Korean GP 2010 - Yeongam

[Arterius]

Andrew - I remember Team Radio to Petrov during one of the GP with instructions to change the way of his down-shifting. Team ordered him to reduce revs during down-shifting and threaten him that if he will not adjust to this they will lower his max revs remotely.
So I guess it is problem while driver do it badly.

Hi all.
In Germany the team told Petrov to short shift into 7th on the straight or they would have to turn down the power to not run out of fuel. I don't rember any other team radios to him talking about his down-shifting.

it will depend on the gear shift algorithm used, and what the rules permitt.
technicaly it´s no problem to prevent an engine over rev while downshifting.
I can´t talk about F1, as I don´t have expirience there, but in GT/sports car shift systems, the gearbox controller would/could just ignore the downshift command, if it leads to an engine over rev.

best example would be, if a driver presses the wrong paddle on the steering wheel, downshift instead of upshift, while accelerating.
In this case, the gearbox (at least in the cars I have worked on - GT/sports cars) would ignore the command.

I would be very surprised if similar strategies are not employed in F1, but I don´t know for sure.

While still permitted (it´s banned now), the driver would just preselect the gears in either up or downshift, and the gearbox controller would execute the shift at the "perfect" time with the best rpm match automaticly.

A few years back when Massa spun in turkey the commentators said that he downshifted to early which had the same effect as locking the rear wheels as the engine would be hitting the rev limiter and the tyre speed would be less than the car speed.

[komninosm]

Heh wanna hear a funny thing? These last few days we're bombarded on Greek TV with the ad Button did for an alcoholic drink and I found it hilarious while I was watching the Korean race, because he was terrible at Korean race, just like the ad says at first (it ends with him a champion).

[Ray]

From f1grandprix.it translated to english.

[928S]

By Paul WhiteBlue, if I understand you correctly, Renault engine is less reliable in Red Bulls because it is used harder despite the same ECU controlling it, while Renault engine can't be less reliable in Vettel's Red Bull because the same ECU controls it?

The ECU of course would have totalling different programming, the gearshift programming would be different the start strategy would be different etc. Renault would supply parameters and experience, Red Bull would tell them what they wanted.

[928S]

By Dragonfly

They use different engines and gearboxes for practice on Friday. And do relatively small number of laps during the last FP.
While you are right in general about how revs influence engine wear, your arguments about Webber and him preserving the engine better are weak.

That is not quite true either, the way you present these facts it is like the engines are not in the pool of 8 engines. The fact is that Webber engines have not failed in the races is because he is still able to use the high milage units in the times set aside for practice. So this keeps his engines fresh for the races. This is the reason that he was able to hold off to the Korean GP to use his last engine.

Another point on engine life relating to use. Lets just say and this is speculation that Vettel uses more revs (I think that is close to being a fact) and that also uses more fuel. So then he needs at various times to change the mixture. This has become quite important this year with a fixed fuel load. Remember the fuel load is still an estimate as atmospheric conditions change and the amount of fuel varies with this. So he goes out hard and he often does he then either has to turn down the revs or adjust the air fuel ratio.

This is the different settings you sometimes here over the radio messages. When they do this they lean out the air fuel ratio and the combustion temperatures go up. This places a greater thermal load on many parts of the engines. The main ones being the pistons. What are these made of in the Renault engine? 2618 or 4032? They behave differently when they get hot. The 2618 can get micro welding in the ring grooves and the strength deteriotes especially for later use. Mahle doesn't recommend this material for 24 hr use normally. The 4032 material is high silicon so it wears better but has less strength and all alloys loose quite a lot of strength at elevated temperatures. Then you also have the Ti valves, particularly the exhaust, they will get really hot and of course the exhaust system itself.

Given there was a failure of the exhaust apparently on Vettel car you could make the arguement that if the engine was being leaned out and this as I mentioned makes everything hotter than normal and he rides the kerbs a lot and Bahrain was a bumpy track that could have caused the failure. The material is inconel and I have welded these type of headers it is only 0.7 mm thick. It is very tough but think about it being past red hot and almost white hot you can damage it. So again you can have driving style influence the life of various components.

