2022 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, March 18 - 20

[Watto]

No, if you are reading something that says RB made a miscalculation on fuel, that is wrong

It was a fuel pump that stopped feeding fuel to the engine

How would you explain that both cars had the same issue within 2 laps? And they were the only car that had this issue in the race?

Because, as I said. They have identical cars. If both cars have faulty parts, under the same conditions, they will break down in a similar timeline.

Max's fuel pump was malfunctioning for a few laps, Perez went straight away

It was the reason why RB had no data for Max when he said he was having issues with power

The engine was good, RB did not understand what was going on

Interesting, looking at all the things that have come out.the issue with the new E10 fuels causing issues and cracking the resin with the fuel pump causing trouble with the electronics. They talked about Max's steering wheel playing up in the laps before his retirement . wonder if that is a sign that it had made it into those electronics.

[dialtone]

These are the telemetry for one of the laps with VER passing LEC (18th lap):


And this is a few laps later 24th lap:


From there one can say that the slipstream + DRS is indeed still very powerful, in fact quite a lot, VER gets up to almost 327kmh while in a normal lap both would do 301kmh. While LEC instead of hanging around 300kmh chooses to stay in 7th gear and around 285kmh, in fact LEC scrubs off some more speed before the entry down to 282kmh. In video LEC seems to also leave some decent space inside the turn because he's setting himself up to pass VER again the following straight and build some gap in S2 and S3.

Another interesting bit happened at laps 45 and 51 (fastest lap for VER and fastest lap for LEC):


VER's lap was the lap right after his tyre change, LEC after the restart from SC.

It's interesting to see that while LEC is tapering off at end of straight, presumably energy recovery including his fastest lap, for most of the race laps that I checked VER was almost always as sharp as you see up in the graph. I don't know if that's a feature of the Honda engine of course, or they ran it really hard to try and pass, and how it accomplishes energy recovery, but it could be related to them running out of fuel. It's quite a difference in race mode however, it's IMHO cool that FER could still manage to do what they did while tapering off that much on their laps.
LEC really makes the lap up in T6/T7 which he takes full beans, as well as other faster corners like T12 where he simply carries a lot more speed. And this is fast lap on same condition tires for both of them, if anything LEC's tires were a bit colder after the laps behind SC.

[fritticaldi]

First race the engines are made in house at Red Bull factory . 3 of the 4 cars had technical problems causing DNF's. Not the start Red Bull & Alpha Tauri were hoping for. Worrisome situation.

[Sulman]

First race the engines are made in house at Red Bull factory . 3 of the 4 cars had technical problems causing DNF's. Not the start Red Bull & Alpha Tauri were hoping for. Worrisome situation.

Strange that they ran with few issues in testing, and in much hotter conditions, too.

[Sulman]

Did the RBR cars run out of fuel?

No, if you are reading something that says RB made a miscalculation on fuel, that is wrong

It was a fuel pump that stopped feeding fuel to the engine

How would you explain that both cars had the same issue within 2 laps? And they were the only car that had this issue in the race?

This was my line of thought. The description by Christian Horner was cryptic, something like "the engine was not getting fuel" and my immediate thought was: Was there any left? Something with the E10 formulation catching them out perhaps. Maybe running too high a mode for too long? They've been doing this for eight years now, so they should have the software down.

[silver]

First race the engines are made in house at Red Bull factory . 3 of the 4 cars had technical problems causing DNF's. Not the start Red Bull & Alpha Tauri were hoping for. Worrisome situation.

Incorrect. Honda facility in Sakura continues to manufacture the engines.

What a comeback by Ferrari. So it's now clear that they have the best car and best engine. Nobody deserves it more than Ferrari. What an ignominy in 2020 and what a redemption in 2022! They were kicked when they were down by the world around in general and Mercedes fans in particular for the accusations of cheating and now trying to ride on their back to demean Red Bull is cheap shots.

Tough luck to Red Bull. Those Mercedes cars are so far behind! It's just bonkers. How badly they have got it wrong.

[silver]

I think this is being overplayed. Reliability has been at it's best in F1 and it's only getting better. Even with such 'porpoising' issues, teams completed enormous amount of mileage. Some teams even completed race sims. All this without having to go through serious damage to any part of the car. In fact with a such simplified cars in terms of appendages, the amount of carbon fibre debris in clashes would be significantly less which also means, despite some contacts, the damage may not hurt a great deal on aero performance. Drivers just need to be cautious to avoid kerbs and especially if there are sausage curbs as now the underfloor is significantly important than ever. By next week there would be some solutions for the porpoising issues, either temporary or permanent.

I wish they would further simply the floor area and remove all those cuts, curves, bends, bulges and appendages with change of rules to make the floor inline with the FIA show car.

