125 replies to this topic

[Singularity]

Is there any numbers for how much performance an engine lose every race?

The thing between Lewis and Max is that the grid spots are not so important, they will only fight each other anyway. A grid penalty will only delay that fight slightly.

[shure]

Is there any numbers for how much performance an engine lose every race?

The thing between Lewis and Max is that the grid spots are not so important, they will only fight each other anyway. A grid penalty will only delay that fight slightly.

Mercedes aren't releasing figures, apparently.  But Horner has claimed that the Honda only loses around a tenth overall during the life of a PU, while it's thought the Merc is at least double that. Mark Hughes has provided some numbers (not power) to show some circumstantial evidence of how the Merc has improved, but of course this doesn't necessarily have to be all down to the PU

 

https://the-race.com...ster-in-brazil/

[AmonGods]

There are 20+ races and sprint races. Lets them have 5 engines at least. Any extra engine you start from the back.

[absinthedude]

Isn’t the whole idea of penalty to deter people from doing something? If penalty isn’t doing that then it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

 

I thought the idea behind this penalty was, "you can change your engine again, but there is a price to pay"....so the gamble is whether it's worthwhile taking the penalty. 

 

there is another aspect at play. Some people literally don't like that Lewis wins everything....you know you're a great when people demand the rules are changed to make it more difficult for you.

 

Teams have exploited loopholes for as long as motorsport and rules have existed. Renault bringing in 1.5 litre turbocharged engines in 1977 wasn't in the spirit of the rules which dated back to 1966. The early 60s had seen rather low powered 1.5 litre normally aspirated engines for five seasons. These had been introduced because everyone found the previous options too expensive. The 1961-65 rules lead to the British "garagiste" teams taking over as the best much to the chagrin of people like Enzo Ferrari and some fans. or 1966 the rules were changed to enable "the return to power" is it was called...3 litre normally aspirated engines.....with the option of 1.5 litre supercharged to enable anyone to adapt one of the old 1.5 litre engines in case they hadn't secured a supply of 3 litre engines.

 

Nobody took that option but a full decade later, Renault decided that "supercharged = turbocharged" and tried 1.5 litre turbos. It was not within the spirit of the rules, but nobody challenged it...possibly as the Renault was probably more of a grenade than an engine to begin with. But within two or three years it was clear that turbo was the way to go...costs exploded, with teams sometimes using special engines designed just to do two qualifying laps, cars using up to 4 engines per weekend, so 3.5 litre normally aspirated were mandated for 1989...after attempts at limiting turbo boost had failed to slow the cars or the burning of money.

 

And here we are again. A rule primarily designed to slow the burning of money by limiting engine development and power, and increasing reliability, hasn't really worked. but there is a legal loophole. A gamble, but a loophole. Had McLaren or Ferrari exploited it I reckon everyone would have been happy. But it's Mercedes and Lewis. 

[PayasYouRace]

Renault weren’t exploiting anything in 1977. The rules were for forced induction, “supercharging”, and that’s all a turbo-supercharger is. It is a form of supercharging. Nobody ever specified it had to be mechanically driven, and that’s why nobody challenged it (apart from a few like Ken Tyrrell on very shaky engineering grounds).

A turbine driven compressor was perfectly within the spirit of the rules. They’d have been entitled to an electrically driven compressor too, like the MGU-H, if they so wished.

[ToniF1]

I dont know what is a loophole in what is Mercedes doing, like some say. There is no loophole, it's clear, you change the engine and you get x places penalty.

 

Loophole would be if they could serve the 5 place penalty in a sprint race or stack 5 engines on just one penalty, or something similar...

[keeppari]

I wonder how much more performance could be extracted from the current PUs if a team decided to completely disregard the rules and take a penalty every weekend.

[smitten]

I wonder how much more performance could be extracted from the current PUs if a team decided to completely disregard the rules and take a penalty every weekend.

If everybody did it, it would just net out to near zero, wouldn't it?
 

