Official 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Thread ***SPOILERS***

[Teddy Lop]

StevieBee said:

Doink said:

Ferrari have been caught cheating and the FIA bottle it once again and fine them $50,000, thats like 20 quid to me and you. I'd love to know how they came to that decision, clearly it broke 'A' rule for them to issue a fine but like horner said it was a technical rule so is black or white, your either illegal or your legal, pregnant or not pregnant as Ted Kravitz said

I believe that there was 5kg of fuel left in the car at the end of the race which negated any advantage it would have had which would have been marginal in any case. If the car was dry then I would have expected exclusion but as it wasn't and the extra fuel hadn't been used, then a fine seems the sensible penalty.

so to clarify, ferrari had more fuel that they disclosed to the fia but obviously were within the max permitted, so no rule broken as such?

What is the claim/conspiracy - that the extra fuel is what they'd have used when gaming the sensor, thus the car doesn't start with (for example) 90kg, use a measured 83kg according to the fuel flow sensor and have 2kg (or whatever the fia require for sampling) left over and some mysteriously gone? If that's the case then of course they didn't "use" the extra fuel in this instance.

Does anyone believe a top running F1 team would just derp a gallon more fuel into the car than intended?

[TheDeuce]

DS240 said:

TheDeuce said:

CardShark said:

TheDeuce said:

And my point was that I don't know if they cheated, simply that either way they look bad. I can't see we have disagreed about anything.

If Ferrari were cheating by exceeding the fuel flow... my view has always been that is a cheat too far, even for them. It would be a shocking thing - too shocking to shake off.

Whatever the truth though, they had more fuel than they claimed they thought they had in the car. It makes them look stupid, and will only amplify rumours of cheating. If they played it straight, neither would be the case.

That's cool, I'm not looking for a fight

I just haven't, as yet, read anything official that states Leclerc had 4.88kg more than declared. If there's anything out there that confirms that's the case then I'd like to see it, perhaps a link posted here for example.

There's nothing to fight about

Over fuel, under fuel - whatever the amount, the discrepancy exists and it should not. Honestly, I don't feel the need to theorise or understand it myself. All I know as absolute fact is that Ferrari are playing loose with the rules on some level, and in spite of that they still can't win titles. I think that's all any of us need to know when we consider how impressive Ferrari really are in F1 right now.

Crikey, you have information that is ‘absolute fact’ that Ferrari are cheating. Give the FIA a call, they’d love to see what they missed all year... handover that dossier of insider info, blueprints, technical info, telemetry etc.

I said absolute fact that they're playing loose with the rules. Yesterday they broke the rules... They accepted that. How more accurate can I be?

[anonymous-user]

TheDeuce said:

DS240 said:

TheDeuce said:

CardShark said:

TheDeuce said:

And my point was that I don't know if they cheated, simply that either way they look bad. I can't see we have disagreed about anything.

If Ferrari were cheating by exceeding the fuel flow... my view has always been that is a cheat too far, even for them. It would be a shocking thing - too shocking to shake off.

Whatever the truth though, they had more fuel than they claimed they thought they had in the car. It makes them look stupid, and will only amplify rumours of cheating. If they played it straight, neither would be the case.

That's cool, I'm not looking for a fight

I just haven't, as yet, read anything official that states Leclerc had 4.88kg more than declared. If there's anything out there that confirms that's the case then I'd like to see it, perhaps a link posted here for example.

There's nothing to fight about

Over fuel, under fuel - whatever the amount, the discrepancy exists and it should not. Honestly, I don't feel the need to theorise or understand it myself. All I know as absolute fact is that Ferrari are playing loose with the rules on some level, and in spite of that they still can't win titles. I think that's all any of us need to know when we consider how impressive Ferrari really are in F1 right now.

Crikey, you have information that is ‘absolute fact’ that Ferrari are cheating. Give the FIA a call, they’d love to see what they missed all year... handover that dossier of insider info, blueprints, technical info, telemetry etc.

