A good question. I have been mulling over that discrepancy for some time. Obviously the issue here is not a simple increase in boost pressure as they could do it 25 years ago. You only get more power from the ICE if you find efficiency improvements. Those will typically not be of a nature that they cannot be exploited over a longer time. But one thing limits power that is not applicable in qualifying. There is no fuel allocation for qualifying which means that they can use fuel to generate more electricity. They can also load their energy storage up completely and use maximum electric power for one fast lap.xpensive wrote:... where does this difference between q and race come from?
So peak power could be available for a longer duration of a qualifying lap than a race lap. It still does not explain why Pirelli expect 900 bhp. The other value that came from Pirelli is the torque. They expect up to 600 Nm compared to 350 today. That sounds like a lot of torque. If the MGU-K can have 200 Nm obviously 400 Nm can come from the ICE. Btw. I have not found the figure of 120 kW for the MGU-K in the regulations. It is only in the drawing and that means we may not have a legal limit of 120 kW. What if the MGU-K can be over loaded in qualifying? That is not at all technically inconceivable. As Wuzak tells us the data in 5.2.3 stipulate that you can get 1047 kW from the MGU-K. That is unrealistic but what happens if they can put between 120 and 200 kW through it?
The torque data from Pirelli are also interesting. If you take 200 Nm for the MGU-K away - assuming it has no gearing - you get 460 kW at 11000 rpm from the residual 400 Nm torque or 617 bhp.
All of this leads me to believe that Luca Marmorini from Ferrari is not very wrong in his assumption that ICE power will be around 600-650 bhp.