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Archive: temperature

More problems with F1's infrastructure in Hungary

4 August 2008 16:30

Categories: Opinion

The Hungarian Grand Prix saw yet more worrying failures of Formula 1′s important equipment.

The timing glitches that struck the German Grand Prix returned at the Hungaroring. Seemingly, despite the clear evidence that Kimi Räikkönen’s car had a faulty transponder, no-one decided to check it out.

So Räikkönen’s times for sector 2 and sector 3 were not recorded, he tumbled down the timing screen a couple of times before re-appearing in his proper position and his first pitstop didn’t properly register at first. Nor did he appear on the lap chart, as you can see by clicking here and launching the live timing archive.

More worryingly, though, no fewer than four teams had major problems with their refuelling equipment during the Hungarian Grand Prix. Fuel rigs are standardised and supplied by the FIA. The multiple failures occurred despite the fact that there were no new parts used in the refuelling process.

Of course, it could be just a coincidence. Flash fires in the pitlane do happen from time to time. Usually, however, you see two or three a year — not three within five minutes of each other. Sébastien Bourdais’s Toro Rosso, Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams and Rubens Barrichello’s Honda all briefly caught fire as the fuel hose was coming off. Meanwhile, Timo Glock lost around 15 seconds due to a fuel rig that did not fit his car properly.

One widely suggested explanation is that the heat in Hungary either changed the shape of the fuel hose enough so that it did not fit properly, or that the fuel expanded in the heat causing it to overflow. However, this explanation does not quite seem right as there are hotter races during the year, notably in Malaysia.

Whatever, this essential equipment ought to be designed to cope with ambient temperatures of 32 °C. This was the highest temperature recorded by FOM’s equipment during the race, and it does not strike me as overly hot for a summer in the middle of a continent towards the south of Europe.

A cheeky suggestion put forward by Ian Phillips during The Inside Line podcast is that flames are good for viewing figures. That is going a bit far even for Bernie though.

More seriously, this is quite a serious safety concern. Although the fires were small and all immediately extinguished, this sort of thing should not be happening. The FIA should get to the bottom of what on earth was going on during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

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Title contenders blow it

3 August 2008 22:08

Categories: Report

This season just seems destined to provide excitement. The Hungarian Grand Prix is usually among the most boring races of the year. The tight and twisty configuration would make it tough to overtake anyway. But the geography of the Hungaroring, which is situated in a natural bowl near Budapest, means that all the dust from the city descends upon the circuit.

This means that even after a weekend of practice sessions and support races, drivers must keep to the racing line like a slot car or risk getting bogged down. The dust problem is so bad that the dirty side of the track is so dirty that it is often, perversely, advantageous to start from 3rd or 5th on the grid than 2nd.

No-one told that to Heikki Kovalainen. The Finn started 2nd on the grid but went on to win the race. However, his start was poor. You might suspect in the back of your mind that Felipe Massa was aiming to start 3rd on the grid rather than 2nd. What was surprising about the Brazilian’s start was not that he passed Kovalainen, as this was to be expected. But he got a superior start to widely-fancied pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton panicked as his mirrors filled with red. The Brit went to the inside to try and defend his position into the first corner. But this only meant that he got bogged down in the dust. Massa, after getting a bit of a slipstream from Hamilton, stuck more closely to the cleaner racing line and had superior grip into turn 1.

Massa’s move was incredible for its bravery and aggressiveness. Massa threw caution to the wind but appeared to have it all under control the whole way through. He smartly forced Hamilton onto the dirty side of the track, knowing that even if Hamilton maintained the lead into turn 1, the Brit would get worse traction and would also be on the outside for turn 2. Massa the mediocre driver continues to show flashes of brilliance.

What was even more surprising was that Massa began to pull away from the McLarens. This was supposed to be a McLaren walkover. McLarens are meant to suit tight and twisty circuits, and this certainly wasn’t going to plan.

I read a good theory which is that the old wheelbase explanation — whereby Ferraris suit circuits with fast, sweeping corners while McLarens prefer twisty circuits — no longer cuts it. As Ferrari moved to a shorter wheelbase and McLaren moved to a longer wheelbase configuration, this seems to make sense. After all, McLaren were dominant at Silverstone which is a pretty fast circuit with long, sweeping corners. Now Ferrari have (or at least Massa has) excelled in Hungary.

Instead, we should look to the weather as an explanation. McLaren prefer cooler conditions, whereas Ferrari cope better in the heat. If that theory is true, I guess, therefore, that McLaren should be worried that the remaining European races take place in the height of summer, with the other non-European races taking part in hot places like Singapore and China.

