But if the deployment power is the same the deployment time must be roughly the same as the recovery time.
Four wheel drive in F1 is basically a non-starter due to strong opposition to it, so a front axle motor would more than likely be recovery only and then deployment goes through the rear motors only.
Same is true for Formula E's next ruleset for Gen3 (2023), for example, which will have up to 600 kW total braking recovery (250 front, 350 rear) and then deployment is capped at 300 kW in a race setting. I'd imagine that F1 would presumably follow the same type of arrangement.
Current F1 rules - if I'm not mistaken - are still that you can deploy up to 4MJ per lap whilst the MGU-K can recover up to 2MJ of that per lap. As a bit of a back of the envelope thing 2MJ is 0.55kWh, so with braking of 10 seconds you're talking about a ~200kW peak recovery, right? The system is then permitted to redeploy at 120 kW.
Seems like the idea in future F1 is to have a 50:50 split in delivered power from the motors and the ICE. If you had a 400 kW sized rear MGU and a second, recovery-only MGU on the front (lets say 200kW for arguments sake) you would easily be taking a big leap forward in MGU-K recovery potential from today's cars up to something like FE's planned 600kW.
600kW for 10 seconds is (theoretically) ~6MJ which would be +50% on the permitted combined per lap deployment today from both MGU-K and MGU-H combined. Deployment could then still be capped to the proposed 350 kW to extend the deployment phase.
In practice is a little more complicated, sure, but in theory that's how I'm seeing it.
Additionally, I honestly think the way the way the world is going will mean that we will see ever tighter development restrictions on the ICE side whilst more of the competitive focus and development budgets will go towards the ERS, since that's the bit that's relevant no matter whether you're selling hybrids, EVs or fuel cell vehicles.
At the end of the day, the current ERS regulations were written in 2012/13 and have barely changed since. They need the update.
Edited by Ben1445, 17 September 2021 - 09:00.