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Formula 1 Red Bull Racing

Well, that’s just crap!

Daniel Ricciardo

I drive all the way from Canberra to Melbourne and see Daniel light up the Albert Park crowd and track on the way to earning himself a front row start for the Australian Grand Prix.

On Sunday I watch the race at a pub with a great atmosphere which builds as Daniel holds off a fast charging rookie in Kevin Magnussen on his way to second place and the honour of being the first Aussie on the podium in Melbourne.

The crowd cheered loudly when Daniel crossed the line. It was a great moment and all was good with the world.

I cross the road from the pub to watch my football team play. They start well, really well. But end badly, really badly. They were rubbish. I’m in a bad mood.

While I’m driving home I remember how good Ricciardo was today. My mood improves a little.

I arrive at my mate’s place and he tells me the FIA is investigating Daniel for exceeding the fuel flow rate in his car during today’s race.

It’s late and I need to write a race report but the wind has been sucked out of my sails. Imagine how Daniel must be feeling.

And now it’s official. The FIA has excluded Ricciardo from the results of the 2014 Australian Grand Prix.

Shit happens. Red Bull couldn’t have possibly tried to cheat because the cars are monitored by the FIA. It’s a bit like speeding in pit lane; nobody deliberatly does it, but mistakes are made.

The happy story is now that Kevin Magnussen has finished second his maiden grand prix. And as good as that is for the sport it’s just not the same as remembering the feelings of goodwill I experienced trackside and in Melbourne this weekend as we cheered our Daniel onto success.

Or so we all thought.

I’m going to bed.

[Pic: Red Bull/Getty Images]

 

17 replies on “Well, that’s just crap!”

Well that is crap! It’s not like he was getting closer to Rosberg, in fact I believe he was losing time.

Stay tuned for the appeal from RBR I guess. Fingers crossed for Daniel.

Adz.

It certainly explains why RBR were floundering in the mid pack for the whole of the pre-season (along with all the other Renault-powered cars) and then appeared at the pointy end out of nowhere. It also answers where the top Stone Brothers engineers went after their V8SC license was bought by Erebus.

Congratulations to Magnussen, the most successful debut race since Villeneuve in 1996.

With due respect Dave, it explains nothing of the kind.
I recommend doing some research into the systems, tolerances and rules involved.
The FIA have admitted (and most teams have reported) that their FFMs have been giving inconsistent results. Redbull complained to the FIA that both the FIA’s FFMs fitted to Dan’s car this weekend were inaccurate, – well outside the FIAs own tolerance specs of +/-.5%, so they used metering from their direct injection system (generally considered to be an order of magnitude more accurate technology) to determine actual fuel flow. The FIA have taken exception to this and pinged them.
If the specific FFM in Dan’s car is found by an independent technical scrutineer to be inaccurate, then Dan’s position should be reinstated and the FIA ordered to pay for replacement FFMs (of a more accurate design) for all teams.
(The current FFMs are of a standard design mandated by the FIA. At the time these new rules were introduced, many teams suggested that the design of the mandated FFM was inherently inferior to metering through the DI systems and could result in anomalous results. …and so it has come to pass…)

Thanks BMW. I read that before my original posting. It changes nothing. The regulation stipulates a max fuel flow of 100kg/hour. If (for example only) a faulty FIA meter shows 120kg per hour when the real rate is 100kg per hour is that the fault of the competitor?

Should the competitor then be required to operate at a lower performance level, just because the FIA can’t get it right?

F1 is a multi-billion dollar business and competitors have every right to expect technical competency from the governing body.

Here is a link to the FIA FFM manufacturer’s spec:

http://www.gillsensors.com/content/datasheets/gill-sensors-fuel-flow-meter-2014.pdf

As per the listed specifications from the manufacturer itself, the sensor is designed to measure flow in litres per minute.

FIA regulations stipulate flow in kg per hour.

We all know that fuel volume varies quite dramatically with temperature, therefore the FIA need to determine precisely the fuel temperature at the time it enters the FFM.

My understanding (please feel free to correct me) is that the fuel temperature sensor is located remotely from the FFM. Excess operating temperatures may therefore produce anomalous results.

Hence Red Bull’s understandable reluctance to accept the FIA’s numbers.

WTF. I thought they were allowed to carry 100Kg of Fuel. WTF does it matter how fast they go through that amount of fuel? It seems like the FIA is trying to regulated everything from how many turds a driver can dump or not. What the FIA should regulate and it would be more to the benefit of the sport is the size of the cockpit and minimum weight of the car to allow driver not to look so unhealthy and emaciated from the dramatic weight loss they are putting their bodies through with the new rule changes. I wasn’t at the race but some of my friends who were there said a lot of the drivers look like little African kids in famine starved countries compared to other years. This is not good for the sport at all! Humans are getting taller and larger, this is just a proven fact. But F1 seems to think humans are going the other way and now we have already tiny drivers trying to lose more weight because of the rules. Soon only jockeys and dwarfs will be sleeked out to drive F1 cars. Absolutely pathetic! But the FIA is more concerned about how much fuel a car burns. F’ me dead, just make sure every tank holds a maximum of 100Kg of fuel for F’ sake!

Other than that, they should outlaw those ugly penis nose cones on the car and raise the rev limiter on the cars to 20,000 rpm to give them some more sound. At the moment the cars a silent with the lower 15,000rpm rev limit.

@Craig I’m not siding with RBR or FIA on this one, as I think both have made wrong decisions and the net result is RIC was DSQ. We all now have to wait for the weeks of appeals process to be concluded to find out how this will pan out. F1 is the loser out of this.

It annoys me because Australia has a great pool of talented drivers coming through, between RIC being DSQ from his home race and the cancellation of the National Formula Ford season with nothing replacing it until Formula Renault in 2015, future Aussie F1 stars may be few and far between in the next 5-10 years.

Would be interesting to see if it was a RBR team strategy (i.e. If Vettel was also exceeding) and whether it would have cropped up had it been Vettel in second instead…

The Blues have 21 weeks (and more?) to redeem themselves and I’m dumb enough to fall for it every year and hope they have some better days ahead.

I do hope we see more good days from Daniel though!

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