chrisp

Someone who knows should chime in. What exactly are they allowed to change under the frozen engine rules? They are definitely allowed to change some stuff, I know that much. Perhaps Ferrari pushed the envelop in one of those areas too far. This could realistically impact every Ferrari motor.

Flying Finn

That's from F-1 Live...

As much as I'd like to blame McLaren ECU, It was the valves, not ECU that cause Ferrari engine failures.

But I agree with Pete & others, it's beyond me how McLaren could be accepted as a manufacuturer of these.

MTosi

Yeah I do agree with you, I doubt there was anything malicious with the Ferrari ECU's I just think that the mclaren ecu is far more suited to well mclaren, and seeing as how mclaren knew exactley what the ferrari design was I think there was the temptation to make its as incompatible with the ferrari as possible.

amaist

McLaren was accepted at the manufacturer before the spy scandal. I am sure if they had to make the decision now it would not be McLaren.

If Ferrari win then it's because they are so wonderful and pure. If they lose then it must be some sort of conspiracy. Nice.

mitch236

I think most here don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory. We just don't understand how the FIA can choose one of the competitors to produce such a sensitive part of every race car on the grid when there are other comanies out there that could provide the same ECU.

Bob Rouleau

Since the valves on F1 engines are no longer driven mechanicvally by camshafts - they are pneumatic I believe, is the timing controlled by the ECU I wonder?

Chaos

McLaren has a new satellite called the Ferrari Death Star. Ron Dennis "paints" the car with his laser pointer and hits a button on his lap top from the grid. The FDS beam disables the eletronics and gives the driver the "trots" at the same time to distract the stewards.

ZAPmobile

I knew it, I just knew it. What else could it have been.

multi21

There is also speculation that Ferrari knew their dossier would be compromised and placed a decoy section known internally as "Steering Wheel" in the dossier.

Reports from reliable sources indicate that McLaren followed Ferrari's design on this important piece of equipment and fitted the pit limiter button in a location where 1 or more of their drivers could easily hit it at critical points in a race, hence ruining their effort.

Thus far, the last two races (2007 Brazil, 2008 Australia) have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the "steering wheel" decoy was working beyond Ferrari's exceptations.

MTosi

I don't realy believe in some conspiracy but giving design and control of something that vital to a competitor in the series is just plain stupid.

flashgordon

I may be missing something here, but I don't understand how a team is told to develop an engine without an ECU. The engines were designed and frozen before they were given the new ECU to do any R&D. This would make it next to impossible to devlop a reliable engine design. The problems Ferrari had could very well be related to the engine management and there will likely be other teams that will have issues with engine reliablity(one can assume, however, that McLaren will not be one of them). This is just another example of the complete lack of brains in F1 management.

Veloce Raptor

Typical for the corrupt inbred FIA, though....

Scootin159

First a few points to correct some mis-information in here:

1) The ECU's are new for EVERYONE... they are not simply last year's McLaren ECU, they are a new FIA-designed spec, which is then manufactured by McLaren.
2) The new ECU's are OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SCHEMATIC. While they are still a new design, and thus have a learning curve... they are not black boxes. Ferrari has no technical reason for not understanding the ECU 100%.
3) McLaren Electronic Systems is not McLaren F1 team. Yes they are owned by the same parent company, and yes they are in the same office building, but they are technically not one in the same.
4) The new engine rules allow for hardly any engine modifications at all. Last year all ancillary systems were still open, but this year even those are frozen.

Of course, given the above, Ferrari should be running the exact same engine as last year, but with a new ECU this year. I'm skeptical that it's McLaren sabbotagoe, but its more likely that it's one of:

1) Poor QA at Maranello due to recent changes in management.
2) Poor ECU programming due to engineer's unfamiliarity with the new system
3) Faults in the engine being exposed due to increased grip levels (the car's pulling more G's in the corners this year)
4) Faults in the engine being exposed due to the loss of TC this year (perhaps more quick rev changes due to traction events)

The whole "McLaren sabotaging Ferrari" thing just sounds too conspiracy theory, and too convenient for me. If McLaren were to do something to intentionally sabotage Ferrari, wouldn't they make it a little more subtle? If the current trend holds true, Ferrari won't finish a single race this year... and with all the manpower & talent back in Maranello that would be devoted to this if that were to happen, we can be assured they'd find evidence of the sabotage if it were there.... McLaren would know this, and would never risk it, especially knowing that it would likely lead to expulsion... or worse.

A.Wayne

As posted 2 months ago

F1 mandatory ECU
F1technical .net

The 2008 Formula 1 season will herald the start of a revolution. Research and development funds will be spent not on the duplication of common components and infrastructure, but channelled towards pure performance and road-relevant innovation. Every team on the grid will use a standardised Electronic Control Unit (ECU), and a technical partnership between McLaren Electronic Systems (MES) and Microsoft has been awarded the supply contract by the FIA. Although the unit is referred to as a ‘standard’ ECU, it’s actually a very sophisticated device, and will play a vital role in helping shape the cars of the future – on the road and track. “It’s not about dumbing down to one level, it’s about elevating everyone up,” says Peter van Manen, managing director of MES. “A common electronics platform developed from a best-of-breed system has the potential to make a big difference for the whole grid.” The ECU is the nerve centre of a Formula 1 car, controlling the power train and delivering data by dealing with more than 6000 different parameters. Reliability is a priority. The physical boxes are therefore only slightly modified versions of the units that have been supplied to other teams for a couple of years. Vital issues in any new design, such as cooling the processors, had already been addressed.

