Roughly the same sorts
of opinions (
to Brundle's) have been out and about for quite some time, I remember Sam Michael talking about this at length pretty soon after the initial tests without TC/engine braking (
or so). Anyway that was quite a while ago, so I guess the teams have had a reasonably comprehensive grip on this issue before the season started. I can't remember a single racing accident in Melbourne I could directly attribute to the change (
though my recollection can fail me). Perhaps as a contributing factor (
drivers having to fiddle with the diff and brake balance, compromising their situational perception - especially in close proximity to other cars which doesn't help overtaking at all), but no-one seemed to completely lose it just by gunning the engine at an inopportune moment.
The two moments that came closest to "unforced errors" were Massa's first corner rampage and Glock's kangaroo tribute (
which could've ended badly). I suspect that Felipe's incident might have had something to do with engine mapping though, as the FIA hastily imposed a 90 second ban on engine map changes from the start to prevent one of the 12 available settings mimicking launch control. While a Ferrari representative did commend the decision saying that it made "launch control maps" "extremely unlikely" I still suspect that the top teams have compromised one map for the start, accepting some handling risk for the first minute and a half of the race. Notably McLaren's Merc engines were said to rev at about 9000 when they practiced starts, while most others' were screaming well beyond that. As for Timo, he commented that his car had become very challenging to control after his pitstop, so I imagine that off can't be pinned on lacking TC/engine braking either.
The mechanical failures were fairly diverse, but considering the length of the homologation (and especially almost a complete lack of engine failures during the actual races in 2007) it's clear that one of the avenues of investigation must be the new SECU, or rather its adaptation. It's an interesting thought, for example, whether the SECU could've been made less specific to certain engine harmonics/properties. As has been apparent in this msgboard for some time (
for the considerable efforts of at least one member), an analysis of the exhaust noise can yield highly specific data about the performance and ranges of operation an engine employs - and by extension, doesn't employ. Overheating, as I understand it, is a compounding problem only partly to do with performance and air temperature ending more regularly in failing peripherals than catastrophic events in the main components. I guess we'll hear some "versions" eventually, depending on the teams' positions and general stinginess with details.
