Remember how they did the blown diffuser thingy? This is essentially the same (mapping wise). The ECU's also automatically make the engines run on 4 cylinders for cooler temperature and less fuel use when idle. What Red Bull have done is make it happen at different RPM. Simply said... Probably a terrible explanation.
But the mapping is sort of fixed for all the season, IIRC. Have they been doing that all the season or just from the last race? Apparently, nobody talked about strange noise till now.
Brundle has noticed it for a while apparently. They're gaining something of it, but a few things contributed to Vettel's 2.5 second a lap charge in Singapore: 1: Vettel is mighty there 2: Rosberg wasn't as fast, and especially later on had rubber stuck in the wing 3: He was the only one in clear air...webbo was fighting hard in dirty air constantly. The Red Bull doesn't like dirty air. I'm sure the mapping can contribute around half a second, perhaps 7 tenths on Singapore with it's many corners.
excellent article here: Analysis: Vettel?s astonishing speed in Singapore ? here to stay?James Allen on F1 ? The official James Allen website on F1
Yes good article fully agree with it. The combination of Vet and the Bull team is devastating. So we can moan and groan all we like, I don't like it, but I tip my hat to them, and they have my full respect as a team.
You guys are still overestimating the power of engine maps. The blown diffuser was about the most you can do by changing the maps. There is no way you can implement a traction control if the function itself is not already implemented, and it isn't in the ECU. Good analysis, but I still wonder how they can publish plots like the one below... there is so much wrong that I don't know where to start, I have said it before and I say it again: If one of my students came with such a plot, he'd have one less head within seconds! Image Unavailable, Please Login
What's wrong with it? It's just trying to demonstrate the delta between the Vettel RB9 and the fastest competitors, no need to be overly complex. Perhaps you mean the plot is meaningless as Vettel may not be driving as fast as he can? Or maybe that the other cars are covering the track under different conditions i.e. in traffic?
Everything is wrong or missing apart from the actual data. Axis scaling, axis labels, units, for example. Then laptimes are discrete values (one value per lap), the lines between the data points are meaningless. Or did Alonso do 113s (I suppose seconds, because there is no axis label, could be years or bananas) in lap 0.5? Even worse, while Alonso and Hamilton have linear interpolated lines between their lap times, a spline has been fitted to Vettel, which results in him having his fastest lap roughly in lap 46.1, improving the time of lap 46 by about a tenth of a banana. Edit: Hamilton got a spline, too, but of a lower order than Vettel (maybe one order per championship?), which makes the over- and undershooting of the line not as bad. And lap 8 must have been bad for Alonso, otherwise it wouldn't have been marked black.
^I applaud your visual prowess, but again, I think the point is to simply illustrate how much faster Vettel is. I also did find the spline fitted to the Vettel plot odd, but was more focused on the points. I assumed the Y-axis was seconds, but didn't look too carefully. I agree that as an academic, this would be unacceptable from anybody beyond the 2nd year of high-school. If you want to gasp in horror some more, make your way over to the Strategy section of the site and take a look at some of the plots in those posts. I cannot make any sense of those.
From some years of literature study I have found that shoddy formatting indicates a generally shodiness of the work. And anyone who works with Excel on actual scientific or technical data is never to be trusted! Thanks, but I have seen enough for today
Iirc the action of the gas pedal must correspond in a linear function to the amount of petrol sent to the engine and red bull Renault have been already found once to cheat on this smoothing the injection at peak engine torque to avoid wheel spinning. Now from the sound of vettel's clip it seems the engine fires to create the ground effect midway through the corner where the accelerator is supposedly shut. Isn't this illegal?
Agreed. I like Vettel, but can't say I'm 100% happy when he wins. Only when he beats a driver I don't like am I happy about it. I'm happy for him enjoying the success he's having. He's absolutely savage.
FWIW, his traction control comments are SOAKED with irony in German, maybe that doesn't come across in English. Journalists here generally reported it as a joke, and if you read sentences like "we have been developing it all Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday it finally worked", it's pretty obvious.
Vettel does make a difference, otherwise we'd be seeing Webber in 2nd all the time, at least before he fails to finish. But his normal running position is anywhere from 4th to 7th most of the time. YoY.
What they are likely doing is opening the throttle to increase the engine airflow (and consequently the downforce), while at the same time activating the KERS so that the power just goes into the KERS and not to the rear wheels. This allows them to make a lot more rear downforce, and, at the same time, effectively have traction control since the KERS can sense acceleration rates and insure that the wheels don't accelerate too fast (like the would if they broke traction). That first part is probably legal, but if they are using the KERS as a traction control device it probably isn't. At least not in the way I would interpret the rules. The problem in the control mapping is, how much power do you subtract with the KERS? Well if the KERS actually functions as a traction control system, limiting wheel spin, it gets pretty easy to do. Moreover, it won't have to interact with the regulated engine ECU, the driver can just plant his foot at mid corner and let the car do the rest.
That's an interesting theory. I still don't get how shutting 4 cylinders can help the diffuser though. I guess it doesn't and its only purpose is that of reducing torque.
What you describe - shifting the load point of the engine to use the electric machine as a generator and using that machine as a TC - requires a lot more than just fiddling with some maps. It requires major functional changes in the ECU which are not possible - trust me, I am in hybrid car research and work on stuff like that 9 hours a day
While integrating the systems would be nice it most certainly isn't necessary at all. If you can't (because the rules say you can't) and don't muck with the engine ECU you can do it all with the control for the KERS system, and actually it's very easy. The driver puts his foot down and the engine makes all the power it can. In that case, the engine doesn't know what the load is, and it doesn't care, it simply produces as much power as it can. The control for the KERS does everything. The engine just gets a bit more load and accelerates a tad slower, it just makes power and is fat dumb and happy. The alternator sucks some power out of the drive train and dumps it into the KERS for a few seconds while the traction control is active. It is very similar to a traction control system that nubs the brakes to reduce the torque a bit to prevent wheelspin. No difference, and extensive remapping of the engine control isn't necessary. You aren't shifting the "load point", you are just slowing down the acceleration of the system. It's the same as if saw a bit higher drag for a few milliseconds, the engine won't care.. You are thinking about changing the ECU for the engine and integrating the systems, but if you can't you really don't need to. This is a parallel hybrid, and I've worked on both series and parallel hybrids, and I'm sure you can do it in a parallel system if you so desire. BTW I was doing hybrid drive system research back when the concept was in its infancy, and did award winning vehicles... Think about it a bit...
