What's very telling is that we're hearing a lot from McLaren and Ferrari lawyers, when the inquiry is supposed to be FIA vs BMW & Williams. Where is the discussion about whether or not BMW and Williams drove illegal cars?
Furthermore who made the protest and who has the most to gain from it going through. They are so hypocritical that it makes me sick.
All this nitpicking is not doing very much for the credibility of F1.
Besides if thay have a rule about the temperature of the fuel in the tank then why on earth are they measuring it not in the tank but in the filler pipe... are they supid or just incompetent?
Hey all you combustion experts! What are the benefits of cold fuel?
I can come up with:
Higher density so you can fit more in the tank.
Is there anything else?
The colder fuel leads to better compression which will increase horsepower - figures of between 5 and 20bhp were quoted at the time by F1 engineers.
The fuel temp in the tank is not the variable they measure, it is the filler temp - this is the documented measurement that all the teams were aware of. The reason the filler was chosen was based on the practicality of obtaining a reading from a vehicle during refuelling.
I think Damon Hill sums up the situation best -
The principle, ie exactly how the FIA avoid punishing the drivers in this case, is what McLaren (and probably a few of the other constructors) want to find out - presumably so that the next time there's an infringement this case will be cited as precedence.
I've not really got my head around this. A couple of degrees Celcius won't make much difference to the mass of fuel injected (which is to with fuel pressure and the time the injectors are open for). The small temperature difference will have little effect on charge cooling, bearing in mind they probably already run a little rich anyway for power reasons. If they could get a bit more power by putting more fuel in, then they probably would all the time.
I totally understand that cooler, denser fuel might save a hundredth of a second in refuelling time, or maybe a tenth. But I can't see how it would produce more power. Besides, the fuel will warm up pretty much immediately once in a warm fuel tank. You might get a performance advantage (if there is one) until the end of the pitlane.
I'm basing this on statements by Mike Gascoyne and Eddie Jordan, both have said there is an increase in horsepower due to running cooler fuel - Jordan claims this will last for perhaps 3 laps (a bit longer than the pit lane).
Mike might know. Eddie is a business man not a technical engineer, so I wouldn't beleive him.
And I'm not saying it won't improve performance, just that no one has been able to explain why, other than making up random sentences that don't stand up to scrutiny. WHY does Mr Gascoyne think it will, or did he not mention a REASON?
I asked this question at the time and nobody came up with anything.
F1 cars used to over-fuel massively (approx. lambda 0.5) during the turbo era because the evaporation of the fuel in the cylinder helped cool the pistons (look for black smoke behind a turbo-era F1 car). I don't imagine that they still do this, but they will certainly run slightly richer than stoichiometric in order to achieve peak power. Whether they go even richer to increase piston cooling or not, I don't know.
Typically, fuel injectors are calibrated to deliver a fixed mass of fuel, so making it more dense just means the injectors open for a shorter time...there's no advantage there.
On top of that I would like to have some calculation, an esteem. How many degrees could cause this advantage to happen and yield a significant time difference?
I mean, putting it in the freezer at -15 celsius is one thing, having 2 degrees of difference is another. And since the measurement source - If I remind well, it was France Meteo for Williams - is different (but nevertheless a respectable source) from what appears on race monitors and contemporarily no official source is specified in rules, I hardly see a case that could work well for McLaren, especially for the consequences of what they ask (that is, winning the championship).
If no official source has been specified we must assume France Meteo data have a certain reliability, although they differ from the monitors temperature. That's the main case for the defense, and I think it will work that way. It seems that the rules, in this respect, are flawed, and a clarification is needed.
But overall there's quite a 'political feeling' in this appeal, and the fact that Ferrari joins in the fray confirms it. The argument about rules clarification remains valid, but nothing more than that.
Still, I would like to see significant esteems of the supposed performance gain, no pears to apples comparisons or incomplete descriptions: I need something like "70 liters of fuel at 25 degrees give these exact performance benefits, at 23 these other ones". Since the rules are unclear, this would exactly tell if we're discussing merely about a principle or not. If it's a matter of principle lets clarify and get on with it, if not, a careful and consistent action may be needed.
Hehe, it is still a bit weird feeling when you look at the final constructors' chamionship table. Top four (or five ) teams cheated in one way or other during or throughout the season