tangodjango wrote: ↑07 Oct 2020, 23:01
Mudflap wrote: ↑06 Oct 2020, 18:57
For those who still believe oil burning is a thing:
Assume the car burns 0.9l of oil (300km race, 0.3l/km) per race and assume a team somehow manages to formulate an oil blend with the same heating values as fuel (say 45MJ/kg) which the FIA somehow fails to notice. Say 50 laps per race, 100s per lap gives roughly 6.5kW available in this fuel/oil per lap at 800kg/m^3 oil density.
Now say this can be converted with some 25% efficiency given than it can only find its way into the combustion chamber by going past the rings and hence will burn very poorly. That's about 2 horsepower.
Do you still think this is something that can be exploited ?
Seems like solid proof to me. The flipside is: your calculation applies to previous seasons too.
Since the issue is the ratio of *usable energy* vs *mass of the extra oil*, consuming 5l of oil won't show any benefits over 0.9l. You'd still struggle to break even on laptime either way. This was just as true in 2016 as it is today. Burning oil for its energy content has never made sense.
...Yet they clearly did it anyway. Oil consumption in the last year of the V8s was ~0.2l/100km if I remember, so the gobs Merc were using in '16 clearly weren't from natural consequence. Some other mechanism was in play that made over-consuming oil advantageous despite the extra weight.
"Oil burning as a delivery system for illegal fuel additives" has always been the far more likely explanation. Accomplishing that with only 0.3l/100 km would take some super-clever chemistry, but it's probably no longer an impossible scenario. It's most likely achievable.
You are forgetting that:
A. They were allowed to return the blowby to the turbo inlet. This meant that the oil could be well mixed with the air and so would burn much better.
B. Oil composition was unregulated. For what we know they could have used rocket fuel for oil and FIA would not have batted an eyelid.
C. If used for a qualy lap the mass penalty would have probably been tiny compared to potential benefits.
Going back to the N/A era, Honda say that in 2003 their qualy engine oil consumption was over 3l/100km and 1l/100 km during race. By 2006 they managed to achieve 0.66l/100km.
Keep in mind these engines had less than half the cylinder pressure of turbo engines, about 4 times less mileage and never knocked!
Current engines experience higher ring temperatures, pressures and are required to last much longer. This means that over the life of the engine the rings lose a very significant chunk of their tangential force. I am actually surprised they manage to achieve the current levels of oil consumption.
Does this mean the engine has no oil consumption? 
