Short guide to F1 Telemetry - Spa circuit

Hello, prior to Belguim Gran Prix at Spa circuit, here's a really short intro to F1 telemetry sheets. This is the type of information that is being analyzed by both drivers and race engineers - either prior to the race or after it.
First of all, let's start with the base - the ATLAS. This is the software responsible for the creation of that telemetry print, and the acronym stands for Advanced Telemetry Linked Acquisition System, developed by McLaren Electronic Systems (MES). At the core of the ATLAS software product is SQL Race; an application program interface (API) of Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
Let's first mention that this is the standard FIA approved data acquisition system for all cars on the grid. The software itself is a close resemblance of the idea behind Microsoft Excel - it consists of multiple sheets, consolidated in a  workbook. Each of the sensors on the car collects information and then sends it back to the garage where it is being stored in a database. This software package, ATLAS, is highly customizable in order to accommodate the wide variety of needs of F1 engineers.

For now, I will guide you shortly to the meaning of each of the lines. For easier reading, they are marked with numbers, respectively Line 1, Line 2. and so on.
Every line has its description and metric at either the left or the right side.

Image credit: Caterham F1 Team, Renault. Click for full size

First of all, let's start with the X axis - it represents one lap of the Spa circuit and the unit is meters.

• Line 1: This red line shows the RPM (Revolutions per minute)
• Line 2: The blue line is car's speed
• Line 3: The green one is lateral acceleration
• Line 4: Purple line is the gear position / changes 
• Line 5: Orange line is the throttle pedal position
• Line 6: Brown line is the brake system pressure

It is really as simple as that :) Questions are welcome.

Race Strategy explained

Hi everyone, we are back on track with another exciting and exclusive installment of F1 Framework related topics. Judging from the stats, you have really enjoyed the insight on Engine Maps brought to you by Maurizio Bollini - he worked as engine engineer for Michael Schumacher when he was the Ferrari F1 driver, during 1996 to 2006 period.
Today, he goes strategic to explain what are the main considerations behind Race Strategy - an imminent element of every single start in Formula 1.

---

When explaining the basic concepts of the F1 Race Strategy, let’s consider two of the factors contributing to race pace: the tyre behavior (and degradation) and the weight effect of the car on the lap time. We are going through a very simplified demonstration.

Tyre behavior

A given set of tyres is used in a race stint. During the utilization in the stint, the tyres go through four phase of life:

• warm-up phase (the firsts one or two laps)
• performance phase (depending on the compound, from 10 to 20-30 laps), 
• degradation phase (depending on several factors, it can be very few laps), 
• Give-up (in very short time).

During the warm-up phase the tyre reach the optimal working temperature in its working range. The working range depends on the compound and other factors. Pirelli tyres for F1 2013 season have the following working ranges:

Low Working Range

• Super Soft, 85-110 deg
• Medium, 90-115 deg
• Hard New, 90-115 deg (from Bahrain 2013 onward in the season)

High Working Range

• Soft, 105-125 deg 
• Hard, 110-135 deg

The performance phase is a window whose duration depends on the compound, the track characteristics and the car. For the softer tyres it could be somewhat like 10 laps, for harder tyres it could be in the range 20-30 laps. In this phase the tyres gives the best performance and so the lowest lap time.

The degradation phase occurs for wear, abrasion, graining and blistering and the lap time start to increase. It is time to make a pit-stop to change tyres.

The give-up occurs when the cyclic stress reached the maximum acceptable level for the compound and construction. The combination of stress and heating generate mechanical and chemical changes in the rubber causing the lap time increasing sharply. Usually the car is called at the pit stop before this phase because it can cause tenths of retard on the pace.

Weight effect (on lap time)

The weight-effect is a value that expresses how faster the car run while the weight decrease because of the fuel burned. It is measured as seconds/lap/10 Kg.

It can be estimated at the Lap Time Simulator (LapSim), an application running on a PC, with experiments at different level of fuel or just by fitting real data public available from FIA.
The LapSim gives, for Australia 2013, a value for Weight Effect of 0.22 sec/lap/10kg.

