http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/news...001151150.shtml

Sebastian Vettel does not think he sped in the pitlane last Sunday in Singapore. The Red Bull driver's already slight championship chances diminished yet further under the Singapore floodlights, where he received a drive-through penalty for breaching the pitlane speed limit by 1.4kmh.

Team officials unofficially protested the infringement after the race, showing the stewards and race director Charlie Whiting telemetry that did not back up the speeding.

Vettel told the German news agency SID on Thursday that he believes there was a "measuring error" by the FIA.

"I hope the same thing doesn't happy to anyone else in the future," he said. "The speed limit should be independent of the track on which you're driving."

He is referring to the fact that pitlane speed is not measured by laser or radar, but rather by measuring the time it takes cars to travel through various fixed segments

"We have data from our car that shows clearly that we didn't exceed the speed limit," said Vettel, whose Renault powered car is limited electronically in the pitlane to 99.5kmh.

"Drivers take different lines in the pitlane. In the (Singapore) pit entry there was a line which you could drive over. Some did it a little, others a little bit more, like myself. It was completely legal," he explained.

Cutting the pitlane curve, Vettel believes, had the result of making it appear he went too fast through one of the timed segments.



I am amazed to learn that, there is no speed guns or laser guns to measure pit lane speed??
and they measure it by just measuring total time taken to get from point A to B?
Vettel just cut the pitlane curve and he was handed with a speeding penalty?

what is going on with this primitive method?

If true, terrible and unacceptable.
Why are there no penalties and punishement when FIA fails the sport?

You do realise that the only way to measure speed is to use the time travelled between two points?

If this is true then couldnt Red Bull protest the penalty during the race?

they could place speed guns head on and also keep rows of it from pit entry to pit exit...maybe 10 meters apart?

That's F1

Radar measuring 2015
HD 2016

But apparently, in this case, the distance between the points can vary, without the driver breaking a rule.

Well, you can't touch the white line on the pit exit, so you can't touch the white line on pit entry? Apparently so...

Not true sir. That can only measure an average speed, not a minimum or a maximum speed. The only way that can accurately measure speed at any given point is by using Doppler waves, either from Radar or for greater accuracy Laser.

first define speed, then we talk again

we are talking about a curved pitlane
which can be taken differently, the curve providing people to stick their one tyre over the line....and reducing the total time taken for it

Where is the corner he must have cut to alter his line in the pitlane? I thought the controlled speed zone was a straight line?

speed=distance /time

but the Distance shud be same for evryone
with a curved pitlane the distance can be fractionally smaller and longer for each car!
so the speed will change .....and causing a miscalculation

nope its a small curve

Great, another example of the FIA not running the sport as well as it could be.

I'm blown away that they check the speed of the cars via that archaic method of doing timed segments. With that sort of system, a driver actually could speed by quite a bit in the pit lane provided their average speed stayed under 100km/h

I'd have thought they'd stop using that at least 15 years ago

I get your drift I think, but, can I ask you to define your two points in the context of speeding in the pit lane?

It looks like a major screw up if a bit of the pit line was curved and no clarification was given over what will be considered 'above' the limit. But it's hardly surprising if you consider how badly the pitalne was designed in the first place (ask Heidfeld).

Any pics? Lots of pitlanes have curves at either end but the controlled zone is normally a straight line. If this is true, it puzzles me that Vettel was the only person to be caught all weekend.

absolutely it could. Especially a 1.9 km/h difference (assuming they are limited, like they said to 99.5 and went 1.4 over).

Especially if the distance they measure is short, the potential for error becomes greater the smaller the section

It appears Red Bull knew how pitlane speeds were/are measured. They should've taken the necessary precautions.

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-...en-1416896.html

Whiting: "In that segment we calculate the shortest possible route, to give the competitor the benefit of the doubt."

The stewards believe that Vettel simply braked too late.

Whiting: "The drivers don't know where these induction loops are located. Those who are too fast at the entry point can't keep that up until the end of the segment, even if the speed limiter is set below 100 km/h."

One Engineer believes that his wheels may have looked up for a tiny moment after a hard braking maneuver, which may have miscalculated the speed and as a result would have increased the speed by the speedometer. Subsequently, if the speed of the car exceeded the speed measured at the wheels, it would have been their own fault.

it all a moot point anyway, you can't appeal drive through penalties. From now on just make sure you know where they are measuring the speed and adjust accordingly.

speed = distance/ time only gives you the average speed. The instanteneous speed at any point can be greater than the pit lane speed limit and yet have an average speed that is legal. Telemetry is the only way to measure instanteneous speed. Not sure why FIA don't use it. As far as competition goes, as long as the average speed is OK, the driver won't get any advantage as he will take exactly the same time as anyone else to go through the pits, on the other hand it's the safety of the people in the pits which is the concern so having an instanteneous speed greater than the speed limit should be penalised.

I can't believe that the FIA are using induction loops. Something as high tech as Formula One and they use such primitive technology for something that could influence a competitor's race?

Just use a radar gun so that the error term is minimised.

If they use one radar to measure it then you could in theory have drivers slowing down for the camera and speeding up slightly when they are past it.... just as many do on the roads. The only solution would be to have them at intervals down the pit lane. I dont know how workable that is? They would have to be mounted overhead as either side of the pitlane is to busy to have anywhere to locate them.

