Running on Empty

To no one's great surprise, last week's International Court of Appeal hearing into the Brazilian Grand Prix fuel saga did not come up with a verdict that overturned the result of the world championship.

In fact it didn't come up with a verdict at all, because despite hearing the evidence relating to the fuel temperature issue, the ICA ultimately decided that McLaren's appeal was inadmissible in the first place. What McLaren should have done on that Sunday night is protest the results, and not appeal against stewards' decision number 41.

In the light of the eventual outcome, an obvious question has to be asked - why did the case get so far? Some 51 people were involved in the hearing, and many were from overseas. Everybody had somewhere else they would rather have been. And let's not get into carbon footprints and all the rest of it ...

There certainly seems to be a bizarre Catch-22 situation that allows the race stewards to accept an appeal, which then sets a process in motion that can only be stopped by the ICA itself declaring that the appeal should not have been brought in the first place on a procedural technicality.

You could argue that it is all part of ensuring the ICA's independence; that it is the only body to decide if it should rule on something or not. You could also argue that it's a complete nonsense.

There must be a good case for some kind of filtering system, and one in which competitors (and the public) have faith.

If the FIA had announced a couple of days after Interlagos that it had been determined that McLaren had made a procedural error, it might have raised a few eyebrows, but the sport would have not lost as much credibility as it has after the weeks of uncertainty surrounding the case.

In fact, the opinion that the appeal was questionable was communicated to McLaren by the FIA shortly after the Brazilian GP, but the team wanted to proceed. It's perhaps appropriate, therefore, that the team will get the bill for the costs...

Nevertheless, the whole episode has been an interesting case study into a previously unheralded corner of the rules, and it has been fascinating to see how it all unfolded.

It was certainly illuminating to speak to Williams technical director Sam Michael the day after the verdict came out.

He had been en route to Sao Paulo airport when he was called back to the track to deal with the crisis. On the night he was a little cagey about revealing his hand - in fact he seemed to realise that it had been a close shave - but with the appeal now consigned to history, he's happy to share the team's side of the story.

"There were two basic parts of the case," says Michael. "One was on admissibility, and one was on merit. The ICA said they would hear everything, they didn't want to stop and just hear admissibility.

"So everything went out, which was very good. It meant they weren't prejudging anything, and it gave everyone the opportunity to put forward their case from an engineering and regulations point of view."

So evidence was heard from the FIA, Williams, BMW Sauber, McLaren and 'special guests' Ferrari. But in the end it was all pointless, because no decision was made based upon it. As Michael suggests, it was at least healthy that everyone had the opportunity to say what they had to say.

The bottom line is that although the 10 degrees Celsius rule has been in place since 1990, no one had ever been accused of transgressing it before. So for all concerned, this was a bit of a step into the unknown. There was no precedent, and the various aspects had not been dissected in such detail ...

Fuel temperature

As we've explained previously, the FIA fuel temperature figures are recorded by the standard 'white box' loggers that are attached to the rigs. The data from these is then downloaded by the FIA after the race.

What wasn't obvious before is that the device that actually measures the temperature and sends it to be recorded by that white box is, at least according to Williams, potentially suspect.

"The sensor that's in the rig is not a homologated sensor," says Michael. "It's not sealed and it's not tamper-proof, and in fact it's different between fuel rigs.

"In our case, for example, it hasn't been calibrated for seven years. It was put in by Intertechnique seven years ago, and from our investigations we found that some teams didn't even have them fitted to their rigs, and they fitted them themselves afterwards.

"No one maintains it or anything. It is connected to the FIA box, but the sensor that goes in there is not controlled at all and could read anything.

"In fact, our sensor is obsolete - if you ring up Intertechnique to get one, they say they don't make them any more. Anyone who's ordered a rig in the last couple of years, for example the newer teams, have got a completely different sensor. McLaren stated in their submission that it's a standard sensor, and it's not.

"It was never put in the fuel rigs to be used for regulatory reasons. It was originally put in there because the teams wanted to deliver fuel in kilos, and the pump in the rig is a volumetric pump in litres per second. So you've got to use the temperature of the fuel in that calculation because the density changes with temperature."

He also makes the point that since it is not tamper-proof, teams could set it to read deliberately high, so that the 'white box' had no idea that the fuel going into the car was actually cooler than the regs allowed.