Proven hardware

“We know we’ve got something that works on a racing car,” says Jonathan Hand, technical director of MES. “We didn’t want to risk supplying a possible 12 teams with a brand new piece of electronics that had never been used on a racetrack.” Although the hardware was already proven, writing the software was a huge technical challenge. It demanded the evolution of a common code that would satisfy the needs of the teams, running a variety of different engines and gearboxes. In order not to be pulled in different directions, the team went back to basics. For example, what happens during a gearshift: “We broke down how you manage the engine behaviour during the shift, and looked at the point at which you ask the gearbox to disengage one gear and re-engage the next,” says Hand. “If you consider those steps in sequence, what you want to do with one gearbox is pretty much what you want to do with any other.”
Highly configurable

It may be a generic solution, but the ECU has detailed architecture. It’ll give teams flexibility in how they set up their software, which options they choose to enable, and how they fine-tune parameters. “The system is designed to be highly configurable, and the team that learns how to configure it best will do better,” says van Manen. Inevitably, many of the headlines revolve not around the functions the ECU offers, but one that it doesn’t: traction control. This feature, like launch control, will not be available in 2008.

The contract is testimony not only to MES’ technical prowess, but also to the level of confidentiality for which it is renowned. Some observers raised their eyebrows at the award of the ECU deal to a company that shares its name with one of the competitors. It should have come as no surprise to the teams, as they already use MES components, including the high-intensity rain lights. Formula 1’s reaction time is the envy of other industries. The rapid response is shown by the speed with which the ECU project progressed. The contract was awarded on July 5, 2006. Work began next morning. Teams were supplied with the system specification in September 2006. Production started in November and the first items were delivered on March 9, 2007. All competitors ran the unit on the racetrack in Barcelona on November 13-15. The unit’s debut at this, the first winter test, was a success: it completed 16,000km – equivalent to 50 race distances – without any real problems. “The debut performance, running during three days with no failures, was a milestone that we were all quietly very pleased about,” says van Manen. “The target was always to have something running and stable before teams started testing their new cars in 2008.” The finished version highlights the colossal leaps forward made between the initial ‘STAR system’ – which raced in 2000 – and the STAR 2 system that evolved into the 2008 ECU.
Winning combination

Its predecessor had a memory of 256 megabytes and a maximum of 192 logging channels, yet STAR 2 has a memory of up to one gigabyte and 512 logging channels. There has been a staggering progress in ECU processing power in recent years, up from about 200 million instructions per second (MIPS) to almost 2000 MIPS. The ECU on a modern high-performance sports car, such as the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, uses less than 50 MIPS to run the engine and conduct all of the onboard diagnostics. The new ECU’s initial incarnation did not fully reveal the hand of the engineers behind it.

“We didn’t want to be changing everything on day one,” says van Manen. “It needs to do a job, needs to supply high-fidelity data to the teams, but also acts as a road map for what will be available as it develops.” McLaren migrated from its own internal systems to a Microsoft Windows platform in 1999 and immediately reaped benefits. “Much of Microsoft’s core technology is already widely employed in teams’ factories and pit-lane garages,” says van Manen. “The next step in the process is to add the management of data from other sources as well as the racetrack, such as engine dynamometers and wind tunnels. For that we will need to use the latest Microsoft SQL and business-intelligence software to manage these extra data sources. This is a great opportunity to take some of the residual clunkiness out of those interfaces. A more efficient infrastructure also has potential cost savings. It allows the teams to exploit relatively inexpensive and powerful PCs and widely available software tools.” Twenty megabytes of raw data are received from a Formula 1 car in real time every lap. More efficient management of this data could involve huge benefits, for race teams, the automotive sector, and for the aerospace, finance or pharmaceutical industries. “We are pushing boundaries with this project,” says van Manen. “Everything we’ve seen since being awarded the contract suggests the tie-up between MES and Microsoft will be a winning combination.”
Attached Images

A.Wayne

It is very plausible that Ferrari's issue's or anyone else for that matter is ECU related , as Renault had complained about mapping going into last weekend and yes Mclaren has a huge advantage in being involved with the development of this ECU and it's source code.

1. Major disadvantage is that none of the teams developing engines will disclose to mlcaren, operating principles proprietary to them in setting up the function of the ecu. Mclaren on the other hand would have been able to get an head start in development information, especially in the critical relationship of cam/valve variable timing. Being that these are pulse width modulated there could be enough differences between the types that will set back others, coupled With a freeze on engine development any short comings here will limit the manufacturer from optimizing there engine package and in a field where 1% or 1/10 of an advantage is a catastrophe this ecu change is puts the advantage to Mclarri.

2. familiarity with software and hardware compatibility with drivers etc would be another issue that will show itself more as the season progress.... engine mapping will be different as in the past teams wrote their own source codes to solve problems or make modifications, now the engineers will have to work within these limitations and back into their respective mapping solutions ...a compromise.

3. For this to function fairly the FIA Needs to confiscate and check randomly and regularly all ecu's on race weekends , as" power control" maps will become the norm ......