Ferrari 150° Italia

[ESPImperium]

Here's the 150 Italia onboard lap of Alonso at the Indian GP.

http://www.formula1.com/video/onboard/

Speed data extracted from the engine noise in that video and comparison with Vettel's pole:


And lateral acceleration:



obtained applying Alonso's speed to a plausible racing line, computed by minimizing an opportune fitness function of various parameters, between track boundaries.

Lacking satellite image, best I could do was to use official's map as centerline, adding a constant width; track being rather wide I used 14m. Real tracks don't have constant width typically, and India's in particular, in some areas it looked even wider than that, which affects the estimate of radius thus of lateral acceleration (last corner an obvious candidate for that, 3g @ 100km/h is clearly too much), anyway, that's not meant to be 100% accurate, it's just a first order approximation to get an idea, so take it for what it is, considering the limitations.

Thank you for this bit of info.

Im coming to the conclusion that Ferrari are having a problem with their Diff being set up too loose just to get the car turned in. They obviously have a car with a understeer tendency. They look on that to have a car that is set up very stiff at the front to make the wing work and with this they need to get the car to turn somehow and have the exit corner setting set up looser just to get the change in direction they need in the middle to high speed corners.

[timbo]

Im coming to the conclusion that Ferrari are having a problem with their Diff being set up too loose just to get the car turned in. They obviously have a car with a understeer tendency. They look on that to have a car that is set up very stiff at the front to make the wing work and with this they need to get the car to turn somehow and have the exit corner setting set up looser just to get the change in direction they need in the middle to high speed corners.

What make you think so? I'm not disagreeing about the car having understeer quality, just want to look into your thoughts that lead to such conclusions.

[ringo]

Reca what deceleration under braking is your first graph suggesting?
max of 3.58g?

I notice how the rb7 has higher minimum speed, showing it doesnt have to slow as much to make the corners.

How do you get this data?
engine noise and what else?

[ESPImperium]

Im coming to the conclusion that Ferrari are having a problem with their Diff being set up too loose just to get the car turned in. They obviously have a car with a understeer tendency. They look on that to have a car that is set up very stiff at the front to make the wing work and with this they need to get the car to turn somehow and have the exit corner setting set up looser just to get the change in direction they need in the middle to high speed corners.

What make you think so? I'm not disagreeing about the car having understeer quality, just want to look into your thoughts that lead to such conclusions.

Its mainly the wheelspin that he is getting in sector two, Alonso has a lower speed and is looking to have wheelspin.

There could be a more mechanical problem suspension set up wise, possibly with the set up of the third damper or roll bar. However i just think its the diff, and i think its set too soft, its not locking quick enough to get the power down.

And as for power, the trace to Turn 4 says to me the Renault RS27-2012 isn't as down on power as Horner bleats on about, id recon only about half a dozen horses than the Ferrari, which is reputedly down on the Mercedes by as much as 10 to 15 horses. The Ferrari Type 056 engine is reputedly performing to around 820-840hp these days, but we know about the size of Italian horses. Id recon that theres as little as 15hp covering the 3 top engines these days. Makes me wonder what a BMW engine could have done in the current F1, even the Honda and Toyota power plants.

[ringo]

The car had a very stubborn front end in Melbourne. The stubbornness may be innate to the design, so i think ESP may have a point.
They probably solved that issue with the diff and other settings.

[Pierce89]

The car had a very stubborn front end in Melbourne. The stubbornness may be innate to the design, so i think ESP may have a point.
They probably solved that issue with the diff and other settings.

I haven't really heard them complain about understeer to much since they shed the season starting FW.

[Pierce89]

The hardest tires of the range are too hard. Not only because of the Ferrari but on the hards the cars never seem to race as hard, I guess because the cars feel less confident.

I also think the rule that you must use both compounds is ridiculous(anybody with a reason why they SHOULD do it?)

[Reca]

Reca what deceleration under braking is your first graph suggesting?

