F1 Fanatic

I’m not sure if I’m the only one who caught/heard this. But near the end of the SPA race, the team asked kimi to pick up the pace abit and he asked for more power.

Does the team control how much output the engine gives them? Could this be the reason for performance difference in team-mates as well? (I know maybe I’m just being skeptical or a conspiracy theorist)
What would be the reason for this?
Could it be to preserve the engine more so it doesn’t overheat or longer life?

What do you think?

They have multiple engine settings, which allow them to conserve fuel when needed or give extra power to help increase pace. This is not a reason for difference in team mates’ performances, unless one has been more effective at saving fuel so they can allow a better setting late in the race.

The engine mixture settings allow the team/driver to change how much power the engine is giving. This can be to achieve many things: save fuel, to control the amount of heat being produced, to save engine or gearbox life, and so on.

From Raikkonen’s messages it sounds like he’d been told to use a lower engine mixture so that when he was asked to increase his pace he wanted to be able to turn the mixture back up and get more power to enable him to do that.

I noted these two radio messages from him at the time. There may have been more, I often have difficulty understanding what Raikkonen’s saying.

Raikkonen urged to pick up the pace – he says he needs to be given full power. #F1

— F1 Fanatic Live (@f1fanaticlive) September 2, 2012

Raikkonen told to use mixture five. #F1

— F1 Fanatic Live (@f1fanaticlive) September 2, 2012

Back in the days of pit-to-car data transfer the team would probably have just turned his engine down remotely without even needing to ask him! Many of the settings drivers are told to adjust on the steering wheel are just replicating that now-banned means of adjusting the cars while they’re on the track.

After the race, they asked James Allison about that and he basically said that normally, as the race progresses they reduce the fuel mixture to reduce power output with an eye to saving the engine. At Spa, obviously near the end Raikkonen came under increasing pressure from Hulkenberg and so the team asked him to pick up the pace to make sure of 3d and the radio messages you referred to took place. If I remember correctly, Kimi responds with “So give me full power! Give me full power!”.

I may be reading too much into this, but I think Raikkonen was a little bit frustrated at that point. He’d obviously had a far from easy race in a car that wasn’t really handling as well as expected and desired and it wasn’t the first time in the race that the team asked him to pick up the pace either.

If you follow this link, at around the 4 minute mark, they ask him to pick up the pace a bit as well, earlier on in the race and he responds saying (I think) “Yeah, but I don’t have any grip, so…” with Simon Renni responding “Ok Kimi, understood. We need to push, push in harder and we’ll get the front tyres working”. Obviously that’s not how it worked out and after the race Raikkonen said they added a bit more front wing and lost even more top speed as a result.

I didn’t know that teams were ever allowed to make changes from the pit wall. When was that banned?

Cheers @keithcollantine.

Thanks @F1Yankee and @keithcollantine.