Ask Gary Anderson

The opening race of the 1.6-litre, turbocharged V6 engine era threw up plenty of headline-grabbing stories.

GARY ANDERSON has sifted through his mailbag to answer your questions, which this week include fuel-flow rates, aerodynamicists at races, the development war and the controversial topic of noise.

Mercedes looks very strong at the moment. Can the others catch up and if so how much will it take?
Bobby @mbobbyf1, via Twitter

Bobby, we have only had one race and a lot of the teams have yet to get the best out of their cars.

Mercedes started testing very strongly and carried that momentum into the first race weekend. But remember, it is one of only two genuine works teams, along with Ferrari. By that I mean it manufactures the engine and the chassis, so the integration should be much better than any customer team.

The Mercedes engine is the strongest, so that is the area the others will need to focus on. Assuming that there are no inherent concept problems with the mechanical engine package, most of this development will come down to mapping and making the best use of the turbo and electrical energy available. This is not an overnight fix and it will be the start of the European season before we can see a true picture.

As far as the Mercedes car itself is concerned, it is a decent package but I think the Red Bull is probably the best. Its mid-corner speed and balance are very good. If Red Bull and Renault get their problems sorted, Mercedes will be in for a tougher time very soon.

Can you describe what the scrutineers do before and after the race to inspect these high-tech cars?
Stuart Hartley @stuhartley, via Twitter

As far as the mechanical side of the car is concerned, the FIA scrutineering bay is set up with a flat surface table and lots of measuring devices, including the weighing scales, for the teams to use from Thursday lunchtime. It is the teams' responsibility to make sure their cars comply with the regulations using this measuring equipment.

After that, the FIA has a computer programme that will generate a random list of things to check either during or after practice and qualifying and then again after the race. Other than the weight, the FIA will not check the same thing on all cars. But if over the weekend something comes up that is a bit close to the mark, it has the right to check this.

As for the electronics, the FIA has a group of people who conduct hardware and software inspections. Within the data-logging system, everything of interest is recorded and checked as required.

This will be where the Red Bull fuel-flow controversy emerged. During practice, Red Bull had some problems with this so this will have led to someone keeping a watchful eye on it during the race.

With the introduction of the new 1.6-litre, V6 turbo power unit, the complication in compliance with the regulations has at least doubled. It would be no surprise to see more drivers and teams suffer the same fate that befell Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull in Melbourne.

What also helps control this is that if any team suspects a rival is pushing the limits that little bit too far, it is never too proud to make the FIA aware.

Can you explain how you can consistently exceed 100Kg/hr and yet use less than 100kg of fuel in the race?
motor_racing_addict @motorace_addictm, via Twitter

To explain we need to take a few assumptions and round them up.

With a typical race time of 1h40 mins (or 100 minutes), on the average track around 60 per cent is spent on full throttle and 15 per cent is spent braking. That leaves 25 per cent at part throttle, which is at mid-corner and when trying to get the power down at the exit.

During the 15 per cent braking, which equates to 15 minutes of the race time, very little fuel is used. Ferrari even uses the electrical motor to blip the throttle during downshifts to save fuel.

During the 25 per cent mid-corner, which equates to 25 minutes of race time, again very little fuel will be used as it is a transient state for the engine. So the engine will be mapped very lean and in this condition the teams will be using a lot of their electrical energy to save fuel.

That leaves the 60 per cent full throttle or 60 minutes of race time and during that period the maximum fuel flow of 100 kg/hr needs to be managed. At full throttle the revs will be increasing and the fuel consumption will also be increasing, so not all of this one hour will be using the 100 kg/hr maximum fuel flow.

So let's say 45 minutes is at the maximum fuel-flow rate of 100 kg/hr. That would use 75kg of fuel, leaving 25kg of the 100kg maximum fuel capacity for the other phases.

I heard that Ferrari were about 0.5s a lap slower than the Mercedes in Australia. What does it need to do to close this gap?
Matt Squires @mattsquires27, via Twitter

Matt, I take the fastest lap that each team completes over each race weekend and turn it into a percentage of the fastest single time set by any car. This allows me to look at it more consistently from race to race with the varying circuit lengths, laptimes and differing conditions.

Last year, after 19 races Ferrari was 0.552 per cent slower than Red Bull, which was fastest. This year, after one race in Melbourne, it is 0.847 per cent slower than pacesetter Mercedes.

