MOTORSPORT: A little favour for Webber's Porsche

Mercedes is delighting in its new dominance in Formula One and at least one of its team chiefs reckons fuel rules ought to be toughened rather than relaxed.

And V8 Supercars – in which yet another German make, Mercedes, won its first race last weekend while Volvo is a frequent pacesetter – are trying to ensure parity in its five-make series by reviewing the centre of gravity of engines.

Audi has won the French classic 12 times this century and its ‘Mr Le Mans’, Danish driver Tom Kristensen, seeking his own 10th victory there this year, has said the Porsche has “already shown good speed [in testing] and, more importantly, good reliability”.

Now world motorsport’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO), which runs Le Mans and effectively the World Endurance Championship (WEC), has adjusted the fuel-flow regulations up to, and including, Le Mans in favour of the petrol-powered LMP1 cars – the Porsche and Toyota’s TS040.

They have been allowed more energy per lap and larger fuel tanks, while the turbo-diesel Audi R18 e-tron quattro will have to use less energy than it was going to and have a smaller fuel tank.

Autosport has reported that, under the latest equivalence table published by the rule-makers, Toyota and Porsche, which will run in the 6-megajoule (MJ) hybrid sub-class (after Porsche initially looked at running in the maximum 8MJ class), will be allowed 139.5MJ per lap of the 13.629km Le Mans circuit rather than the 137.5MJ in the regulations published in December.

The fuel capacity of the TS040 and the 919 has been raised from 66.9 to 68.3 litres.

The energy allocation for the Audi, which will run in the 2MJ hybrid class because it is running only one retrieval system, has been reduced from 140.2 to 138.7MJ and its fuel capacity from 54.8 to 54.3 litres.

The changes have been made based on information the three manufacturers gave the FIA and ACO from their testing up to the end of March.

Webber’s 919 – one of two entered by Porsche after 16 years without it running factory cars in the premier Le Mans category, LMP1, topped the two-day, all-in official test at France’s Paul Ricard circuit late last month in the hands of Webber’s New Zealand co-driver Brendon Hartley. The third driver in their car will be German sports car veteran Timo Bernhard.

The rule-makers are trying to ensure parity between the different hybrid four-wheel-drive technologies in LMP1.

“The fuel rules for LMP1 are now set in stone up to and including the Le Mans 24 Hours in June, after which they will be re-evaluated and locked in place for a full calendar year until after the 2015 24 Hours,” Autosport reported.

“Cars that exceed their energy allocation, which is measured by the same Gill sensor used in Formula One, are subject to a sliding scale of penalties.”

The Gill sensor is at the centre of the controversy that led to Daniel Ricciardo’s disqualification from second place in the Australian Grand Prix, against which Red Bull Racing’s appeal is to be heard in Paris on Monday.

In sports car racing Audi’s R18 e-tron quattros have 4.0-litre, turbocharged V6 diesels paired with a flywheel hybrid system powering the front wheels for maximum fuel efficiency and a
second system that recaptures energy from the heat of the exhausts.  

Porsche’s petrol 919 combines a battery pack and F1-style hybrid energy system similar to what it uses in the 918 supercar with a turbocharged V4 engine, a configuration chosen to save weight and space.

Toyota has gone to two energy-retrieval systems with its TS040, enabling it to achieve 50 per cent more hybrid power than with its previous TS030.  Its normally-aspirated V8 – now 3.7 litres, up from 3.4 – produces 520PS (512bhp) and then it has 480PS (473bhp) available from its front and rear-axle hybrid systems.

The Japanese manufacturer is using a Denso motor-generator at the rear and a version of the AISIN AW unit at the front.  It has retained the TS030's super-capacitor energy storage system.

Australia’s Speed pay-TV channel through Foxtel is to televise all eight WEC rounds.

Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull-Renault was 3.174 seconds slower on the second day of the test than Hamilton’s Mercedes and also behind the similarly Renault-powered Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne, Kevin Magnussen’s McLaren-Mercedes and Sergio Perez’s Force India-Mercedes.

