planetf1.com

Morning all,

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but what was the advantage of not declaring Leclerc’s extra 5kg?

Can’t see the point.

B

It was likely just a mistake.

The only advantage would be if Ferrari were cheating the fuel sensors as speculated earlier in the season and using a higher than allowed flow rate.

DeepPyro69 wrote:Morning all,

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but what was the advantage of not declaring Leclerc’s extra 5kg?

Can’t see the point.

B

I imagine extra fuel allows you to run more agressive engine modes throughout the race, and also do less lift and coast. Of course the added weight would slow the car down but the benefits outweigh the downside I would think.

kleefton wrote:

DeepPyro69 wrote:Morning all,

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but what was the advantage of not declaring Leclerc’s extra 5kg?

Can’t see the point.

B

I imagine extra fuel allows you to run more agressive engine modes throughout the race, and also do less lift and coast. Of course the added weight would slow the car down but the benefits outweigh the downside I would think.

I'm not sure they would. At many circuits, teams have more than enough space in the fuel tank to reach the end of the race, but still run minimal fuel amounts rather than run extra fuel for a more aggressive engine mode.

kleefton wrote:I imagine extra fuel allows you to run more agressive engine modes throughout the race, and also do less lift and coast. Of course the added weight would slow the car down but the benefits outweigh the downside I would think.

I believe it's the other way around; the downsides outweigh the benefits. It's known that F1 teams don't fuel their cars to the maximum, so clearly they feel the saved weight is more important than being able to run rich for longer.

Teams do lift and coast because of the fact that saved weight is better than running a higher engine mode. Nobody makes them do it.

EDIT: An additional factor which wouldn't have come into play in Abu Dhabi is that running higher modes reduces the engine life, which is usually a key concern for teams over the course of the year. Leclerc's engine only needed to last the race, so there is that to consider.

Asphalt_World wrote:

kleefton wrote:

DeepPyro69 wrote:Morning all,

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but what was the advantage of not declaring Leclerc’s extra 5kg?

Can’t see the point.

B

I imagine extra fuel allows you to run more agressive engine modes throughout the race, and also do less lift and coast. Of course the added weight would slow the car down but the benefits outweigh the downside I would think.

I'm not sure they would. At many circuits, teams have more than enough space in the fuel tank to reach the end of the race, but still run minimal fuel amounts rather than run extra fuel for a more aggressive engine mode.

I guess some of the thinking is that the more aggressive engine mode requires fooling the ffs and running beyond the legal limit, using more fuel then is actually measured by the ffs.

Exediron wrote:

kleefton wrote:I imagine extra fuel allows you to run more agressive engine modes throughout the race, and also do less lift and coast. Of course the added weight would slow the car down but the benefits outweigh the downside I would think.

I believe it's the other way around; the downsides outweigh the benefits. It's known that F1 teams don't fuel their cars to the maximum, so clearly they feel the saved weight is more important than being able to run rich for longer.

Teams do lift and coast because of the fact that saved weight is better than running a higher engine mode. Nobody makes them do it.

EDIT: An additional factor which wouldn't have come into play in Abu Dhabi is that running higher modes reduces the engine life, which is usually a key concern for teams over the course of the year. Leclerc's engine only needed to last the race, so there is that to consider.

It also puts more strain to the tyres, reducing their life.

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

I dunno,

this is Ferrari. I remember when they entirely forgot to put any fuel in Massa's car for his qualifying run one year.

mikeyg123 wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

I dunno,

this is Ferrari. I remember when they entirely forgot to put any fuel in Massa's car for his qualifying run one year.

Hungary 2007, I think.

I don't understand why it's a rule.

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

Exediron wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

I don't think that any of us were aware that these was done in the first place but I did hear that more stringent checks were going to be done so maybe these checks in Abu Dhabi were not exactly the same?

