New details
The British website The Race has revealed new and interesting details regarding the case involving the Mercedes and Red Bull powered teams, who in the first three rounds of the season used a clever trick in qualifying to make the most of all the electrical power their power units had available.
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The trick – just to refresh your memory – consisted of benefiting from the 350 kW power of the electrical component for a few extra seconds, avoiding the gradual decrease in power to zero but instead using a sudden shutdown of the MGU-K. The solution was allowed by the regulations, which however, to prevent abuse, required the electronic control unit to go into protection if the MGU-K suddenly ran out of energy. This was why this solution was only used in qualifying, when the important thing was to finish the fast lap at maximum power, ‘accepting’ the price of a very slow subsequent lap.
Now the use of this solution has been banned and no team will be allowed to use it in Miami. The reasons are related to safety and The Race has revealed that some of those directly involved are actually happy about this ban. The English website quoted Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who called the situation he found himself in using this trick “stressful”: “Especially at Suzuka, I was an easy target in certain corners, given that the track is not very wide and the space available for overtaking is really limited. It was quite stressful not being able to do anything. Because obviously the car wasn’t responding to any commands. I was going very slowly on track and it was a moment of great tension”.
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The game wasn’t worth the candle
According to the World Championship leader, the game risked not being worth the candle, given that the time advantage guaranteed by using the 350 kW for a few extra seconds was actually minimal: “It’s a relief to know that we probably won’t find ourselves in a similar situation again – Antonelli commented – this entails a loss of perhaps a couple of hundredths of a second, so very little time, but at least it gives the assurance that such a thing won’t happen again. Furthermore, in qualifying [with this system] it’s easy to impede someone during a lap and thus receive a penalty. And that’s certainly not what you want”.
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