gearboxtrouble wrote: ↑09 Mar 2026, 02:11
The driver has no input into that decision to slow the car down in the fast corners. We're going to see cars slow similarly in Eau Rouge and Copse and it will be awful. The rules need to be adjusted to effectively end super clipping on any track.
The adjustment we need is a reduction in peak output large enough to remove the incentive to clip through fast corners or at the end of straights.
We still want super clipping. It works great in constant speed or gradually slowing turns like hairpins or tightening esses or the turns 1-4 complex in Shanghai.
The way to do that is by making the cars rocket out of corners slightly slower. In other words by reducing peak deployment. If you can’t get back ip to top speed as quickly, the incentive to clip in Eau Rouge or the chicane in Melbourne disappears.
The drivers might still lift and coast a bit into braking zones, but they won’t be super clipping for several seconds.
This will make the cars significantly slower, but it would be a decent bandaid fix for now, until they can work out a long term solution. That long term solution could be more fuel and/or maybe loosening some of the cost-cutting engine restrictions like 16:1 compression ratio, low boost pressure and variable trumpets ban. An unrealistic option could be an anti-lag system in the form of an electric turbo (but not MGU-H because it would be prevented from harvesting and would resort to the wastegate for overpressure)
Realistically though, politics made these regs a mess because Mercedes was afraid of Audi and Audi was afraid of the MGU-H and wanted a nominal 50/50 power split. As a result we got a compromise that removed both and resulted in lower efficiency engines with super clipping being the bandaid fix. In reality the cars could probably have 3600 MJ/h of fuel flow on the same amount of race fuel if super clipping was banned. Combine that with front axle regen and an MGU-H that caps harvesting at a level achievable by Audi. The resulting cars would be much less energy starved while burning the same amount of fuel over a race distance and putting out some 1100 peak horsepower with no turbo lag. The lack of turbo lag would make deploying the full 350kW in traction zones impossible due to the immense torque, which would extend the effective life of the battery and make overtake less wasteful. Combined with active aero these cars would be the fastest ever while burning much less fuel and making fewer compromises. They would also look really twitchy and be a handful to drive due to the extreme torque, which is fun to watch. If you really wanted to make sure the cars aren’t energy starved, you could probably even make the MGU-K power dropoff go slightly into the negative above certain speeds (like going negative starting where the currnt curve ends, peaking at -100 kW at 350 km/h or so), since 650 HP ICEs with active aero might actually be TOO fast. This way super clipping wouldn’t actually be an issue. Since it only prevents dangerous top speeds by limiting acceleration.
If Audi were so concerned about the MGU-H being an advantage for established teams, give them additional budget allowance for it and give the non-WEC teams some extra budget for the front MGU. The only downside would be that the cars would come in at maybe 780-790kg instead of 768, which would be a small price to pay.