If the cars are consistently hitting the ground hard due to porpoising then you will damage the car over the course of a race weekend to the point where even the most robust of components will fail and may you run out of spare parts before the race so have to do running repairs on floors etc that might well fail in the race. We'll only know if it's been overstated once the race is over. Racing puts a lot more stresses and strains on the cars and drivers than testing ever will.

Aside from reliability, it'll be interesting to see how the race evolves in terms of how the drivers go about overtaking over the course of a race. Will it be tentative or caution thrown to the wind ?

They did multiple race distances in 3 days testing, but nobody broke floors. Like I mentioned already, some cars did race sims without issues. Some cars had usual damages that we have seen in the past while running over kerbs. That's why in my opinion it's being overstated. As usual, there will be some cars that would hit reliability problems as nobody pushed the engine components to the fullest. It's an issue that we have witnessed in the past seasons.

I guessed it right.

[e30ernest]

Awesome job by Leclerc and Sanz to grab the 1-2. Unlucky for the Red Bull boys.

I really enjoyed the fight between Leclerc and Verstappen. Hoping the fight between them stays this close throughout the season. I am also hoping the Mercedes boys along with Sainz and Perez can join in the fray.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Lewis get a gap over Russell that large in qualifying. It's either an indication of Lewis' pace over Russell, or Russell going with the wrong setup for that qualifying. They were closer in the race when I was watching (I missed much of the middle of the race after the Leclerc vs Verstappen duel and just before the safety car ended).

I'm cheering for Ferrari this year. They need the break. It's either one of the Ferrari boys this year for me or Lewis (so he can grab his 8th).

Also noteworthy how Albon outperformed Latiffi by a huge margin. Albon's performance over Latiffi sort of puts some doubt in my mind over George's ultimate pace. We'll see over the season I guess.

Magnussen over Schumacher was also interesting. Schumacher is only in his second year so yes there is inexperience there, but Magnussen has been out of F1 for over a year so I think it should have cancelled out. His lack of pace is concerning and it really shows how slow Mazepin was IMO.

Bottas over Zhou. Glad to see Valtteri to be on pace. Zhou also did well to get into the points even if both Bottas and Zhou beneffited from 2 RB's DNF'ing.

Alpine was a disappointment, same with McLaren. I was really hoping they'd be close to the front end and fighting for third with Mercedes. They were nowhere. Aston was also a disappointment here.

[Sulman]

Magnussen's benefiitted from the multidisciplinary approach to his year off. Sportscars require an awful lot of adaptability, and he did a stint in Indy too. Most importantly he's looking fit and motivated; I wasn't surprised he did so well. Schumacher will catch up, he may have been on for a better finish if he hadn't been punted by Ocon early.

[JPBD1990]

As a Ferrari fan I must say I enjoyed basically every pundit favouring redbull for the pole and win here. Even now people are convinced redbull had the faster car, despite Leclerc gapping him to between 3 and 5 seconds every stint.

Redbull had to run significantly less wing than Ferrari, hence had worse tyre wear. So it wasn’t just the brake issue, or the steering issue, or the fuel issue. It was outright speed. Redbull anticipate 3 tenths deficit.

So Ferrari had the speed, had the pit stops, had the engine, and had the tyre wear, had the reliability. This is not the Ferrari of old.

Long may it continue (hopefullyyyyyy)

[PlatinumZealot]

Material compatibility issues at the fuel pump is a rubbish rumour. Choosing a material that alcohol will not attack is the most basic design decision there if it was known for years that E10 will be used. So I don't for once believe that the Magnetti marelli made this mistake.

[tpe]

Well, fuel is a complicated chemical formula, so there is a possibility that RB's fuel causes the resin to break.
Should I believe it? I don't know. F1 is so political that you never know what is true and what's a lie...

[PlatinumZealot]

Well, fuel is a complicated chemical formula, so there is a possibility that RB's fuel causes the resin to break.
Should I believe it? I don't know. F1 is so political that you never know what is true and what's a lie...

It's simple really you use an alcohol resistant resin. I was in food industry for a few years and things like acidity, water exposure, alcohols and fats were standard considerations when you spec something. For example the humble hose.. Buna-N, Viton, EPDM, PET, PTFE, HDPE, Silcone... This would be one of the first things you chose.

I dobnt buy that silly rumour.

[Vanja #66]

Material compatibility issues at the fuel pump is a rubbish rumour. Choosing a material that alcohol will not attack is the most basic design decision there if it was known for years that E10 will be used. So I don't for once believe that the Magnetti marelli made this mistake.

Agreed. Would make much more sense that cars bouncing and a stiff mounting in RB/AT caused it to crack. Teams had a lot more trouble with bouncing during testing, so the fuel is certainly not the only explanation of resin cracks.

[e30ernest]

Yeah I think the pump would have been designed to take that E10. Now I wonder if their fuel has another additive that could cause that.