Веројатно не е само мапирањето на моторот туку и изигрување на сензорите за температура на возух. Слично како што Ферари имаа со горивото изигрување на сензорите.
Red Bull has been poaching Mercedes Engine experts over the season and made a curious inquiry with the FIA in September that could only have come from inside sources: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mercedes-dismisses-special-solution-amid-red-bull-fia-engine-query/6659984/
The FIA ruled in October that they are not going to do anything about the complaint: https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull-mercedes-trick-complaint-quashed/
Bottas' engine penalties in Italy and Russia (Both in September), indicate Mercedes was testing something with new Engine materials or similar.
Mercedes has seen to be MEGA in FP1 (Before the engine map settings are frozen for the weekend) and later found to be super slow. Again, like they were testing something with the engine.
Conclusions and Speculation:
Mercedes are indeed doing something to super cool the air going into the ICE and have figured out a way to represent the temperature in the plenum differently to the sensor, thus defeating the checks.
This can be inferred through their odd choice in only swapping the ICE components of their power unit, while maintaining the other parts as the same. The power increase from just an ICE change are astonishing to say the least in the middle of a season.
If, as others have speculated, this is purely done with the aim to "increase reliability", that would not hold up to scrutiny, since new engine materials that help tolerate higher combustion scenarios while rated for a shorter lifetime mileage is not a reliability upgrade, but a performance upgrade. The technical delegate has the liberty to refuse to entertain a change with a performance gain in mind if it can be proven that the power unit has additions that lower the mileage and increase perf as many members of Mercedes have represented to the media.
The curiosity with the sensor in the plenum is very odd. The FIA has not done anything here, especially seeing how these checks are impossible to be done in the middle of a lap when the actual readings are made. I'd expect them to take this up more aggressively now that we see a ridiculous power boost down the straights for the Mercedes engine in Hamiltons car WHILE STILL CARRYING MONACO LEVELS OF DOWNFORCE.
Веројатно за тоа и овие коментари осамнаа насекаде.
(Фотографијата е скриена. Кликни тука за да ја прикажеш..)
1. James Allison speaks about the new changes to this years Mercs. Interestingly, James mentions that the "noticeable" change is the bump in the plenum area and how their cars this year have, with the help of HPP redesigned the plenum area, the intake area of the engine, retune the engine around that, and squeeze a lot more horsepower out of the power unit as a consequence.
And the crucial bit is in the next immediate sentence, that they had to do this in a regulatory environment that only gave them one shot at this.
Now, for the interesting part, when certain conditions are met, the engine is programmed to spray liquid water into this mixture before it enters the combustion chamber in the plenum section of the engine . Why? Well, that liquid water gets converted to a gas and drops the temperature of the mix by a further 25° C
Because of the reduced temperatures, the boost in the engine can now be raised safely as well. In the case of another motor, this allowed them to raise pressures from 17.2psi all the way to 21.6psi (+25%)
The ensuing horsepower boost was +49HP. (443HP to 493HP)
2. Okay, cool. Is this illegal?I'll do a hot take and say Yes. It almost certainly is.
Red Bull were likely aware of this and they may suspect it is not illegal and hence did not challenge the system of water injection itself, but the effect it had on the plenum temperatures. I suspect they believe nothing makes water injection itself illegal, but lowering temperature below ambient for a short burst down a straight defeats the purpose of the regulation.
The regulations for temperature in the plenum area are designed in spirit to stop this exact scenario where, through clever engineering of any sort, teams optimize the density of air and control temperatures beyond regular engine capability of road cars and gain an advantage.
The present way this is enforced is very dumb and averages the temperatures over a lap.
As long as Mercedes is smart enough to add guards in the control electronics that counter balance too low a dip in the temps, they would gain a lasting advantage and never trip the average temp.
We have seen the measurement of a regulation get flipped around at least once before in this season with the introduction of the rear facing wing camera being introduced. I see the FIA doing something similar where they move from a dumb average to a percentile deviation at high speed from norm. Extreme deviations at the right time in temperature is what they should be looking for and they have the readings today, but the aggregate calculations don't present the information fairly.
3. Where does it say it is illegal?Regulation 5.8.1 states "with the exception of incidental leakage through the joints (either into or out of the system) and power unit breather fluids, all and only the fluids entering the compressor inlet and fuel injectors must exit from the engine exhaust system".
This maybe leaves two potential options open: injecting water into the air before the compressor or injecting water in the plenums as you suggest, but somehow separating it back out so it doesn't go down the exhaust. The second is obviously impossible, and the first is less than ideal as any significant amount of water in the compressor will cause damage to the vanes (normally the air filter will remove actual droplets).
There is also a second regulation, 5.14.2 which states "the addition of any substance other than fuel, as described in Article 5.10.3, into the air destined for combustion is forbidden".
This clearly bans any form of water injection.
Does this mean that, if this is factual, then Mercedes Bottas and Hamilton should be fully disqualified from the championship? Yes.
