Mercedes AMG F1 W07

[e30ernest]

Maybe I missed the obvious, but if you are heating your brakes/axle to 200C with the aim of keeping your tires at 120C for longer, wouldn't you risk hitting and exceeding that 120C limit? Or are you just slowing down the cooldown times so that it is cooler but closer to 120C? If you are all limited at 120C, how can the "axle-warmer club" get a tire pressure advantage?

[Jolle]

The tire would never get to 200 to be fair.

Either way, RB are clearly doing it and not running afoul of any rules. My question is, why is the Mercedes way, without wheel and tire mounted, better?

That's what the amus article would have us believe.

What if, because Mercedes and all the other "drum brake heat teams" have better tire wear because they don't have to heat the brakes trough the tires on track? The extra energy to get them on operating temperature has to come from friction with the road. It's just a case of added energy that doesn't have to come out of the car or tires.

And yes, when you have your brakes on operating temp on the grid, it's better for your heated tires, but only because if you still have cold brakes, it'll cool them down.

No, just no.
The brake is heating the tire, not the tire heating the brake. The operating temp of the brakes is maintained by breaking, nothing else.
Preheating axle/brake does not have anything to do with the operation of the brakes. In the past (before the tire pressure limit) no one was heating the brakes on the grid, they were sometimes warmed in the garage and then during the introduction lap just by breaking.

Of course the heat doesn't go from rubber, to rim to brake. But the "old" way of warming brakes, hard braking, takes quite a bit of life out of the tire, therefore, you use the tire to warmup the brakes....

[basti313]

Maybe I missed the obvious, but if you are heating your brakes/axle to 200C with the aim of keeping your tires at 120C for longer, wouldn't you risk hitting and exceeding that 120C limit? Or are you just slowing down the cooldown times so that it is cooler but closer to 120C? If you are all limited at 120C, how can the "axle-warmer club" get a tire pressure advantage?

Yes, the heat transfer is low while the car is not moving, so not much danger to overheat the tire with the heated axle. I think it is more an attempt to get the rim hot. This should be easily achievable just because of the low heat capacity of the rim and the high heat capacity of the rubber. Like this the air temperature in the tire will slightly go up and raise the pressure.
The tire is not in danger as it is still in the blankets and they will switch off when the tire surface is getting too hot.

[SiLo]

The point is the tyres go on at the last minute and the brakes and the axle members are then subject to the air so they will have residual heat but cool quite quickly. So they check the pressure whilst everything is hot and the pressures are at their lowest legally at this point. Then the axle and wheel cool reducing pressure in the tyre one the car is moving via windage.

[Nickel]

There's a clear picture of red bull using the same device as Mercedes with a screw through the adjustment knob, which is cranked over to max like the merc version. The screen is blacked out but the knob is clearly set to the same position.

They haven't been penalized for exceeding the warm up temps. It thus stands to reason that the hub assembly of both cars is being heated to whatever temp by air at 200C.

The question then is why would you not want to soak the heat into the rim instead of just the hub?

Assume the carcass temp doesn't exceed 120C, why not dump heat into the rim?

Could it be because you want it to cool faster to achieve lower pressure by the time the lights turn out? Only keep the pressures up just as long as necessary?

[Racer X]

Can other teams copy the system fast enough before the FIA make it ilegal if they indeed do?

[basti313]

There's a clear picture of red bull using the same device as Mercedes with a screw through the adjustment knob, which is cranked over to max like the merc version. The screen is blacked out but the knob is clearly set to the same position.

They haven't been penalized for exceeding the warm up temps. It thus stands to reason that the hub assembly of both cars is being heated to whatever temp by air at 200C.

I think AMUS is on the wrong path and the pictures are misleading. The display on the Merc pictures clearly show 200°C. So the Leister Hotwind System is in temperature control mode, the red knob setting is not crucial.
The display on the same device on the RedBull is off. This means they have set the system to a certain temperature they want to hide. So it could be either higher or lower than on the Merc...I guess lower if the rim is not designed to keep the heat from the tire. Rim pics without the tire mounted would be nice to compare.

The question then is why would you not want to soak the heat into the rim instead of just the hub?

Assume the carcass temp doesn't exceed 120C, why not dump heat into the rim?

Could it be because you want it to cool faster to achieve lower pressure by the time the lights turn out? Only keep the pressures up just as long as necessary?