Exediron wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

The tests were carried out starting this year but on a random selection. With that in mind, if a team was bold enough they could risk doing this every race. What I don't get is why would they declare 5kg less than what they put in the car. There is no limit if they want to put more fuel than the other teams, their engine may be thirstier than others for all we know, just declare the correct amount and there is no problem.

donr wrote:I don't understand why it's a rule.

It was introduced by the FIA this year. They haven't exactly advertised it nor explained why they have it, but here we are

Edit - Just to add that this article explains the procedure:

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferr ... i/4605643/

Quite a tedious procedure just before the race

pokerman wrote:

Exediron wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

I don't think that any of us were aware that these was done in the first place but I did hear that more stringent checks were going to be done so maybe these checks in Abu Dhabi were not exactly the same?

Not sure where you heard that, the tests are as per the link I provided above, they sound quite stringent as they are and no other TD has been issued regarding changing this process to my knowledge

Exediron wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

Different circuits have different characteristics, and it's not an essential part of the plan. They could over use strategically and underuse later on. The benefit comes for overtaking, in and out laps and qualifying hot laps - other laps (particularly on qualifying with the in and out laps) can fudge the sensor the other way.

Ferrari haven't given a list for all the times they've been tested - and this power gain has been a post summer break development so if the majority of the checks occurred before then, it wouldn't have mattered. If Singapore was another circuit, the over use could have been managed without having to over declare, particularly given how Ferrari pace managed that race (and the opening of Russia where they suddenly couldn't pull away from Mercedes after having over half a second in qualifying)

Abu Dhabi may well have been one of the few tracks where they actually needed to over fuel the car to get more gain than they would normally need to make up for the 6 tenths they were losing in sector 3. It's likely they have used it before, and have been saving the "it's not a rule" joker card to play the first time they got caught out.

Siao7 wrote:

pokerman wrote:

Exediron wrote:

Alienturnedhuman wrote:In terms of weight, 1kg of unnecessary weight costs 2 seconds per race distance. Therefore 5kg extra weight equates to a race time of 10 seconds slower than without it.

This is why it is very hard to believe this happened by accident - because an unnecessary 10 seconds on a race time is an ice age in Formula 1, teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to claw back a tenth or two a lap, so if an engineer did just accidentally overfill the car to the tune of nearly 5kg they probably wouldn't be doing that job again.

However the belief here is that Ferrari were under-declaring on fuel so they could burn the excess during the race. They've be accused of interfering with the fuel flow sensors, enabling them to pass through more fuel to the engine than the sensors read, and in this case, if they had 105kg of fuel logged during the race, but actually burned 109.88kg.

In this situation, the bonus power from the fuel gives far more performance than is lost from the weight penalty (especially as that gets reduced during the race, it would only be about 4 seconds lost due to weight rather than 10 because each lap more and more of the 4.88kg is burned off) - the power advantage, as well as enabling them to overtake far more cars on the long Abu Dhabi straights, making traffic a trivial issue, would give them up to half a second a lap in extra performance. This is the suspicion for what they were doing.

It's impossible to prove it wasn't just a clumsy engineer overfilling the tank, but this isn't like filling your Ford Focus down at the local Shell garage, F1 cars are built to millimetre tolerances they aren't going to suddenly accidentally overfill a car by near 5% and add 5kg of unnecessary ballast.

If that's the case, how do you explain Ferrari's claim that this is the 10th time they've had their fuel checked and the first time they've failed the test? If over-fueling the car was a core part of their power gain, wouldn't you think it would have been detected before now?

I don't think that any of us were aware that these was done in the first place but I did hear that more stringent checks were going to be done so maybe these checks in Abu Dhabi were not exactly the same?

Not sure where you heard that, the tests are as per the link I provided above, they sound quite stringent as they are and no other TD has been issued regarding changing this process to my knowledge

Yes I've seen that now but it does say they have the right to weigh so I'm not sure they always carry out that procedure?

No they clearly said that more stringent tests were to be carried out which included the teams have to detail all the fluids being put in the car that relate to being hydrocarbons, all things that can be burnt in the combustion chamber of the engine.