If Ferrari got the most out of its car as it stands, then it is all about development. As a quick rule of thumb, to close this gap it either needs 8.5 per cent more downforce (that's around 100kg at 250km/h) without any drag penalty or 8.5 per cent more horsepower from the power unit (that's around 70hp).

Neither of these steps are quick or easy to achieve but we have only had one race weekend to get these figures. We need to wait until we get to the start of the European season before we get a clearer picture of how much progress Ferrari really needs to make.

With the fans disappointed by the sound of the current cars, how could manufacturers ramp up the sound without removing the turbos?
Peter Clements, via Facebook

If it can be achieved, Peter, it will be like many things in Formula 1 and have to be done artificially.

Basically, the turbo is taking energy out of the exhaust gasflow to increase the inlet pressure on the other side of the turbo.

And to add to that the problem, at higher revs there is not adequate fuel flow to keep using the exhaust gases and turbo inlet pressure to their maximum. Then, the motor generator unit 'H' (MGU-H) starts to hold the turbo back as it generates electrical power to either charge the battery pack or directly supply this power to the motor generator unit 'K' (MGU-K).

Because of the maximum fuel flow of 100kg/hr, very few engine manufactures are using anywhere near the maximum allowed 15,000rpm as this would use too much fuel. In fact, they are using more like 12,000rpm. This again has an effect on the noise level.

Taking into account the reduction in engine size from 2.4 to 1.6-litre, the reduction in revs from 18,000rpm to about 12,000rpm and the increase in exhaust outlet diameter required to minimise the turbo back pressure, the actual exhaust gasses are leaving the system at around one third of the speed it used to. So, forget all of this other stuff, the noise will inevitably be reduced just because of this.

I attended the first-ever GP3 test at Paul Ricard and when this formula was introduced it used a turbo engine and it sounded terrible. GP3 has now changed to a normally-aspirated engine and they now sound like racing cars.

Perhaps the rulemakers will never learn from what has been done in the past.

I read earlier this week that Ron Dennis has said that his cars will be "half a second" faster in Malaysia. It's a big claim to make in a sport measured in thousandths of a second, but is it possible that the McLarens will have made such a giant step forwards in performance?
Graham Dalley, via Facebook

Graham, it is a fairly bold statement and I can only assume if there is any truth in it that they will have found most of that time in optimising the use of the engine, turbo and ERS. It looks like Mercedes is the only team really on top of this.

As McLaren uses the same engine package, perhaps Mercedes is willing to share some of that technology with it? It would be in Mercedes' interest if it is confident in its own performance to win the championship.

While Red Bull and a few others are struggling, Mercedes needs to get as many cars between itself and any other championship contenders as possible to increase its points advantage.

If McLaren has found that half second in pure development components then I think most people in the pitlane will eat their hats. Luckily for me, I don't wear one.

When do you expect Red Bull to get on top of its engine issues? How soon can it challenge Mercedes and with which driver?
Syed Hasan @smhasan7, via Twitter

Syed, both Red Bull and Renault are fairly confident that the start of the European season is when they will be able to measure their true performance. That said when you are focusing all your engineering expertise on recovering from a problem, true car development will be suffering and you will be playing catch up for a major part of the season.

Red Bull has one of the largest budgets in F1 so if any team can spend its way out of trouble and do both then it is Red Bull.

As for which driver, I believe Sebastian Vettel is still top of the pile and, given the tools, the man to do the job. But Daniel Ricciardo will definitely keep him honest as far as pure pace is concerned.

He will need a little time to get consistency over a race distance but that will come now he is driving for a team that expects, at the minimum, podium finishes.

Do teams take aerodynamics engineers with them to every race or do they operate from the factory only?
Ashwani lamba @accelerro, via Twitter

Ashwani, all the teams will have a track aerodynamicist in attendance. Their job will be to make sure that the team is using the car to its true aerodynamic potential.

As the weekend unfolds, various aerodynamic problems crop up and if someone who has all the aerodynamic data at their fingertips is there to help, better solutions will be found. They will also be able to make detailed notes to take back to the aerodynamic department, which can cut out the potential misunderstandings in translation between mechanical engineers and aerodynamic engineers.

The other thing they are able to do is a little bit of spying on the other teams. If you look at some of the grid shots we get on TV when was the last time you saw Adrian Newey looking at a Red Bull?