Ferrari Power Unit Hardware & Software

[ripper]

What really amazes me is that Ferrari and Mercedes are steadily updating their PU increasing power by 10-15 HP each upgrade (rumors of course) while keeping a very good reliability level. I'm wondering when they will find their limit, how much they can still improve and where: ICE power? Harvesting and deploying? Fuel usage?

[turbof1]

Can we please get back on topic? It's not relevant what Hamilton said, and unless the PU electronics of Ferrari are doing data mining during the race, I don't see why we have a discussion about cryptocurrency either.

[dren]

Toto: "They [Ferrari] have a power advantage,"We saw that in qualifying that their power advantage is on various parts of the straight, and you can see that even if the exits are worse than ours, their engine keeps pulling,

"That is nothing that could be a trick. It might also be related to how you run the engine, how you calibrate it. But in the same way, they derated earlier in qualifying than we did.

"So yes, we can see that they have a slight power advantage and then you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially, and that causes the double whammy. If you aren't very good on traction and you are being outperformed slightly on power then lap one happens."

"It is all about understanding your power unit and calibrating, extracting all of the performance out of the software, the fuels, the oils and optimizing the whole way you run the engine. That is something which doesn't involve the hardware and this is an ongoing process. So the answer is yes you can find performance.

[MtthsMlw]

"That is nothing that could be a trick. It might also be related to how you run the engine, how you calibrate it. But in the same way, they derated earlier in qualifying than we did.

I assume he's talking about Q1 and Q2 and not Vettel's last lap in Q3 which he started on a basically empty battery?

[ringo]

If they derated earlier, what is that saying?

Are they deploying at low engine speeds,without loss of traction?

What does Wolff mean by various parts of the straight? I find that interesting.

If it's engine calibration, can I suspect the engine has an extremely high compression ratio, but rather than be fueled to run this way most of the time, it is tuned to run in a manner where the negative effects (knock etc.) are not experienced; ie in a de-rated manner. Shell's fuel also plays a very critical role here.

When the car is moving at high speed and cooling air flow is high, it runs to its true level but does this sparingly and only when needed. In this way they have control over damage cycles, reliability etc.

Their advantage can be strictly down to the ICE; high compression, special fuel, low heat rejection to cooling water, and efficiency of turbo.

To add to that, they have a damn good chassis with very good low speed traction; which is a continuation of last year's car, as demonstrated by the performances in Monaco and Singapore.

[saviour stivala]

Quoting what people that matter says might not be relevant to some, but to me it is, example is what Toto have been quoted as having said. Out of what Toto said to me it means that after both Mercedes and FERRARI introduced their 3rd upgraded power unit FERRARI not only still have a power advantage but it looks like they have even managed to increase that advantage. And to me that advantage is all coming out of their ICE combustion. That ICE power advantage is only possible by reliability to sustain it, fuel consumption to sustain it and harvesting to also sustain it, these three achieved parameters are no problem when qualifying, but deploying that sort of power during the race is not possible without them having been achieved.

[roon]

...

I've heard software and engine modes/maps are supposed to be the same for factory and customer engines. I don't know if that's currently the case, or something proposed for another season. If so, how are engine modes and different supplier fuel properties accounted for?

[wuzak]

...

I've heard software and engine modes/maps are supposed to be the same for factory and customer engines. I don't know if that's currently the case, or something proposed for another season. If so, how are engine modes and different supplier fuel properties accounted for?

It is currently the case.

Both Sauber and Haas use Shell fuel. I don't know if they get a different spec to Ferrari.

Maybe they get new fuels a few races after Ferrari?

[giantfan10]

...

I've heard software and engine modes/maps are supposed to be the same for factory and customer engines. I don't know if that's currently the case, or something proposed for another season. If so, how are engine modes and different supplier fuel properties accounted for?

It is currently the case.

Both Sauber and Haas use Shell fuel. I don't know if they get a different spec to Ferrari.

