No, these kind of things are kept very quiet as I'm sure you can imagine.

thank you for the swift reply
hope everything ends up good

Ye guys are clowns- any reason to bash the FIA. To suggest that a guy holding a speed gun while the car is in the pitlane would be a better method is laughable. What happens when 10-20 cars come in at once?

Semi-naked ladies would be better.

I was going to suggest that the grid-girls be assign to check the speed of their own car. I would be all in favour of that!

Vettel claims he's innocent so immediately people chose his side?

It's interesting that Seb was the only person to fall foul of this... frankly it doesn't sound like much of a case when the other 19 drivers pited hundreds of times over the weekend and didn't have a problem.

I thought exactly the same thing. Two pit stops (more for some!) per car in the race, which works out to 40 and only ONE was wrong.

No, that's just Seb having a whinge because he lost out on a second place/possible win. Stop bashing the FIA for no reason to those who are!

he claimed that, after he and his team looked at his telemetry

Maybe the othe teams run with more margin? I guess it comes to how precise FiA promise that their measurments are, if they say max 0.5 km and Red Bull trust their own device to 100%, they set it to 99.5 kmh. If Red Bull have telemetry that proves Vettel did not speed, then I think we can at least consider the fact that he didn't instead of labelling him as a whiner.

As someone said earlier - the most logical thing would be to have the speed checked from the ECU directly and make random verification checks with external systems.

The car's electronics have only three ways to measure actual speed.

1) pitot tube

2) rotational speed of the front wheels

3) gps

Neither of those is even remotely close to a light barrier at the pit entry line in terms of accuracy. It doesn't surprise me at all, that there is different data from the telemetry. Doesn't make either way of measurement wrong per se. But it doesn't change the fact that he was caught for speeding either.

His explanation doesn't make sense still. There is no other way to measure speed objectively. Speed is distance per time. No matter if you use a radar gun or light barriers, this wont change.

As as I said in my post above, the FIAs error was in using a curved path to measure the path travelled by cars upon pit entry. not every car is going to follow this exact curved path and the straighter the path taken by a car, the less time it will take to pass through the timing beams at a fixed vehicle velocity (lets say 99.5 kmh). Vettel straightlined the curved path (more than others i suppose) and so his speed exceeded the "limit" while never actually being over 100 kmh.

But the FIA have already stated that they used the shortest path possible through the curve to give drivers some leeway. If the FIA used the shortest possible route around the curve then it doesn't matter how much more efficient his line was, he must've still been just busting the limit on entry.

If the FIA have made this error, why was no one else caught out? An error in measurement such as that would have, in all likelyhood, caused more than one false reading. And I very much doubt that Vettel took some strange line that no one else did, because if there's one thing that is reasonably obvious, all drivers will enter the pits using the quickest/shortest possible route.

But a curved path is longer than a straight line between the same points. You cannot "short-cut" a properly set up light barrier speed trap so that it records you faster as you really were. That's physically impossible.

But a curved path is longer than a straight line between the same points. You cannot "short-cut" a properly set up light barrier speed trap so that it records you faster as you really were. That's physically impossible.

Then, to avoid any doubt, cars should enter grooves in the asphalt and travel exactly the same distance.
100 km/h is ~27.778 m/s; time to travel 100 m is ~3.60 seconds.
101.4 km/h is ~28.167 m/s; time to travel 100 m is ~3.55 seconds.
So for 100 m the difference is 5 hundredths of a second.
Don't know how long is the zone of measurement in Singapore, but if it is not a straight line, it's not impossible to gain a bit of distance
0.389 m/s * 3.55 = 1.380 m gain per 100.


We can't be sure that all who had a marginal overspeed have been penalized.

I believe they mean the distance (straight line) bewteen the two points differs form the length the FIA uses. The FIA uses the length of the curved path for their measurements.

Not according to Whiting http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?s=&a...t&p=3896816
surely the shortest possible routeis a straight line?

I guess then its simply a case of Whiting's word against the telemetry/word of Sebastian, because their statements seem to oppose each other! i will try and find out more about the pit entry.

That wouldn't give you a sporting advantage but it would compromise safety, and the FIA should make sure none of those exists.

Some drivers will get differing reactions.

I wonder people would leap to Nakajima or Buemi's defence.

Yes, if the radar is designed to track only one object at a time

But they say they do the precise opposite, although they could of course be lying.

BTW, does anyone know 'for sure' what the speed limit was during the Singapore race? Is there a place we can look for this information?
Asking because some guys at the local forum claim it was 80 km/h.

Isn't it a Vettel problem by cutting the curve instead of taking the proper longer line as a precaution, afterall vettel appears to be an expert in the operation of the FIA pit lane measuring system

it's the same as it is at every GP. This is an FIA sanctioned event, not a local club race where the rules are made up by the locals.

Lose 2 places just by attacking the pit lane curve to gain a mere 0.05-0.2s... typical Vettel over-aggressive driving brain fade.


The race track timing system measures to 0.0001s after all, so 0.05s is no problem for it to measure.

Nope, it's a fair question. Should be 100kph, but can be lower if the FIA deem it necessary.

His speed was too high when he crossed the line, simple as, I just wish he would just accept it instead of moaning.

From the AMuS article linked.

Charlie Whiting doesn't think the timing is done by beams.
So please, no more about beams.

The FIA's idiocy in this case is to time the cars through a curve.
Cutting the corner cuts time, but the machinery assumes the full distance - and computes an inaccurately fast speed.
Incompetant of the FIA to measure the speed thus on a corner that could be cut.

Red Bull's idiocy was to cut the corner, cold-bloodedly seeking an advantage, WHEN THEY KNEW this was how the speed was being measured!



Right, now to more significant stuff.
{Yes, of course Teflonso is involved - but this time as the one who lost out.}
Does this "induction" system use the same "timing transponder" that went 'on the blink' on Kimi's Ferrari at Hungary 08? When, ummm, as I recall, Kimi made up a surprising amount of time (almost 4 sec) on a pitstop? The replies given at the time (that the FIA use radar and timing beams) are now clearly shown up as fantasy.

Does pitlane speed measurement use the same timing transponder?
I think it looks like they might very well depend on the same item.
And if Ferrari realised this, they'd have known they couldn't be nailed for pitlane speeding, and heh, a pass is a pass ...
Of course if Ferrari didn't realise they had gained a stealth mode, they ought not to be in F1.

20 guys with speed guns?

I stand corrected

Not according to Einstein.

But I assume we are not needing to be that accurate. If the FIA have correctly calibrated their speed trap and assumed the shortest possible route between points A and B then Vettel cannot have passed through the speed trap under the speed limit. However, which is more accurate, the FIA speed trap or the car's telemetry?

I would assume (possibly wrongly) that the FIA would use multiple sensors that record the instantaneous speed of the car as well as the average speed. UK 'average speed cameras' do so. (Slightly off-topic - one the few pleasures left in motorway driving is watching deluded motorists slow down as they pass one 'average speed camera' before accelerating away only to brake hard for the next 'average speed camera'. "Oi, you! Numpty in the CLK; doing 40 past a camera in a 50 limit isn't going to stop the ticket coming through the letterbox when you do 95 between the cameras!")

First derivative of distance.

LOL, I get your drift, but, Radar, on sea, land and air, has been my life's work since 1964 and I can say that the only Radar which has been designed to track one target (track, not monitor) at a time is one that has so been allocated to a specific target.

In a military sense, there are only three types of Radar.

Makes you realise the penalty for pit-lane speeding could have been a lot tougher.

"Charlie, what's that gun-turret shaped thing next to the speed-trap?"

Don't worry about it, just keep your head down.....

Thanks, Clatter.
I knew I've seen it written somewhere.

Laser, or more correctly, LIDAR, measure the distance to an object and uses the change in distance to calculate the speed. The laser fires several pulses (typically infrared), and by measuring the time it takes for one pulse to travel to the object and back the distance can be calculated using the known velocity of light. Using more than one pulse, several distance readings can be used to calculate the speed of the object relative to the LIDAR unit.
A LIDAR handheld as used by the police is accurate down to about 2 km/h and it can only track the speed of one car at the time, radar based systems can handle more than one.

The doppler effect is dependant on that the object we're measuring the speed of is changing it's position relative to the observer. So there is always a time factor involved in a speed measurement, in other words, measured speed is always 'average speed'. The difference is over how long time the average is taken. 1 ms, 1 second, 1 hour?



The telemetry can only measure average speed like all other speed measurements. It's also a less accurate way to measure the speed of a car as you typically calculate the speed based on wheel rotation and a known wheel diameter.



A reason not to use telemetry is inaccuracy. Just because the measured speed is logged doesn't mean it's accurate.

Car speed is typically measured using hall effect wheel sensors. A toothed disc is rotating with the wheel shafts and a hall effect sensor detects a change in magnetic field as these tooths passes the sensor; this gives a frequency output which is related to the angular velocity of the wheel. This is converted to car speed using the known radius of the wheel. However, no consideration is taken for changes in wheel radius due various reasons. Secondly, this only shows the velocity of the wheel and the car can move faster or slower in relation to the velocity of the wheel.



The only speedometers which make use of air pressure is those used for airspeed as found in airplanes and helicopters, and these use the difference between static and dynamic pressure to measure the airspeed. Airspeed sensors measure the speed relative to the wind which is important for vehicles like airplanes as their wings generate lift dependant on airspeed. Regular cars measure the speed by wheel rotation, and these days the ABS systems supply the speed signal. With olders cars, the rotation of the output shaft of the gearbox was typically used for speed measurement. F1 cars also tend to be equipped with airspeed sensors, but that signal is not used by the driver.

Measuring the speed using timing over a known distance is very accurate given that you have measured the distance correctly.



A speed trap should in general be more accurate than car telemetry.

'Instantaneous speed' can't be measured.

OK, I admit it, you're even more pedantic than I am. You're right, 'instantaneous speed' can't be measured because, as you've more or less said, 'speed' is both distance and time related. But the time taken for a car to pass through a single timing beam is enough for F1 purposes.

I think the problem is with the margin of error of the speed trap and setting a reasonable threshold above which a penalty will be applied.
The timing transponder-loop system have accuracy up to 0.0001 second and when measuring lap times without considering the actual trajectory over the circuit it is more than enough. But it can't determine whether a driver has cut a corner and thus shortened the road.
If this discussion has to be kept on the right course, we must also know the length of the actual speed trap. The accuracy varies with length and if it is not a straight strip, the curvature also introduces some error.

Sounds like Charlie put his sensors just at the edge if the white line. So all that is needed is to warn the drivers about similar risks in the future. They have to stay within the lines to be safe, both on entry and on exit. Tough luck for Vettel, but setting the limiter at 99,5 sounds like a bit of a gamble.
Out of curiosity, how much could tyre wear affect the actual speed and do they compensate for that in entry/exit?

Even if there was an error in the timing, Red Bull are going to have a devil of a time proving that it cost Vettel position. He'd taken a chunk out of his diffuser - possibly damaging the floor in the process - and lost a wing mirror (which, while counting for little, the remains were a rather jagged shape and probably cost him a little speed), so even if he'd been running second or third, it's very likely Glock and/or Alonso would have caught him anyway.

If they are taking their speed via the pitot then tyre wear is irrelevant, but wind speed could screw the measurement.

Well remembered. Worthy of it's own thread I think.

Maybe they should all take clases of a certain Michael Schumacher how to enter a pitlane in supersonic mode without breaching speeding rules.

What is it with those current drivers and not wanting help

Transparency. Instead of making a few choice quotes to the press the FIA should use some of it's approx $400,000,000 assets to run some demonstrations and an investigation into any possible improvements.

No, that is rubbish. You cannot short-cut a speed trap. No matter if it's beams, induction loops or a radar gun. The speed trap measures the time it took you to drive a certain distance. The distance is a straight line. Either it's perpendicular to the beams/loops or it's the line of sight of the radar gun. This straight line you can not cut with a car.

If you drive a curve while the measuring is being done maybe the radar gun would see that. Any other method wouldn't and thus would show your speed even slower than it really was. So entering the pit as Vettel claimed he did would only trick the speed trap in his favor, not to his detriment.