As alternative, the Weight Effect can be easily estimated by fitting real data. Let’s consider the real lap times from Australia 2013 F1 race from three drivers.

For comparison, if we take the best of the fitting cases above we get a Weight Effect of 0.0722 sec/lap. Knowing that the fuel consumption in Australia is somewhat as 2.5 kg/lap, the fitted Weight Effect will be 0.29 sec/lap/10kg, not so far from what we get from the more accurate simulation and not so bad considering the “noise” affecting the second measure.

Going through a normalized value per 10 Kg is not really needed for this purpose but it is important to compare the weight effect of different race circuits.

Race Strategy example

As a race strategy example, we want to compare two tyre management options for the Australia race, called Option-A and Option-B. Both options use the same sequence of tyres, SuperSoft/Medium/Medium.

Option-A do pit at lap 13 and lap 35. Option-B do pit at lap 17 and lap 38. The pit-stop time is the same in both cases (20 seconds) and the tyre model, very simple and just for the purpose of this demonstration, is based on the Weibull degradation formula.

We calculate the lap time lap-per-lap for both options on the race distance including the weight reduction effect and the tyre behavior effect.

Then we sum the lap times in order to have a cumulative curve for Option-A and Option-B and we make the difference, lap by lap, of the last two cumulative curves. Results are plotted on the next chart.

By reading this chart, the conclusion is that at the end of the race, Option-A is slower of about 3.61 seconds respect to Option-B.

Using this procedure, it is possible to play with different scenarios. During the race, simulated lap times are updated, lap by lap, with the real lap time and the scenario update in accordance.

This is, in a very simplified way, what is behind a dynamic race strategy application.

This tool is used trackside by the Performance Engineers with the support of the Strategy Engineer at remote garage, the facility located at the Team’s Headquarter. Such example is Neil Martin from Scuderia Ferrari, who has been known to update the team in terms of strategy via remote link from Italy. 

Making the right strategy call is, of course, very important. The recent example was Mark Webber in Hungary, 2013 - he had to start P10, running for a long period on Medium compound and eventually making it to P4 with very late usage of the Softs. 

---

Maurizio Bollini is the owner of MET Milano (www.met.it), a consultancy firm involved in motorsport. In the past he worked as engine engineer for Michael Schumacher when he was the Ferrari F1 driver, during 1996 to 2006. He can be contacted at maurizio.bollini@met.it.

F1 Simulators

In F1 world simulators are expensive set of hardware and software, whose aim is to resemble as closely as possible the real car feeling while driving on a certain track. Consider F1 simulators as the massively expensive version of the small simulators you may have at home or driven at some public car shows and events. Add to that equation the variable "sophistication" and you'll be closer. Still not convinced? Proceed below :)
The prime drivers to have that article are, as usual, sharing information inside F1 world, and the increasing emphasis on simulations overall, as testing on track becomes more and more limited, following recent news that teams have not agreed to open doors to in-season testing.

In details

Image: Youtube.com

Woking, Mclaren factory - this is what you are going to face on the front door of this secret place, fortunately, we have something to share.

Mclaren

Mclaren is perceived to have the most advanced installation at the time of writing this article. These words come from the person who has spent lots of time inside it - Pedro de la Rosa, who used to be Mclaren test and reserve driver, currently doing the same at Ferrari. The work at Woking factory started back in 2003, which according to the Spaniard gives them (Mclaren) few years advantage.
Gary Paffet, their test driver says: "Certainly, inside the tub you get very similar feedback to what you feel in the real car". Jonathan Neale adds: "What separates the $2000 home installation and the multi-million dollar F1 simulator is the engineering and the science models that lie below. We do want to know what is happening with the tire contact patch, what the forces are, fine tune the engine modes, as they affect the downforce. We do want to know where the downforce is working when you have steer angle, roll and yaw".
"We have committed", Neale continues, "thousands of man hours in software models, tire matrices, engine modes in order to give the testing driver the best feeling about the car".
Chris Goodwin, chief test driver, admits that the simulator has been irreplaceable and essential part of their projects, which also helped Mclaren road cars division to integrate lots of knowledge in production.
This is how it looks like:

