Traction control rears it's ugly head again

[Gt_R]

i still think traction control sucks...it would dilute the difference between an extremely good driver (like Schuey) from a normal driver esp in the wet...

Yes, it would make racing a little closer, by closing the gap between the two ends as it compensates the lesser skilled, and from the spectators point of view, it would be great. But it just devalues the whole championship, and make F1 more accessible to other drivers...

In the past, only the best 20 odd drivers can qualify for driving an F1 car. Now more than 4 times the number of people would be up to the job of driving it fast...

[Billy_Hunt]

Just a couple of pointer's .
When is a Formula 1 race most dangerous ..When it's wet.
When will TC be most effective .. When it's wet
There fore we are going to see alot higher speed's during wet races than before .
This is not very good from a safety point of view, after all the fia have done to reduce speed's, ie those stupid tyres, they are now going to introduce something that is going to increase the speed whilst the circuit is wet .
It also is going to be most effective on the short twisty tracks like Monaco, again not a good thing in the way of safety is it.
I think they have just lost the plot on this one .
I'm sure TGF will not me so much the rain master once it's here because so will all the other driver's(mmm! a plus point )
I've got TC on my mondeo, when I was stuck in the field's at Silverstone it just said you've got no traction you aint going no where mate

[Gt_R]

by the way...if there is traction control, and a car spins on the track and face the wrong direction, how is the guy supposed to smoke his tire to do a 180 degree spin back into the right direction? Wouldnt the traction control prevent the car from spinning the wheels?

[Tris]

I think that you have to appreciate that Traction Control does not enhance the grip levels. In the wet there will be a finite amount of grip available and the best drivers in the wet are the ones who can pick the line with the most available grip. I will used the tired example of Senna at Donnington in 1993.

I think traction control has been in widespread use ever since 1994. Team will not admit to it but I would wager that engine mapping traction control has been used for years (Ferrari pubically admitted it in 1997.) I think the FIA has just said... OK we can’t police this thing so lets make it legal.... then we won’t look so stupid!

[angst]

Tris, I'd have to agree with you on that one. Look how close it is now between the back of the grid and the front, it's greatly decreased from the period before 1994. What did Mazzacane do in the lower formulae? Very little, and yet he doesn't look completeley foolish in the company he is in. Now that it's legal they can push the boundaries out and the gap will decrease even more, and the driver's input will be lessened again.

[Tris]

Originally posted by angst
Tris, I'd have to agree with you on that one. Look how close it is now between the back of the grid and the front, it's greatly decreased from the period before 1994

Angst, I was thinking about this ealier today and I remeber that many of the smaller teams only began to get semi-auto gear boxes in 1994. This must be a factor too. I know Pacific and Simtek were running manual gear shift's in 1994.

[Billy_Hunt]

Originally posted by Tris
I think that you have to appreciate that Traction Control does not enhance the grip levels. In the wet there will be a finite amount of grip available and the best drivers in the wet are the ones who can pick the line with the most available grip.

I agree Tris but with out TC no driver including TGF is likely to get the maximum grip available 100% of the time , they are nearly always going to be more or less below the the finite amount of grip available.
But with TC this case just goes out the window they will be able just to plant there right foot and the TC will give them the maximum grip, hence faster acceleration.
More often than not maximum grip is normally on the racing line

[Valve Bounce]

OK. Will Trax help drivers stay on the road instead of running off when it is very wet or aquaplaning? Will Trax and/or ABS help prevent cars from running into each other?
I think whether we like it or not, Trax is here to stay. It is a case of "if you can't beat them, join them. (or something like that). Does anyone know how the Trax on my Volvo AWD work?

[Dino IV]

One shouldn't be thinking of F1-TC as the systems you know on your road cars or the old ignition-cutters but more in the direction of active torque monitoring optimizing grip from a multi-dimensional spectrum thus providing the most optimal engine- and diff-map for any given circumstance. This is also the the reason that one doesn't speak of TC when F1's leave the starting grid, but of Launch Control, because it's a very specific preset in contrast to the ignition-cutter which simply detects spin and cuts the ignition.

And don't make any illusions, a lot of cars were taking advantage of this the past few years, some a lot better than others, although strictly speaken it was not allowed. Newey already admitted that. All tools are available and it all comes down to your own guts to take it all the way and keep a straight face in front of good ol' Charly. The only thing allowing it will change is that more simple input signals can be used from obvious sensors, instead of the more complex filtering of the needed input signals out of other indirect signals. Something which was eyed to obstruct even more with the halfway 2000 rule changes but which failed as enough options were left open. And ofcourse ignition cutting can be an option again because TC doesn't need to be silent anymore, so there's no need for clutches or other slip-mechanisms anymore. It will be interesting too watch who will use that again, coz it will give an indication who has had litle or no experience with the 'silent' techniques. And ofcourse it will prevent teams from hypocritically accusing each other over and over again. With the exception of Minardi you'd better trust no one in this field. F1 was about drivers long ago. What's left is a WCC, a World Chip Contest.

[Billy_Hunt]

Tough one there Valve Bounce I'm no mechanic or tech head.
But what I do know is there are several ways TC can work.
Basicly some form of detection is needed at the wheels to detect them spinning, then some form of control is needed to stop them spinning, now this is where it get's confusing some systems will just cut the amount fuel going to the engine ,others can apply a little break to the spinning wheel, or apply more power to wheels that have got traction and less to ones that are spinning ,or all the above and more (I'm loosing it now ).
If all the above is controlled by a computer we are talking fractions of seconds ,with it working on all four wheels at a once .

