satisfy a pope.
Last edited by dee_eff : 29-01-2014 at 14:20

Great piece on the Renault Engine on Ted's Notebook tonight. Even if there was some.cringeworthy moments.

I don' t mind the sound of the new engines. May be weir at first but we will no doubt get used to it.

Did any of the cringeworthy moments involve noting that the majority of engine failures at Jerez involved Renault power plants?

11 laps in total for Vettel with a dodgy car on day 1 and then an engine blow-up on day 2 looks promising for, erm, everybody else.

If anyone hasn't seen it (I can't see this link on this thread) the Hamilton 'crash' is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guc2-...ature=youtu.be

Saw it yesterday. Found it on THIS website, which I'd never seen before and seems to be good for a laugh.

Wasn't it about this time last year that Hamilton broke the brakes on his shiny new Merc'?
He does seem to have a talent for testing things quite thoroughly.

Wonder if he'd been riding the kerbs and damaged the wing prior to it falling off?

No, even though he was actually talking about the Renault engine with one of their engineers during the feature.
It was Ted's use of stupid things as representative parts of the engine, including a child's fan and nose hair trimmer.
(I believe stefmeister has just posted links in the F1 Coverage thread in Broadcasting)


The Renault teams do seem to be struggling a bit at this first test, more so Red Bull. Their choice to focus on 2013 longer before switching focus to 2014 appears to be harming them at the moment.

Red Bull's issue appears to be of their own making if Ted's comments last night are correct. Apparently Newey has packaged the electronic gubbins that are outside of the battery pack (Energy Store in F1 lingo) too tightly and they are over-heating. Newey has gone back to MK to urgently work on a redesign. Red Bull have shot themselves in the foot. The Mercedes power plant in working out of the box while the Renault has issues and Red Bull are compounding those issues by making it nigh-on impossible to maintain the power train in-situ. The CC could be over for them before they even get close to Australia.

Ted also answered the question about if there was still a KERS boost button... no, it's all integrated into the throttle software so is 'always on'.

I'm loving the technical aspects of this first test. The new power train is hellishly complex but I love all that stuff and watching the teams struggle to integrate it all together is fascinating. I can't quite believe how unprepared some of the teams are. Marrussia had to re-write the code in their start-up routine to get the engine going yesterday! It's like they turned up with the car in one box, the engine in another and had never put the two together before!

The changes are going to be pretty extreme for the drivers, too. Brake-by-wire is going to be tricky to get used to and the extra torque means gearing will be very interesting. Lewis was saying there are corners where last year they would have been in 1st or 2nd but this year they'll be in 4th or 5th!

Thanks for that one, another change to my overall picture of what I'm watching.

It's an interesting change which I don't think has really been explained fully to us punters.

33 seconds of boost ... why 33 seconds? Is that the limitation from the capacity of the battery, sorry, Energy Store? But the ES (presumably the FIA love their acronyms so much they couldn't bare to just use the word 'battery') is constantly being replenished by the two ERS devices under both braking and acceleration so theoretically there shouldn't be any limit other than that imposed by the type of track. For instance at Monza they're on the throttle much more than the brake so KERS won't be as effective as TERS is so if TERS is less efficient they won't be able to generate as much energy.

In any case, how many tracks are there where they're on full throttle for more than 33 seconds a lap anyway? And given the extra torque of the engines can they actually use the ERS energy in any case?

One thing is for sure, if a car develops an issue with any element of the power train from the BBW through the ERS, the battery, the engine or the turbo lag compensation they're dead in the water. Ted was saying yesterday that with these cars a gear box change will take 3 hours and a an engine change will take 6 hours, and that's when the teams are used to it all. Right now it's a full day's work.

Have you heard them when they're powering down? After the engine dies there's about 30 seconds of weird, high pitched whining as the ERS systems wind down too, very similar (but quieter) to a jet turbine shutting down (which is kind of what's happening, the TERS turbine in the turbo is spinning down from 120,000 rpm). It's all very strange and new.

Oh, and the final interesting thing the Renault guy explained is that because of the turbo the V6 engines are direct injection which means they can control the fuel flow much more precisely (good for fuel efficiency) and also they can run the engine on any number of cylinders from 1 to 6... which inevitably means the teams will develop complex engine-based traction control to overcome the massive torque. We could well end up with the entire grid starting each GP on only 3 or 4 cylinders off the grid!

I'm beginning to form a picture of what's happening.....
I'm still not thinking, as I said in an earlier post, of 33 seconds of contiguous boost, rather that the boost as we have known it in the past will simply be added to the available (engine) power and used when required. The clever backroom bods will have worked something out that will fascinate me for as far as I will be able to understand it.
Nowadays, without the teachings of Gary A., it looks as if I'll have to wait until Ted explains it to Sky viewers and someone, here or elsewhere, passes on the info.

