FIA-Ferrari PU Statement Controversy

[turbof1]

The traction control saga cannot be compared with what is happing here. At that time ECU and Software were a free for all. At the present time, ECU and SOFTWARE used must be approved by the FIA before use.

They did start to hammer down on it in 1994. Traction control was outlawed, which does involve software. It only makes things more convoluted.

For the record, nowadays teams have incredible complex software which I wouldn't be surprised would be bordering on illegality on some fronts. For example, there is software involved for the PU that predicts where the car is on track and sets harvesting and energy output based on that.

[timbo]

The traction control saga cannot be compared with what is happing here. At that time ECU and Software were a free for all. At the present time ECU and SOFTWARE used must be approved by the FIA before use.

Please indicate the sporting or technical regulation, that says anything even close to this, I know of none!

The ECU is nothing more than a standardized ASIC, The fact that the FIA mandates and supplies a specifc one in itself means nothing, other than the teams are bound by what the hardware is capable of. In other words as long as the teams aren't doing something so computationally expensive that it maxes out the ECU's processing power, almost anything is possible.

Not to mention the FIA is not going through every line of code for every manufacture. They neither have the time nor the manpower for that. All they are doing is high level spot checks of maps and some sub systems, not detailed code reviews.

FIA has access to all the logs from the ECU, so if there are unusual events they can easily see this.

[saviour stivala]

Re the use of incredible complex software. An interesting article: “F1 traction control failsafe had role in Verstappen Monza power cut”. (Autosports Sept 11 2019).

[Capharol]

Re the use of incredible complex software. An interesting article: “F1 traction control failsafe had role in Verstappen Monza power cut”. (Autosports Sept 11 2019).

link to it...

[saviour stivala]

Read my link given.

[hollus]

What you provided is a quote, Savior. A link is clickable.
Here it is in link form:
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/14592 ... -power-cut
If Autosport gives problems, one could always just google the text quoted by savior, several versions are available.

[Just_a_fan]

So the FIA have a system in all the cars to prevent traction control? Sounds like it detects traction control type behaviour and then produces a standard throttle response. Presumably it gives a slow torque increase which is so slow that the teams will avoid it at all costs.

[dans79]

2020 FIA F1 technical regulations. Article 8: electrical systems.

Article 8 is a joke.

it amounts to nothing more than a requirement for teams to give them a copy of the software when its updated, so they FIA can review it if they see fit to.

I'm a developer by trade, any developer worth their salt could render these rules practically useless.

1. Removal all comments from the code base
2. Abstraction and randomization of varible, function, and class names
3. abstractions and generalization of algorithms to the point it's spaghetti code.

I've had to deal with issue like the above and it can take orders of magnitude more time to reverse engineer a code base than it originally took to create.

[dans79]

FIA has access to all the logs from the ECU, so if there are unusual events they can easily see this.

Most systems don't log everything they do. Most systems only log errors, or things that are required for potential later use. If you are going to do something illegal, you wouldn't log it, unless you want to get caught. Not to mention the entire point of aliasing is that it would look normal in the data that is logged.

[PlatinumZealot]

The hybrid cars are comparitvely quiet so you will hear the traction control if it was there. The problem is you have to separate the sound from the regular exhaust burbles.. Should be doable.

This how the V10 tractions control caused the engine to sound.. Traction control for the turbo cars would be trickier to dicern, especiallly if the MGUK is working too... But at the same time ECU logs are easy to monitor.

[saviour stivala]

"8.2.1: The ECU may only be used with FIA approved software". Does anybody believe that the FIA are going to approve a software that they do not know what it contains?.

[63l8qrrfy6]

"8.2.1: The ECU may only be used with FIA approved software". Does anybody believe that the FIA are going to approve a software that they do not know what it contains?.

Yes, absolutely.
Do you have any notion of how much effort would go into actually verifying every single bit of code that teams produce?

There is simply no practical way of checking it without a huge FIA/ third party software team.

[saviour stivala]

So the FIA approves the software being used without them knowing what it contains because of the hug effort it takes for the FIA to verify what it contains. And even so the FIA technical regulations states “8.2.1 that ECU may only be used with FIA approved software”.

[RZS10]

Remember that, if the official story is to be believed, the FIA needed help from Ferrari to understand their battery layout and how the system worked, even though all of it's operation must've already been in the code ...

[dans79]

So the FIA approves the software being used without them knowing what it contains because of the hug effort it takes for the FIA to verify what it contains. And even so the FIA technical regulations states “8.2.1 that ECU may only be used with FIA approved software”.

I'm sure they review it, but not at the level of detail you are assuming. Simply put, the teams are better staffed, better funded, and more skilled than the FIA, so slipping things by them would not be hard. Specially if what you are trying to get past them is obfuscated.