Art. 8 More failures in F1 please. Russell screwed up. And Thermal Club failed.
Sorry Max, that's on me.
Atonement.
So I said last week that barring catastrophic failure, Max was a lock. This is probably karmic justice. I deserve it.
His brake failure was an interesting one. Stuck calipers are not standard in motorsport, and even less so in F1 with the brake systems designs. Max reported that the right accurate caliper stuck on from the green flag and, within a few laps, caused a subsequent fire and failure of the system.
“What we can see so far in the data is as soon as the lights went off, the right-rear brake just stuck on,” Verstappen told Sky. “Of course, the damage kept on increasing.”
“As soon as the lights went off, you accelerate, and you can see one brake, the right-rear brake, just stuck on,” he added.
There is no other cause than a stuck piston not retracting. A seal was bound up, debris in the piston bore prevented it from returning, or the caliper body had a mechanical failure. It doesn’t take much to have an issue with hydraulics. The tolerances are very tight. A standard clearance rule is often 0.001” per inch; it doesn’t leave much room for issues. For reference, that’s thinner than an average human hair.
Brembo makes all of the calipers for all ten teams. Only one team uses AP Brakes, but Brembo owns AP. They bought the firm in 2000. Each team works with Brembo/AP to design their calipers. The RB19 took a more aggressive design to reduce the unsprung mass by eliminating weight in the caliper design.
The RB19 used this skeletonized design to reduce weight and increase heat transfer for thermal control. The pins we see there are also for the same reasons: increasing surface area for high-efficiency thermal transfer without significantly adding mass.
Given that each team is designing its systems within the open rules set by the FIA, we can see a significant change between teams in design philosophy and material. By all accounts, Red Bull has been one of the few teams on the grid to get “wild” with its design. It’s even started using special coatings to control the temperature build and release to maximize tire and rim core temps while ensuring they are consistent and do not spike through its cooling ductwork.
Brembo(AP) released a statement earlier in the week that they are confident the cause is unrelated to the caliper.
The cause of the problems encountered by Max Verstappen is “not attributable” to their materials or components, nor to component anomalies or a malfunction in the materials used to make the components. - Brembo PR
Helmut Marko came out and also issued a statement.
"Max [Verstappen's] brake broke down, the exact cause is still being investigated. But it's not down to the caliper. It's more an[sic] assembly problem, but that is being checked. - Helmut Marko
With Brembo saying that it’s not their fault with anything related to manufacturing or materials for the caliper, but Helmut saying they have an assembly or setup problem, we are only left with a few options in which this failure mode could have occurred.
The FIA mandates that the braking system have dual master cylinders: one for the front brake pair and one for the rear pair. We also have the Brake By Wire system for the MGU-K. The rear braking system after the rear master cylinder terminates at the BBW system inside the transmission. This is exactly where I think the failure occurred.
The BBW system balances the rear-to-front bias based on the setting the driver and engineering have determined for the situation. This may result in varying levels of additional retardation for the car beyond the MGU-K’s braking ability. It also ensures balanced left and right brake pressures to avoid an unintended yaw situation.
A basic diagram of how the system is laid out would look like this for a four-channel system in a road car application.
In F1, much of this will be simplified, and much more of it will be far more complicated. Still, additional components will also improve performance and rapid actuation, like an electrohydraulic modulating brake valve or a spool valve system to control the brake pressure and application.
The failure point for me will be a component of this system. Through the suppliers' and team's admission, we've already determined that it’s not a component of the caliper(allegedly), meaning it has to be somewhere upstream of the caliper itself. We didn’t see any leaking fluid; the smoke originated from the wheel, which probably eliminates a line failure. This was also proved by the fact that Verstappen still had brakes and the caliper didn’t release. A loss of pressure in the brakes would have seen the caliper release, and we would have seen fluid loss downstream of the proportioning valve.
Helmut also said it was a setup issue that won’t be repeated.
I have a feeling Red Bull has developed their own “Brake Magic” system to pull heat into the rear tires by running the performance on the BBW system backward more than would normally be used in race conditions. We know the failure was on the formation lap, and the system didn’t release.
The only thing I think this could possibly be is the proportioning or balance valve in the rear hydraulic system, which developed a failure due to exceeding pressure in the system, killing the right half of the valve through a component failure.
One could see how having more heat in the rear to provide better braking force, launch at the start, and, more importantly, inducing a better slip angle to turn the car at the first corner would greatly benefit from getting an advantage on lap 1. Max has been a consistently good starter and is often able to stretch the gaps on the opening lap. And I think that’s all because the tires are up to temperature.
Red Bull likely stepped outside the limits, trying to gain an advantage. They won’t do that again.
More mechanical mayhem.
Australia saw numerous failures in ways we don’t see. Verstappen's brakes failed, Perez’s brakes had problems after ingesting a tear-off, Hamilton's engine let go, and I cannot even begin to remember the last time a Mercedes powertrain failed.