Consider it passed thru not little filtering though:


As for what I need, engine noise ("clean" without annoying commentators talking over it) to extract rpm, and peak speed data, so to calculate gear ratios, that's all it's strictly needed to obtain the speed.
Then with more info (speed in various intermediates, a good estimate of the total distance effectively travelled on racing line etc) it's possible to improve accuracy, but that's refinement stuff, not strictly necessary.
There should be a very old thread where I explained the basic method.

For the racing line, the track boundaries, better if coming from the satellite view.

[ell66]

The hardest tires of the range are too hard. Not only because of the Ferrari but on the hards the cars never seem to race as hard, I guess because the cars feel less confident.

I also think the rule that you must use both compounds is ridiculous(anybody with a reason why they SHOULD do it?)

just because ferrari are the only top team unable to make them work..and why wouldnt you have the two tyre choice? it adds more strategy in to it, otherwise the vast majority of races would be run on just the soft tyre.

oh and the medium was the prime tyre this weekend not the hard.

[Lorenzo_Bandini]

And where is the problem if all the field run the softer tyre ? I don't understand...
More strategy ? Well, since China all the team except Renault ( they are very silly really ) adopt the same strategy..

This rule is ridiculous, and i say this since 2010.

[shelly]

The rule o tires is one of those artificial show enhancements like drs, or pirelli tires. It can affect some teams more than others, but it's up to the most affected teams to up their game.

[Richard]

As for what I need, engine noise ("clean" without annoying commentators talking over it) to extract rpm, and peak speed data, so to calculate gear ratios, that's all it's strictly needed to obtain the speed.
Then with more info (speed in various intermediates, a good estimate of the total distance effectively travelled on racing line etc) it's possible to improve accuracy, but that's refinement stuff, not strictly necessary.
There should be a very old thread where I explained the basic method.

For the racing line, the track boundaries, better if coming from the satellite view.

Coulthard was saying in commentary that he had to wait a day for that sort of analysis, but the drivers can now get a printout within minutes of getting a good audio feed. I think Brundle (or Kravitz?) said he saw a team once pump the air with delight when the TV feed switched to a rival's onboard footage for a few corners because it gave enough data to reveal their gearing.

Most teams know the other teams gearing from the audio, and from that they can estimate fuel load in the free practice sessions. They can also compare drivers performance as shown on Reca's sheets.

Of course it assumes that the highest pitch noise equals the top revs. A car that is limited to say 17k or 16k revs would give misleading results.

[Richard]

And where is the problem if all the field run the softer tyre ? I don't understand...
More strategy ? Well, since China all the team except Renault ( they are very silly really ) adopt the same strategy..

eh? At this race we saw one driver on a 3 stop strategy, most on 2 stop and few on 1 stop.

[Lorenzo_Bandini]

Yes at THIS track.. But look at the others..

[raymondu999]

As for what I need, engine noise ("clean" without annoying commentators talking over it) to extract rpm, and peak speed data, so to calculate gear ratios, that's all it's strictly needed to obtain the speed.
Then with more info (speed in various intermediates, a good estimate of the total distance effectively travelled on racing line etc) it's possible to improve accuracy, but that's refinement stuff, not strictly necessary.
There should be a very old thread where I explained the basic method.

For the racing line, the track boundaries, better if coming from the satellite view.

Coulthard was saying in commentary that he had to wait a day for that sort of analysis, but the drivers can now get a printout within minutes of getting a good audio feed. I think Brundle (or Kravitz?) said he saw a team once pump the air with delight when the TV feed switched to a rival's onboard footage for a few corners because it gave enough data to reveal their gearing.

Most teams know the other teams gearing from the audio, and from that they can estimate fuel load in the free practice sessions. They can also compare drivers performance as shown on Reca's sheets.

Of course it assumes that the highest pitch noise equals the top revs. A car that is limited to say 17k or 16k revs would give misleading results.

On a lot of the TV stations you can choose to just follow an onboard of a guy; and on fan vision on circuit you can do the same for drivers who are on track. I don't get why you should wait for the tv to go to an onboard. Ted said the fist pump bit in fp, either 1 or 2.