slugmeister wrote:This my first post, so apologies for jumping straight in, but this topic touched on my F1 and fuel injection interests and experience.
I was at the Melbourne GP and a few things were of note. Working backwards to my point, the Renaults had horrible driveability and there was talk from drivers etc of engine mapping issues. Renault apparently made some late changes to their engine mapping. You could actually hear the problems at the track, on corner exit for example.
To my ears too, and some others, it did sound like the Merc and Ferrari had more revs at some parts of the track this year, but that's not been technically confirmed.
Im going to hypothesise that Merc and probably Ferrrari are indeed (somehow) using more fuel flow than is legal for certain parts of the rev range. The fuel flow through the meter remains legal at all times, and ECU log analysis looks legitimate too. However, through some trick at certain times more fuel can be injected than is legal based on some accumulation downstream of the meter. However, the trick is injection mapping related, or to utilise it the injection mapping must use legitimate sensor input (that is logged) but sort of ignore that and inject on what is really happening ( higher fuel pressure or more air mass or something).
Where is this coming from? Well I think Renault know how to get the increased fuel pressure, or that at certain times there will be higher fuel pressure, but they cant get an injection map that works reliably to use it. In short, Renault aren't programmatically able to exploit the trick yet, probably because injection mapping relies on using sensor input and religiously believing it - that is, its difficult programmatically. I think at the Melbourne GP they had some injection maps that were "experimental" (and probably they know aren't legitimate) and decided to go with them because they realised how far behind they were without this trick. However, these maps weren't quite working and Ricciardo et al struggled with "spiky power delivery" (sic). I even think that is possibly what lunched Ricciardos engine.
Post race Horner starts whining that Renault haven't delivered on their promises (to "cheat" as well?) and that theyre needs to be equalisation. Marko starts threatening to leave F1. Then, someone must have let the cat out of the bag, probably RBR or Renault to the FIA about some fuel flow trick, and bang a new directive comes out - pseudo equalisation? Any thoughts?
That is a good theory on why Renault would mess up that bad in Melbourne and being OK (weak but OK) in Malaysia.
The new rules will begin to be inforced in China, so no reason to blame Mercedes "poor" performance on it, though it was odd to see Ferrari smoking them on the high speed sectors.
The curiousity to see how Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault will perform in China is huge.
