“Departures are not going well enough, we have a little problem with the car, we know what it is, which limits us“. This is how Carlos Sainz expressed himself in July, complaining about some imperfections in the deadlift procedure of the Maranello cars. Some statements by Valtteri Bottas also revealed the introduction of a new clutch just before the summer break to tackle the problem, implicitly underlining that all Ferrari-powered single-seaters and not just the F1-75s were suffering from it. Sainz’s subsequent words, however, highlighted how this gap cannot be filled only during the current season, but it is necessary to make changes to the car under construction for 2023: “We have drawbacks that cannot be solved with this year’s car and I don’t want to go into details, but for 2022 departures will always remain a question mark. Sometimes we manage to perfectly center the procedure, other times we don’t ”.
The statements of the Spaniard refer to the starting procedure through which the optimal point of maximum torque transfer to the clutch from the engine to the gearbox is sought, also known as the bite point. In fact, as explained by a FormulaPassion.it Jon GrantChief Engineer for AP Racing, a reference company in the supply of clutches in Formula 1, the clutch control is the work of a software that manages its implementation to satisfy the driver’s torque demand through the paddles on the steering wheel: “The clutch is now still manually operated by the riders, but is supported by a negative feedback control. The driver therefore, rather than asking for a position of the clutch bearing, requests a certain torque directly through the paddle on the steering wheel. In any car with a manual transmission, the pedal is used to reach a precise bearing release position, generating a certain transfer of torque. In which case one relies on one’s sensitivity to reach a certain couple. What the driver does instead is move the lever on the steering wheel to request a certain torque and then the hydraulic control system quickly moves the bearing into the corresponding position, modulating it to satisfy the request “. Although this procedure is not always handled optimally on Ferrari-powered single-seaters, as noted by Sainz, the impossibility of solving the problem during the current season suggests that it may not be directly dependent on the software, but on the design aspects of the hardware.
Jon Grant illustrates in particular how the clutch differs between the different cars according to the internal dimensions of the bonnet and the design objectives, so much so that AP Racing itself customizes its components to meet the requests of its customers: “We focus primarily on the demands of the teams to meet their mass and inertia requirements. Teams have different ideas about how the clutch should behave. So yes, there are differences between the teams, not only in terms of mass and inertia, but also in terms of packaging issues and the volume available where the clutch should interface with the engine and transmission, an area that once again it has unique characteristics for each team ”. The regulation does not in any way preclude the possibility of evolving the clutch project during the current season, so much so that there is no lack of updates during the championship: “Often the project evolves during the year, as for any other part of the car, but it would be unusual to have different clutches depending on the circuit”, Grant points out. To further confirm this, in France Valtteri Bottas spoke of a new clutch developed by Maranello: “Here we will finally have a new clutch. We will use it for the first time in free practice. Ferrari has been working on it for a while of time and now we have the new pieces that should help us “.
However, the starting limits of Ferrari engines do not seem to be resolvable even with the changes that can be made during the current season, nor by updating the control software or the clutch design itself. It will be necessary to wait until 2023, when the new arrangement of the internal components will allow to optimize the volumes for greater freedom of intervention on the clutch itself, without excluding that the origin may actually depend on other related components. A small problem that the Scuderia del Cavallino will be able to try to fix in view of next season, although not of great importance.
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