Red Bull exceed fuel flow limit, Ricciardo DSQ at Australian GP

[e30ernest]

If Red Bull wins the appeal then the FIA should simply scrap the fuel flow limit. It'll remove any unintended advantages of teams doctoring fuel numbers to their advantage. The maximum fuel capacity and engine reliability rules should be enough to keep maximum power in-check. The added strategy layer for fuel usage would spice-up racing in my opinion.

For those arguing that such changes would bring about 1000+bhp engines, it won't be as bad as it sounds. That kind of power would only come at short bursts, maybe at the straights. On other parts of the circuit, that much power won't be an advantage anyway. Cars are already traction limited as they currently are. Prolonged running at that power setting would kill tires and compromise the overall race due to the fuel limit. It'll also ruin future races due to potential reliability issues.

[Juzh]

Cool, so we agree, bullshit on 4-6% then.

Why wouldn't we agree? 4% inaccuracy is just bonkers and would mean a slam dunk win for RB on appeal. Even the FIA isn't that stupid.

[dans79]

Why "outraged"?

IMO RBR fans have come to expect nothing less than dominance, and they will freak out when the FIA puts them in their place.

[Tim.Wright]

Cool, so we agree, bullshit on 4-6% then.

Why wouldn't we agree? 4% inaccuracy is just bonkers and would mean a slam dunk win for RB on appeal. Even the FIA isn't that stupid.

Obviously someone has drawn a wrong conclusion from Wolff's comments of running at 96%.

Even with a perfectly accurate sensor, you need to run with some margin for spikes. That margin is nothing to do with sensor accuracy, and everything to do with the system dynamics.

You can't imply the sensor's inacuracy by the size of that margin.

[ebare]

What you fail to understand is that following procedure is everything. Whatever else they may or may not be guilty of they are guilty of failing to follow procedure. Seriously, next time you are given instructions by a policeman or your boss, fair or otherwise, please refuse, and see where it gets you.

I have already agreed, that's why i wrote "that’s the only thing you can accuse them of." Well, at least right now. As for the policeman or my boss instructions, despite not being a lecturer in legal matters (or in any other, for what matters) around the world, is fairly safe to assume that at least in all the western world there is the constitutional right to resist as it is in my country. It all depends on the order. If my boss took my chair away and ordered me to henceforth seat on the tip of spear, i had the right to say no.

P.S. Next time you want to make a point don't use just smilies, use neon font colors as well. Just in case.

For some people that wouldn't be enough, it is a good idea though.

[ebare]

Cool, so we agree, bullshit on 4-6% then.

Why wouldn't we agree? 4% inaccuracy is just bonkers and would mean a slam dunk win for RB on appeal. Even the FIA isn't that stupid.

Obviously someone has drawn a wrong conclusion from Wolff's comments of running at 96%.

Even with a perfectly accurate sensor, you need to run with some margin for spikes. That margin is nothing to do with sensor accuracy, and everything to do with the system dynamics.

You can't imply the sensor's inacuracy by the size of that margin.

An unidentified source from RB claims it was about 2%.

[beelsebob]

An unidentified source from RB claims it was about 2%.

2% different from what they recorded though, not (necessarily) 2% different from the actual flow rate.

[thomin]

This let no doubt about, it is pure wishful thinking. Do you seriously believe that them, or any other team, would risk disqualification based on hunches? If you don’t take in consideration the tech side, at least think of the money involved. There’s no room for hunches. If RB relinquished the FIA FFM, they must have had very good reasons to do it.

I'm not saying that they didn't have good reasons. But they might very well be of a completely different nature, like the knowledge that they wouldn't get any points with a legal setting, be it because of a lack of power or the likely possibility of a DNF.

If you have nothing to lose, you may as well go for it. Particularly if you have doubts regarding you ability to be competitive with the rules as they are.

Now let´s reason the other way around for a while. Imagine that RB can prove in court that they were always within legal flow rate and relying on wrong reading from the FFM, on an unofficial source from the team words, would have unduly cost them about 2%. Remembering my (lack of) degree again here some basic calculations, if this means 2% of the power of the engine, it means about 12 HP. As the weight/horsepower is about even in a race distance, taking in account that the engine only produces about 80% of the power available, this would meant about 9 HP less. Don’t know how much this kind of imposed sandbagging would had cost them in lap time, but be it 2,3 or 4 cents a lap, but, yet and again, if they can prove they were always within the regulations, i would say they have a pretty good case.

First of all, I'm not sure that it will be enough to prove that they were within the 100kg/h limit, as the Technical Directive defines that as 100kg/h according to the FIA FFM. So even if they could prove their point, they'd also basically need to get the court to acknowledge that Technical Directives are null and void. The consequences for F1 would be monumental.

Secondly, even so, it should be virtually impossible to prove their point, because the only independent sensor in there is the FFM.

Lastly, you can only measure fuel flow over a certain amount of time. The FIA measures it per 0.2 seconds. But that's not in the rules either, this is also a Technical Directive. So if they wanted to, they could get technical on Red Bull's ass as well and just look very closely at their fuel consumption, say microsecond territory. The smaller the interval they'll look at, the unlikelier that Red Bull could stay below the 100kg/h threshold even if they wanted to.

[thomin]

So I have been thinking about the interval the FIA measures: 0.2 sec and how an offset of that interval with the injection frequency could influence the measurement.