Ferrari

Our next stop is at Maranello, where Ferrari are enjoying the simulator installation done by company called Moog - a process which has started back in 2008.
Some of the technical aspects of the simulator are:

• Viewing angle - 180 degrees
• 10 multiprocessor computers 
• 60 GB of RAM
• Around 5 GB of data per day
• 3,500 Watt Dolby Surround 7.1 sound system

All this looks like this:

And finally, if you want to see it working:



Thanks to Axis of Oversteer for both photo and video.
It's not all roses for Ferrari, though - back on the connection between Mclaren and them - Pedro De la Rosa - when the Spaniard made an examination of the current status quo upon its arrival at Maranello, he explained that steps need to be taken, first in terms of hardware and then software built upon it, if Ferrari want to chase the rivals in that area.

Red Bull

Certainly, the reigning world champions, Red Bull Racing, are not just magically winning races and are surely complemented by similar system.
Before we proceed to the technical details, a short word on why such machinery is important.
The time stamp says 24.05.2013, Friday, Red Bull are noticing that they need about 1 second prior to going into qualification mode in Monaco. The information gathered on the streets of Monte Carlo is sent back to their base and Sebastian Buemi does about 400 laps in the simulator, which reportedly resulted in new parts / modifications being done to the front wing of the car (RB9) for the race.

The Main man behind the simulator is Andy Damerum. The cockpit is from the original Red Bull RB1 of 2005, yet it is programmed with the aerodynamics and engine specification of the current car.
Pedals and driving position are exactly the same, steering wheel works in full, all buttons, and is exact copy of the one that gets used on race weekend.
This cockpit is on top of a platform, which is mounted over six hydraulic “legs” - they are somewhat high, so the driver is almost 2 meters above the ground. Roll, pitch and yaw are there, as you can imagine - people with motion sickness better stay out.

Since peripheral vision is weak with us, humans, compared to animals, we need more time and resources to identify the surrounding objects, thus, the simulator wants to try to emulate the environment closely and stimulate the brain’ Occipital lobe, which is mainly responsible for processing vision. Hence, there’s a single 180 degree vision screen to match the moving pictures of the track and objects that you leave behind.

Short note about senses stimulation: a while ago Williams F1 team had a technical partner, Qinetiq, who has done a research on how the nerve endings are sending info to the Cerebellum (smaller region in the lower part of the brain) about perceptions of yaw, pitch and roll. The research claims that if stimulated at early age, these perceptions are being developed much faster than at later age. Sorry for the medical distraction, I strongly believe, however, that physics and human body, most notably including the brain, are one of the most important aspects of the beloved sport.

Back on the simulator, any type of setting and parameters that can be altered during the race, such as angle of attack, toe-out, suspension, etc, can be changed in the simulator, too.
Something which is usually not changed is the grip levels, as they will produce different feeling for the driver, hence the grip is usually a constant parameter.
The engine sound is, well, fake, but certainly the sounds match the sound frequency of the gears. Feedback through the steering wheel is definitely there.

One of the most frequently asked question is how tracks are defined within the simulator. New tracks are added in database model first via raw data (coordinates, numbers), then video footage to polish the sharp edges, then input and potentially real data from car tested over there.

Andy Damerum or other team personnel is monitoring the live data: the same parameters are available there, as on the track, even named the same for full match: pDiff, nEngine, NGear, rThrottlePedal, MDiffDemand, etc.

This is a typical screen that a simulator engineer is looking at:

Finally, short word about Merceges AMG F1 team - back in 2010 the Brackley-based squad has complained a lot about the lack of proper simulator. Today, 2013 in the summer, the team are already seeing positives in having Robert Kubica helping them with simulator work and feedback. The Pole has already had multiple sessions in the simulator, but his main task for now is rallying and there's no long term plan for him.

Once again, thanks for attending, questions are welcome!

"You shall not pass"

This famous phrase from "The Lord of the rings" by the wizard Gandalf actually originates from World War I and it exists in many forms.
In our case we are going to talk about the 'motor sport war' and the crash tests of Formula 1 cars which are the mandatory step allowing the cars to participate in the world championship. Certainly, we are not going to emphasize the importance of having crash tests, but rather try to reveal some details from behind the scenes. The idea and the data for the article comes from our friends at F1Talks.pl - thanks for that - so let's roll.

