Red Bull "torque control"?

[Terry]

What RedBull need right now is Talk Control. That'll sort things out.

[phatjedi]

What I love about F1 is the cars and technology that make them go. If Red Bull figured it out and the FIA have not stopped them good for them!!!! Vettel still has to drive the car and is obviously talented. I have great respect for what he has accomplished and how he drives. Not my favorite driver. Whether this is true or not, to me it is plausible. Not sure if we will ever know. Red Bull team has same if not better resources than anyone in pit lane. Maybe smarter people work there. Either way they are dominating and the other teams and drivers will have to step up there game.

[fade_to_black]

Thats what I thought, but I am not sure where the suspension reference comes from in the article quoted?

Under the "Hangar 18" Red Bull conspiracy, the suspension activity is used as input to a controller to define the amount of engine Torque (or Power) that goes to the wheels and the excesso that goes to charge the KERS. According with the compression/distension of the supensions they control the amount of power they put on the ground. This way they modulate the power passed to the wheels to act as a traction control.

Kind regards

[AJP01]

...which is actually very difficult to do I would think. It would mean that the car's KERS computer would have to (in an ultra-fast way) get the suspension pushrod position or shock position change to figure out that the wheel had less traction (due to dip in the road/kerb or wheelspin) and instantaneously engage KERS generator to increase load on the engine and reduce the effective torque to the wheel(s). And this would all have to be controlled by the differential as well because reducing engine power might momentarily affect the traction/slippage of the other wheel differently.

Pretty cool actually.

[MoFo]

What a lot of rubbish that article is, written by someone who has no idea how the sport is policed.

Okay.

Every car must be passed by scrutineering. Every technical change or advancement must be revealed to, discussed with and passed by the FIA.

If Red Bull have a "secret" system then good for them.

These two statements are mutually exclusive. "It would be impossible for them to have any secrets... and if they do, good for them!"

Not to mention just how hilariously wrong it is to suggest that no team has ever snuck anything past scrutineering.

And let's remember that a 32 second win is not "enormous".

Umm... yes it is. The average margin has been 10 seconds this year. In fact, that single race bumps the season average margin by two seconds. It's double the second largest margin of the year, 16 seconds at Spa. And, let's clarify here, that's a 32 second gap formed after the safety car, over just fifteen laps of racing. At that pace, he WOULD have lapped the field over the full 61 race laps. It's not the single largest margin of victory in F1 history, but in 2013, a 32 second win IS "enormous".

I don't hate Red Bull. In fact, if all this is true, I think it's pretty awesome that they've figured out a clever way of skirting the regulations (assuming it's not just flat-out illegal - I'm not sure what the rules are for KERS harvesting/usage). But let's not pretend that nothing shady can or does go on.



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AJP, it wouldn't be all *that* hard. I mean, plenty of road cars have adaptive suspensions that take adjust thousands of times per second. And it sounds like the suggested method here could be reasonably "analog" using inducers and capacitors. Basically, with suspension compression at X, we get Y gain in current, which feeds into a capacitor so that when it de-compresses, it can feed into the KERS like a sort electrical "valve". In fact, that's probably part of the strategy; the FIA already control ECUs and track engine mapping, so any additional computers might raise suspicions (or just flat out be banned).

[drledford93]

Maybe I just didn't see it but I don't remember ANYONE voicing cheating thoughts at McLaren in their dominant years of '88-'91. From what I could tell, these sort of accusations started to fly around '94 when electronics were banned and certain teams seemed to have them via evident performance advantages. So, the comparison of the MP4/4 to the RB9 is not valid in my book. There have been plenty of voices wondering the legality of the RB cars over the years.

I agree with MoFo that a 32 second win is HUGE. That was from the restart with something like 10 or 15 laps to go. 2-3 seconds PER LAP. Yikes.

I'm all for development but when you start to bend the rules or bending the rules to get a system (or the effect of one) that is banned, that's not right in my book. I do NOT want a formulaic racing series at all. I just wish they'd scrap the rule book and start all over. I wish the rules would be black and white and not allow this "grey area" stuff to continue like it has. The more simple, the better.

[smbrm1]

I believe Teams are allowed to submit novel developments to the FIA for review and rules compliance. If the idea is rules compliant I believe there is no requirement for the FIA to divulge the development, for something like a year or the end of the current season or something like that.

I think all the secrecy is paranoic and not conducive to bringing new fans or keeping fans in the sport. The technology needs to be novel, relevant, exciting but also transparent: especially so we can build models!

Unfortunately Formula 1 will always be formulaic: it is by definition and inclusion of the word "Formula" in the description. Build a car to race to rules of the formula, in this case the first(pinacle) formula!!

[fade_to_black]

...which is actually very difficult to do I would think. It would mean that the car's KERS computer would have to (in an ultra-fast way) get the suspension pushrod position or shock position change to figure out that the wheel had less traction (due to dip in the road/kerb or wheelspin) and instantaneously engage KERS generator to increase load on the engine and reduce the effective torque to the wheel(s). And this would all have to be controlled by the differential as well because reducing engine power might momentarily affect the traction/slippage of the other wheel differently.

Pretty cool actually.

The control unit to analyze the data in miliseconds wouldn't be hard. The issue are the componentes response times... alternators and specially batteries need time... maybe they have resistances to dissipate the excess energy generated by the alternator that doesn't go to the batteries Maybe that's why Webber car burned in Korea...The conspiracy can go on and on
This last part I was kidding guys

Kind regards

[MoFo]

Nah, Webber's car burned because of the bomb Seb placed in it.

[AJP01]

The control unit to analyze the data in miliseconds wouldn't be hard. The issue are the componentes response times... alternators and specially batteries need time... maybe they have resistances to dissipate the excess energy generated by the alternator that doesn't go to the batteries

Yes, that part (the sensing and electronic control) wouldn't be that difficult - to your (and MoFo's) point. The part that I think about though is; great, you know suspension displacement, relative traction level (you "think", because you're not allowed to use wheel speed sensors for true slippage), and such. But once you've figured out that you want to adjust torque, you've got to repeatedly engage/disengage the motor generators, translate that through the rotating inertia of the engine at XX,000 RPMs, gearbox inertia, driveshafts, and then tires (which are in hysteresis at all times to varying states). With tire sidewall flex. And those Pirelli's are heavy too. All that in milliseconds impresses me.

Cheers,
AJ