To answer your question about what kind of sensor we are talking about: It is made by SenstronicsTM Limited from 2015 onwards is called the Flowsonic Elite Fuel Flow Sensor. It was made first by Gill Sensors in 2014, but FIA switched suppliers. SenstronicTM Limited is comprised of a group of people who have worked since 2009 on the development of the fuelflow sensor. More can be found here: https://www.reventec.com/fia-homologate ... r-f1-lmp1/Phil wrote: ↑06 Nov 2019, 12:37
Anyway - as for the sensors: It would be great to know to what tolerances these sensors operate in and how secretive the FIA are about things. Is it a sensor that has a spec, is manufactured by a specific company, perhaps even off-the-shelf where any competitor could gain knowledge on the tolerances, know-how on how it's being measured that then could be used to be exploit? Or are these sensors under top-level-secrecy and the teams can only assume?
Given that RedBull seems to suggest such a device could be built and could be in use by Ferrari makes me think the former, perhaps even to a degree that the sensors are perhaps just not that good in order to prevent manipulation on that level. That's just my take though. It's a very lucrative market and you can never be surprised to what lengths a fierce competitor might be willing to go to exploit the maximum out of the grey areas of the rules.
Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if they could be exploiting something like this or not. I just think we can not exclude Ferrari trying things to exploit advantages that may be going against the ethics of the rules.
I wasn't necessarily talking about a fuel sensor failing during the entire period. I was more thinking along the lines of failed reading at the interval point. E.g. there's data there, but the data is wrong. A wrong reading could be logged as a failed reading. Where would the threshold be at which the FIA says, ok, we've had N number of failed readings, something is up? Or would they put it down to what you suggested, e.g. normal activity due to hobling, vibrating car on a bumpy track? I quite frankly have no idea how precise these sensors are, therefore my question regarding the tolerances involved. And when we are talking sensors and electrical appliances, there are always tolerances involved (see the Vettel jump start sensor topic).This has been explained to death back in 2014. If and only if the official fuel sensor fails, there is a backup in place that makes use of the team's sensors.
The public is of course not privy to the tolerances. The teams will know the tolerances, even though neither the FIA or Senstronic will deny or confirm those tolerances. The sensor unit weights in at around 250 grams. We can deduce from that this is not a particular shielded one, although it will have been developed with keeping out some random electromagnetic interference from any devices around it.
In the first race of 2014 Red Bull did complain of wrong readings. It's not relevant here to rehussle that whole story, but just take from it there is backup system that only at the discretion of the FIA can be used. A sensor failing can mean a lot of things, from outright shutting down to giving weird readings on a regular base.
Also note that when I am talking about purposely sending electromagnetic pulses into a device to jam signals, I am not claiming devices on their own malfunction under racing conditions. I am perfectly aware all the electric devices in a F1 car work splendidly under these conditions. What I am saying (and this is completely my own opinion) is that if you have to design a way to send EM pulses into the fuelflow sensor in a none-conspicuous way, you will have a hard time to do so. Let us take the biggest rumor on that: there f1 sites out there claiming a loose outside wire would be able to send these send these precise pulses into the sensor and manipulate the readings in a precise way. I am not doubting at all you can make the wire do these pulses in exact manner, I am doubting it can reliably manipulate the readings. The pulses will have to travel a bit through material that is not intended to be traveling through (because again even though the sensor will not have lot of shielding, it is not designed to be influenced by it either)
Dans79 suggested they'd do it a much more blunt fashion and tinker directly with the sensor by putting a purposely build EM device on top of it and say the FIA would not necessarily find out. Yeah you can do that, but next to me doubting that the FIA would not notice (they do scrutineering after all), if you are going down that road why even bother. Replace the sensor with a visibly identical one that spits out incorrect readings in the first place.
Note these are no allegations towards Ferrari in any way.
