F1 Traction Control

[minghis]

Does anyone know the last time F1 cars ran without traction control prior to this season?
I seem to recall it was sometime after the Prost/Mansell Williams era (early 90's) that it was 'taken away', but can't remember when it returned..

[Teppic]

Well, officially it was banned from 1994-2001, but there were always rumours that teams were running illegal traction control - Benetton's "Option 13", Nicola Larini's comment in Aida that his car handled better when he switched the traction control on, are two examples from 1994, the first season that it was banned.

It returned in 2001 when the FIA admitted that they believed certain teams were running TC and that they couldn't police it.

[jbudgie]

If they couldn't police it then --can they now?

[johnph]

jbudgie said:

If they couldn't police it then --can they now?

Yes, because they have a spec ECU now, if they didn't then they would never be able to enforce it.

Its a spec part i'm glad to see.

Edited by johnph on Sunday 23 March 16:46

[topless_mx5]

I've heard that the ECU is built by Mclaren, hmmm!

[jbudgie]

I still wouldn't trust certain teams to try and get round it. --(cheat).

[FourWheelDrift]

topless_mx5 said:

I've heard that the ECU is built by Mclaren, hmmm!

All of the F1 manufacturers were invited to tender, the FIA chose McLaren's solution.

[Mr_Thyroid]

I never understood why they couldn't police it since you could quite clearly hear the TC 2002-2007.

[SamHH]

Mr_Thyroid said:

I never understood why they couldn't police it since you could quite clearly hear the TC 2002-2007.

I think that the sound is too subjective a thing upon which to justify a punishment. Just imagine the amount of moaning that there would be if a team were punished.

[DavidCane]

But the sound of a car with TC exiting a corner is like artillary fire. If a team was running TC it would stand out big time. I think the rumour back in 2000 was that Ferrari had managed to get their gearshifts down to some ridiculously short length of time. This opened up a loophole in the rules which allows 0.2s of compelte freedom with the engine electronics for gearshifts. So, the shift took something like 0.01s, leaving 0.19s for some traction control to do it's work.

It was just a rumour tho and in practice I can't see how it would prevent moments like Massa's in the race just gone.