Ferrari International Assistance alive & well

[Mr Pointy]

The FIA & Ferrari come to a "private settlement" over the legality of the 2019 engine:
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-fia-eng...

An utterly appalling state of affairs.

[Mr Pointy]

Derek Smith said:

While I'd love to see the management call their bluff, I don't think it would be a good thing for spectators and the sport.

I'm not so sure & the upcoming new regulations & Concorde agreement were the perfect time to put Ferrari on the same terms as everyone else. For all the good Liberty have done, to allow Ferrari to retain any veto rights & to continue to bung them millions of dollars makes me deeply disappointed with Chase Carey.

Would there be an effect if Ferrari left F1? Yes of course there would, but the sport would survive. No-one is indispensible, as even Bernie discovered.

[Mr Pointy]

NFC 85 Vette said:

It comes back to the general consensus in the media (and as a result, the public) being something like:

Ferrari innovation - "must be illegal, they must be cheating".
Mercedes innovation - "genius, they're smarter than all the others".

Ferrari appear to have outsmarted the FIA's technical community, and upon investigation, done a 'Penn & Teller' explanation, because they had no choice, and the FIA then realised that had other teams had the same thought process, Honda, Renault or Mercedes could all run a similar system that made however many fuel flow sensors on the car, completely pointless. It's possibly left the FIA a bit embarrassed and they don't have a quick fix to ensure compliance. I'd expect a better, more intrusive set of sensors to be introduced as soon as the governing body can fathom how to do it.

Unfortunately, it's Ferrari, who are often deemed a bunch of dis-organised clowns by the media and viewers, so there's a level of disbelief that they could have developed something better than Mercedes. (Edited)

I don't believe the two situations are the same at all. The aim of the fuel flow regulation is very clear; it specifies a numerical limit on the fuel flow rate to define the rate of fuel injection into the engine (note I said aim). The suspicion is that a team had a system that gave the correct flow rate value data from the sensor (possibly by introducing electrical noise into the system), but was actually delivering more than this to the cylinders. Many would feel that's not compliant with the rules by any reasonable definition. If it was then it wouldn't have been investigated & then dropped by the team.

The Merc DAS system simply isn't covered in the regulations, unless another team protest it under the parc ferme rules at the race.

I would suggest one is innovation & one isn't. Almost every team has (maybe grudgingly) admitted the DAS system is a brilliant piece of engineering; not one team other than those getting the advantage of it thinks that fooling the fuel flow sensor would be anything other than cheating.

[Mr Pointy]

NFC 85 Vette said:

It's clear that Ferrari's horsepower advantage was reduced, but if the FIA has said that they cannot prove it was illegal, because it simply works in a way that isn't specifically prohibited, and the fuel flow sensor provides the target number, then there shouldn't really be a problem. The regulations seem pretty watertight, so whatever they were doing, involved a lot of blue sky thinking far beyond what the FIA anticipated anyone could do. (Edited for brevity)

This last bit is key: if it were simply the case that Ferrari were doing something "simply works in a way that isn't specifically prohibited" then there would be no reason for the FIA to step in, investigate & then issue the "private agreement" statement. It would be EXACTLY the same situation as DAS: almost everyone agrees that there's nothing in the 2020 rules that covers DAS, although it's been banned for 2021. There's no reason why the FIA couldn't have agreed the fuel flow monitoring arrangements were ok for 2019 & banned the system for 2020.

Instead we got a situation where the Ferrari performance magically dropped off after the FIA got involved & it was blamed on aero changes. That's a difficult explaination to swallow: what team voluntarily drops a legitimate, significant performace advantage that's perfectly legal? Of course if you've been caught out & there's fingers pointing then you'd be unwise to carry on running it.

[Mr Pointy]

NFC 85 Vette said:

The timeline for the whole episode makes it look different in hindsight - at Texas, what official statements had the FIA issued with regard to the Ferrari fuel system? I'd expect that fearing it being defined as illegal, Ferrari put a halt to whatever it was doing until it heard either way whether it was legal or not. From memory the investigation started at Texas and has only been concluded over the winter, so every race post-Texas, they didn't risk it as they simply didn't know what the FIA's interpretation would be.

Upon finding it's been judged legal, but not ethical, the quiet conversation they've had with the governing body is probably along the lines of "now you know how we did it, we wont do it anymore, but you need to cover off the regulations better".

It's an uneasy situation for the FIA; my take is they realise Ferrari found something, but if they so much as hint to other teams as to what it was, they'd have to investigate every single power unit supplier to ensure it was "legal but not ethical" in a similar fashion. This way, nobody tries it, they have their eyes on Ferrari alone, and no damage is done. The noise the other teams are making now, is to understand what Ferrari did, so they can work up their own version. But the FIA would open the flood gates and probably need to see the inner workings of each and every one, which might take as long as it did with Ferrari to ensure they're not operating out of bounds.

There's no such thing as ethics in F1, especially in the engineering departments. If it's not against the rules, it's in. If it's against the rules but you reckon you won't be found out, it's almost certainly in. See traction control, self erasing firmware, bendable floors etc etc. Plus a million other tricks we never heard about.

The FIA can't sanction a team for not breaking the rules. This whole mess is of their own making & the perception is (rightly or wrongly) that it's only because it's Ferrari that have been caught that they are getting away with a private agreement. This is a huge business worth billions; why should the FIA decide which team gets off with a private deal? One possible view is that it's being done to protect Ferraris reputation which is not a courtesy extended to other teams as far as we know.

It's just one more example of favouritsm towards Ferrari & as said previously there's no legimate reason whatsoever for them to retain their veto or get paid $100m a year for turning up. Why should the other teams have to compete on unequal terms?

[Mr Pointy]

//j17 said:

If you just have the basic "Here's you X kg of fuel for the race, use it as you want" you tend to get very dull and dissapointing races.

Driver A uses a bit more fuel to try and overtake Driver B - so Driver B uses a bit more fuel to defend. Driver's A and B repeat this for much of the race, constantly cancelling each other out and over using their required fuel/lap rate...so come the last 5 laps of the race driver's A and B are crawling around the circuit just trying to limp home while Driver C who's had a really dull race just watching his fuel usage trundles up to them, overtakes and wins the race.

Yes, Driver C deserves the win as they ran the most intelligent race but it feel very artifical.

Sounds rather like Formula E doesn't it?