Maybe they get new fuels a few races after Ferrari?

Read somewhere that they refused the new spec fuel which contains a very very expensive additive that those 2 teams cannot afford.....that in turn i suspect is a built in reason for different engine management software.....

[alexx_88]

Fuel development is probably the biggest oversight of the 1.6T engine regulations. Absolutely 0 road relevance and essentially moves the focus away from the engineering expertise in the teams to that in the supplier. No different than a tire war.

[LM10]

Fuel development is probably the biggest oversight of the 1.6T engine regulations. Absolutely 0 road relevance and essentially moves the focus away from the engineering expertise in the teams to that in the supplier. No different than a tire war.

How can you say that there is 0 road relevance in fuel development?

[alexx_88]

When it's rumored that professional F1 teams can't afford the additives for the fuel to run their F1 cars, I doubt what they're doing is of any relevance to the road cars. Those additives probably improve knock resistance, but I don't see who would pay for that in a road car. They'd need a whole generation of engine development to take advantage of it and, with R&D investment in ICE getting smaller and the focus on electrification, I doubt we'll see anything in petrol stations.

I was similarly excited by the MGU-H, thinking it will be added to hybrids in a bid to further improve efficiency. As far as I know, the CLS AMG is one of the only reasonably-priced cars that features the technology, with little indication that more will follow. And that's more than 6 years after they've started working on it.

[Dr. Acula]

Fuel development is probably the biggest oversight of the 1.6T engine regulations. Absolutely 0 road relevance and essentially moves the focus away from the engineering expertise in the teams to that in the supplier. No different than a tire war.

How can you say that there is 0 road relevance in fuel development?

Well, do we have roadcars which need more than 98RON to run at all at the moment? No we haven't. Many cars actually use knock sensors and they will retard the ignition timing to prevent knock if you use lower grade fuel. Also you don't automatically generate more power by just using a more knock resistent fuel. The engine needs to be designed/setup with such fuel in mind.
Also in some countries it's still hard to find petrol with more than 95RON. But as a manufacturer you have to deliver cars to such countries either.
You will not see 105RON or even higher fuel on normal fuel stations any time soon because there's no point in using it in normal cars.

I was similarly excited by the MGU-H, thinking it will be added to hybrids in a bid to further improve efficiency. As far as I know, the CLS AMG is one of the only reasonably-priced cars that features the technology, with little indication that more will follow. And that's more than 6 years after they've started working on it.

Was pretty clear to me from the beginning that the MGU-H the way it's used in F1 will never transition into roadcars.
An electrically supported Turbocharger, yes that will work.
But the idea to use the turbocharger as a generator under full load in a road car has an inherent problem. You hardly ever drive a road car under wot for extended periods of time.

[saviour stivala]

Sometime early this year or late last year somebody posted on here that Honda had patented an MGU-H intended for road car use, he even gave US patent number which I checked and confirmed at that time.

[djones]

If it was ICE it would be an advantage all the time and from what I can see this is not the case.

They look to have a traction advantage and when they need it a power advantage. But not all the time as though it either needs to charge up, or can only be used a certain amount of laps for reliability etc.

Maybe they have two 'tricks'. One a method of mild traction control and the other is they are using the gaps in the rules to deploy more than the allowed limit. We know there are paths of energy that are unlimited.

I could be talking complete rubbish here, but maybe the car out of slow speed corners purposefully relies more on the electronic power. Each lap it could learn how much to apply or something. Or maybe the driver tells the car he was on the limit and it was a perfect exit (at a given throttle amount) then the car adapts from then on and does not go over that power level at that part of the track. So its not really traction control, just a clever method of limiting power based on location.

Hell... maybe that extra thing on Vettel's steering wheel was the "that was perfect" button.

Or maybe I have just had too much coffee this morning. Ether way, I think we need to think outside of the box on this now as we seem pretty stagnant on getting to the bottom of it all.