"Because it's not tamper-proof, anybody can do anything they want with that sensor. We could tweak the back of it and make it say 50.C and actually run our fuel 20,C under. I'm not implying anyone does that, that's not the point."

It's an interesting explanation, and it casts new light on the fuel rig measurements. It certainly strengthened the case of Williams in terms of shedding doubt on the whole process, although the FIA was not convinced that the actual sensor was a big a part of the story as Michael contends. Indeed, the view is that it's the duty of the team to maintain its accuracy and ensure that it is working properly.

But what it does is put a different focus on the validity of the on board temperature readings. The reason that the FIA chose to measure fuel temperature at the rig is because the on board data is provided by the teams and therefore potentially subject to manipulation.

Michael insists that since the same can be said for the rig temperatures, the on board data is just as valid.

"If you allow the data from the fuel rig sensor, you've got to allow teams to present their on-board data. You can't say the on-board data is from a team sensor, because so is the fuel rig data.

"As soon as you admit that data for anything at all, you've got to apply the same to our on-board data, which is why our fuel tank and fuel rail temperature are relevant.

"Because they're non-FIA sensors you could say, 'You guys could have done what you want,' but if you don't allow the data from our fuel system you can't allow the data from the rig. The stewards could see straight away that that was an issue for them."

The relevance of all this is, of course, that it lends a little more weight to the on-board data provided by Williams and Sauber, which certainly helped to sway the stewards on Sunday night in Brazil.

"I knew immediately that night that the regulations specified that it was on board temperature. I went straight away and checked the fuel tank temperature, and said to the guys, 'That's what the regulation says'. That was my first reaction. It wasn't go and look for this in the fuel rig or anything."

Put yourself in the position of the stewards. The rule specifies the fuel on board the car can't be 10.C below ambient, and the teams provided exactly that data - the temperature of the fuel on board the car.

Michael insists that the minimum temperature recorded on board was 31.C, which is fully 7.C hotter than that recorded in the rig at Nico Rosberg's first stop. Sam says there are good reasons for that.

"We have a sensor inside the tank and the minimum it saw was 31.C, it didn't see anything underneath that. So the only thing we have is 31.C from our on board sensor, and 24.C from a non-homologated rig sensor.

"You've got a fully charged fuel hose that's been sitting in 32/33.C sunlight for five or six hours, you've got a 12 litres per second fuel pump that's got to move a hell of a lot of fuel very quickly, and is going to add heat to it as well, and you've got a restriction going into the car."

All of that contributes to the temperature rising as the fuel is dumped into the very hot environment that is a near-empty tank.

The other key issue is that is the fuel tank temperatures are rather less important than the temperature at the fuel rail.

"If you go back to why the rule is there, it's so people don't run ridiculously cool fuel and don't get a power advantage. Our injectors were running at 35.C - what you're then actually going to say is that you are going to kick cars out that are injecting fuel that is 2.C higher than ambient. You've got to take that into account as well."

And that's a fair point. In all the esoteric discussions about how and where temperature is measured, it's easy to lose sight of why the rule was there in the first place.

Ambient temperature

The other key figure is, of course, ambient. As we have reported previously, it was understood by the FIA and teams that the figure used for ambient was that measured by FOM and shown on page three of the timing screens.

The thinking has always been that even it is not accurate, it's the only figure we've got, and if everyone uses it we have a level playing field.

Matters were complicated by the introduction of Meteo France last year as the official weather forecasting service for the FIA and the eight teams that subscribe to its service. The existence of the Meteo France data - legitimised somewhat by the presence of FIA logos - went some way to swaying the minds of the stewards in Brazil.

McLaren rightly pointed out that there existed minutes of meetings of bodies such as the Technical Working Group and Sporting Working Group that specified that the FOM figure was sacrosanct.

What only emerged publicly at the hearing is that there are also apparently minutes that show that Meteo France figures were specifically discussed in connection with the fuel temperature issue.

In essence, Charlie Whiting (who chairs such meetings) conceded that if there were grave doubts about the accuracy of the FOM figures, reference would be made to Meteo France.

This apparently came up in a meeting on December 6 2006, for the minutes record that 'the accuracy of this temperature would be reviewed with Meteo France.'

And again on February 2 2007 the minutes say: 'Mr Whiting confirmed that it was proposed to obtain this service for '07 to be used for the purpose of the regulations.'