The less injection operations there are, the more this offset could come into play. The fuel flow limit comes into play at 10500rpm. In order to get even numbers, I used 10800rpm which equates to 36 rotations per 0.2 second interval . Assuming that with one rotation there is also one injection, that means 36 injections per 0.2 seconds (actually, it would be 6 injections per rotation, one for each cylinder, but that distinction isn't important for this calculation).

100kg/h translates into 5.55555g/0.2s, that's 0.15432g per rotation. However, if there's an offset, say the measurement starts just before the first injection instead of just after the last, then we will also have one more rotation at the end within the interval. That means that our measurements alternate: In one 0.2 second interval, we'll measure 35 injections, in the next 37. If we'd always measure 36 injections, we'd be perfectly within the legal limits. However, the 37 injections that take place every other interval throw us off. If you do the math, it translates to 102.7777 kg/h which would be over the limit. The next interval would make up for it with 97.2222 kg/h, but the rules say that the teams mustn't exceed the 100 kg/h at any point.

I could imagine that since Red Bull calculated their measurements by their injection system, they'd always automatically arrive at the most convenient intervals, as they'd always start right with an injection, so in this example, their intervals would always have 36 rotations and therefore 36 injections. The FFM however is detached from the injectors, the interval it samples is therefore random, so it is extremely likely to be out of sync and therefore to detect an alternating pattern: 35 injections, followed by 37 injections, followed by 35 injections, etc.
The teams would therefore have had to reduce their fuel flow so that they'd be legal at 37 rotations per 0.2 seconds even if they were only running 36 rotations, because if the measurement isn't perfectly in sync with the injection rhythm, you will measure 37 rotations for every other measurement. That would translate to 97.297 kg/h according to their own in-sync measurements.

EDIT: Thinking about it once more, the FFM wouldn't necessarily measure an alternating set of rotations, i.e. 35-37-35-37-35-37. If the offset is small, it could also be like this: 36-36-...-36-37-35-36-36-...
But the point remains. Unless it's perfectly in sync with the injection mechanism, it will eventually run into one interval with more injections.

[beelsebob]

So I have been thinking about the interval the FIA measures: 0.2 sec and how an offset of that interval with the injection frequency could influence the measurement.

The less injection operations there are, the more this offset could come into play. The fuel flow limit comes into play at 10500rpm. In order to get even numbers, I used 10800rpm which equates to 36 rotations per 0.2 second interval . Assuming that with one rotation there is also one injection, that means 36 injections per 0.2 seconds (actually, it would be 6 injections per rotation, one for each cylinder, but that distinction isn't important for this calculation).

100kg/h translates into 5.55555g/0.2s, that's 0.15432g per rotation. However, if there's an offset, say the measurement starts just before the first injection instead of just after the last, then we will also have one more rotation at the end within the interval. That means that our measurements alternate: In one 0.2 second interval, we'll measure 35 injections, in the next 37. If we'd always measure 36 injections, we'd be perfectly within the legal limits. However, the 37 injections that take place every other interval throw us off. If you do the math, it translates to 102.7777 kg/h which would be over the limit. The next interval would make up for it with 97.2222 kg/h, but the rules say that the teams mustn't exceed the 100 kg/h at any point.

I could imagine that since Red Bull calculated their measurements by their injection system, they'd always automatically arrive at the most convenient intervals, as they'd always start right with an injection, so in this example, their intervals would always have 36 rotations and therefore 36 injections. The FFM however is detached from the injectors, the interval it samples is therefore random, so it is extremely likely to be out of sync and therefore to detect an alternating pattern: 35 injections, followed by 37 injections, followed by 35 injections, etc.
The teams would therefore have had to reduce their fuel flow so that they'd be legal at 37 rotations per 0.2 seconds even if they were only running 36 rotations, because if the measurement isn't perfectly in sync with the injection rhythm, you will measure 37 rotations for every other measurement. That would translate to 97.297 kg/h according to their own in-sync measurements.

I believe the 6 injections per cycle is important here. It means that you're talking about 217 injections vs 216, i.e. a 0.4% variation, rather than the 2.78% you saw.

[thomin]

I believe the 6 injections per cycle is important here. It means that you're talking about 217 injections vs 216, i.e. a 0.4% variation, rather than the 2.78% you saw.

But those 6 injections always happen in-sync....I don't think it'll make much of a difference either way: In the worst case, we could still end up with all 6 additional injections per 0.2 sec interval, though it would be more likely to only get 3 additional injections per interval. But eventually, we will get all 6 and that is the worst case that teams have to prepare for.

Be that as it may, this is just a thought experiment in order to show how a fuel sensor that isn't in sync with the injection mechanism can produce varying numbers because it doesn't perfectly overlap with the injection cycle.

[Dragonfly]

You can't have 6 injections per rotation. This is a 4 stroke engine.

[thomin]

You can't have 6 injections per rotation. This is a 4 stroke engine.

Yeah, you're right, silly me...that was actually why I went for 36 rotations per 0.2 seconds, so that I can divide it by 4...but I somehow got lost in the numbers...

That would go on to increase the impact of an offset though...Instead of 36 injection events you'd have 9...or taking half rotations into account, instead of 72, you'd have 18.

That would translate to 105.555 kg/h in a cycle where you measure 19 instead of 18 injection events.

So on the extreme end, a team would have to reduce its internal fuel flow to 94.7368 kg/h in order to be on the safe side, which would be in line with what we heard form the various teams.

[dans79]

You can't have 6 injections per rotation. This is a 4 stroke engine.

+ 1 on this, a cylinder only fires once every 4 rotations of the crank.

[Richard]

So I have been thinking .....

Have a read about aliasing ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing