20 replies to this topic

[Ross Stonefeld]

Traction control is being legalised under the guise that its impossible to police. Logical

I was watching a video from the Jerez testing and it was indicating with a fade in-out which clip was TC which wasnt. The TC equipped cars were making a very rev limiter-ish noise when it kicked in.

Now my question...

If this is what it sounds like how come there's been so much acrimony? I think it'd be easy to identify who has it the first time they got on the gas. So why does legal TC sound so obvious but illegal doesnt? [p][Edited by Ross Stonefeld on 01-18-2001]

[Ali_G]

I am guessing that in illegal TC instead of cutting revs, they acctually would just let 2 cylenders misfire as they did back in the early nineties. Misfiring two cylenders for a certain revolution will cut power and a noticable fall in the pitch of the engine does not occur as it is going at the same revs. It just gets slightly quieter.

Niall

[P1 Senna]

Ross, great points. I have been asking the same questions for some time now. TC is very distinct audibly (and sounds like crap). The reason the FIA are caving in is that they can't be bothered to do their job. They could police this, but choose not to.

Incidentally, the other day I was watching the 2000 Spa race again, and I found something interesting. At the end of lap 39, when Hakk was ruthlessly pulling in Schumi, they came out of the bus stop chicane with Schumacher in front. Hakkinen was on such a mission, that as he accelerated on the run to the start/finish line, his rear wheels stepped ever so slightly to the right, and he laid down 2 very distinct stripes of rubber - something that would not have happened if he were using TC. The only traction control Hakk was using that day was his own skill.

Watch it yourself and see. It's easy for people to say so and so is using TC. Talk is cheap, especially on these forums.;) How about some proof?? I've offered proof that McLaren were not using TC. Anyone have proof otherwise? And I'm not talking launch control here, I'm talking about real, full-blown TC systems that were banned in '94. You know, the kind where the driver just plants his right foot to the stop on corner exit and lets the computer modulate the power. How about it? Anyone have proof of active TC?

[Witt]

I think there are two different types of traction control. There is full blown traction control that cuts the cylinders out. That is the easiest and least expensive to build and install.

I think the FIA believes the teams have been using a more complicated form of traction control, one that does not cut out the cylinders, but rather limits the throttle input to the engine when it senses wheel spin. Using complex algorithm's in software that contains millions of lines of code (making it impossible for scrutineers to scrutinise), i can't see why this wouldn't be possible to do. F1 teams have massive budgets and can afford the computer genisuses that are capable of designing such complex and effective software for an F1 car. All this would be possible because F1 cars use fly-by-wire throttles, which mean the throttle goes through a computer anyway.

Now i'm not no computer genius so don't flame me if i'm wrong about all this, it just sounds possible to me using my limited knowledge about software as the basis of my argument.

Now, this is what confuses me. If the FIA found it too hard to police, then why the hell don't they just ban fly-by-wire throttles? Are they afraid that they will not be the cutting edge of racing technology? Cars are supposed to mechanical, not computerised, so i don't see why it would be a problem.

[Darren Galpin]

Witt is right - it is the fly by wire throttles and engine management systems which are making traction control difficult to detect. Just cutting the spark to a cylinder is a relatively crude way of achieving a power reduction, and isn't easily controllable in the amount of power it reduces. Using engine management sensors, you can detect when the wheels spin - the engine revs will rise in a recognisable way. When the sensors detect this, the software in the engine management can either lift the throttle slightly until the wheels grip, or lean off the engine slightly to achieve the same effect.

[Manson]

Cutting out cylinders is also very hard on the transmission, half shafts etc. Teams that use this method could see some serious reliability issues in this area. (Could this explain certain teams having drivetrain problems in 2000 I wonder) Drivers who continue to feather the throttle instead of just mashing it, may finish more races.

[AyePirate]

I wonder why they don't just mic the engines
and then analyse the audio. There should
be some sort of telltale signature like
the throttle fluctuating a 100 times faster
than a human could do it. The rub comes
in when the FIA decides how fast is
"humanly possible".

[NOvene]

Is there any difference between installing a system that helps the driver to a better clutch and the engine power control, and one that actually produce optimum clutch and perfect engine control?

Which is TC and which's not? Which is legal and which's illegal?

[Ali_G]

Yes but what Ross pointed out is why didn't these illegal cars sound like they were dropping revs. It was simpley cause they were letting engines misfire to drop power.

Niall

[355 boy]

P1 Senna - Just because a car has TC, it doesn't mean that it won't lay down any rubber at all. I'm not going to go into the physics, but a wheel that doesn't slip slightly will not move. Some slippage is required.

Also, if you notice, all the cars lay down rubber at the start, so by you're logic, no-one is using traction control...

You have not proved that TC is absent - I PERSONALLY have driven cars with TC that can lay down lines of rubber - that is not because the TC is rudimentary but beacuse it is by design.

[P1 Senna]

Originally posted by 355 boy
Also, if you notice, all the cars lay down rubber at the start, so by you're logic, no-one is using traction control...

If you will re-read my post, you'll see that I was not referring to launch control. Don't gimme your ;)

And without even looking at what I was talking about at Spa, you will disagree. Yet you offer no proof that active TC was in use, which was the point of my post. Like I said, talk is cheap.

[Clatter]

OK this may sound like a really silly question, but how does cutting the power help TC?

If only one wheel is slipping then you wouldnt want to lose power to the other, would you?? I can see how it would work if both wheels had lost grip and that would certainly be the case in a launch control system.

I thought that these days with electronic diffs (havnt a clue how they work) they used this to limit the power to the wheel that was slipping.

[Dimo]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
The TC equipped cars were making a very rev limiter-ish noise when it kicked in.

Not to mention that they can be spotted easily because of their wheels glowing green.;)

[desmo]

For optimal acceleration on a dry track something on the order of 10% wheel slippage is optimal for acceleration, therefore the presence of black marks on acceleration doesn't mean that TC is absent. The use of fly-by-wire throttles is not neccessary to implement TC, and in fact isn't even the best way as the inertia of the hydromechanical barrel throttles used in F1 would prevent the response time neccessary for optimal TC.

And for those who say that an audio sample would suffice to definitively prove the presence of a TC system, I invite you to write up the technical regs that would define precisely what constitutes the parameters that would be used to assume, de facto, that TC was present. In spite of what people assume, the FIA scrutineers are really quite clever and if there existed an easy way to police the TC regs, they would surely have been used.

[AyePirate]

That's why I said there is a "rub".

Even if you determine what is the
limit of human reaction, like they
do at track meets to determine a
false start, this still leaves it
open for a system that allows an
average driver to throttle control
at a Senna level and still be
within "human limits".

[Ross Stonefeld]

So if the sputtering-method is so crude and hard on the car, why do they use it?

[RedFever]

Button the other day was playing down the entire TC issue in terms of its impact on talent. He said that it's not a big deal. Even if it helps somewhat in accelerating, specially if wet, he feels it will do very little to flatten talent, as the best drivers will still be able to take advantage of it better than regular drivers, since driving an F1 at the limit is not just about accelerating, but control and reflex as well. I guess he should have an idea of what he is talking about.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Relevance factor is .05 captain!

[Yelnats]

Frans had a point with his green brake rotors a few years ago. A very simple and effective form of TC can be achieved by braking the slipping wheel subtly but nowhere near enough to produce a brilliant glowing disk (green or red!). But as this requires some pretty obvious mechanical interferance with the lateral brake preasure distributuion, it would be easy detected in tech inspection.

Illegal TC probably involves the modulation of the throttle position at the engine along with control of the lateral tourque split by the electronicly controlled differential. This would produce an exhast note almost indistiguishable from a driver controling the throttle as long as it's modulation rate wasn't too fast.

A TC that cuts power to the cylinders has the advantage of being detectable by the driver also. Inaudible TC systems must result in excessive throttle input by the driver to ensure maximum power delivery as he has no way of knowing when he has activated the system. This would complicate things compared to an audible TC that allows the driver to feed in just enough throttle to keep the TC on the boil and surely be a big advantage during testing and development.

[raffiki]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
So if the sputtering-method is so crude and hard on the car, why do they use it?

Because it was cheap and easy to produce.

The "Fly-By-Wire" TC system is by far the more efficient - and the throttle would not "Fluctuate" much... it would hunt a couple of times, then settle at a level. It would then repeatedly attempt to increase the power until eventually maximum were reached. The reason I know this? Because I worked on Tornado Aircraft for 13 years, and they use the exact same feedback loop to control both engine acceleration and pilot control inputs. The engine control is to prevent engine damage, and the pilot input control prevents the pilots inputs (however ham fisted) losing control of the plane. At low speeds, with the "SPILS" (Spin Prevention and Incidence Limiting System) enabled, the pilot can throw the stick left, right, and back, with virtually NO effect on the aircraft; because SPILS prevents those inputs ever reaching the controls.

Fly By Wire TC is exactly the same. BTW - the Tornado system does not use software... it is an analogue computer using feedback loops, requiring much less expertise to design, build and maintain than a software based digital solution. If they are going to use TC this year, my bet would be on an analogue feedback based system.

[Billy]

In 1993, Ford didn't allow Benetton to use the crude spluttering method of cutting cylinders because they thought it would be too hard on their engines. As the factory team, Benetton had no choice but to develop a better system. Ron Dennis at McLaren was just a customer, so he could do what he liked with the engines he bought. McLaren implemented the crude "cutting cylinders" TC well before Benetton, which certainly helped in the early season races. Schumacher got hold of the Benetton's newly developed "throttle intervention" TC at Monaco, and after trying it out said

"During this morning's session I experimented turning the traction control on and off, and I reckon it was worth 1.2 seconds a lap. In addition it gave a great boost to my confidence."

In the race, his engine blew up anyway!