If energy is required to produce noise, then any machine which produces excessive noise is inefficient. This contradicts the F1 desire to be seen as the pinnacle of cutting edge technology.

and

If a great amount of noise is so desirable, why wear ear-defenders. Free your ears!

I've never been a fan of noise, having flown in some very noisy aircraft, having worked directly under the Forth railway bridge and having attended F1 races, if I can have my drathers, I'd rather do without it. I find being able to hear the crowd, the tyres and the TV commentary is an enormous plus.

In conclusion, consider the old noise-related conundrum:
If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Kind of arguing the other side here, but still...

I guess it's kinda like being nicked for speeding.
The speed limit might be 70mph but you wouldn't be able to argue that you weren't guilty because you'd only travelled 56 miles in the previous hour, even though your maximum speed had been, say, 85mph at certain times.

The odd thing, here, is that it's a bit like having one law which says you're only allowed to travel 60 miles in an hour and having another law which limits speed to 40mph.

Safety issues aside, there really wouldn't be any need for the 2nd law cos even if you did drive at 90mph for 30 minutes, you'd have to drive at 30mph for the next 30 minutes (if my maths is right) or you'd be breaking the other law.

I just don't see why it actually matters what the fuel flow-rate is at any given time as long as the cars finish the race using the designated amount of fuel.

Nor do I but apparently the FIA do and they do love their regualtions.

Oh, sorry.

You're wrong, twenty five years with fuel flow systems means nothing if it's no in F1, you've only been watching F1 for five minutes when Vettel started winning. You're just some brain dead fanboy who wouldn't know a big end from a bell end etc. etc.

Is that better?

The reason why kg/hr is used, is that the fuel changes density depending on temperature. If it is hotter, the fuel becomes less dense, so what was once a litre of fuel, when it was cold, is more than a litre of fuel when it is hot, but the mass stays the same. That is why mass is used as a metric, rather than volume.

This seems to be the crux of a few differences of opinions in this thread.

Oddly reassuring actually.

I'm definitely damaged goods.

But it doesn't do that at all. It measures kilogrammes per hour, not litres per hour and I think this is part of the issue with Red Bull using their own measuring devices.

Surely the point of having a fuel flow meter is because the amount of fuel the car is carrying isn't actually policed? The regulation is that they use a maximum of 100kg for the race, that's from green light to chequered flag, but the car has to get to the grid (potentially doing several laps via the pits), do the parade lap and get back to the pits after the race and still provide a sample so they will actually carry upwards of 110kg and if they want to carry more that's up to them as it's a weight disadvantage if they carry extra fuel they can't use. So the fuel flow rate has to be measured as it's the only way to accurately measure the over-all fuel usage during the race. Why there's a limit on actual flow rate though is beyond me.

That's because the flow rate is variable. The maximum is 100kg/hr, but the "cruising" rate (for want of a better term), is considerably less. The cars will not be running at the maximum rate for the whole race.

Yes, I was paraphrasing.
The important point in the post you quoted was whether or not the regulations specifically state that fuel flow must be quantified via the FIA flowmeter.
They don't.

The real issue here is simply that RBR think they've always run the car with a fuel flow-rate of less than 100kg/hr and they can probably calculate that with perfect accuracy by referring to their telemetry, which will show exactly how much fuel each injector has pumped into each cylinder with every combustion cycle whereas the FIA flowmeter has obviously been reading higher.

As has already been said, the fundamental question is whether a team is supposed to comply with conditions of the rule, itself, or comply with whatever instrument the FIA choose to use to police that rule.

IMO, if the instrument the FIA are using can be shown to be faulty then the teams shouldn't be penalised for failing to comply with it.
It's up to the FIA to find reliable methods of policing their regulations.

As I already said, if a car's FIA RPM sensor was faulty, it'd be daft for the FIA to insist that the team set the rev limit to, say, 12k instead of 15k if the team could provide data which proved that there was a fault with the sensor.
Same thing applies here.

That's an interesting point and I guess we'd need to know how the FIA actually govern this stuff before we can speculate.

I know that any additional form-up laps count toward the race-distance (as we saw on Sunday) so perhaps the initial form-up lap counts as part of the "race" too and the teams are issued with a regulated 100kg of fuel to begin with?

If that was the case, I don't think there's any potential for unfair advantage due to extra running.
I mean, unless you had a car that could run super-lean, you're never going to deliberately waste fuel on the form-up lap just so you've got a lighter car for the race.
You're always going to do the form-up lap as efficiently as possible so you've got as much fuel as possible remaining for the race, itself.

I can't help but wonder if the reported errors with the fuel-flow sensors are consistent from one car to another. If not, the ultimate performance of each car will be influenced by how big an error is shown.

Imagine there are two cars, and each is actually using 100kg/hr of fuel. However, car A's sensor reads 102kg/hr and car B's sensor reads 115kg/hr. The driver of car B is going to have to turn down the wick a lot more than the driver of car A so will be at a disadvantage.

I'm also troubled by the use of the word "consistently" when applied to the limit of 100kg/hr. If someone does it a couple of times in the middle of the race, do they just get a warning? If someone deliberately does it a couple of times on the last lap to take the lead and win, do they just get a warning too?

