Red Bull suspects McLaren and a few other teams of filling water into the tyres

[PlatinumZealot]

That claim is ridiculous. Teams are pumping up the tyres with dry nitrogen for years for better pressure stabilty over temperature range as desorbing water adsorbed on and absorbed in the rubber increases the pressure variations. And now they'd start filling them with water?

What if I told you that in these restricted regs and Pirelli cheese tyres, the teams maybe, with a high likleylood, would give up a bit of pressure stablity for temperature stability?

Lets compare the heat capacity and latent heat of 100% humidity (air saturated with water vapour) from a high temp, and down to some medium temperature under a given starting tyre pressure. It could be that little bit of latent heat as the water condenses and evaporates helps with the temps(and EVEN lowers pressure a bit too!).

The other thing to be aware of is that teams sometimes makes inquiries on their own naughty ideas, veiled as a suspicion of other teams using that idea to cheat to "test the waters."

[bananapeel23]

So if I understand this correctly, by hydrating the air a bit the heat transfer between the hot tyre and the cooler rim improves which allows you to push the fragile Pirelli tyres more during the race. So when you first put air in a compressor tank while being in an extreme humid environment, then let some of the air out of the tyre and add this very hydrated air in you can claim you've just added air and not added any water

I think they would pump in very humid air, cool the rim below dew point, so that water turns to liquid, purge the tyre with dry air then heat the tyre in the blanket.

The water would not change phase till it reaches 111 degree at 22 psi tyre pressure. The additional water probably cools the rubber and provides more mass which provides stable temperature high or low as the rubber wears off.

As discussed above, probably being done for later stints when weight penalty is reduced by the lighter fuel tank state.

Could this be a factor in Russel being underweight at Spa? He suddenly decided during the race not to do a second stop.

No. We're talking about significantly less than 1kg of water across all 4 tyres. Russell was over 1.5kg underweight if I'm not mistaken.

[TimW]

Gary Anderson: Red Bull's McLaren tyre water theory doesn't add up
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/red- ... -anderson/

That article is utter nonsense, apparently someone missed a few physics classes. At 80 degree the vapor pressure of water is 0.5 bar, so the partial pressure of water in the humid air would be 0.5 bar! I don't know the exact density of water vapour at 80 degree, but something like 0.8g/ liter would this mean 0.4 gr/liter tire internal volume would evaporate.

The boiling point of water is of little relevance in a closed system. If there is liquid water, it will just be in equilibrium with the air above, and the air will reach 100% humidity. No sudden transition at 100degC, just a gradual rise in pressure.

[PlatinumZealot]

Gary Anderson: Red Bull's McLaren tyre water theory doesn't add up
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/red- ... -anderson/

Gary should stay far away from thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer topics. Not his strong point.

The tyres are about 20 psi so the evaparation rate would be a bit lower, however he has no business talking about boiling point! Boiling point is temperature when the vapour pressure above the liquid is at envrionmental pressure and would be nothing like 100*C in that tyre, Pretty much the whole tyre would need a substantial amount of water for that, and that is beside the point too. The water does NOT need to boil to evaporate! It's just a problem of evaporation ( or mass transfer) inside the tyre.

Heating the water causes more vibrations of the molecules at the surface raising the vapour pressure, and then that will try to equilibrate with the partial pressure of water vapour in the air, spreading more vapour around (an also creating an evaporative cooling effect). The tyre can basically be cooling pipe like what you see in computers.

[PlatinumZealot]

Gary Anderson: Red Bull's McLaren tyre water theory doesn't add up
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/red- ... -anderson/

That article is utter nonsense, apparently someone missed a few physics classes. At 80 degree the vapor pressure of water is 0.5 bar, so the partial pressure of water in the humid air would be 0.5 bar! I don't know the exact density of water vapour at 80 degree, but something like 0.8g/ liter would this mean 0.4 gr/liter tire internal volume would evaporate.

The boiling point of water is of little relevance in a closed system. If there is liquid water, it will just be in equilibrium with the air above, and the air will reach 100% humidity. No sudden transition at 100degC, just a gradual rise in pressure.

Ah thank you! We posted the same time with similar points! Boiling point has little to do with this. Gary is just good at churning out articles to meet some sort of deadline imposed on him!

[Vanja #66]

Gary Anderson: Red Bull's McLaren tyre water theory doesn't add up
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/red- ... -anderson/

That article is utter nonsense, apparently someone missed a few physics classes. At 80 degree the vapor pressure of water is 0.5 bar, so the partial pressure of water in the humid air would be 0.5 bar! I don't know the exact density of water vapour at 80 degree, but something like 0.8g/ liter would this mean 0.4 gr/liter tire internal volume would evaporate.

The boiling point of water is of little relevance in a closed system. If there is liquid water, it will just be in equilibrium with the air above, and the air will reach 100% humidity. No sudden transition at 100degC, just a gradual rise in pressure.

