Strat mode? Engine Magic? Chainbear gives us the run down on how engines are controlled and mapped in Formula 1 - and how these settings relate to power, efficiency and engine wear.
Chain bear did it again. He picks a topic you think you know, makes you realize you actually know nothing about it, tells you what you need to do and says bye.
Chain bear always explains things in a way that a lay man can easily understand, his voice is clear and calm making him easy to listen to. Thanks chain bear, looking forward to the next one.
Chain bear has seriously enriched my F1 experience to an extent that I don’t think I would have found F1 to be as interesting as I do now if it wasn’t for the knowledge I’ve gained through your Chanel. Thanks Autosport for collaborating with CB for this vid
"It sounds complicated, but it all happens incredibly smoothly" Thats because mapping that IS incredibly complicated, especially to allow it to happen incredibly smoothly. Its actually pretty damn complicated to map a modern road engine using torque based modeling and those engines arent even in the same sport let alone the same ballpark as F1 motors in regards to thermal efficiency and how razor thin the GO/NOGO line is in the mapping.
Well I think the collab between him and Motorsport mag (Autosport) benefitted both parties. Autosport can get videos from Chainbear while Chainbear can get the data and knowledge (and money perhaps) from Motorsport mag
I think it's less about 'knowing so much' and more to do with how well he communicates complex topics by breaking them down into manageable chunks and readable animations.
I literally just found your channel bear and I love it. I'm an F1 fan over here in the states and prefer most road racing over the typical oval or speedway racing you see in NASCAR and indycar. So it's really nice to see F1 broken down so simply in order to explain the complex stuff and the not so complex stuff
Great explanation! Summary: nowadays, is less important the sensitivity of driver's foot on throttle, but it is very, very, very, very important that the driver must know every single map position...
i hope engine mapping comes into the f1 games if that is sensible. this seems like a nice addition to finetune your car beyond nonengine related setups
Could you do a video on post race scrutineering. I've always wondered for instance the order they do the cars, how long it takes and how the process changes if one driver has to be disqualified
Point of order: Injector timing isnt a main fueling map. It will have an effect on low/midrange torque but not overall power. There is a VE/Load table that controls main fueling. In general it will read off air coming in and current a/f to determine the next cycle of fueling. Fuel mapping is rather simple... different richness settings for power enrichment. Could also add in what point PE happens based on throttle percentage. Its fun to see a video of something I've done on modified road cars.
One thing I wanna know is the brake by wire system on the rear wheels of a F1 car. Because it uses MGUK to apply brake torque to charge the batter, isn't it possible to make it work like an ABS set up on the rear wheels?
That’s interesting, I didn’t realize that due to the extreme amount of control they have over the engine so they can “personalize” an engine to a drivers preferences. I mainly thought they were used for fuel saving and engine wear saving vs max power for overtakes or qualy
Great video can I just suggest touching on the lean burn subject next time? Figuring out the mapping has been SO tedious in this engine formula because the fuel flow rate is restricted for everyone. Lean burn is perhaps the most intriguing part of modern F1 mapping since it has such catastrophic effects when mapped incorrectly. But when it's set up the engine can run in compression ignition. I think the oil injection and burning deserves a mention as well since all competitive teams are burning up to the alotted (I believe 800ml) over race distance.
So if you can finely tune engine maps for different scenarios - wet track vs dry track, slow section vs fast section, etc - then how do engine maps get past the "drivers must drive the car alone and unaided" rule? Seems to me like engine map variations are aiding the drivers to drive their cars
This is an explanation for gas pedal mappings. It does not explain the engine settings currently used in f1. Engine mappings consider a) the air/fuel mixture: the more air you get into the cylinder the more efficient the engine will use the added amount of fuel thus creating more power. On the other hand the mixture will be harder to ignite and burn hotter creating more wear on the engine leading to b) the timing of the ignition or „engine timing“: As a rule of thumb you have a constant variable of how long it will take the mixture of fuel and air to ignite and reach its full potential of energy release. You want this to happen when the piston is moving downward and the crankshaft reaches the rectangular angle to the movement of the piston. But the faster the engine goes, the more you have to ignite the mixture ahead of the downward movement of the piston leading to potential engine knock and ecxessive wear on the engine. When and how much fuel is injectet also plays into this game. As a rule of thumb you can say the more efficient you run the engine, crucially in these days of max fuel flow, the more you put stress on the engine through heat and vibration. c) boost pressure: the turbo charger presses more air into the cylinder leading to a more efficient combustion thus creating more power. It enables to add more fuel combusting with more air as you need a certain ammount of o2 to react with the fuel during combustion. This on the other hand also creates more exhaust gases driving the turbo even more. As the turbo is no longer a turbo but also creating electricity that is not limited by the fia via the mgu-h you want that thing to spin as much as possible at any given time. So you want the engine to pump as much air as possible which on the one hand also leads to a better and more efficient combustion as mentioned above. On the other hand it creates more heat as the air is compressed prior to the combustion creating more wear on the engine. When the engine ist exceeding certain speeds in rpm it can not maintain the boost pressure because it would be overcharged given the injectiontiming has to be more in advance of the piston reaching its upper dead spot (german english alert!) and with higher boost pressure the risk of self ignition would be higher. So, the ability to maintain high boost pressure at higher engine speeds is again a question of how much wear you want to occure on the engine for the sake of producing power with the given ammount of fuel. These factors and surely some more describe the mapping of an engine as you can influence these factors with timing, mixture an boost pressure. It is always a struggle between efficiency and reliability over the course of a few races.
