Ferrari Mailing List: Re: F1 SPOILER

[Dennis Liu (BigHeadDennis]

Morning, John.  
 
Just to clarify - by no means am I saying that Renault designed their engine
to win from 5th but not 10th.  That would, of course, be silly - no one
knows what the starting grid will look like when the engine is designed.  
 
Rather, my point is this.  When Renault engineers are charged with designing
a new engine, or a new spec of this season's engine, they have to arrive at
a decision, after making some design compromises.  More reliability versus
more horsepower.  We can make the engine last longer, at a cost of less
power/speed, or cut the margins thinner and create more grunt at the risk of
prematurely blowing the sucker up.  Ideally, you'd make it last long enough
for your driver to charge from the back of the grid to the front, but if the
spec says that the engine can last the entire race at 100% of
absolute-top-RPM, then at 95% or even 98%, the engine would last 3-4 races
(in other types of racing, cutting RPMs by 500 or 1000 or so can easily
DOUBLE the life of the engine).  Clearly, the design goal is to make it last
two races (with qualifying and practice), but the design goal is also NOT to
make it last (much) beyond that, otherwise you'd be guaranteeing nothing
better than a mid-pack finish.
 
If you or I had to make the final decision, and if we were being chased hard
by Ferrari, we'd probably want to cut tolerances close - can't sacrifice too
much horsepower.  And you'd hope that your driver can stay ahead of Michael,
as he's done in the past, and turn down the wick.  OR, he ends up right
behind Michael, so he doesn't HAVE to chase him down, but keep everyone else
behind him, and, again, he can turn down the wick.  So you'd want some extra
power available for him to GET into that desired position, at the risk of
blowing up the engine.  If you built a more reliable engine, he may not have
enough power to GET into that position.
 
Since we know that this was a "fresh" engine, we can GUESS that it wouldn't
have lasted the 2nd race, but we don't know if the engine could have
finished THIS race (and given the sophistication of telemetry, Renault could
have chosen to replace the engine before China).  And it appears that this
was less of a design problem and more of a manufacturing problem.  But even
a bad part may not manifest itself unless the engine is stressed long
enough.
 
Bottom line - I just don't think it's fair to CONCLUDE that the penalty
meted out to Alonso become IRRELEVANT simply because his engine expired near
the end of the race.
 
vty,
 
--Dennis
 
 
  _____  

From: JAshburne [at] aol.com [mailto:JAshburne [at] aol.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 12:37 AM
To: BigHeadDennis [at] earthlink.net
Cc: ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] F1 SPOILER


Dennis:
 
I was with you until you got to the 10th place vs. 5th place effect on
engine life.  If Renault has designed their engine's life to survive with
Fernando driving hard enough to win from no higher than 5th place (or 6th,
or 7th) but with significantly higher probability of failure if he needs to
charge up from 10th place, then I would say that is cutting things too fine.
 
In reality, I am sure that their safety margin for MTBF is likely to a lot
more than 6 practices, 2 qualifying sessions and 2 races.  The probability
of failure within that time period had better be pretty close to zero (and
certainly less than 5%, meaning less than 1 engine failure in a 19 race
season using 10 engines) if they hope to win a world championship.  They
just ran into bad luck or a wear factor that was higher than designed, or a
piece of bad metallurgy or any one of a number of other factors that caused
this engine to fail somewhere below the mean but still in the fat part of
the distribution curve.
 
Net, net, I don't think that the outcome would have been different if he had
started 5th.
 
John
 
 
In a message dated 9/11/2006 11:35:27 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
 
BigHeadDennis [at] earthlink.net writes:

Lashdeep wrote:

>The Renault engine should be able to endure any level of effort and abuse,
despite any setback or penalty. It wasn't.

-------------

Now that's just plain silly.  :-)  

Racing equipment has a finite life, especially in F1.  Teams build
everything to extremely close tolerances, essentially following Colin
Chapman's dictum that the perfect racing car is the one that falls apart
after it crosses the finish line - if it lasts any longer, then it was built
too well/strong/heavy.  Weight is the enemy, so engineers build things to
last just long enough (and be safe enough too, of course).  

Want more power but displacement is limited, fuel type is limited,
aspiration is atmospheric?  Add more revs.  But that cuts into reliability.
So you build the engine just long enough to last for qualifying, and you
swap it out for another one that lasts just long enough for the race.  Wait,
there is a 2-race rule?  Ok, you build the engine just long enough to last
for TWO races, including qualifying.  But if you have to abuse it, run it to
the ragged edge, it may not last as long as you want.

Renault built its engine to a certain spec limit.  That spec limit was their
best guess and compromise - it has to last 2 races, but must also produce as
much horsepower as possible.  If it ABSOLUTELY must last two races, then you
opt for lower rev limits and lose power.  If you grant your driver more
power for a goodly portion of a race, then you cut into whatever safety
margin you had built in, and run a much higher risk of blowing the thing up.

Every team has the ability to build a completely bulletproof motor that will
last two races.  Heck, last an entire season.  But it would be dead last.

How fast do you want to go?  Well, how long do you want to dance on the edge
of the knife?

Renault and Alonso had to dance on the edge longer because they had to start
from 10th and push like hell to catch up to Schumacher.  That ate into their
safety margin.  If they had started 5th, they would not have had to push as
hard.  

Vty,

--Dennis