And yet Ferrari is using some form of this system and it is legal.wuzak wrote:Except that only one injector is allowed, and it is a direct injection system.
Our opinions as to whether or not a separate injector is allowed in the ignition chamber aren't relevant. The FIA decides this question, and they already have. But which way did they decide?
The full text of tech reg 5.10.2 leaves a possibility for either interpretation:
Ferrari may have successfully argued there is only one injector for the cylinder, and it's in the cylinder. The other injector isn't upstream nor downstream of the valves, nor is it for charging the cylinder with fuel, nor is it in the cylinder.There may only be one direct injector per cylinder and no injectors are permitted upstream of the intake valves or downstream of the exhaust valves. Only approved parts may be used and the list of parts approved by the FIA, and the approval procedure, may be found in the Appendix to the Technical Regulations.
AFAIK, the "Appendix to the Technical Regulations" isn't available from the FIA web-site.
What's more intriguing obviously is if Mr. Whiting didn't agree with that argument and the separate injector isn't legal. Mahle's "weeks of work" in 2015 to meet F1's requirements for Ferrari would've been fairly creative.
There is a hint that Mahle may have already been thinking of a creative solution on page 13 of their 2014 presentation, http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014 ... 2014_o.pdf, where they mentioned that they've made progress on:
Mahle's Ferrari article inside their recently released 2015 annual report described their system as follows:Non-auxiliary fueled model under development
If F1 doesn't allow for a separate injector inside the ignition chamber, then studying existing public documentation on their proposed road car systems (patents were from 2010/2011, and DOE presentation was 2014) may differ significantly than what they actually implemented for F1 in 2015. If that is true, I'll suggest that how they described their system in the annual report could be significant in a subtle way.The newly developed MAHLE Jet Ignition lean burn combustion process relies on a special surface ignition, which in turn allows for higher engine performance. The ingenious trick here is that the air-fuel mixture is preignited in a prechamber around the spark plug. This results in the formation of plasma jets that reach the piston primarily at the outer edge and ignite the remainder of the mixture.