I GIVE IN !!my brain is hurting
but I did try
It won't stop cars aquaplaning or running into each other all it will stop is wheel spin
Where TGF is so great in the rain is he seems to know instinctively how much power he can put down with out loosing traction (or they have been running TC all along ?)
or going too slow , but with TC all the drivers are going to be able to do this because TC will do it for them .

[Billy_Hunt]

Hi Dino IV you seem to be the man in the know
But you lost me bit

active torque monitoring optimizing grip from a multi-dimensional spectrum thus providing the most optimal engine- and diff-map for any given circumstance.

For us that are a bit thick could you explain it in more simple terms or give us a link to somewhere that can .
I think where I'm going wrong is thinking how TC does work on a road car.
Of course in F1 things would be a bit different

[Valve Bounce]

Dino - a word of advice: don't ever try to tell that to engineering students. You will be hit with a squadron of paper gliders.
Quite seriously though, I can understand (fair dinkum) what Dino said. I realise that there are a zillion ways that various engine components can be controlled by a computer, and the best system will be the most effective out of any corner.

[Dino IV]

In F1 it is permitted to gather all your input signals, like all driver inputs (throttle, brakes and steering), car response (speed, lateral and longitudinal acceleration, and yaw acceleration) and rear wheel response (slip ratio, vertical load and torque), together put it's not permitted to actively regulate them, in other words let them control each other. However it is permitted to pre-set your systems standings and even to let the driver chose from a given library of pre-sets while driving - hence the huge amount of selectors on some drivers steering wheels. If you can not use the active variant, which detects wheelspin and then adjusts the feeded, one has to set up a library of presets and either automatically or manually activate them when needed. Automatically means either triggered by a grip-lost signal which is in effect illegal or triggered by a timeline or sequence signal (for instance activating preset no.23 two seconds after the fourth downchange from seventh gear) which is strictly speaking not covered by the rules to be illegal, but is by the actual meaning of the rules. By analyzing the track characteristics and the dynamic behaviour of the car on it that library of presets can be developed. Exiting corner X will give so and so much wheelspin which can be optimized by choosing this gear, that engine-map and this diff-map for the first second and that diff-map for two more seconds for optimum torque distribution for the rear wheels, as an example of a preset. Set it up, make sure it gets triggered and there you have it. Funny effects happen when the car is out of it's expected pace and the wrong library of presets is active. We've seen numerous occasions the past few years where drivers went very slow or cars behaved very strange for part of a lap and resumed their usual fast pace again after they resetted the activated library.

[Dino IV]

I know, VB, with a messy sentence like that on a forum as well.

[Valve Bounce]

Dino got me thinking yesterday, and I realise that this is a helluva lot more serious than I had envisaged. From what Dino has preached (there is no other word that describes it better) the computer can be set to monitor, not only the rear wheels but the front wheels as well. As soon as there is any slip sideways on the front wheel, the Trax comes into effect to prevent the car from understeering off the road. If run properly, together with all the star wars wizardry that Dino has outlined, a driver can virtually steer any line through a corner at a reasonable speed without running off. He then only has to brake (with ABS of course) from the correct position, and literally flatten the accelerator while steering through the corner. I am beginning to hate this Trax more and more, the more I think about the endless possibilities that the computer can control the car through the corner. Initially, I was only looking at the use of Trax after the car has exited the corner. I suppose the races of the future will be won by the team with the best programmers and best computers. I guess the teams better line up outside the jails to intreview the hackers and virus writers as they are released.

[Billy_Hunt]

Valve Bounce keep's refering to the use of ABS.
I was under the impression this has nothing to do with TC but a totally separate driver aid,or are you going to tell me now TC is here there is going to be no way to detect the use of ABS so all the teams are going to be using that as well .(I hope not)

[Billy_Hunt]

Something I just read:-

Whitmarsh told Motoring News: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that traction control detracts from the show.

“Even with all these driver aids in 1993, Ayrton Senna still looked much better than his team-mate and the rest of the field.

“Even at Donington in the wet, which was one of the better examples of where the system should have evened out the field he managed to overtake four cars in a single lap.”

But Berger said he had mixed feelings about traction control’s return.

He said: “I have two hearts. On the driving side, I remember when we had traction control it took away some areas where a good driver can do something better than a not-so-good driver – by controlling the throttle himself, or using a bit of nice power oversteer.

“But from the challenge of an engine manufacturer specialising in electronics we would love to work on this area.

“What’s most important is to be sure that the FIA is able to check that everybody is using the same car.”

Perhaps it's not going to be so bad

[Valve Bounce]

Hey Billy, I just assumed that within F1 circles, ABS is Trax applied to the front wheels!! I am sure that these smart guys can figure something out.

[Carla O]

Originally posted by Tris
If TGF whentt straight at the start instead of sideways he would have no problmes!

[Carla O]

sorry about the totally non-technical reply before... i don't think i could do any better but i just loved that sentence...

anyway i tried to edit the previous message but i had left it too long...

[Tris]

Well I am afraid that the rules changes are even more stupid than I thought!

On December the seventh it look like the motion will be passed that will allow the free reign with regards to electronics. So it is not just traction control we will be getting it will be..

Traction control electronics,
Gear change electronics,
Differential Electronics
Engine electronics.

The only thing that will be unlimited will be torque steer differentials

Holy C**p! the end is nigh!