(from autosport.com) McLaren are at a clear advantage this year because they built the electronic system which all Formula One teams must now use, Ferrari chief executive Jean Todt said on Monday. The SECU (Standard Electronic Control Unit) produced by McLaren Electronic Systems is a major development for the new season, which starts on March 16 in Melbourne. "We would have preferred that the single control unit for all Formula One teams was built by another company. We must accept the fact that McLaren with Microsoft put forward the most economic proposal," Todt told reporters. "It is clear it is a situation to monitor. But it is obvious that, at least at the start, McLaren will have an advantage in the championship," added the Frenchman, who has handed the reins of the racing team to Stefano Domenicali while he remains boss of the company. The rivalry between the two teams was extremely heated in 2007 with the Italian outfit becoming constructors champions after McLaren were stripped of all their points for a spying scandal involving sensitive Ferrari information. Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen also beat McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to the driver's title by one point. Alonso has since returned to Renault. The new Ferrari F2008 car was given its first run out by Raikkonen at the team's Maranello base on Monday with the Finn managing 20 odd laps without any problems. The track was slightly damp and provided an early challenge for Raikkonen given Formula One cars have no traction control this season.
touche'!!............ I'll be pushing for Ferrari and Alonso(even though I don't expect Renault to do much) this year.....
What an idiot spewage of verbal diarrhea from Todt. What a whining little imp! I am beyond sure that all teams got full disclosure and full documentation on every aspect of the standardized ECU. The whole point of standardizing it is so that nobody has an advantage. And since it will have a lot of stuff taken OUT of it, it's not like they need to learn to use the new features - it will do much less than what they already have now!
Knowing the source code and exactly how various functions are performed is pretty important. I was pretty surprise when ANY team was even aloud to bid the project, much less get it. IMO McLaren has a clear advantage as a result. If they were honest and trust worthy it wouldn't concern me much, but they aren't. For example there are an awful lot of ways to traction control or pseudo-traction control and it could very well be in the ecu if you know which wires to cross or what form to send the signal in.
exactly the point, how can you possibly trust one team to supply components to the others and not at least attempt to gain an advantage in the process?
+1 I've been involved in motorsports engineering and one of the advantages my guys had was that we we worked together with a ECU manufacturer. We had full insight in how the stuff worked, were able to let our input influence future development and did not just have the documentation you get as a costumer at, let's say, Motec. This alone was a huge advantage, and MCL now had development in their hands from the beginning on...
This always bothered me. FIA should have insisted an independent entity develop this. Mclarens will go to "11"
F1 isn't supposed to be about competing on an equal playing field. Although, does anybody else remember the battles between the Rothmans 962's, and the hax0red Bosh Motronic 1.2 New Man Joest, and others? Boy were Porsche surprised when the New Man car could stay out an extra lap longer then the factory cars for each pit stop
there has to be more to it that what we know.........the FIA knows that all teams cheat, and if they allow a team to manufacture components for all other teams then I would hope that they have a system in place to make sure that there isn't an unfair advantage. but you guys are right, from where we stand as spectators......it sure looks like McLaren will have an advantage, since they'd be very familiar with the new ECU.
In reality, especially with what happened last year, there will always be a cloud of doubt weather there is an advantage or not.
Thats exactly right. There may be absolutely no advantage but there will always be doubt....dont bend over to tie your shoe in a melon patch if you dont want it to look like youre stealing melons....
Interesting to note that as Todt has said this McLaren has stated that their new 2008 car is already faster than the old one. I can see it already; If Ferrari best McLaren it’s because they’ve built a superior car but, if McLaren is faster than the Ferrari it’s because of the ECU. I wish they'd all just get out there and race.
At least they have the possibilites to gain an advantage. This year's season has shown that they aren't the most trustworthy guys around any more, so my answer is: yes. I still have no idea how Microsoft fits in the scenario, what do they do? Use their electronic hardware skills? MS usually outsources its hardware parts (Keyboards and such). Software? Yeah, we know about their operating systems, but how much experience do they have with car electronics? Zero? Something like that. My guess is that MS is mainly in for the publicity and the McLaren guys do most of the work. Can we trust them? I say: No. Edit, before the "But if Ferrari..." crowd starts to cry: We could trust no team in such a matter. Allowing one competitor to develop a directly performance related standard is somewhat crazy (an example for the contrary would be something like the HANS device). +1
I see your point, but I suppose I'am more interested how you think they could gain an advantage, given the assumed spotlight on this piece of kit, I get the fact initially they may have an advantage given they have made it or had a hand in making it. If you were making one could you tweak it so it performs better than another one, and if so would you risk it given Mc are under the spotlight you get what I mean. I agree they are not to be trusted ,though I doubt this is the avenue they would take but who knows! electronic's a mindfield.
The ecu should have been outsourced completely imo. Ferrari's concern's are legitimate but know one will know if it's true until the season start's.
mk e mentioned it - if you are the one to program that stuff, you can build in every backdoor you like. Easy example: The European driving license class "AM" allows 16 year olds to drive motorcycles with a max. speed of 45km/h. On some motorcycles, this isn't restricted in a mechanical way but by the ECU. When I was that age, a friend of mine had a moped from Spain which had a nice feature: If you pulled and released the clutch lever four times within 2 seconds, the ECU would switch off the restriction. If you did it again, it was switched on again. So when he was driving there with 80km/h, a police car pulled up behind him (noticing he was way too fast for the bike he rode), he stopped, pulled the clutch four times, the policemen came over and he said "well, I don't know what you mean, here, drive it, it won't go faster than 45km/h", he gave his helmet to one of the officers who then drove a few times up and down the road and couldn't go faster than 45. They searched his whole bike for a secret switch but couldn't find it. They finally left him with a "We'll get you, son....", got in their car, he pulled his clutch four times and drove away with full power. Yes, there will be much more surveillance on the new F1 ECU, but those engineers at McLaren aren't stupid, either... I agree with you: although it might be possible from a technical point of view, they'll hardly engineer some traction control in their software, being activated by pushing the "Neutral" button with the Morse code of "go swivel". It might be some small things which can't be spotted by the careful observer: A few revs more here, a little bit more (or less!) fuel than the actual mapping says here... in the end, it might become an advantage.
Thanks mate, we had the same thing on motorbikes here getting them to go faster. The go swivel ECU... LOL
From what I understand McLaren/TAG build the hardware and MS are writing the software controls. The field is using the McLaren ECUs because they were the ones who came in with the most cost effective (lowest) bid. If Magneti-Mirelli had been the lowest they'd all be using those systems and then Ferrari would have the "upper hand."