Things went from bad to worse for Hamilton as a puncture towards the end of his second stint thwarted what little hope he had of catching Massa. The puncture developed on turn 1 of the circuit, meaning that Hamilton had to go round the whole circuit with it. He lost a lot of time and emerged from the pitlane in 10th place. Moreover, he was the first driver in the entire field to make his second stop and had to spend 28 laps on the softer tyres which don’t suit the McLaren.

Nonetheless, Hamilton was able to move up the standings as people in front of him pitted. In the circumstances, a salvaged 5th position is not a bad result. However, it bodes badly for Lewis Hamilton’s ongoing tyre management issues. Just when I thought he had got over his tyre problems, another Hamilton tyre has popped. This is clearly Hamilton’s Achilles’ heel. Having said that Bridgestone’s initial assessment is that the tyre damage may have been caused by debris.

Despite the bad result though, Hamilton has, somewhat perversely, extended his lead in the Drivers Championship. Because while Hamilton’s race was bad, Massa’s was even worse. Nothing to do with the Brazilian’s driving, which was about as great as I have ever seen it. But, agonisingly, Massa’s Ferrari engine blew just two laps from the end. You could see how distraught he was as he emerged from his car, which came to a stop on the pit straight, and walked around the pitlane like a headless chicken.

I am no fan of Massa or Ferrari, but you had to feel sorry for him. Massa should have had this race wrapped up, and he was robbed. I’ll give you that about the Hungaroring — at least it springs the odd surprise in the form of sudden retirements from the lead. Who could forget Damon Hill in 1997 or Fernando Alonso in 2006?

So Hamilton’s blown tyre and Massa’s blown engine meant that McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen became the unexpected victor. I don’t think Kovalainen deserved to win this particular race. But to win a race you need both a reliable car and the good driving skills, and Kovalainen had the best balance of that today — even though his race was rather anonymous.

The likeable Finn will be a popular winner. It is also this season’s second new winner after Kubica took the chequered flag in Canada. Kovalainen will enter the record books as the 100th driver to win an F1 Grand Prix.

Special mention should go to Timo Glock. Following his heavy crash in Germany two weeks ago, Glock has bounced back in the strongest way possible. He was looking good throughout practice and qualifying. He outshone team mate Jarno Trulli and had the measure of Räikkönen’s Ferrari at the end of the race.

Renault also had an excellent race which suggests that they are coming back into form. Alonso finished 4th, not too far behind Räikkönen. Meanwhile, Piquet continued his strong run by finishing 6th. There is no doubt about it. After an immensely difficult start to the season, Nelsinho Piquet has put the jitters behind him and is now performing well.

It’s amazing to think that just a few races ago Renault were struggling to keep Honda at bay in the Constructors Championship. The Enstone-based team have more than doubled their overall points haul in just two races.

Toyota and Renault are currently the two teams on the up in the intense midfield battle. Red Bull were alarmingly off-key in Hungary. They were not in contention for a decent points finish at all in Hungary, which is unusual for Red Bull this year. The team today slipped from 4th to 6th place in the Constructors Championship at the expense of Toyota and Renault.

Meanwhile, BMW should be looking for answers in response to their alarming drop in form. Kubica qualified well but simply did not have the pace in the race, managing to score just one point. Meanwhile, Nick Heidfeld was absolutely nowhere all weekend and never placed higher than 10th. For a team that was second in the Constructors Championship until today, this is quite a disaster. Let’s hope it’s because they are concentrating on 2009.

There is a three week break now. Next up is the European Grand Prix at the brand new Valencia street circuit. By that time you might notice something else new as well…

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What's happening to FOM's infrastructure?

22 July 2008 20:12

Categories: News, Opinion

One of the more minor talking points of the German Grand Prix was the failure of the live timing system provided by FOM. This is not the first time FOM’s timing systems have failed. In fact, a failure is a relatively common occurrence, and the odd glitch is to be expected in any system as complex as this which has to be hauled around the world.

However, the problems of the German Grand Prix were much more major than usual. And it represents what I consider to be the second large failure of FOM’s infrastructure in the past twelve months.

What happened in Germany

Problems with the live timing system became apparent when commentators across the world exclaimed to their viewers that Heikki Kovalainen was dropping down the order, but they couldn’t explain why. Soon enough commentators realised that this was an error, as Kovalainen was still running in third position with no problems whatsoever.

