“There are those who play with words and are interested in increasing the tension in the paddock. We have a wonderful championship and it would be better to live it paying attention to the facts ”” – These are the words of an FIA exponent who wants to remain anonymous to comment on what he experienced in Barcelona before the Spanish GP.
Red Bull pulled Max Verstappen’s RB18 out of the pit lane just seconds away from the red light in the pit lane. An unusual procedure that prevented the world champion, for example, from carrying out the usual starting tests, necessary to calibrate the bite at the click of the start according to the available grip.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, arrives on the Barcelona grid at the last minute
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Evidently there were more important aspects to take care of that concerned the fuel loaded into the tank. The cameras lingered mostly on the number 1 single-seater, but all four RBPT001 (Honda) powered cars had similar problems, delaying the time to line up to the grid as much as possible. The two Red Bulls but also the AlphaTauri.
But what happened? In Max Verstappen’s tank there was a full tank of petrol which had a temperature well below the 25 degrees set by the regulations for the Spanish GP. The rule is very clear: one hour before the start of the race, Meteo France declares what the ambient temperature is (it was 35 degrees) and communicates it to the FIA and the teams. The fuel can be up to 10 degrees colder than air and all teams try to reach the limit allowed by the regulations.
But ExxonMobil bio fuel was not within the minimum value.
Why? At this point it is fair to add that in Miami, only for the USA race, the FIA had defined that gasoline, regardless of the ambient temperature that would have been detected, could be cooled down to 18 degrees, thus not considering the usual differential of 18 degrees which is written by regulation.
The International Federation intervened to safeguard the reliability of petrol pumps. On the F1 there are three: one for lifting, a second for priming and a third for delivery. The first is located in the tank, works at low pressure and is supplied by Marelli, while the second serves to increase the pressure and is classified as Open Source (OSC): the lifting pump is made by the teams that have the obligation to publish the project in the FIA servers to allow, if necessary, the opponents to analyze and copy it.
The high-pressure pump, on the other hand, is supplied by Bosch and brings fuel to the 6-cylinder injectors. The standard accessories (Marelli and Bosch) showed some reliability problems, so much so that the FIA is evaluating changes to avoid the problems that were not limited only to Red Bulls.
Verstappen stopped in Bahrain and Jeddah due to problems with fuel draft, but in Spain the spare chassis was mounted on Carlos Sainz’s F1-75 because the lift pump was in crisis and the replacement was not an easy job. play in the box.
The problem exists and will have to be solved as soon as possible, but the technical directive of the FIA was valid only and only for Miami, although some teams had tried to ask that the gasoline temperature be uniformed to 18 degrees at the Florida GP.
Christian Horner talks to Mattia Binotto on the Barcelona grid
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Obviously Red Bull had been the promoter of this request which did not find the necessary support even for the decisive Ferrari opposition. In Barcelona, however, there was no change in the rules, but simply a return to normal after an exception.
But why is the theme so… warm and heartfelt? This year F1 has adopted bio fuel with the introduction of 10% ethanol. And, as you will remember, due to the different chemical properties it caused the power units to lose a 20 horsepower.
As we have repeatedly pointed out in the winter: Shell was better than ExxonMobil in recovering power, but the Cavallino technicians, evidently, were able to adapt the combustion chamber of the 066/7 to the needs of the new petrol. which has lower calorific value and higher volatility, two characteristics that don’t seem to fit the Honda engine.
Red Bull, therefore, two hours before the Spanish GP refueled the RB18 with a decidedly colder petrol, miscalculating to reach the expected 25 degrees before going to line up. Milton Keynes technicians were forced to implement all the procedures to heat the fuel: they started the power unit, while with dry ice they checked the cooling system of the power unit.
In Miami, the two Aston Martins started from the pit lane after having to heat up the petrol
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
In Miami the same strategy forced the two Aston Martin drivers to start from the pit lane, deciding to break the parc fermé to replace the registered petrol with a full tank that reached the 18 degrees allowed only in the USA. The Silverstone team had talked about a trivial human error, while now we discover that these are precise strategies that the teams still do not know how to control.
Nothing irregular if they fall within the prescribed values, because another FIA technical directive specifies that checks are carried out only when the cars leave the pits, while in Maranello they claimed that they could be carried out at any time after having a full tank.
In this case there are no regulation holes or gray areas, while it is clear that Red Bull has tried to gain an advantage on a terrain where it feels weaker. The fear of vapor lock (evaporation of gasoline due to the heat) or of detonations in the combustion chamber have prompted Red Bull engineers to push on certain regulatory levers, hoping to obtain some advantages by invoking the reliability of the pumps.
But the FIA, instead of raising the temperature of the gasoline, prefers to modify the pumps …
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