Many people will disagree, but I like the chance for parts failures. Give me chaos.
Alonso did nothing wrong.
So many people jumped on one clip, one GPS speed graph that showed early braking, and a different type of corner entry.
This will no doubt be a hot-button topic, but I believe Alonso was managing a throttle problem. The On-board video showed weird noises and engine stutters at times, and the timing data showed that Russell was gaining over the last laps.
With the BBW system providing a lot of braking performance and some throttle input to balance the car, it may have been necessary to drive and enter the corner differently to keep entry, apex, and exit speeds up. Or at least high enough to be managed. Looking over some bits of the telemetry, it appears his throttle may have been only partially opening if not all the way. That would explain the weird on/off/on power cycle as the TV telemetry did not show any throttle modulation, and he was likely balancing the car using the on/off/on technique through that corner with brakes for speed/yaw control to help get it turned coming back into the power abruptly.
Doing so would have kept the pressure on the front tires and allowed a semi-normal turn-in and back on the power.
The closure rate and the aero wake coming off Alonso’s car caught George out; he got off rhythm and crashed. I don’t think for a second that Alonso was doing this intentionally to cause a racing incident for Russell.
I disagree with the stewards’ decision. But nothing we can do about it.
Thermal Club was awful.
I wrote last week that IndyCar needed the exhibition at Thermal Club to be a success.
It was anything but.
While 890,000 pairs of eyeballs tuned into the race, I wouldn’t have wasted my time again. Whatever this was needs to be thrown away, burned, thrown away some more, and forgotten.
I will applaud Penske and IndyCar for trying, but this was absolutely not something to repeat in this format.
We can probably start with the good.
The ice cream and catering were excellent.
Now that we have that out, let us discuss the bad.
This probably deserves a list.
Tire degradation. The hybrid tires without hybrid power do not fall off. Palou was brilliant for just sending it.
Why do we need “halftime” after 10 laps? Seriously, that’s weird, and it threw the whole thing off.
Push to Pass needs to be unlimited; who cares if it’s from the green? It must always be enabled, and there should be no limit. Burn the engine down if you want to. Make it interesting.
Run it at night or at sunset to make the visuals pop. The desert at high noon looks blown out and dead. Sparks are good, add titanium skid blocks.
I’ve heard rumors that the armed, private security was on a power trip to the point they were telling photographers they couldn’t do their jobs. Also, why do we need armed security at a private club? We’re not just talking about a handful of yellow shirts with pistols. We’re talking fully kitted up, with long guns, and I know there was at least one goober with a set of NODs in a bag “just in case.” This is absolutely unacceptable. You don’t even see this openly at things like the Super Bowl. Whoever made this call, your rocket to the sun is departing shortly.
The racing was awful. Thermal Club is a track day course for rich guys to bin their Porsches. Not one suited for this type of event. There are so many other options available.
If it were up to me, I’d do a few things to make this a success.
Run it at an existing event and open the season at St. Pete with a million-dollar kickoff, but I’d also run it late into the afternoon and switch some lights on. The winner gets a guaranteed entry to the 500. And most importantly? Link up with Microsoft and turn it into a real-life Forza Horizon festival. Allow special compound tires, give the cars huge power, fan voting for restart positions, knockout rounds/laps for last place, and for the love of everything Flora and Fauna, DO NOT put it up against March Madness.
This has been excessively complained about, I don’t think much more needs to be said.
You have to do something that makes it shiny, sparky, and unique that isn’t being done elsewhere. Making this the Temu version of F1 Sprint racing will never work.
Ditch Thermal, it’s cold as can be.
MotoGP to Liberty Media?
Do we have to do this? I mean, it’s probably happening. And maybe it would be fine? I’m not a huge bike person, so I can’t say if it’s good or bad. I just hate the idea of massive corporations owning everything. With that being said, F1 has done well with Liberty, so I’d like to think they’d find success there, too. And I have no question whether we might see a Drive to Survive TV series with MotoGP.
Whatever this becomes, please give Road America a chance as the US round. Yes, I know, that means the track needs a new pit complex, but seeing as the F1 bid was unsuccessful, can we at least get another huge name to show up here? I’d like it. The days of peak AMA there were great. Perhaps it’s time to correct George Bruggenthies' mistake of not taking WSBK or MotoGP back in the early 2000s and losing it to Laguna Seca.
BTCC to TikTok.
I’ll watch more of it in portrait mode on my phone. This is weird and I don’t understand it. But, more touring cars are always good. unless, of course, they block it in the US.
Given the recent saga in the US Government, it’s possible.
Either way, the series that brought us some incredible racing hits a new outlet, and we should all be happy to watch Colin Turkington start his 398th Season in BTCC in 29 days at Donington Park.
Welcome to the weekend! As always, thanks for reading, please share and subscribe!