In the latest issue of AUTO magazine there is an extensive material from FIA, which exercises the direct supervision of the entire crash-testing process, to reveal some facts and open some doors firmly closed so far.
One important thing that's often asked by fans: Can a team introduce new chassis in the middle of the season? The answer is plain Yes, as long as it's being re-tested and passes successfully.

When you change the rules in 2012, each of the cars must be pre-season tested in one of three locations approved by the FIA:

• Cranfield Impact Centre
• Transport Research Laboratory (both located in the UK)
• CSI lab in Milan. 

People inside those organizations are certainly busy, according to Charlie Whiting, the reason for this is not only the large number of tests, but also to approach the teams that are trying to meet the requirements of the rules.

“Any Formula One team can get their cars to pass the test without a problem, but obviously what they want to do is build the lightest most aerodynamic car they can. That requires specific shapes and specific packaging and very often that goes right up against the tolerances set by the tests.” says Formula One race director Charlie Whiting, who drafts the regulations the teams must adhere to. “The rear impact structure, which we also crash test, is a good example. Currently the teams want that to be swept upwards whereas, in terms of the tests, it would be far better for the structure to be straight.
“We had one team this year pursuing a particular solution for the rear of its car and they had, I think, in the region of 15 attempts at passing the rear impact structure test before they got it right. “However, they’re not catastrophic failures; we’re talking about tiny amounts by which they miss the standard. In the rear impact test, the maximum deceleration can’t exceed 20g for more than 15 milliseconds and what they find is that it is exceeding that standard by one millisecond. So that’s the sort of fine-tuning teams are involved in.”

Jo Bauer, the FIA’s technical delegate at races and, along with Forbes, an observer at crash tests, agrees saying that while failures are frequent, solutions are normally straightforward.
“This year we had a team that destroyed its survival cells during the side impact tests and one team where the seat bulkhead failed during a [frontal] impact test, which is rare,” he says. “However, the solution to that was simply to add another ply of carbon-fibre, 200g at most, and the test was then no problem for them to pass. The margins the teams work at are very small, so there are never any real fundamental failures and by and large it’s just small adjustments that are required".

“Currently we have eight static tests on the chassis and three push-off tests on the impact structure, front, side and rear,” he says. “We also have two front impact tests, one side and one rear, and a steering column impact test. There are also side penetration tests, so the teams supply a test panel and the chassis must be built with this construction.“The first team started in the middle of November and the last in the third week of January. It depends on what their development schedule has been like and how confident they are of passing the tests.”
Confidence sometimes isn’t enough, however, and though no team has yet been refused permission to race, testing is another matter. In 2012, the FIA introduced a new ruling stipulating that all teams must pass the full battery of tests before the start of pre-season testing. Marussia fell foul of the ruling when its MR01 failed its final test and was forced to sit out the first test of 2012. Whiting insists, though, that the requirement to homologate before testing was long overdue.
“It was common for cars to do thousands of kilometres of testing without any crash testing, which was madness,” he says. “Certainly it was unsustainable and we had to step in.”
Indeed, the tests are now so rigorous that Bauer admits that teams sometimes miss the pre-season deadline.
“It can take some time for teams to get it right,” he adds. “At the first of this year’s two pre-season tests in Barcelona we still had one team that hadn’t passed the full set of tests, so they were forced to run with a compromise solution. They just had to complete a rear impact test which they hadn’t passed, so in Barcelona they used their old rear impact structure.”

