Ferrari annoyed by Mercedes once again
The new Mercedes and Red Bull engine trick to fully exploit every horsepower of electric power in qualifying is making Ferrari F1 turn up its nose. The issue, which emerged in the last few hours, was reported by the specialist online newspaper The Race which, with an article signed by the expert and respected colleague Jonathan Noble, explained how the Brixworth and Milton Keynes power units manage to exploit an emergency mode in qualifying. A perfectly legal situation at least according to the current reading of the regulations, but which according to the team led by Fred Vasseur could be contrary to the reason why the FIA has imposed a control unit “protection” system when the electric power drops from 350 to 0 kW.
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How the Mercedes and Red Bull engine trick works
In short – here instead, if you prefer, the technical explanation in detail – the cars with Mercedes and Red Bull engines (and it is clearly visible from the qualifying telemetry, for example, of Alex Albon) manage to avoid the gradual drop in MGU-K power kW after the delivery of maximum power, exploiting maximum energy for a few more seconds before suddenly putting the electric motor into protection mode. A situation that is not prohibited by the regulations, with the FIA however having imposed a “safety lock” on the control unit in such cases, which effectively forces the MGU-K to shut down for 60 seconds in the event of a sudden drop in energy from 350 to 0 kW: for this reason, such a trick is unusable in the race, but is still useful in qualifying, on the final straight before the finish line.
Ferrari asks the Federation for info
According to The Race, all engine manufacturers have been aware of this secret for some time and are evaluating if and how it might be worth working on the power unit management software to replicate it. For this reason, the Ferrari F1 team has reportedly asked the Federation for clarification with the intention not so much of asking for a stop against rivals Red Bull and especially Mercedes and McLaren, but to understand if there is really an intention to block the use of the “trick” in the immediate future for safety reasons: in fact, it can happen – as happened to Alex Albon at the end of his Q1 lap at Suzuka – that the MGU-K lock and the sudden slowdown put the turbine and consequently also the internal combustion engine in difficulty, pushing the driver to stop on the track to reset the entire system.
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How much is the Mercedes engine secret worth?
It is not even clear how impactful the advantage is in terms of lap time. Certainly, much depends above all on how long the straight part between the last corner and the finish line is, but also on how slow the corner leading onto the finish line is (and, therefore, how important the acceleration on exit can be). We are not talking about an advantage of tenths of a second, but still a small improvement that in the case of particularly tight qualifying can make the difference in winning pole position or not (or making the cut in Q1 or Q2 or not). Furthermore, it is not even certain that Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell used this trick in Q3 at Suzuka. In any case, once again Ferrari is waiting for answers from the FIA on the Mercedes engine.
