2018 pre-season testing thread

[Phil]

100% in agreement with this, put it's nice to be precise when talking here like you just were. I would not be this pedantic if this was not the thousand time I see stuff like "Ferrari asked FIA to ban the FRIC". Because this sort of shared imprecise knowledge creates a lot of false information.

FRIC just means FRONT-REAR-INTER-CONNECTED. It used hydraulic accumulators connecting all four corners of the car to help stabilize it, improving both mechanical and aerodynamic performance. The FIA issued a technical directive sometime in mid 2014 that FRIC constituted a breach of the regulations because it helped with the aerodynamics of the car.

I am pretty sure though that due to the complexity of it, Mercedes was still able to run it till the end of the season. In 2015, Mercedes continued experimenting and using hydraulic accumulators for their suspension. This is what has then become "trick suspension" (no fancy word). Most of this tech was again "banned" for 2017, though banning is a strong word. Mercedes at the beginning of 2017 was still confident that their system was legal, but didn't want to risk using it because a formal protest after a race could mean that Mercedes could lose its points and then face having to change the car. The trick suspension also came at a weight disadvantage too.

Still, Mercedes are still using hydraulic accumulators (or were in 2017 at least) to control their suspension, especially ride height between QF and the race. The system goes through the gearbox I think and therefore uses the heat there to control the pressure. There was a report about this mid last year when it was said that Force India was using something similar, but their system relied on changing the fluids before the race (and pre-heating it to get the necessary pressure that they wanted). That system, more primitive than the one Mercedes uses, was easier to ban/clarify. From what I understood, Mercedes system never got banned or prohibited because there is definite lack of insight on how it works exactly and because it's all inside the gearbox housing, I guess it's not something that can be checked or seen easily.

So I guess there are various stages of FRIC and where that tech led to. I suppose most here just still use the term because it's easy and most people know what's being talked about. And the later iterative incarnations of the same tech don't have any fancy words to describe it other than "trick suspension".

[TAG]

It is a shame you refuse to read my posts. If you read the article I put you see that the statement you highlighted (I don't think the suspension ban hurt them as much as people claim.) was backed up and indeed Mercedes themselves said they didn't necessarily need to change their suspensions and indeed they would not want to use it anyway because they were already overweight in the early races and that whole hydraulic system had extra weight penalty bigger than the advantage...

I'm hoping for a competitive season as well but I think Mercedes at this point looks to be a step ahead of everybody a bit like... well every year it seems now.

My suggestion for them doing burnouts is very simple, they want to put heat on the tyres like every other team is doing and also how everybody does on the warm up lap just before they do the start. Not more not less.

Of course I read it, I read it and I remember, that's why I was surprised at your lack of consistency. Of course Mercedes said that they didn't need to change, the same way Ferrari insisted that they didnd't need the second oil tank and additional plumbing. When you claim what you're doing is legal, then you can't say that it hurt your performance when you lose it.

All I want is consistency.

[Big Mangalhit]

It is a shame you refuse to read my posts. If you read the article I put you see that the statement you highlighted (I don't think the suspension ban hurt them as much as people claim.) was backed up and indeed Mercedes themselves said they didn't necessarily need to change their suspensions and indeed they would not want to use it anyway because they were already overweight in the early races and that whole hydraulic system had extra weight penalty bigger than the advantage...

I'm hoping for a competitive season as well but I think Mercedes at this point looks to be a step ahead of everybody a bit like... well every year it seems now.

My suggestion for them doing burnouts is very simple, they want to put heat on the tyres like every other team is doing and also how everybody does on the warm up lap just before they do the start. Not more not less.

Of course I read it, I read it and I remember, that's why I was surprised at your lack of consistency. Of course Mercedes said that they didn't need to change, the same way Ferrari insisted that they didnd't need the second oil tank and additional plumbing. When you claim what you're doing is legal, then you can't say that it hurt your performance when you lose it.

All I want is consistency.

You make no sense. So Mercedes was outright lying cause it doesn't fit your narrative.
When did Ferrari say they didn't need the second oil tank??? That seems such an absurd statement, if they didn't need it then why the hell didn't they put it?? for ballast?

But worse is probably this sentence: "When you claim what you're doing is legal, then you can't say that it hurt your performance when you lose it."

Why not????? Why on earth couldn't you say that the ban hurt you?

I can even show you an exemple of a driver saying that the FRIC ban hurt them when they lost it: https://www.crash.net/f1/news/206885/1/ ... han-others

[TAG]

I can even show you an exemple of a driver saying that the FRIC ban hurt them when they lost it: https://www.crash.net/f1/news/206885/1/ ... han-others

Point me to one example of Ferrari saying they struggled once they lost the ability to burn the additional oil.

[dans79]

You make no sense.

You aren't doing much better, what point are you trying to make exactly?