Haven't seen a good article from Gary, unless he's months late to some explanation, since forever...

[TimW]

Heat transfer increases dramatically with humidity:

(From:https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Eff ... _261716067)

So there is a huge benefit of you need heat transfer between tire and rim.
As long as you make sure that all water evaporates, I don't think there is any big impact on the thermal expansion coefficient.

So to me there seems to be a clear possible gain here, if you can sneak in a few cc. of water in while adjusting the tire pressure.

My biggest reservation is that this would be an outright violation of the rules, not a grey area. Just like adjusting the bib height in parc ferme would be. I'd expect a team to be taken out of the constructors standings as a penalty for that, if caught. And I cannot imagine a team taking that risk.

[avantman]

I'd expect a team to be taken out of the constructors standings as a penalty for that, if caught.

Not gonna happen in this time an era. Mosley was the last FIA president that had big enough balls to do that. And which is why they had him destroyed.

And I cannot imagine a team taking that risk.

Could you imagine the team violating the technical regulations with regards to the limit on fuel flow, got caught, but kept all their points in WCC. I possibly couldn't ten years before, but not now.

This thing is business first, show second, sport fourth. Not to mention the inner politics. No shareholder, including rival teams would like to create another huge scandal. And team exclusion from WCC would be a huge scandal. The integrity of the sport would get questioned again. This would be very harmful to the whole F1 business directly. Modern FIA presidents are fully controlled puppets that only pretend to be fully independent entity .

[Stea1th]

Merc in trouble currently for tire pressure change

[PapayaFan481]

Gary Anderson: Red Bull's McLaren tyre water theory doesn't add up
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/red- ... -anderson/

That article is utter nonsense, apparently someone missed a few physics classes. At 80 degree the vapor pressure of water is 0.5 bar, so the partial pressure of water in the humid air would be 0.5 bar! I don't know the exact density of water vapour at 80 degree, but something like 0.8g/ liter would this mean 0.4 gr/liter tire internal volume would evaporate.

The boiling point of water is of little relevance in a closed system. If there is liquid water, it will just be in equilibrium with the air above, and the air will reach 100% humidity. No sudden transition at 100degC, just a gradual rise in pressure.

Haven't seen a good article from Gary, unless he's months late to some explanation, since forever...

Finally something you and I can agree on!!

The Race need to get a better, more recent, Technical Expert, because Gary has been so long out of the sport and rarely gets things right.

[organic]

From The Race

"Red Bull feels the performance of certain teams in the Brazil sprint race vindicated its suspicions [about water injection] as it believes its race pace was stronger than it has been for several grands prix and thinks others were struggling more."

[dialtone]

From The Race

"Red Bull feels the performance of certain teams in the Brazil sprint race vindicated its suspicions [about water injection] as it believes its race pace was stronger than it has been for several grands prix and thinks others were struggling more."

you can say that about races after the asymmetric brake, bib and so on...

[organic]

From The Race

"Red Bull feels the performance of certain teams in the Brazil sprint race vindicated its suspicions [about water injection] as it believes its race pace was stronger than it has been for several grands prix and thinks others were struggling more."

you can say that about races after the asymmetric brake, bib and so on...

Indeed. I'm just posting what red bull thinks

Here's the article https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/fres ... ing%20more.

If red bull has race winning pace in the remaining 3 races (4 including Brazil/Brazil sprint) after not having it for a long time then it's pretty good confirmation?

[dialtone]

If red bull has race winning pace in the remaining 3 races (4 including Brazil/Brazil sprint) after not having it for a long time then it's pretty good confirmation?

I don't think so. Max won the Austin sprint easily and always qualified very well. The difference between cars has been minimal and down to having wrong setup and slightly sub optimal mix of corners in races.

The idea that somehow the start of year RB-20, that had Perez finish 2nd on the regular, somehow turned into a mid field car that only god emperor max could drive to a decent result was never true. RB-20 is another great car, when you are off a bit in setup it doesn't perform as well. For reasons that the team appears to not know (yeah sure), they went from a huge pace advantage at start of season to a smaller one compared to any other team.

Last I'm getting bombarded by all sorts of things now... is Max the best ever and won because he's great and as usual won despite having the worst car on the grid or is it MCL that now got robbed of their cheat and nerfed enough that now max can finally beat them?

[Rikhart]

From The Race

"Red Bull feels the performance of certain teams in the Brazil sprint race vindicated its suspicions [about water injection] as it believes its race pace was stronger than it has been for several grands prix and thinks others were struggling more."

you can say that about races after the asymmetric brake, bib and so on...

Yes, this was a race, and it was after all that (which is mostly all bullshit as agreed by people who really hate the team and it's drivers). Did you miss the race?