Adrian Newey loves to take things to the limit so he would run that engine as hot as possible and as such it is possible mr Vettel takes it that little bit further and it doesn't like it.

[zeph]

Thanks for this clear and informative exposition. I would like to read more posts of this caliber.

Stick around!

[WhiteBlue]

Conjecture and speculation.

Nothing in 928's post sheds any new light on Seb Vettel's engine failure in the Yeongam GP. And it doesn't support the outlandish theory that the engine failed due to driver input. I call it off topic speculation.

[ringo]

928, what you are saying has some truth, but it's a little exaggerated.
An engine that is designed to do 2,200km on full load, does not catastrophically fail at 1600km because of one driver using it like it's supposed to be used.
Pressure vessels have certain factors of safety that have to be adhered to, especially when in proximity to an operator; such as a driver.

Whatever thermal loads, it's all considered in the design of the engine by a certain factor.
Unless you can mathematically demonstrate why one driver pressing a computer moderated pedal and paddle shift can force his engine to blow 3/4 it's life cycle, it cannot be concluded that Vettel overdrove his computer limited engine.

All Vettel can do is press a pedal and flick a paddle. These are the only driver inputs. Curb riding doesn't cause a catastrophic failure either.

Take for example the failure of Sutil's engine in Suzuka. No way to blame the driver's habits or, recommended by the engine maker, fuel mixtures.

You know a lot of the details of the make up of a race engine, but there is still no correlation as to what the driver is actually doing to influence the failure, or even if lean mixture, recommended by the engine maker can cause such a visually chaotic failure.

It's easier to imagine and more likely the engine was put together improperly by Vettel's mechanics. His repeated mechanical troubles points to the people who work on his car. They actually established a trend for themselves this year.

Webber being on the team the longest probably has the most experienced and detail oriented mechanics. Redbull should hold a mechanics meeting and have Webber's Mechanics retrain Vettel's.

[Ray]

Or maybe it just blew up because --- happens? :/

[WhiteBlue]

Or maybe it just blew up because --- happens? :/

Yeah, I would agree with the sh!t happens theory. It is common in motor racing.

[Pup]

Anyone here who thinks a driver can't kill an engine has obviously never driven with my wife.

[928S]

I don't think you can say the engine can operate at full load for that distance, for me you would have to specify what full load is first at a minimum. Is it full revs? Is it peak power (HP)? I s it peak torque or is it peak volumetric efficiency? Now the designers design for a mixed bag of all these factors, you cannot claim if it is designed for that purpose it will be O.K as these engines are pushed to the limit and to a degree are experimental! If I can give you an example, I can't remember if it was Cosworth or Renault but it was one of them and they found the first or major problem with extra milage was the blocks cracking. Now this is a stressed member, if you ride curbs and the block is borderline it would I think be reasonable to shorten the life by pounding away at the mounts if the block is the weak point.

Now as to it being Vettel's mechanics they do not have any thing to do with the engine assembly and may not even fit the engine to the car. Renault would normally do the fit but I don't know their specific arrangement so I would bow to anybody who knows differently.

As to thermal loads being considered of course they are, however you can only have one set of optimum settings, as such if you make lots of allowances you will end up with a compromised engine. Give you this example, piston to wall clearance, these are very short slipper pistons. That means the skirts which guide the pistons are short and this means that every bit of clearance you use will give you extra rock of the piston in the bore. This ruins your ring seal and that ring seal gives you your power. So run a sloppy clearance and get lots of blowby and loose power because of this.