[SparkyAMG]

Why not????? Why on earth couldn't you say that the ban hurt you?

Without getting drawn into this argument too much, if you admit to using something that had always been explicitly outlawed, such as burning anything other than race fuel, you risk bringing your results into dispute.

Red Bull fell foul of this at the start of the 2014 season with their fuel flow meter.

The FRIC scenario was different. The specific technology in use wasn't illegal on it's own, it just fell under the general grey area of moveable aero devices, which is a catch-all rule that covers a multitude of things. All teams had a version of FRIC, and importantly the FIA stated that the legality of such systems could be in breach of said rule and it would therefore be better if everyone just removed them full stop.

[Big Mangalhit]

Sure but my argument was never about oil, I understand in that case not wanting to admit it cause it actually goes against a violation of the rules that were before.


As you said in case of the FRIC in 2014 it is different cause it was in a grey area and was only really illegal after the directive before the German GP so no point in denying its use and benefit, I totally agree. Likewise admitting that the suspension ban before the 2017 would've hurt Mercedes would be totally acceptable since the season hadn't even started.


Basically I'm just saying that I think that the suspension rule didn't hurt them as massively as people claim (everybody wants to see magic bullets in every little thing but this like most F1 innovations account for little gains that all together make the very small advantage separating 1st from the other LOSERSSSSSSSS).
-> then to back my claim I use SOURCES from mercedes claiming they would not even would've use it in Melbourne because the weight penalty would be bigger than the advantage (RB said this too btw, even tho it was suspected that RB was more reliant on their version which was outright outlawd unlike the Merc one that was in a grey area)
-> Then I got a counter argument that Mercedes is for sure lying because "Of course Mercedes said that they didn't need to change" and "When you claim what you're doing is legal, then you can't say that it hurt your performance when you lose it."
->So then I argued yet again that I fail to see the logic of why would Merc deny losing a big advantage (ofc they lost an advantage but smaller than the being overweight by the parts' amount) in a system that wasn't even raced yet, nor even completely outlawed.

[dans79]

-> then to back my claim I use SOURCES from mercedes claiming they would not even would've use it in Melbourne because the weight penalty would be bigger than the advantage (RB said this too btw, even tho it was suspected that RB was more reliant on their version which was outright outlawd unlike the Merc one that was in a grey area)

You're assuming that a team would be honest with the media about how much a given piece of tech helps or hurts them. In my opinion, it is not wise to trust any team in this regard, as they have a vested interest in not telling the truth.

[Sieper]

Of course not. They never will. What they try to do is Either give a plausable explanation on why they never would have used it, or throw a Q ball to keep us talking about that, or best, both.

[nevill3]

TBH that doesn’t sound very interesting to me, just more of the same

How do they know RB’s upgrade is worth 0.2? They dont happen to mention Friday’s winning euromillions numbers in the article too by any chance?

It’s not RBs upgrade. It’s supposedly down to rhe engine. Renault was running conservative during the winter test for reliability. Towards the end of testing, Renault upped the performance of the engine and plans to up the performance again by the same amount again for Melbourne if everything goes smoothly.

That’s a bit of an if though, as McLarens turbo issue might mean it wont happen for Melbourne yet.

I think the original source is from AMuS who interviewed Helmut Marko in the article i translated. There were no numbers quited though in that article.

It’s a few pages back in this very topic...

The McLaren Turbo issue could be down to the fact that the one that failed on the last day had been in use on a previous ICE that failed earlier in the week, I think the one with the oil leak. EB confirmed this in an interview on Sky Sports F1. So the extra Renault engine performance may not be in jeopardy after all.

[NathanOlder]

Decent program on SkySports F1, Development Special, with Ted, Natalie, Mike Gascoyne & Craig Scarborough. 1 hour long, followed by a 30min Testing Special.

[JPBD1990]

Decent program on SkySports F1, Development Special, with Ted, Natalie, Mike Gascoyne & Craig Scarborough. 1 hour long, followed by a 30min Testing Special.

Do you/ does anyone know where I can watch this outside of the UK? Is it on YouTube or something??

[NathanOlder]

Sorry I have no idea mate. Some times things come up on YouTube, but I guess that's just down to luck that someone puts it up and then Sky don't get it removed.

[3jawchuck]

Decent program on SkySports F1, Development Special, with Ted, Natalie, Mike Gascoyne & Craig Scarborough. 1 hour long, followed by a 30min Testing Special.

Do you/ does anyone know where I can watch this outside of the UK? Is it on YouTube or something??

I posted a link on page 79 that has lots of motorsport recordings, there's a fair bit of F1 testing stuff there still.

[SameSame]

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/13484 ... re-in-test

Interesting comment from Toto saying the gaps between the different compounds were extremely small and not what Pirelli suggested. If this is true it would throw off a lot the "analysis" done of the testing times.