Réclamation de Racing Point contre Renault

Could be a late night waiting for the outcome of this Racing Point protest against Renault. All sorts of options open to the stewards if there's a breach, as one F1 member succinctly put it "ranging from no further action to f**k off out the championship"

Zelkin a écrit:Le pire scénario serait pire que ça malheureusement, je crains

Mathieu a écrit:Le système régulerait automatiquement l'équilibre du freinage de la monoplace pendant le tour d’un pilote, en fonction de sa position sur la piste. Normalement, les pilotes doivent ajuster la force de freinage sur le volant, en fonction du type de virage ou du niveau d'adhérence des pneus. Reste à savoir si ce qui est reproché à Renault est fondé ou pas.

the rules don’t say much about the brake bias controls but the article 11 makes couple of points. First the 11.1.3 says that:

Any powered device, other than the system referred to in Article 11.9, which is capable of
altering the configuration or affecting the performance of any part of the brake system is
forbidden.
11.9 says that
The pressure in the rear braking circuit may be provided by a powered control system provided
that :
a) The driver brake pedal is connected to a hydraulic master cylinder that generates a
pressure source that can be applied to the rear braking circuit if the powered system is
disabled.
b) The powered system is controlled by the control electronics described in Article 8.2.
8.2 says that the fia ecu must be used to control it.

However the real point of contention is probably about the definitions in 11.1.4
Any change to, or modulation of, the brake system, other than any movement of the minimal
flexible parts described in Article 11.4 to 11.6, whilst the car is on the track must be made by
the driver’s direct physical input or by the system referred to in Article 11.9, and may not be
pre‐set.

In the end this boils down to the fact that the rear brake system can be powered and can be controlled by the official ecu but only the driver can change it by physical input. The reason the rear brakes are powered is because of the hybrid engines. As the cars coast or brake the rear axle is used to harvest energy and this changes the effective brake bias. The more you harvest the more you need to move the brake bias forward because the harvesting increases the rear braking. This is why you need to fiddle more with the brake bias. The computer pretty much controls half of the rear braking and that is distance based and varies between corners. As the driver changes from from one harvesting mode to another (say from oilburn maximum attack to full on harvesting) the brake bias needs to be adjusted as well or you get too much or too little rear brake bias.

There are couple of ways I can imagine renault can be interpreted to have a “pre-set lap distance-dependent brake bias adjustment system”. The most obvious one is that hey have used the ecu to adjust brake bias without driver control. This is very clearly illegal in the rules so it would not make any sense to break the rule in such obvious manner. I think it is more about the fine print and details and interpretation.

Here is one way you could claim a system has preset. All the teams use rotary switches to control various bits of the engine. You turn the knob to increase or decrease a value. Maybe renault has a system where the knob has a position for each corner. Instead of +0.5% steps for changing the brake bias the knob has a setting for each corner or section of the track. So for turn 1 you put the knob into position 1, for turn 2 you put it into 2 and after you have completed the lap you go back to position 1.

This is still human controlled but you could claim that the brake bias is also now preset because every corner has a value that comes from the computer memory despite being physically switched to by the driver. So you have a pre-set but technically the different positions on the knob just give you different values. If this is illegal pre-set then fia needs to clarify that one step on the brake bias know must be certain size. Because otherwise you could claim the values are pre-set. Turning the knob once does not always increase or decrease the value by the same amount. For example knob with 1,2,3,4,5 is not pre-set but 1,2,3,5,7 is because the steps change.

Other more sinister variation of this is that the brake bias values are automatically altered by the computer for each engine mode. So that turn 1 knob position gives different brake bias depending what engine mode you are in. So when the driver switches the engine from harvesting to full-on oilburn attack the brake bias values are also altered. The driver still physically switches between them but the driver does not control to which value the brake bias goes to. This becomes somewhat confusing if the brake bias changes even when the driver changes engine modes using different knob. The rules don’t say the brake bias knob needs to be its own thing. Nor do rules outlaw one knob having multiple functions. So if the driver turns engine mode knob and the brake bias changes technically one could argue that it is still driver controlled by his direct physical input. But is it pre-set?

Big one a écrit:Cette décision ouvre la boite de pandore pour la F1.

Sur cette interprétation toutes les voitures sont illégales.

tigo a écrit:

Big one a écrit:Cette décision ouvre la boite de pandore pour la F1.

Sur cette interprétation toutes les voitures sont illégales.

J'ai lu uniquement l'article de nextgen, je ne comprend pas bien en quoi toutes les voitures seraient illégales avec cette interprétation.

Est ce que tu peux développer stp ?.

Jovial a écrit:https://www.fia.com/news/decisions-protest-cars-3-and-27-japanese-grand-prix << le document

En gros Racing Point voit des modifications de la balance de freinage sans action du pilote sur les caméras embarquées et a un témoignage d'un ancien de Renault.

D'après le règlement, la balance ne peut être modifiée que via une action du pilote sur un bouton sur le volant.
Le document semble signifier que c'était bien le cas mais que ça exploite astucieusement le règlement. Du coup, je comprends pas ? Est-ce qu'ils n'utilisaient pas l'utilisation d'un autre bouton pour régler en même temps la balance de freinage ? Les pilotes utilisent des boutons pour régler les modes moteurs, le DRS, ...

Bref, c'est nébuleux

Quelqu'un a une longue caméra embarquée d'une Renault à Suzuka ?