In many places on the Wibbly Wobbly Web I still see many comments on the awarding of double points for the last race. I have even seen that double points for the last three races has been mooted.
Imagine the furore if Seb were to come from behind and win the championship thanks to the unequal award of points. This would not only throw a spanner amongst the pigeons but would also throw a cat in the works.

This is the sort of thing I was talking about when I suggested that there are going to be accusations of people fiddling their ERS.

I assume the FIA must think they've got a handle on it all but it seems like there's huge potential to, say, harvest leccy from the ERS-K and pump it into the ERS-H without it ever going through the battery at all.

With no simple "KERS" button, and (IIRC) 2 way telemetry still illegal, you've got to wonder what the drivers are going to have to do this year.
Seems like it'll be a case of using FP to figure out a basic set-up for harvesting leccy from both systems and where it's most beneficial to use it and then, in the race, the drivers will have some kind of control that'll allow them to tweak the settings in order to respond to what another car is doing.

I mean (to keep things simple), you might be on a circuit where the fastest way to do a lap is to use use leccy to spin the turbo for 2 seconds coming out of every corner and then spin up the leccy motor for 5 seconds on the main straight but then, in the race, you might find yourself being passed by somebody who's using the leccy motor for 10 seconds on the main straight and isn't using as much leccy for the turbo.
He's going to be slower coming out of the corners but if you can't pass that won't matter.
So, you're going to need something that allows you to twiddle your settings so that you can find some kind of advantage of your own.

On the one hand, it could all end up rather complicated and confusing but, then again, it might also turn out to be one of those situations (a bit like with tyre strategy) where even though there's a heap of different things you can do, the best option is glaringly obvious so that's what everybody chooses to do.

Worst case scenario, I can see some (or all) of the teams realising that one of these ERS systems isn't as useful as the other and it ends up not being used properly.

I mean, we're all loving the idea of turbo's that can be spun up electrically but if it turns out that having extra power on the exits of corners doesn't actually create an advantage very often then most, if not all, of the teams could end up just using it as a generator and pumping almost all the juice into the leccy motor on the main straights.

And then there's tyre wear too.
A given usage of leccy might be optimal for new tyres but be wasteful when the tyres are losing their grip so teams and drivers will probably have to modify their leccy usage throughout the race, depending on what state their tyres are in.

Thing is, this all seems very complex but, at the end of the day, they all just plug the numbers into a computer and it'll spit out an optimal strategy and the computer programs tend to be very similar so I wouldn't be surprised if there's no big dramas resulting from any of it... other than from reliability issues, where a failed ERS is really going to ruin your race.

I think if Vettel comes from behind to win the championship from Alonso in the last race, Jean Todt will be exiled to Elba.

So to summerise the Jerez testing, Mercedes clearly had the best 4 days followed quite closely by Ferrari and Mclaren. Williams, FI and Sauber also had good tests. Red Bull had a nightmare and will be playing catchup in Bahrain doing all of their integration testing while their competitors get down to aero testing and performance testing.

Mercedes have the 'best' power train at the moment in terms of out-of-the-box reliability but the Merc is a little over-weight so Ferrari possibly edge them in terms of over-all package. Mclaren have possibly the most potential for development and performance. Right now no-one has any idea about outright performance, though.

Ross Brawn has announced that he will not return to F1.
A canny man who has most certainly left his mark on our sport, I feel sure he will be missed by many. Unless of course, he should decide to come out of retirement in the future.
Whatever he does from now on, I wish him well.

Does not rule him out of some other class of motorsport such as LMP?

I should have included a link with the Telegraph "exclusive".
Any and all speculations can be read as conjectural.

Wonder if there's something within F1 that's convinced Brawn to give it up?

I mean, here's a guy who's been involved in the sport for 35 years and has won handfuls of championships.
Has he just had enough or is there something occurring that he doesn't approve of?

If this is indicative of the philosophy within the Mercedes team, then I'm sure the wise old owl would feel his perch to be an uncomfortable place. Some people insist that working under pressure is enjoyable, some don't, but after many years with almost total control and seeing the returns from immense personal involvement cast aside by a new philosophy, it doesn't surprise me that he's had enough and prefers to go fishing.

Give him six months and I think he will be back, possibly in a back of the grid team that he can mold or maybe one of the new teams that are interested like Stewart Haas.

A wise man once said "A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee".

Possibly.

I guess you don't get to be in charge of an F1 team without having a sizeable ego but I can't imagine Brawn throwing his toys out of the pram simply because he isn't getting his own way.
The culture at Merc' does seem awfully convoluted, though, and with "iconic" figures like Lauda swaying things one way or the other I suspect you'd be on a hiding to nothing if you regularly found yourself at odds with the prevailing wisdom.

And, if Toto Wolff is going on the record saying stuff like that, I'm guessing that Brawn probably figures fishing is a better use of his time.
After all, the way Wolff guided Williams to a dazzling era of mediocrity in his vast 5 year F1 experience is certainly enough to put somebody of Brawn's limited achievements in his place, right?

Still, I'm sure he'll get his missus a proper go in an F1 car eventually, and that's the important thing.