Red Bull Appeal..

[zac510]

Agent Orange said:

I'm sorry but something is either approved or not-approved. Can I at least now get your agreement that the FIA have approved Total's fuel?

Article 19 goes into great detail regarding the fuel make up including stating that the fuel should be made using compounds usually found in commercial fuels and should the fuel appear to have been formulated in order to subvert the purpose of the regulation it will be deemed to be outside it. ie - not approved.

So I'll say it again and then give up for fear of going round in circles with you.

Total are either using illegal fuel
or
FIA fuel sensors are not fit for purpose with FIA approved fuel

..or the rule is poor. Not a first for the FIA.

Edited by Agent Orange on Tuesday 22 April 15:41

You're doing it wrong!! What you need to do is decide that RBR is guilty, then work backwards to create supporting evidence. Then you will see all this information in a completely different way!

[CraigyMc]

zac510 said:

What you need to do is decide that RBR is guilty

The FIA court of appeal already concluded that.

[NRS]

zac510 said:

You're doing it wrong!! What you need to do is decide that RBR is guilty, then work backwards to create supporting evidence. Then you will see all this information in a completely different way!

Care to explain why Caterham have no issues then, yet the team modifying things does?

[Agent Orange]

NRS said:

OR...

The modifications done by 3 of the Renault teams to the sensors have issues with something in the fuel. Which seems to be the case if Caterham have not been affected and are using the same fuel (unless it is something to do with temperature instead). Therefore both the FIA sensor and fuel are completely in the clear.

Yep I'd agree with that and said so yesterday (22:44).

Point I'm making is that if after explicitly banning modification of the sensors they still fail in Red Bull cars the FIA aren't going to look at the o-ring but are instead planning to tell Total to change their fuel.

If by then modification has been ruled out as the issue surely the right answer is to upgrade the o-ring?

Of course we may never get to that point as the modification appears to be the biggest culprit but just seems an odd stance to take when logic, to me at least, would say upgrade the o-ring because our (the FIA) sensor doesn't work with fuel we (the FIA) approve for use.

[Graham]

Rather than the fuel being approved specifically, it sounds more like total put something in it the fia didnt even think about so its defacto approved rather than specifically approved. Plenty of cases of the fia tightening the regs because someone found a loophole the fia hadnt thought of. The additives wouldnt be in the fuel if they didnt give some advantage. As for the sensors the supplier will only have been asked to supply something to cope with the fuels that the fia expected.

So i summary total/renault/red bull exploiting the rules with their legal (for now) fuel and have issues with the specified sensor. Tough thats racing

[zac510]

NRS said:

Care to explain why Caterham have no issues then, yet the team modifying things does?

I couldn't possibly even comment; they haven't even commented on the matter.

If we're at the level of placing guilt on RBR by subtracting an assumption of lack of guilt from Caterham that's a really bad position. It's either a crazy anti-RBR bias or just sheer desperation to interpret something out of 2 sentences worth of quotes from a man from the FIA.

[anonymous-user]

Red Bull have had a long time to test these sensors (and the O-rings) themselves with the fuel they will run, so my call is they knew these sensors would fail and planned to use that failure as a way to circumnavigate the regulations to run more power.

I think they thought they were being clever and would get away with running to their own algorithm whilst the sensors were failing consistently. They called it wrong.

Red Bull and Newey have a long history of taking the mickey out of the rules, they are usually clever weezes that are hard to prove using the test methods in practice, so I'd be utterly gobsmacked if they didn't plan these failures to help mitigate the performance loss they are facing with the current Powertrain package from Renault.

If they are modifying the sensor fittings to the point their mod has the inlet port fitting touching the active sensor tube, they have done that on purpose. Anyone with half a brain working with these fittings knows how to prevent that, I would not expect that from an apprentice, never mind a team of the calibre of Red Bull. They did that on purpose.

[Scuffers]

^^^^ well said ^^^^

anybody naive enough to think they were not 100% aware of what they were doing is deluded.

(see, I don't always disagree with you!)

[Megaflow]

Munter said:

I wonder if this chemical only becomes "active" in a way that affects the O ring, when the fuel gets very hot...or conversely the O ring only becomes affected by the chemical when very hot. And the other teams using Renault/Total are cooler under the body.

Quite possibly. I'd wager it is probably the bio element of the fuel causing the issue, bio fuel can be very corrosive, particularly when hot.

[10 Pence Short]

Megaflow said:

Quite possibly. I'd wager it is probably the bio element of the fuel causing the issue, bio fuel can be very corrosive, particularly when hot.

In which case, I submit that Red Bull have been adding the sweat of Helmut Marko to their fuel. Everybody knows Helmut Marko is incredibly corrosive when placed anywhere near anything, hot or cold.

[llewop]

10 Pence Short said:

In which case, I submit that Red Bull have been adding the sweat of Helmut Marko to their fuel. Everybody knows Helmut Marko is incredibly corrosive when placed anywhere near anything, hot or cold.

you've cracked it!

[NRS]

zac510 said:

NRS said:

Care to explain why Caterham have no issues then, yet the team modifying things does?

I couldn't possibly even comment; they haven't even commented on the matter.

If we're at the level of placing guilt on RBR by subtracting an assumption of lack of guilt from Caterham that's a really bad position. It's either a crazy anti-RBR bias or just sheer desperation to interpret something out of 2 sentences worth of quotes from a man from the FIA.

I don't think it's particularly anti-RB. 3 teams have done modifications to the official equipment and have had 95% of the sensor failures. One other team with what seems to be the same equipment have not had problems. Suggests there was an issue with the modifications rather than the basic equipment/ fuel inputs.