I said absolute fact that they're playing loose with the rules. Yesterday they broke the rules... They accepted that. How more accurate can I be?

They’ll all play ‘loose with the rules on some level’, and probably do, if they think they can get away with it.

[cb31]

I don't get it, the Ferrari car was still under the max weight so they could have added 5kg of more fuel legally. There was no reason to lie about the weight of the fuel, it was obviously just another Ferrari cock-up which cost them time during the race due to being heavier than needed.

[kambites]

cb31 said:

I don't get it, the Ferrari car was still under the max weight so they could have added 5kg of more fuel legally. There was no reason to lie about the weight of the fuel, it was obviously just another Ferrari cock-up which cost them time during the race due to being heavier than needed.

That was my impression. The amount of fuel Ferrari put in the car was perfectly legal and would, if anything, have been a disadvantage in the race. The only thing which was illegal was lying about how much fuel they put in. I see no reason whatsoever to believe it was an attempt at cheating; whilst Ferrari may have precidence for... bending the rules, lets say, they have far more precidence in the recent past for simply screwing things up.

I suspect it's as simple as them writing the wrong number of the form.

[LaurasOtherHalf]

It was pulled up in the Sky commentary afterwards, why was VET told to use an engine mode he didn’t want to half way through the race?

I’m going to put my tinfoil hat on and say it’s something to do with this extra fuel they’ve been found out with.

Technical clarifications, extra fuel flow sensors, 5kg of extra fuel found and suddenly Ferrari lose their massive speed advantage from 3 races ago

They’ve been up to something and they’ve been found out.

[kambites]

Even if they had been cheating with the fuel flow sensor (which we will probably never know), why would they then go on to lie about something perfectly legal? Surely that'd just be asking for closer scrutiny of their fuel systems?

[Cabinet Enforcer]

cb31 said:

I don't get it, the Ferrari car was still under the max weight so they could have added 5kg of more fuel legally. There was no reason to lie about the weight of the fuel, it was obviously just another Ferrari cock-up which cost them time during the race due to being heavier than needed.

The boys in red have been under scrutiny for possible bypassing of fuel flow limits, if they have been jiggering the flow sensor then this would still show up as a discrepancy in weights between the declared start weight and the measurement taken at the end of the race.

It just so happens that the "mistake" made is pretty much exactly what you would expect to be happening if they are bypassing the flow sensor. It may well have been an innocent mistake, but it also looks like strong circumstancial evidence that the team has been cheating.

[Exige77]

CardShark said:

TheDeuce said:

Does it matter? There was a discrepancy, whether over/under it's unforgivably inaccurate, in terms of F1. At worst they were doing something that equalled cheating. At best they're incompetent fools that spend £400m++ on entering an F1 season where success is found in tenths of seconds yet manage to mistakenly put significantly more/less fuel in to their car than they intended to. Cheat vs fools, take your pick.

Either way, they look like bellends.

My point, not that I stated it directly, is that everyone is going off on a tangent with the mindset that Ferrari tried to pull a fast one when there's nothing to suggest that at all, not as per the official statement anyway. It's as if we're intent on nailing something negative on the team, particularly after the fuel flow chatter - people are trying to make the evidence fit a crime that simply may not exist, that's not particularly fair.

Yes, they may look a bit daft if it was a clerical error however that's a long, long way from being a cheat.

Where has their straight line speed gone ?

A clerical error in isolation could be seen as such but it’s part of a pattern of strange behaviour / performance.

RB have crept up to Mercedes race by race. For the red team to find such a huge performance gain from one race to the next is very strange indeed.

Edited by Exige77 on Monday 2nd December 09:04

[kambites]

So the tin-foil hattists believe that Ferrari are still circumventing the fuel flow meter?

I have no particular opinion on whether they were exploiting the loophole Redbull queried before, but it sounds a bit far-fetched to suggest that they still are. Seems infinitely more likely that they just filled a form in wrongly to me.

Does anyone know how much fuel they ultimately ran with? The initially declared amount or the measured amount?