[AnR]

I dont know what is a loophole in what is Mercedes doing, like some say. There is no loophole, it's clear, you change the engine and you get x places penalty.

 

Loophole would be if they could serve the 5 place penalty in a sprint race or stack 5 engines on just one penalty, or something similar...

 

Many off the new rules is about costs for teams, and if you interpret this rule from cost perspective it's about reducing that by reusing engines.

 

With current rules you can take a new engine every race if you can produce that, but there is probably only one team who can do that.

 

So Merc doing what they do can be seen as against the spirit off the rule and if they used Bottas as a test bench like many suggests it's even more refined, but it's their budget and their commitment to this season.

[pdac]

McLaren in the early Honda years could barely finish a race. They were taking multiple new engines some weekends. A fixed allocation would have done nothing.

 

That's why I said that NOW there is no need for allowing extra PUs. It was necessary to allow teams to go over their allocation n the past, but that's no longer the case. All of the manufacturers have mastered the technology now and the only reason we see the occasional failure is because they are pushing everything right to the very edge of that failure limit.

[pdac]

I dont know what is a loophole in what is Mercedes doing, like some say. There is no loophole, it's clear, you change the engine and you get x places penalty.

 

Loophole would be if they could serve the 5 place penalty in a sprint race or stack 5 engines on just one penalty, or something similar...

 

Exactly.

[Gravelngrass]

Just shows how sport should always be about pure performance rather than business / environment / pleasing social movement.

Exactly. This is or should be about racing, which is as far as one can imagine from conservation. There are other categories for that. Make F1 about what it should be and these distortions will go away.

[Gravelngrass]

I wonder how much more performance could be extracted from the current PUs if a team decided to completely disregard the rules and take a penalty every weekend.

It apparently works better for some teams. Red Bull are claiming it would not make such a big HP difference compared to what it has done with Mercedes. Having said that, as seen, Mercedes could do that every weekend or every other racing weekend, take the penalty and still win races.

[pdac]

Exactly. This is or should be about racing, which is as far as one can imagine from conservation. There are other categories for that. Make F1 about what it should be and these distortions will go away.

 

Dream on. When there's that much money involved it will never be about the racing.

[Sash1]

Dream on. When there's that much money involved it will never be about the racing.

 

F1 has never been about about racing. It is about winning. Winning titles and loads of price money. Racing is one of those things you might need for that if you can't do pole to finish races.

[ARTGP]

If everybody did it, it would just net out to near zero, wouldn't it?
 

 

The advantage, is being the first to do it (which Mercedes have done).

[ARTGP]

I bet Ferrari do!

 

lol. Of course! But more than Massa losing on the final lap?  Hardly. It was an outright funeral atmosphere at Ferrari after "winning the 2008 WCC"....

Edited by ARTGP, 16 November 2021 - 16:59.

[ClubmanGT]

I dont know what is a loophole in what is Mercedes doing, like some say. There is no loophole, it's clear, you change the engine and you get x places penalty.

 

Loophole would be if they could serve the 5 place penalty in a sprint race or stack 5 engines on just one penalty, or something similar...

 

It is a loophole if you're getting enough performance gains out of a fresh engine to mitigate the effect of a penalty for taking one. 

[ARTGP]

I dont know what is a loophole in what is Mercedes doing, like some say. There is no loophole, it's clear, you change the engine and you get x places penalty.

 

Loophole would be if they could serve the 5 place penalty in a sprint race or stack 5 engines on just one penalty, or something similar...

 

It's a "loophole" because they figured out that they could pack so much performance into the PU, that it would compensate for the penalty. Making it a non-penalty. 

Edited by ARTGP, 16 November 2021 - 18:07.

