Kinetic energy recovery system

Cars had changed a little bit as well.

We went to those god awful 2009 cars with the Kers in it or you could elect to have the Kers in it, which was what sort of rule is that? And they had a lot of understeer, a lot of early turning understeer, which he didn't like.

lot of late mid-corner understeer he didn't like that um so we were constantly trying to get around that problem and and then he just kind of yeah he just he just didn't get uh on 2010 it was sorry um he just didn't get on top of it but it just took a long time but it was definitely a psychological thing rather than a physical thing

interesting oh my we've got time for one final question and you get to choose the question

And it...

And the good thing is Mercedes, w-we knew they were going to have an advantage coming into it, and we'll see if that's washed away with the, uh, with the compression ratio changes, and they've b- They've had another ban on sort of the way that they're able to manipulate the MGU-K, uh, on the straights.

But yeah, the fact that Ferraris and McLaren have been able to overtake them at the start, fantastic.

A-And, and the change of position, I'm with you.

And historically, this has been a problem in Formula 1.

Differences in tire life, DRS, KERS, pit strategy, etc.

have tried to make overtaking easier, but overtaking is still rare in F1 because if a driver attempts an overtake, it means leaving the racing line and taking a slower lap around the track.

There's more to it, though.

So they didn't have enough data, and the cars mistakenly went into wet mode.

And for whatever reason, the hybrid unit on the vehicles, which is known as MGU-K, didn't kick in, and the cars were either stopped completely or driving like they were idling in a Tim Horton's drive-through.

And, uh, so they had to, uh, uh, troubleshoot the problem and then literally roll out a software update, that took them about 45 minutes, to all of the vehicles so they could restart it without this problem.

It was a software bug.

I've got, I've, I've got, uh, like yourself, I've got a, I've got a couple for Singapore.

Um, one of them was, um, in 2009 we had a, when McLaren had a hybrid element to it KERS, as it was-

Oh, yeah

... at the time.

Yeah.

Um, they re- rewrote the constraints to make sure that the MGU-K was sufficiently, was able to do the lower turbo, like, RPMs in slower corners.

Um-

Mm

So driving super slowly in the rain with the safety car caused the engine speeds to drop past a specific threshold.

We used to have this MGU-K hybrid system, and that would be able to recover in situations like this, but this time, the software incorrectly flagged the drop as a internal shutdown that isn't allowed by the rules.

So it initiated basically a little power cut instead, which killed the internal combustion engine, and everybody got stuck.

These engines are so incredibly complex.

And you can still have an electrical element of a car and not be completely defunct when it comes to raining.

I always used to remember back to, I think it was sort of the early 2010s, where you had this thing called KERS, Kinetic Energy Recovery System.

And it had a little battery graphic on the TV.

And a driver only had a certain amount per lap, and it reset every lap, and it was up to you.