Engines replacements and upgrades

[marmer]

are upgrades counted as replacement parts.

i am wondering this as surly this limits Honda even more and any team that has an engine failure early in the season they cannot put upgraded parts on there car without facing a grid pen am i correct in this madness in the rules

[zac510]

Yes that's right. An easy way to think of it is that it's the same as last year but nobody is counting tokens anymore.

PS, madness is only relative.

[turbof1]

Seems logical to me that upgrades are counted as replacement parts, else you'd have teams "upgrading" their components at a constant basis, effectively evading the limit of 4 full PU's a season.

The Strategy Group could decide to make an exception for McLaren Honda, but I think this will require permission of all teams and I do not think that's in the cards.

[marmer]

could a team introduce multiple b spec engines a race weekend without penalties for the rest of the season , say canada and introduce two take a grid pen to be last and then not have any more pens for the rest of the season

[zac510]

No, that rule was changed too.

Please try and use some proper punctuation, marmer.

[turbof1]

could a team introduce multiple b spec engines a race weekend without penalties for the rest of the season , say canada and introduce two take a grid pen to be last and then not have any more pens for the rest of the season

That would be allowed last year and was infact used last year. For instance Mercedes put in 3 new PUs (roughly) during the free practices of the Belgian GP for Hamilton. He received in total a 55 grid slot penalty for it, but he got 2 extra PUs for it (the first new PU was still under his allowed penalty free allocation) and the grid penalty was for that race only. This is called stockpiling.

However, this is no longer feasible this year. If multiple new PU components are used during a race weekend, only the last newly used PU component may be used for the rest of the season. So let's take the example of the Belgian GP and apply it to this year: Hamilton would still receive 55 grid penalty, but he would have to discard the components of which multiples were introduced during the weekend, excluding the last ones used. So say he starts Friday FP1 with all the component used during the last race. Those ones safe as he already used them. Now say during FP2 he introduces a new MGU-H, TC and EC. Those allocations get him immediately over the allowed maximum allocations, so that's 10 + 5 + 5 (first allocation beyond the allowed max is a 10 grid penalty, and subsequently allocations beyond the maximum is a 5 grid slot penalty). During FP3 he introduces another new MGU-H, TC and EC, as well as a new MGU-K (important here!). So that's a 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 grid penalty on top. And finally before Qualifying he introduces another new MGU-H, TC and EC, with another 5 + 5 + 5 penalty. Hamilton will not replace those parts again for the race. Amounting a total of a 55 grid penalty, again for only that race. However, the new parts used and (eventually superseded) in FP2 and FP3 are no longer allowed to be used again, leaving dear ol' Hamilton with only the parts used in Qualifying and the ones he started the weekend with (as again, these same parts were already used at the previous venue). The exception is the MGU-K used during FP3, as that part was not superseded thereafter during the race weekend. So he will be allowed to reuse that part.

Note that all along this hypothetical scenario it does not matter if the components were A-spec, B-spec or X54-spec. You have 4 penalty-free allocations of each of the 6 components during the season. It makes no difference if these allocations are all of the same spec or all 4 are a different spec. You have to keep one logical fact in mind all the time however: changing specification means making physical alterations to components. Teams are not allowed to do this to already used components, so making upgrades means de facto using a new allocation.

Can you follow ?

[j2004p]

My thoughts on this would be to separate the component allowances between upgrades and failures.

Each component could be limited to 4 upgrades per season (whether for reliability or performance).
Each component could then have a separate failure allowance.

Say if you had a failure allowance of 6 of each component but that any upgrade would also count towards the failure count.

That way you're still stopping the big teams from all out limitless upgrades, but also giving a little more leeway to allow for failures without harsh penalization of teams and drivers.

[turbof1]

My thoughts on this would be to separate the component allowances between upgrades and failures.

Each component could be limited to 4 upgrades per season (whether for reliability or performance).
Each component could then have a separate failure allowance.

Say if you had a failure allowance of 6 of each component but that any upgrade would also count towards the failure count.

That way you're still stopping the big teams from all out limitless upgrades, but also giving a little more leeway to allow for failures without harsh penalization of teams and drivers.

The rule for 4 PUs was not introduced to limit upgrades, but to decrease costs (yes, that did not really worked out) and encourage longetivity.

A more appropiate thing to do would be to create an exception system, where if a particular manufacturer is struggling too much, determined by criteria like performance and reliability delta to the best manufacturer, he gets jokers to upgrade and change as it pleases without having to worry for penalties. Once the delta shrinks enough, he gets back to the same system.

Motogp has done this quite well actually, where new manufacturers are allowed more engines and more upgrades until they become competitive at the front.

[marmer]

If a team was to deiced enough is enough on engine development in a season could they test new parts for next season in fp1 and then put old parts back in the car without facing a pen or would it still apply. i was wondering about this as a way to prove parts work in the car without taking grid pens towards the end of the season when parts are near the limit after all its not parc ferme until q1

[rscsr]

If a team was to deiced enough is enough on engine development in a season could they test new parts for next season in fp1 and then put old parts back in the car without facing a pen or would it still apply. i was wondering about this as a way to prove parts work in the car without taking grid pens towards the end of the season when parts are near the limit after all its not parc ferme until q1

it was possible until this season, and a lot of teams used such a scheme to only receive a penalty once a year and introduce several power units when you would have received a penalty anyway.

article 23.3 e of the sporting regulations describe the penalties for the engine elements:

A power unit or any of the six elements will be deemed to have been used once the
car’s timing transponder has shown that it has left the pit lane.
During any single Event, if a driver introduces more than one of the same power unit
element which is subject to penalties, only the last element fitted may be used at
subsequent Events without further penalty.

So this means that everytime you change a part and drive out of the pitlane it counts against your allocation. But for example in McLarens case it could still be worthwhile to do "on track testing".When you receive a 15place grid penalty anyway you might as well use 5 different parts and start from the back of the grid, what you would do anyway and the penalties don't roll over to the next GP.