[Frank Tuesday]

I think the 5 place penalty is fine, but it could be both permanent and cumulative.  If at round 15, you have to put in a 4th engine, you get a 5 place penalty, not just for that race, but for every race the remainder of the season.  If you have to use a 5th engine, you get an additional 5 place penalty for every remaining race.  Add in a rule for forcing a pitlane start if a drivers qualifying position and pentalies add up to lower than "last place" on the grid.   If there are 20 cars, they qualify 11th and have 10 position penalties their "starting position" would be 21, but since there are only 20 cars, they start from pitlane. 

[pdac]

^ an interesting idea.

 

So the units that are within your allocation are 'clean' and the ones above your allocation are 'tainted'. Every event at which you use a 'tainted' unit, you get a penalty. There is no penalty for using 'clean' units.

[Frank Tuesday]

^ an interesting idea.

 

So the units that are within your allocation are 'clean' and the ones above your allocation are 'tainted'. Every event at which you use a 'tainted' unit, you get a penalty. There is no penalty for using 'clean' units.

That would work, too.  But I just meant that if you use a first unit above allocation, you get a 5 place penalty for every remaining race, no matter which unit you use at a race.  If you use a 2nd extra, you have a (cumulative) 10 place penalty for every remaining race and so on.

 

The reason I suggested this is that your interpretation allows for a team to bring a Monza Special and take a 5 place penalty there before going back to their original allotment of units.  A Monza Special engine is a lot less tempting if you have a 5 place penalty for 8 races instead of one.   Sometimes the penalty has to seem excessive to stop teams from gaming a loophole.

Edited by Frank Tuesday, 16 November 2021 - 19:27.

[flyboym3]

I agree on the principle. There is a mistake here in the regulations. Mercedes have proven that you can in fact build a qualifying engine in this era. As long as the performance advantage of the qualifying engine is large, it outweighs a 5 place grid penalty. This qualifying spec could be worth anywhere from 20-50hp over the nearest rival.


I think the FIA should incorporate a WDC and WCC "points deduction" instead of grid drops for PU changes outside of the 3 PU per season. In this way, you guarantee a material impact on the championship result. It directly rewards reliability, and those manufacturers who intend to adhere to the 3 PU limit, while removing the incentive to build a qualifying engine.

However, if a competitor crashes in a race, then they should be able to take a new PU without penalty. Yes there is a potential loophole of deliberate crashes, to take a new engine, but let's not be absurd. 2008 was not long ago.

This is what formula 1 has always been about. Every winter the engineers sit down and read the rule book an look for gaps. I actually commend them for it, they outsmarted the competition like someone said.
Queue following year FIA add code to the rule book to close it down.
We shouldn't dislike a competitor in any sport because they are too good.

[Gravelngrass]

Dream on. When there's that much money involved it will never be about the racing.

All right then...

[sabjit]

I think there is a difference between a rule having a loophole and being open to abuse. I think this is a case of the latter.

 

Mind I never foresaw a fresh engine making this much of a difference on pace.

[danmills]

Not read much of anything above, but my first thoughts on additional engines would be to have a points hit.

Either a reduction (ie, half) points scored every race with a new engine outside the limit thereafter, or a percentage reduced off the overall standings including previous results.

The latter would be harsh, but the former is almost inviting its use in a case like how dominant Mercedes were with fresh engines.

Money and cost caps will not work. Point reductions are crystal clear.

 

Unfortunately Mercedes are just too good at what they do so this change in rule idea is pretty much designed with last weekend in mind. As absinthedude said, had Mclaren done it and won we wouldn't be as bothered. It's just reactionary because it's Mercedes winning (again) despite every possible hurdle thrown at them.

 

Credit and kudos where its due. But it's not good for the sport right now. 

 

A firm point limit / reduction tells you exactly the most you are getting that weekend and somewhat takes the sour away from an easy win. Remember, the rules are X amount of engines. A grid penalty clearly hasnt worked, whilst it probably would have hindered all but two teams. Rules have got to hurt everyone, starting with those thst serve to gain the most by capitalising breaches. 

Edited by danmills, 17 November 2021 - 00:39.