Edited by kambites on Monday 2nd December 08:57

[Exige77]

StevieBee said:

Doink said:

Ferrari have been caught cheating and the FIA bottle it once again and fine them $50,000, thats like 20 quid to me and you. I'd love to know how they came to that decision, clearly it broke 'A' rule for them to issue a fine but like horner said it was a technical rule so is black or white, your either illegal or your legal, pregnant or not pregnant as Ted Kravitz said

I believe that there was 5kg of fuel left in the car at the end of the race which negated any advantage it would have had which would have been marginal in any case. If the car was dry then I would have expected exclusion but as it wasn't and the extra fuel hadn't been used, then a fine seems the sensible penalty.

Once the red team knew the FIA where aware of the extra 5Kg, they were not going to do anything dodgy are they ?

[Cabinet Enforcer]

kambites said:

So the tin-foil hattists believe that Ferrari are still circumventing the fuel flow meter?

I have no particular opinion on whether they were exploiting the loophole Redbull queried before, but it sounds a bit far-fetched to suggest that they still are. Seems infinitely more likely that they just filled a form in wrongly to me.

Does anyone know how much fuel they ultimately ran with? The initially declared amount or the measured amount?

Edited by kambites on Monday 2nd December 08:57

Donning my bacofoil bowler here, if they know the new sensor won't detect the cheat, why wouldn't they keep cheating?

More likely however is that this was an actual error, but that it occurred due to some confusion arising from the new FIA monitoring, which has forced a change in some process within the team, because they have previously been doing something different.

[kambites]

Cabinet Enforcer said:

Donning my bacofoil bowler here, if they know the new sensor won't detect the cheat, why wouldn't they keep cheating?

What new sensor? I wan't aware that anything had changed regarding fuel flow monitoring?

A for why they wouldn't keep cheating, the theory that they were circumventing the sensor was based on the idea that to do so would be, by very tenuous argument, within the letter of the rules despite being clearly outside their intention. Had they been found out doing it before the clarrification, they would probably have just been told to stop doing it in future races. However, if they were to keep doing it after it had explicitly been ruled illegal by the FIA as a result of Redbull's request for clarrification, they'd face a far greater punishment; quite possibly exclusion from both world championships. That would both be expensive (in lost prize money) and pretty damning for their reputation.

Edited by kambites on Monday 2nd December 09:35

[StevieBee]

Teddy Lop said:

StevieBee said:

Doink said:

Ferrari have been caught cheating and the FIA bottle it once again and fine them $50,000, thats like 20 quid to me and you. I'd love to know how they came to that decision, clearly it broke 'A' rule for them to issue a fine but like horner said it was a technical rule so is black or white, your either illegal or your legal, pregnant or not pregnant as Ted Kravitz said

I believe that there was 5kg of fuel left in the car at the end of the race which negated any advantage it would have had which would have been marginal in any case. If the car was dry then I would have expected exclusion but as it wasn't and the extra fuel hadn't been used, then a fine seems the sensible penalty.

so to clarify, ferrari had more fuel that they disclosed to the fia but obviously were within the max permitted, so no rule broken as such?

Not quite. Pre-race, the FIA found 5kgs of fuel in the car over the permitted amount. Ferrari claimed this to be an error. The FIA said, OK, we'll check if it's still there at the end of the race, which it was. This is why they weren't excluded from the race before it started and why they've been punished for the error and not for cheating.

Teddy Lop said:

What is the claim/conspiracy - that the extra fuel is what they'd have used when gaming the sensor, thus the car doesn't start with (for example) 90kg, use a measured 83kg according to the fuel flow sensor and have 2kg (or whatever the fia require for sampling) left over and some mysteriously gone? If that's the case then of course they didn't "use" the extra fuel in this instance.

Does anyone believe a top running F1 team would just derp a gallon more fuel into the car than intended?

Weight trumps everything else. Additional fuel adds weight. Most teams run with less fuel than they actually need to minimise weight, working on the basis that they can control fuel use one the race is running. Safety cars help as well.