Each Formula 1 car carries a transponder which uniquely identifies each car. At various points on the circuit there is a beam which receives a signal from the transponder as the car passes through. This is the equipment that enables FOM to measure lap times to a thousandth of a second as well as car speeds. This equipment also records when cars enter the pitlane and how much time they spend in the pitlane.

What apparently happened is that the transponder on Kovalainen’s car failed. This is not the first time that has happened. Seemingly (and this is speculation on my part) once the people at FOM realised what was going on, Kovalainen was manually re-inserted into his actual race position — not before the legend ‘STOPPED’ (meaning “stopped on the circuit”) was displayed. This process seemed to continue for the rest of the race. A few times I spotted him slipping down the order a couple of places before magically re-appearing in his original position.

Apart from the initial scare of watching Kovalainen tumble down the order for the first time, this was a bearable issue. However, it was not the only problem to afflict live timing that day.

During the first round of pitstops, only three drivers were recorded as having entered the pitlane when in fact almost every driver had made a stop. This wreaked havoc as it was impossible to tell who had taken a pitstop and who had not. To make matters worse, the pitstops were subsequently manually added over a period of several laps. Cars were shown in the red text with the words ‘IN PIT’ which normally signify that a driver is taking a pitstop. However, they were not in the pitlane.

At this stage of the race Radio 5 Live’s pitlane reporter Holly Samos said that the teams were finding the failure of the live timing system very frustrating. It was very possible that the failure of this extremely important source of information could potentially have affected the race itself.

Captions on the television also went a bit awry for a short while at this stage, with the classification being displayed without the time or pitstop strategy information that normally accompanies it. For a few laps every driver except for Hamilton was shown as a being a lap down until this too was (seemingly) manually rectified.

The lap chart — which can still be accessed by clicking on the live timing link on this page — is a bit of a mess. Here, not only was Kovalainen largely missing from the chart, so too was Kimi Räikkönen.

2008 German GP live timing

The positions of the two Finnish drivers were not updated lap-by-lap as they should be. Instead, they jump about with their position updated at seemingly arbitrary points of the race. Gaps are left in the chart where they were supposed to be.

All-in-all, it was a bit of a shambles on the timing front during the German Grand Prix.

The other major failure

This comes off the back of the problems experienced in the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix. Here, the timing systems were fine (as far as I am aware at least), but the weather equipment was playing up.

I and others had pointed out that the temperature was extraordinarily high at Interlagos. At its peak, the track temperature was recorded at 65 °C. Looking back, it seemed a bit fishy. Ted Kravitz pointed out, “That would’ve melted even my trusty Dr Martens boots.”

The track temperature is often of interest, but it is not usually a vital aspect of FOM’s offering. However, this time the temperature measurements were later to have a pivotal bearing on the race result in this, the final race of the championship. The Drivers Championship was almost decided by FOM’s temperature gauge.

In what became known as the ‘cool fuel’ saga, the BMW and Williams teams were deemed to have breached article 6.5.5 of the technical regulations which states that “no fuel on board the car may be more than 10 degrees centigrade below ambient temperature”.

A cooler temperature in the fuel would allow teams to refuel cars more quickly — and, indeed, fit more fuel into the car. The BMW and Williams teams were both accused (by FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer) of filling their cars with fuel which was more than 10 degrees cooler than the ambient temperature which was recorded at 35 °C.

There then followed the revelation that the rules do not state how the ambient temperature should be recorded. Should the fuel temperature be measured against the ambient temperature recorded by FOM’s equipment? Or should it be measured against the information supplied by the FIA’s meteorologists, Météo-France?

Météo-France recorded the ambient temperature as being “a few degrees lower” than FOM’s measurement. Meanwhile, Bridgestone recorded the track temperature as being 48 °C as opposed to FOM’s 65 °C.

Clearly, FOM’s temperatures were way off. Ted Kravitz speculated that their temperature sensor may have been placed in the sun — a mega no-no in meteorology. Williams technical director Sam Michael furthermore pointed out that the equipment had not been calibrated for a full seven years and that it had been clear to all the teams that FOM’s weather information was not to be trusted as early as 2005!

That just strikes me as complete laziness on FOM’s part. Coupled with the woes we saw in Germany which frustrated the teams, it is clear that, unless things change, FOM’s faulty equipment could one day alter the direction of a race or even a championship in a big way. Here’s hoping FOM look into the technical issues and try to avoid a repeat of what happened at Hockenheim and Interlagos.

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