In order to translate all those words into numbers, here's a table describing all 18 mandatory tests that have been conducted with this year's cars before they appear on the track:

Name	Type of test	Additional Information
Striking truck speeding test it against the wall to the speed of 15 m/s car attached structure weighing 780 kg	The car with an empty tank, the nose fixed
The second front crash test	Striking truck speeding him to the test speed of 15 m/s car attached structure weighing 900 kg	Test without a nose mounted
Side crash test	Impact test trolley of mass 780 kg speeding to a speed of 10 m/s in the lateral section of the car attached to the wall
Impact test trolley of mass 780 kg rushing to the speed of 11 m/s in the rear section of the car attached to the wall
Steering column crash test	The weight of the steering column struck 8 kg mass accelerated to 7 m/s	After the test the steering wheel must be able to be easily detached
Compressive strength test zone over the head of the driver (rear roll structure)	Constant force (120kN), acting at right angles (x-60kN, 50kN y-, z-90kN) is applied to the element mounted in a special frame FIA ​​test
Test compressive strength of the protection zone before the driver (front roll structure)	Constant force (75 kN thrust) acting from above is applied to the element mounted in a special frame with FIA Test
The first test crushing strength side zone	Constant force (25 kN) is applied in the right place section side car	Size 100mm to 300mm pressure
A second test crushing strength side zone	Constant force (30 kN) is applied in the right place section side car	The diameter of the pressure of 200mm
The third test crushing strength side zone	Constant force (30 kN) is applied in the right place section side car	The diameter of the pressure of 200mm, a thrust member must be placed 350mm above floor level.
Test the floor under the fuel tank	Constant force (12.5 kN) is applied on the middle of the floor under the fuel tank	200mm diameter of the pressure surface, the force applied from the underside of the floor at an angle of 90 degrees
Test the floor under the driver's seat	Constant force (15kN) is applied to the floor underneath the driver	The diameter of the pressure of 200mm
Test frame (input) Cockpit	Constant force (15kN) is applied to the frame on both sides of the cockpit	Two elements exerting a diameter of 50mm is positioned on the frame cockpit at 90 degrees relative to the axis of symmetry of the car
Test of resistance to pushing the nose (push-off)	Constant force (40kN) is applied to the side of the car's nose	Surface pressure placed 100mm 300mm 550mm from the center of the front wheels, the duration of 30 seconds
Penetration test the protective side panels (located at the height of the driver)	Panel size 500mm to 500mm is pressed by a rigid, truncated cone. Travelling speed of 2 m/s	The test ends when the deformation reaches the panel 150mm
Test of resistance to pushing the rear section (push-off)	Constant force (40kN) is applied to the side of the rear structure of the collision	Surface pressure placed 100mm 300mm 400mm from the axis of the rear wheels, the duration of 30 seconds
Horizontal resistance test side crash zones (SIT's) to repel (push-off)	The element is capable of withstanding 20kN
Vertical resistance test side crash zones (SIT's) to repel (push-off)	The element is capable of withstanding 10kN

F1 Engine Maps

20 articles later, hello again and welcome to the next installment of F1 Framework topics. This time we have former Formula 1 engineer as guest author on exclusive insight into F1 engine maps - a term often cited around with not much explanation.
Maurizio Bollini is the owner of MET Milano (www.met.it), a consultancy firm involved in motorsport. In the past he worked as engine engineer for Michael Schumacher when he was Ferrari F1 driver, during 1996 to 2006. Maurizo can be contacted at maurizio.bollini@met.it.

F1 Engine Maps Explained

With the generic term “Engine Maps” we refer to a wide set of one-dimension or two-dimension parameter tables loaded into the ECU to control all the engine parameters, that are, at least, throttle opening, injection and ignition timings (duration, phase, etc...). The main two-dimensions maps take the throttle opening and the engine speed as inputs and return a proper parameter as output. All maps are filled with proper numbers during hours of engine calibration done at the test rig and/or at track. Let’s consider now two important maps for the driver: the Driver Pedal Map and the Driver Torque Demand Map.

Driver Maps

The Pedal Map and the Torque Demand Map are two important maps that allow the driver to manage the engine drivability through the redefinition of torque delivery at wheel and in turn, to improve the laptime performance.

The F1 Powertrain Control Unit (PCU)  has a Torque Control strategy properly implemented to control the engine. The torque demand, as requested from the driver by the acceleration pedal, is calculated by the chain composed by the Pedal Map and the Torque Demand Map. The input variable is the accelerator pedal position, given by the Drive By Wire potentiometer and the output variable will be the throttle position, actuated from the PCU by hydraulic or electric actuators on the engine intake butterflies or barrels.