Now, there are many, many meetings and lots of things get discussed, so it's perhaps not surprising that these references were to some extent overlooked. But they do lend some credence to the contention of Williams and BMW that the Meteo France figures have some value.

"They have a proper meteorologist in the paddock who measures the temp properly in a controlled environment, with no wind. You get updates on the website which I think come within 10 minutes of him taking those measurements," Michael said.

"Probably five or 10 minutes before the pitlane opened in Brazil, I was looking at the FOM ambient, because I was thinking about water and oil temperatures on board the car.

"It climbed so rapidly that I actually turned around to the other engineers and said, 'There's something wrong with that temperature, it's too unrealistic.' It's the same box that was transmitting a track temp that was 16.C higher than what Bridgestone were measuring."

Sam makes another good point about the FOM number being regarded as foolproof: "If it failed and read 50.C for five minutes, that would make the whole pitlane illegal. Do you disqualify everyone? That's why you have stewards, to make sure to make sure they look into those sort of things.

"It we were more than 10.C below the absolute minimum of Meteo France, then on the Sunday night I would have accepted we've made a mistake here, we're illegal, the cars are out."

It must be pointed out that the reason the FOM figure has been used up to now is that it appears 'live' on the timing screens and is available to all the teams.

And since teams have to track ambient and sometimes adjust the fuel rig temperature to keep up with it, that is very important. As Michael notes, the Meteo France numbers are on a website and not quite delivered in real time.

Significantly, three teams did not subscribe to Meteo France this season (McLaren, Renault and Spyker) and thus in theory did not have that data. However, for the last three races they were given it for free as a 'carrot' for 2008.

Conclusion

McLaren might not agree with all of Michael's conclusions, but you have to admit that he makes some good points. It was certainly enough to install doubt in the minds of the stewards in Brazil, and presumably did so in the minds of the ICA judges, although we shall never know.

And in the real world if there is doubt, you don't hang someone. Equally, just because the 'police' - in this case FIA technical guru Jo Bauer - refer a matter to a higher authority, that does not mean that the party concerned is guilty of a crime. Sometimes there are explanations.

I do have some sympathy with McLaren, since when Bauer's report came out on Sunday night showing the discrepancies in the figures it appeared to be an open and shut case. But it's not quite as simple as a car being underweight, or brake ducts being too wide (something that Michael himself had to accept in Canada a few years ago).

As we have seen there are not one but two sets of moving goalposts in this case. Bauer's report was a red flag that highlighted a possible problem. The stewards took a closer look, realised that the evidence was not what it might have seemed at first, and made their call.

"From Williams' point of view, we were annoyed because our cars were what we considered legal,' says Michael.

"We showed that to the stewards on the Sunday night, and if we hadn't shown that to them, they wouldn't have had any hesitation in kicking us out, So we had to prove that on Sunday night.

"It was those two question marks, one that the sensor was not designed for that, and the other over ambient. And they had our on-board data, so they could see what temperatures we were running."

To take away hard-earned fourth, fifth and sixth places, never mind do something that might have affected the outcome of the world championship, would have been an extreme punishment. On balance, in the end Tony Scott Andrews and his two colleagues made the logical decision on that Sunday night at Interlagos.

The case has certainly highlighted a grey area in the rules that will have to be addressed.

As we have outlined before, the logical answer is that, with the common ECU now in place, it will be easy to introduce a common sensor that provides a definitive on board fuel temperature reading. And clearly, it would be logical for the rules to formalise how the FOM and/or Meteo France figures are going to be used.

"It's obvious that we need to discuss the regulations at the next TWG in December, and make things a bit clearer," Michael said. "That's not an abnormal process, that happens every day. That's why we have TWG discussions on regulations which may not be clear or need to be developed.

"The technical and sporting regs are there to judge innocence or guilt. You are always going to have vagaries, if you look forward for the next 10 years there is no way there are not going to be any protests or any ICAs it's going to happen because things aren't clear.

"There are always going to be interpretations and vagaries in regulations. You're continually trying to improve them, but sometimes things happen.

"I don't have any problem with any team protesting or going to the ICA. Every team has got the right to speak up about what the true story is. But it would have been a much easier process in the TWG.

"It wasn't because of some underhand tactics or the drivers' championship that Williams got off. Our car was not illegal. It was just turned into something massive because there was a drivers' championship at stake..."

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