If you look at the rim pictures, you can see the holes in the rim. They say it is just for weight, but I do not believe this. This is a custom rim design, which is made on purpose. So I think you are on the right way: Heat up the rim inner part and have a "shield" inside the rim to protect the tire from too much heat. Like this the air temperature between rim inner part and shield can be higher than the tire temp. With heating the axle to 200°C this inner temperature is boosted just for the 5 minutes before the start, right when the tire is mounted and the pressure is measured by the FIA.

But the big question is still: If Merc has found the holy grail in pre start tire tricks....why are they even stronger on the second set of tires, which is measured in blankets in the box?

[giantfan10]

While red bull do it with the wheel and tire fitted. To me, this would seem the most logical way as the wheel and tire can soak up all the heat as well.

What would be the advantage of heating the hub assembly but not the wheel and tire?

The regs seem to state that the heat blankets can only go to 110 degrees, and this only for one hour. Surely hearing the rim with 200 degree air from the inside would be beneficial to the process? What am I missing?

Youre not missing anything . What Amus and others are saying is thatMercedes has invested the most into this method with Red bull second and Ferrari not so much.
Its designed to keep tire pressures high for only as long as it takes for the FIA to measure them...during the warmup lap and during grid formation all the temperatures are doing is falling (The artificial temp and pressure spikes ) along with tyre pressures.Im willing to bet that its a pretty precise operation.
Pirelli and the Fia monitoring tire pressures via sensors on a continuous basis in the near future will make this all useless anyway

[basti313]

Pirelli and the Fia monitoring tire pressures via sensors on a continuous basis in the near future will make this all useless anyway

Yes. The qestion is, why they are not putting an end to this immediately. FIA could forbid this axle heating because of safety reasons without any problems for the next race.

[giantfan10]

Pirelli and the Fia monitoring tire pressures via sensors on a continuous basis in the near future will make this all useless anyway

Yes. The qestion is, why they are not putting an end to this immediately. FIA could forbid this axle heating because of safety reasons without any problems for the next race.

Because there is nothing in the rules that deem it illegal to heat your axles would be my guess. The tires are at the Correct PSI when tested. Kind of like wings that pass the deflection test but still obviously flex under load at speed.

[basti313]

Pirelli and the Fia monitoring tire pressures via sensors on a continuous basis in the near future will make this all useless anyway

Yes. The qestion is, why they are not putting an end to this immediately. FIA could forbid this axle heating because of safety reasons without any problems for the next race.

Because there is nothing in the rules that deem it illegal to heat your axles would be my guess. The tires are at the Correct PSI when tested. Kind of like wings that pass the deflection test but still obviously flex under load at speed.

No, I do not think it is like this: Pirelli and the FIA introduced mandatory camber and pressure settings out of nothing, just because of security reasons. Now teams try to play with these security limits, so FIA can easily forbid these toys just because of the very same security reasons.
The same goes for the testing of the tire pressure: The testing procedure for flexing wings was changed from one race to the other (maybe two races in between...). They could just change the testing for the tires and test the starting tires in the blankets before they are mounted to the car and disallow pressure changes afterwards.

[Morteza]

Austria - Thursday

[Sevach]

Immediate change on how tire pressures are measured, pressures will be measured before the tires are installed on the cars.

[giantfan10]

Yes. The qestion is, why they are not putting an end to this immediately. FIA could forbid this axle heating because of safety reasons without any problems for the next race.

Because there is nothing in the rules that deem it illegal to heat your axles would be my guess. The tires are at the Correct PSI when tested. Kind of like wings that pass the deflection test but still obviously flex under load at speed.

No, I do not think it is like this: Pirelli and the FIA introduced mandatory camber and pressure settings out of nothing, just because of security reasons. Now teams try to play with these security limits, so FIA can easily forbid these toys just because of the very same security reasons.
The same goes for the testing of the tire pressure: The testing procedure for flexing wings was changed from one race to the other (maybe two races in between...). They could just change the testing for the tires and test the starting tires in the blankets before they are mounted to the car and disallow pressure changes afterwards.

The FIA needs to give this man a job thats exactly what they did!!!

[Thunder]

Mercedes with Toro Rosso style Wing Slots: https://twitter.com/AlbertFabrega/statu ... 4766211072 https://twitter.com/ScarbsTech/status/7 ... 7289283584