The required maps are the following:

1. The engine torque map. This is a 2-dimension table with engine speed and throttle as inputs and torque as output. This map is defined point-by-point or by ramps at the test rig with the fired engine and the torque meter. Sometimes is trimmed on track if the car is equipped with torque meters on the transmission.
   Short example of why this is so important - we are supplemented by radio message to his team by Charles Pic in Free Practice 1, Monaco Gran Prix:
   "Engine map with retarded ignition timing helps throttle response and low speed rear grip, but still needs to improve a bit".
2. The inverse engine torque map. It is calculated by the engine torque map. It is a 2-dimensions table with torque and engine speed as inputs and throttle as output. It is computer calculated.
3. The driver demand torque map. This is the 2-dimension table with engine speed and driver normalized torque as input and engine torque as output. This is a reshaping of the engine torque. This is the core of the drivability because allow the engineers to completely reshape the engine torque in function of the engine speed, within the boundaries of maximum and minimum torque available (which is the torque at off-throttle – engine brake - and at wide-open-throttle).
4. The pedal map. This is a 1-dimension map where the input is the normalized accelerator pedal position (0-100%) and the output is the normalized torque (0-100%). It can be considered as a “gain” on the driver demand torque map.

Let see a typical engine map. This map is the torque behavior of the engine. Notice the fluid dynamic effect which makes changing of slopes of the torque at constant throttle – this is the source of drivability issues especially when condition are not optimal (worn tires, low grip, etc).

The driver demand torque map could be like the following. Notice the torque at constant throttle now is linear, unregarding of the original torque. It can be shaped freely. It is like to have a “different engine”.

The negative slope is useful to compensate the wheel spin. In fact when the driver hold on the pedal,  if the wheel spin that develops is causing the engine speed to increase, the torque is actually reduced, minimizing the wheel spin. Different drivers are comfortable with different shapes, so the map is driver defined.

With different pedal maps, the torque driver torque map change as follows:

Legend for each column: 

1. Soft pickup – driveability for low speed corner or wet conditions
2. Standard linear map
3. Smooth top end – for high speed corner

Changing the pedal map is an easy way to change the sensitivity of the pedal while conserving the characteristic shape of the driver demand torque map. You notice that the negative slope is conserved while the distance of constant pedal torques change.

How the driver uses the Engine Maps

On the practical way, the engineers provide a selection of pedal maps and torque maps, driver selectable by the driver using rotary selectors on the steering wheel. In addition to a manual selection, if the regulation permits, pedal maps and torque maps can be automatically selected by the space information on the ECU or selected by gears. In this way, the driver could have the optimal pedal map in function of the corner (different between low speed corners or high speed corners) or have negative slope torque map for low gears and standard map for high gears - all selected automatically.

The rotary selector for the pedal map is labeled somewhat like PEDAL and the driver demand torque map is labeled TRQ. Sometimes the two functions can be overlaid on single rotary selector, to save one rotary selector for other uses. It is recommended to always have a WET configuration on the rotary selectors, which can be used when grip is low. Pedal map for wet is usually soft-pickup shaped.

Everyday work at track is to modify the pedal maps to give the best support to the driver. Driver demand torque maps are usually developed on telemetry analysis overnight at track.

The programming part

Programming tables and thus engine maps are usually structured text files. Some are of proprietary format, other are standard formats like XML.
The data manipulation is done using Excel and VBA with custom macros, Matlab or custom Windows applications.
Engine maps are organized into a database with version support in order to quickly update to previous revision in case of issues.
The System Monitor application included in the MES Standard ECU package include a tool to modify engine maps as well other parameters but usually these tools are on the PC connected to the car or to the dyno, to reprogram the ECU.
Engineers usually prefers to work with shared corporate power tools to manipulate the maps offline.
The tools to manipulate the engine maps required specific algorithm for reshaping as well to merge different data sets with specific criteria, not always found on the support applications more dedicated for data uploading/downloading to ECU.

---

I hope you liked the words from the inside of Formula 1, dear readers. Maurizio can be further contacted via his Twitter handle. There will be more coming from him in the near future.