Electronics used by Ferrari in 1991...questions.

in the 641 series cars with the electro hydraulic shift was all done pretty simply..

at tracks where you wanted shorter or longer gears you could tug the paddles 2 -3 times to go faster down the box. some drivers liked to go from 5 - 3 or 7 - 5 with out going thru each gear ... what i mean by that is actually engaging the gear. it could be programmed to skip a gear up or down... especially in the rain.

depending on the torque and ratios being used for the specific track. the gear box was pretty standard but did have 7 speeds + reverse while most other cars had 6 gears at most ... usually 5.

I think Ferrari did 7 gears to keep the engine at its peak torque in the rev band.

it did not have much low down torque so needed to be revved up pretty high.

they always used a foot clutch to start, I dont think there was any way to adjust bite pointe like today.

not sure of the wheel buttons - usually talk and drink.. might be for oil..

 

Nice info, thanks.

So does the gearbox go by the speed of the paddle pulls if it should shift one gear or multiple gears?

And you said this works with upshifts too?

 

I believe - not 100% you use the paddles to tell the computer what gear you want... and the "computer" figures out the ratio and revs.. on the down shift.

on up shift i beleive it is the same... but i know the engineers would tune the box to the track and driver preferenace - ratios based on corners and revs being used.

I did a lot of F-1 races in 89-92 so remember talking to couple Magnetti Marelli guys about the "electronics" of the box.

 

I would think the software could be overridden in such a case? But....>

Thank you. Ian is likely right then

 

Very interesting. They were more sophisticated in '91 then I thought...

 

In 92 F-1 had about the most high tech cars ever:

penumatic valve gear
auto gearbox & programable per track
active suspension
abs
two way telemetry - engineers could make adjustments to the car remotely
power steering
launch control
variable valve & inlet heights
the argumet was that the drivers were not actualy drivng the car... the active suspensions were about the most advanced yet... it meant that the drivers were able to corner harder & faster than ever and experience higher "G"s than ever before ... this is way before driver fitness was like it is today. The 92 Williams was amazing - in the pits they would put it through all of its suspension range to check for leaks etc. and it literally would dance up and down side to side amazing. it could stay totally flat throgh all corners and the aero was spot on the entire race as it compensated for less and less fuel weight.

 

+1

Truly remarkable stuff!

Ferrari's active car also used to to dance around on the stands - Trouble was, they never knew which dance it was going to do! Pretty much the reason the whole "active suspension" era got outlawed IIRC - they used their veto as they couldn't make it work.....

Two way telemetry was legal for quite a few years I believe. I'm guessing it was about 6-8 years back when Mclaren famously "fixed" one of their cars remotely (at Monaco?) and that's when Charlie decided enough was enough and outlawed it.

Anyway, I think we're getting close to "solving" the gearbox story - They could program the TCU to shift however the driver wanted;

1-2-3-4-5-6
1-2-4-5-6
2-3-4-5-7 (wet)
Etc etc.

Cheers,
Ian