Ricciardo also did barely half the mileage of Hamilton that day.
And, while Mercedes has its Renault and Ferrari rivals on the ropes after three rounds of the world championship and calls continue to relax the fuel regulations in the new “green” era, Mercedes executive director Paddy Lowe has said the rules should be even tougher.

“F1 is about delivering technology, and setting stretched targets,” Lowe said.

“I would say, by good judgment rather than good luck, the 100kg for the race and the 100kg/hour are perfectly judged numbers, because if the team that wins the race is racing on those limits, and not having to do unusual amounts of fuel saving, then that is a perfect judgment.

“If that is a stretch for other cars, that is a stretch they should be reaching out to.

“The nature of F1 is to push technology to the limit and beyond.

“And that is what we have got.

“So to back out of it next year would be absurd. If anything, the point of F1 would be to stretch it further - and maybe next year it should be 95kg for the race.

“This was the original concept.”

Ferrari, without a podium yet this season and which cut short its testing in Bahrain midweek when it discovered damage to its car from last Friday’s GP practice, has been leading the agitation among teams for change, but Lowe said he could not comprehend some of the suggestions made.

“There have been things talked about in the last few days that are just completely unrealistic, that I cannot even understand,” Lowe said.

“The first suggestion was that we need 110kg of fuel.

“But has anybody realised that you cannot fit 110kg in these cars? So then they said let's make the races shorter.

“Can you imagine selling that concept to the public? It would be like we have decided that athletes are not fit enough these days, so the marathon is only going to be 25 miles rather than 26 miles.

“The messaging around that cannot be contemplated.

“I hope all of that can be put behind us and all this talk of ridiculous fuel saving or whatever stops.

“This formula is about efficiency.”

Meanwhile, Professor Dr Thomas Weber, the board member responsible for research and development and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, has said that Mercedes probably would have withdrawn from F1 if the FIA had not decided in 2009 to commit to the efficiency formula.

“It was always harder to explain to the Daimler supervisory board why we were using naturally-aspirated [V8] engines [the past seven years],” Weber said.

“Now with these new regulations I can clearly convince the supervisory board that the team are doing exactly what we need – downsizing, direct injection, lightweight construction, fuel efficiency on the highest possible level, new technologies and combining a combustion engine with an e-motor hybrid.

“Never before were we so close technology-wise to the technology we need in road cars today.”

The focus is now on the centre of gravity of the five makes of engine.
The aluminium quad-cam Mercedes, Nissan and Volvo engines are up to 30kg lighter than the traditional cast-iron block pushrod Holden and Ford V8s.

The newcomers have had to add ballast, and the placement of that can affect the centre of gravity and assist handling.

A regulation on the placement of ballast is now being refined.

Engines from all eight suppliers in the category were examined – fixing them into a rig, then weighing them on scales to calculate the centre of gravity – during last weekend’s Winton round.

“There were two incumbent engines, which were a Ford and Holden engine that were basically the same configuration – iron block, aluminium head, pushrod engine,” V8 Supercars’ category technical manager Frank Adamson said this week.

“The centre of gravity of both those engines is, give or take, the same.
“But the new engines are a different architecture with an aluminium block and aluminium heads – fundamentally a much lighter engine.

“With the arrival of these engines with ‘Car of the Future’ a minimum total engine weight of 200kg was established, which is around where the Holden and Ford are.

“There was always an intention to put a centre of gravity height in as well, but we couldn’t really do that until all five engines came along.

“So over the last year we have allowed them to run as they were.

“To ballast up to the weight they could put the ballast on the engine, so they could build a heavy sump. for instance, and so have the opportunity to get the weight a bit lower than the Holden and Ford.

“We are not sure how much advantage that delivered. We are talking about a 200kg mass fixed within a 1500kg mass.

“Pure physics law would dictate the lower of centre the better, but out there on the track going over bumps, braking and shifting mass, who knows how big an advantage it is.”

V8 Supercars’ general manager of motorsport, Damien White, has said an interim measurement may be in place by the NZ round but that “everyone will be compliant” by the Perth 400 in mid-May.