The only way that additional fuel would be an advantage is if it enabled the delivery of higher levels of power to a level that both negated the additional weight and provided additional advantage on top. I'm not sure that this would be achievable and if it is, the benefit would be marginal and the risk associated with it in terms of race exclusion / reputation / etc, wouldn't be worth it.

I do think this is just a case of Ferrari dropping the ball.

It's fun to speculate but I really do think that the days of favoured rulings and help for Ferrari from the FIA are long gone.

[kambites]

StevieBee said:

Not quite. Pre-race, the FIA found 5kgs of fuel in the car over the permitted amount. Ferrari claimed this to be an error. The FIA said, OK, we'll check if it's still there at the end of the race, which it was. This is why they weren't excluded from the race before it started and why they've been punished for the error and not for cheating.

I could be wrong but I don't believe that is correct. I was under the impression the amount of fuel was within the permitted margins but was 5kg more than Ferrari claimed they had put in when they filled in the paperwork?

I'm not sure the actual amount of fuel found in the car has been published but I've seen nothing to indicate it was above the 110kg limit.

Edited by kambites on Monday 2nd December 09:39

[Adrian W]

If Ferrari do it, its an error, if any other team does it, its cheating. in 2005 BAR got a two race ban for using fuel as ballast.

[ajprice]

Verstappens donuts


The state of the tyre when he finished

[The Surveyor]

kambites said:

cb31 said:

I don't get it, the Ferrari car was still under the max weight so they could have added 5kg of more fuel legally. There was no reason to lie about the weight of the fuel, it was obviously just another Ferrari cock-up which cost them time during the race due to being heavier than needed.

That was my impression. The amount of fuel Ferrari put in the car was perfectly legal and would, if anything, have been a disadvantage in the race. The only thing which was illegal was lying about how much fuel they put in. I see no reason whatsoever to believe it was an attempt at cheating; whilst Ferrari may have precidence for... bending the rules, lets say, they have far more precidence in the recent past for simply screwing things up.

I suspect it's as simple as them writing the wrong number of the form.

Which would be fair enough, however in the context of the scrutiny Ferrari are under for being a little too clever with the fuel flow meter (being kind..) they should be doing everything in their power to ensure there are no further suggestions that they are trying to bypass the rules, especially with fuel related matters.

If this was a cock-up despite the scrutiny they would have expected, it beggars belief.

[Exige77]

kambites said:

StevieBee said:

Not quite. Pre-race, the FIA found 5kgs of fuel in the car over the permitted amount. Ferrari claimed this to be an error. The FIA said, OK, we'll check if it's still there at the end of the race, which it was. This is why they weren't excluded from the race before it started and why they've been punished for the error and not for cheating.

I could be wrong but I don't believe that is correct. I was under the impression the amount of fuel was within the permitted margins but was 5kg more than Ferrari claimed they had put in when they filled in the paperwork?

I'm not sure the actual amount of fuel found in the car has been published but I've seen nothing to indicate it was above the 110kg limit.

Edited by kambites on Monday 2nd December 09:39

^^^^^What he said.

The permitted amount is 110Kg and nearly all have less than the max.

You would be stupid to have a fuel cell that can hold more than that.

If the car is under weight they would normally add ballast in their preferred location and not add extra fuel.

The less fuel they run, the more lift and coasting they have to do to get to race distance.

The fuel is weighed very precisely and not on kitchen scales.

There’s a lot of paperwork to be completed by the team and it’s unusual to have this kind of “clerical error” at that level.

I guess we will never know the full story but as said already the red team don’t come out if this well ? Cheating or incompetent? Take your pick.

In isolation it’s not a big deal but it’s one of many oddities this season.

[LaurasOtherHalf]

Interesting listening to the Autosport podcast on the morning dog walk today-they reckon there's more to come out of the story and made noises that it seemed very coincidental that it was after Ferrari's recent issues.

It sounds like there's a great deal of "chinney reckon" in the paddock about what they've been up to.