So if they are using 2618 alloy this is a high expansion aluminium and will expand faster and more than the bore, so if you got the engine really hot like Button did in Monte Carlo, game over. That is an extreme example. So the same applies with the fuel mixture. Most engines will operate and produce the best power at approx 12.8 to 1 these engines are probably around 12.3 due to the oxygenated aspect of the fuel, that is the bio component. If you lean that out to 13 to 1, be sure of this it is not designed to operate like this all the time and also I would imagine that the drivers when in this mode are probably told to get clean air as sucking in hot air would probably be the last straw for the engine.

We also know there has been lost of redesigns of the Renault engine, to me it appears to be a good engine is certain respects and Newey likes it because of the packaging but it has had its problems and Vettel may just push it too hard?

I think you could have an argument over which is worse, the driver who crashes like Webber or the guy who breaks his car like Vettel, that is not about speed so much but who actually gets to the finish line.

928, what you are saying has some truth, but it's a little exaggerated.
An engine that is designed to do 2,200km on full load, does not catastrophically fail at 1600km because of one driver using it like it's supposed to be used.
Pressure vessels have certain factors of safety that have to be adhered to, especially when in proximity to an operator; such as a driver.

Whatever thermal loads, it's all considered in the design of the engine by a certain factor.
Unless you can mathematically demonstrate why one driver pressing a computer moderated pedal and paddle shift can force his engine to blow 3/4 it's life cycle, it cannot be concluded that Vettel overdrove his computer limited engine.

All Vettel can do is press a pedal and flick a paddle. These are the only driver inputs. Curb riding doesn't cause a catastrophic failure either.

Take for example the failure of Sutil's engine in Suzuka. No way to blame the driver's habits or, recommended by the engine maker, fuel mixtures.




You know a lot of the details of the make up of a race engine, but there is still no correlation as to what the driver is actually doing to influence the failure, or even if lean mixture, recommended by the engine maker can cause such a visually chaotic failure.

It's easier to imagine and more likely the engine was put together improperly by Vettel's mechanics. His repeated mechanical troubles points to the people who work on his car. They actually established a trend for themselves this year.

Webber being on the team the longest probably has the most experienced and detail oriented mechanics. Redbull should hold a mechanics meeting and have Webber's Mechanics retrain Vettel's.

[xpensive]

Good morning to you 928S, and welcome to F1T, every engineer is welcome to this forum, in addition to all the wannabees out there of course. Anyway, 928's last point made a whole lot of sense engineering-wise. When it comes to tribology-related machinery such as an F1 engine, saying that the engine is designed for a certain distance, or hours for that matter, is very difficult indeed.

First of all you have to establish the precise laoad-case, which as 928 xplains can hold a number of parameters difficult to identify, sometimes even contradicting eachothers, like a hydrodynamic oil-film increasing its thickness with rpm, while viscosity goes down as shear-force on the film increases with the same.

Secondly, when trying to optimize the engine, you end up in a stocastically xpected lifespan situation with multiple variables and their individual tolerances. At the end of the day, basically a normal-distribution even for a given loadcase.

To a flat-out optimized piece of machinery, of which kind I'm certain Adrian Newey appreciates, it helps the xpected lifespan of the engine if operated by a driver with a little more care than going to 18k all the time and ride every curb in sight.

[lotus7]

Any thoughts on the ingress of rain water through the airbox and the effect this could have on the fuel mixture ? IIRC water injection into the trumpets was used( and banned) in the distant past.
Also in the rainy conditions , the air is much denser , thus effectively more oxygen being "inhaled" and the engine running leaner - I know , I know .... these ecu's have very sophisticated sensors ( lamda ? )and telemetry is available to make adjustments (via the driver)

[mx_tifoso]

Any thoughts on the ingress of rain water through the airbox and the effect this could have on the fuel mixture ? IIRC water injection into the trumpets was used( and banned) in the distant past.
Also in the rainy conditions , the air is much denser , thus effectively more oxygen being "inhaled" and the engine running leaner - I know , I know .... these ecu's have very sophisticated sensors ( lamda ? )and telemetry is available to make adjustments (via the driver)

Water injected in to cylinders?