How long has the present system been running? If its the only ever failure then I would be inclined to say it probably doesnt need reviewing that badly!

Have an official standing at the end of the speed limit use a hand held radar gun to track the cars from the moment they enter pit lane.

moot in terms of race results, for sure.

But it brings to light the manner in which speeds are checked in the pitlane. At least, it's new to me. Perhaps a bit of controversy (much as I've completely exhausted my tolerance for controversy...) might bring about a better way to check speeds?

The system must be accurate and it must be trusted by the teams to allow them to use only a 0.5km/h safety margin.

That wont work....

what happens when you have more than one car in at once?

Nope. If you use the Doppler effect, as bats or police radars do, you get the velocity from the shift in frequency.

That said, a measurement of the average velocity, obtained dividing distance over time, is more accurate if you want to catch speeders. An instantaneous velocity (measured using Doppler effect) over the limit can be explained as a puntual anomaly or something, but if you run the 100m in the pitlane in less than 4s your speed has been greater than 25m/s. No buts, no ifs.

In fact, after many years of police radars, in some countries (UK and Spain, for instance; I think in Italy they are already in use) the police is going to install detectors of average velocities. They put cameras taking photos at the entrance and the exit of a tunnel, with precise synchronized clocks. If the interval between your photos is smaller than the one allowed by the speed limit, you'll get a fine.

So as long as you're the driver behind, you can make up a bit of time in the pitlane while the guy in front gets scanned. Nice.

just like I do on the highways...

sorry..motorways for you folks across the pond

Do you think that Radar at aircraft control towers only track one aircraft at a time.

Instead of Radar guns or Induction Loops what about this solution:

1) The cars use MES ECU
2) The telemetry data is available to the teams so could be available to the FIA
3) Why not just use telemetry data?

Glad you clarified because otherwise I would have been doing -100kph.

no, although my local airport (Heathrow) has moved on from 'men-holding-a-radar-gun' technology.

Phew!, that's a relief. I live on one of the flight paths to that airport.

The typical police radar gun would indeed have a problem with multiple cars...they don't unequivocally know which car is the one registering the speed the see (the gun pretty much just shows the highest speed it sees). The easy solution here is to use a laser speed finder where the spot of the laser is small enough that it can be targeted on one car at a time. The only downside is that you need enough hand held units to track as many cars as are in pit lane at once.

I rather doubt the FIA is going to spring for a multi-target radar tracking system...

My point when I said it wouldnt work was in response to the comment about some guy stood in the pits with a speed gun. Targeting a gun down the length of a pit lane on a single car wont be very easy for hand held, no matter how small the laser spot, especially when theres another car infront partially blocking a lot of the view to target a lazer. What happens when you get a stafey car and everyone pours in? Hand held is not the way to go under any circumstances. To much room for error.

I dont see any problems with the current system, even if it is fallible on rare occasion it seems the most practical way to do it and as I said this is the first I have ever heard of it getting the facts wrong. Is it the first time does anyone know?

I think Vettel is wrong. From what I know the measuring is done with beams. That's what the police is using too on highways. The beams are parallel and the fastest way to pass them is in a 90° angle. If you're passing them in another angle, for example because you cut the corner a little bit, than the recorded speed will be even lower than your real speed.

Considering it's only 1.4 (respectively 1.9) km/h I'd say Vettel just braked too late. Than the system limited him to 99.5 km/h but only very shortly after the speed trap. This is the only reasonable explanation. The other one would be the FIA not using parallel beams, which I doubt, because that would mean they were completely retarded.

Maybe I have to put a precautionary tin foil hat, but
... the qualification part 3 was red flagged with 26 seconds to go. Yellow flags would be sufficient with no time for more laps. Only difference is that red flag nullified Vettel's last lap and there was high probability he'd beat Hamilton who would inevitably suffer from an yellow flag.
Don't beat me too hard.
Everything can happen in F1 and it usually does. Murray Walker said it, not me.

I'd wondered for ages how they checked the speed, never realised it was an average over a distance. I think they should have speed cameras all along the pit, so that there is a nice big flash each time someone breaks the limit.

When pit lane speed was made mandatory (Monaco 1994), they used a speed camera mounted on a tripod.

Didn't know that they had reverted to such basic forms of measuring speed.

It's like with regular cars, the speedometer is based (from memory) on the pressure applied by air into a spring which moves the dial into a predefined position.

If the air density is different from the air density where the speedometer was calibrated then a certain error will be present.

Sometimes F1 does not feel like F1 at all...

great topic! feel so sad for sebas. really deserved the win or second place at least. thanks FIA!

I think the FIA are correct here.

Is there an error tolerance and is it written in the rules? Every system has a its precision. 1.4 km/h is 1.4% of 100.

In honesty i'm not sure, unfortunatly I know you can be caught being 0.6 km/h over, ill try and find out.

Surprising indeed. Apart from the systems in place,doing away with some of those awkward pit entry and exit lanes might help..

Cutting the corner would not register a lower speed because you effectively reduce the time taken to get from beam A to beam B. the FIA define the distance between point A and B as a fixed value along the curved track, so since speed is distance/time and distance is a fixed value, reducing the time taken will give a higher speed. the matter is as simple as that, trust me.

Andy sorry to go offtopic, do you know anything about Kimi to mclaren deal?

On topic

how can the FIA be so sure about the speed, even without a speed gun?