I'm glad this has come to a head now, rather than later in the season as it clearly needs to be sorted. Personally, I also favour the KISS principle. A measured 100kg of fuel is put into each car prior to the race and they can use it however they want. Job done! (Anyone starting from the pitlane so not doing the parade lap(s) will be held for a predetermined amount of time before being released in order to offset the fuel saved).

You were doing fine with KISS until that last proviso.

I see no-one has yet replied to my comments on the problems with excessive power boosts.

Don't post here too often.

Am delighted to see Williams return from their years in the wilderness, although I am not sure that Bottas and/or Massa will show the best of the car through the season. Will there be a queue of drivers lobbying to replace Bottas for 2015? Massa is on a 3 year contract.

I think the number of engine failures will be high throughout the season, and some teams or drivers may exceed their quota. from WIkipedia : "Drivers who use a sixth engine will start the race from the pit lane, as opposed to the ten-place grid penalty handed down for going over the engine quota in previous season" - I expect to see this happening, from Singapore onwards.

The issue is not with the FIA's sensors, but with Red Bull using their own sensors. The theory is that the FIA's sensors are consistent with each other and the Red Bull's one has no official FIA calibration, or even sanction.

[quote=coughthecat;71779744]I can't help but wonder if the reported errors with the fuel-flow sensors are consistent from one car to another. If not, the ultimate performance of each car will be influenced by how big an error is shown.

Imagine there are two cars, and each is actually using 100kg/hr of fuel. However, car A's sensor reads 102kg/hr and car B's sensor reads 115kg/hr. The driver of car B is going to have to turn down the wick a lot more than the driver of car A so will be at a disadvantage.

Thing is, as well, the meters might all have an accuracy of, say, 1% but if one is reading 1% high and the other is reading 1% low then you've immediately got a potential 2% difference between one car and another even though they're both, apparently, in spec'.

To be fair, even if the meters have a fairly rough intrinsic accuracy, it is possible to minimise the problem by hooking them all up to a flow-rig, together, setting the flow to 100kg/hr and then twiddling the meters so they all read 100kg/hr at a true flow of 100kg/hr.

Even so, that still doesn't account for stuff like sensor resolution, hysteresis, linearity or fluctuations in fuel flow due to pressure changes in the system.


I suppose, to give the FIA the benefit of the doubt, it might well be that every time DR used full throttle the FIA f/m was showing 102kg/hr or something but, again, RBR will know that, at 15,000 rpm, with an ambient temperature of X and barometric pressure of Y their fuel-injection system is only pumping fuel at a rate of, say, 98.7kg/hr so they probably felt justified in ignoring the FIA f/m and, if we're honest, they're probably doing this deliberately as a means of discrediting the technology.

Wouldn't be surprised if the Renault engine is thirsty at max' rev's but efficient at lower rev's so it's in their interest to challenge this rule.

What "problems" are you referring to?

The data RBR has in regard to fuel consumption might not be FIA certified but you can be damned sure it'll be perfectly accurate or it wouldn't be suitable for operating an F1 engine.

Which is why they feel confident in asserting that the FIA flowmeter was faulty and not worth considering.

You can still keep it simple but cover any eventualities such as cars at the back of the grid trying to save a bit of fuel by starting from the pit-lane! Cunning these F1 teams when it comes to potential loopholes!


Personally, I don't have a problem with big power boosts. It would primarily be used on acceleration as top-speed tends to be limited by a combination of gearing, aerodynamics and the rev limiter. When KERS was introduced, that gave a power boost and I don't recall it being a safety issue. DRS also creates a significant speed differential between cars, and that's now part and parcel of racing. Indy cars have push to pass, and I don't think it's a problem.

I'd actually rather have an additional power boost which has a downside for the user; ie. the use of extra fuel which means fuel-saving elsewhere in the race; rather than the artificial DRS.

RBR always bend the rules where they can. They've been caught this time and shown some fairly insufferable arrogance as well. I've read they were warned during the race as the infraction came to light, as were Ferrari and Mercedes, and decided to ignore the FIA. Ferrari and Mercedes didn't and guess who kept their points?

I only hope that's the case in practice, and not just in theory!

Exactly.

We've already got KERS, which can be dialed-up to assist with passing so there's clearly no fundamental aversion to "overtaking aids" and the idea of a system where one driver might use boost to create a gap at the start of a race, only to be caught by another driver who's saved his fuel early on, seems like a great idea to me.

Just to add another facet to the discussion, maybe the new rules regarding fixed gear ratios have something to do with this too?
I mean, apparently the cars now have 8 speed gearboxes but they barely use 8th in Oz because it's reserved for circuits like Monza and Spa.
Seems like more freedom with boost would allow teams to run higher levels of torque and be able to pull higher gears, possibly saving fuel.
The permutations are almost endless; mind-boggling.

Course, judging by the sideways action, on Sunday, it seems like the drivers already have more torque than they can handle so I doubt they'd have cause to boost the engines up to 1,000+bhp even if the fuel-flow restrictions were lifted.

For once I felt a bit sorry for an Aussie.

Will this fuel problem be an issue all season?

Then that is something that they should have resolved before the race and not taken it upon themselves to change the rules to their specification. It is not their place to decide they don't like a rule and therefore are not going to abide by it.

But this wasn't a case just "bending" the rules, they blatantly ignored them.