Is this how the "Party mode" works? In that 100% throttle might not give 100% of the torque in the race, but instead gives, say, 95% for most of the time, until qualifying when they turn it up? Or is that a fuel mix thing? Or both?
Nobody knows for sure otherwise Renault and Honda would have party modes too 😉, but it's likely a combination of more aggressive engine mappings + ers deployment(Previously Mercedes were also burning a lot of oil to increase power during "party mode", until the FIA got wind of it and regulations for oil burn came into place) . There has been lots of speculation this season that ferrari have managed to close the power gap to Mercedes by using a clever ers deployment during qualifying with their 2 battery system that is somehow able to deliver more power for a longer duration than other teams.
Surprised you didn’t mention anything regarding feedback from exhaust temperatures and O2 sensors to manage efficiency of the combustion process. Also, on a traditional butterfly throttle valve setup, the “map” is not linear. It’s more S shaped.
Most non-traction controlled car I've seen use something call torque per gear or boost per gear (forced induction engine) to control the amount of power send to the tyre to control the amount of traction by limiting the overall power output without the need of wheel speed sensor. Of course power is a relation between torque output and engine speed so any cut-off from either both will help with power output management. The problem is that any modern engine relies on gearbox system as a torque multiplier to set the car moving from complete stationary. This torque management will help as far as traction are limited at low speed but the drawback is as the speed going and the car now are somehow not limited by traction, the whole power unit need to utilise the full torque multiplier preset by the tuner but as the system is somehow being kept online, the car wont experience a full torque multiplication as the system doesn't know that it need to go offline as the speed increase. Most car with this setup will suffer on rolling start racing or going through tight hairpin using the lowest gear as the vehicle will experience a huge lost in acceleration (per my observation)
At least in F1 2018 i was glad to find that rich mixture and just a bit lower revs (not as low as when you don't change the mix...) does cool down the engine just like it should.
I’ve got a question. Do you know if the teams set the maps themselves or is it just the engine supplier? For example: do Force India set their own maps for the Merc engines or do Merc do that for them?
My guess is Merc sends a ‘standard’ set of maps to their customer teams that work reliably with the engine. Merc will have their own finely tuned maps and I guess it’s up to the customer teams to tweak the standard maps into their own to suit their car/driver?!
Benjamin I’ll try I’m not the best person to explain it but they were talking about the level of torque demand they used at the start of the race and this video explained how they use different engine maps to give a traction control like effect.
Can someone help me wrap my mind around this: how can the open throttle be dumping a lot of gas into an engine doing low RPM? I kind of figured the relation to throttle and RPM was fixed?
The relation between throttle and RPM isn't really that simple, the ECU bases the amount of fuel used by engine load, quantity of air entering the engine and other miscellaneous info from other sensors. In the instance of low RPM high load the ECU determines that the amount of air entering the engine means that the driver needs a large amount of acceleration. At high RPM low loads the fuel charge can be less as it is easier to maintain speed.
It's hard to imagine how racing used to be pure engines and then seeing today's cars. We wouldn't have the race cars we know today but I'm not a big fan of computers being such a huge part of racing. I can't believe teams have to submit their engine mapping for approval either. F1 seems to be closer to racing in a simulator than actual car racing. I know these things evolve over time but I'd like to know the year computers began getting involved in racing, aside from just monitoring sensors and which things were initially controlled by computers. ?? I think that would be a GREAT video!
This is a competitive racing and if computer's can be used for competitive advantege, they will be used for that, especially if rules encourage just that. BTW managing turbo boost, hybrid battery SOC, car acceleration, MGU-K braking (or acceleration) on tight corner, when you'r head expirience 5 g's of acceleration is for sure hell on earth. This is primary tasks for computers to do.
How about a video on engine/PU wear. I get asked all the time why teams don't use "Party mode"(or as I like to call it Rock and Roll" all the time..........interested to know how teams manage a PU and know when to retire it
so happy to see Chain Bear's videos get more and more attention. It really makes non-hardcore F1 fans become more interested in it. someone at Skysports should take notice
Despite great graphics, it's not accurate and confusing. Throttle map is a thing (input : pedal position, output : throttle bodies position) And engine map is another thing (main inputs : throttle bodies position + engine rpm (+air temp, air press, water temp,...) outputs : injectors duty cycle + ignition timing
Not anymore. What should ECU do if trottle pedal is just pushed 80% and turbo boost is only 2 bar out of maximum of 3 bar. Should it apply only 80% (3/4*80%=60% of torque) of the throttle body position or 100% (3/4*100%=75% of torque). Should fuel injection, MGU-K or MGU-H compensate for that? How much? Well, engine maps are to HELP the driver, so everything happens exactly like described in video MAYBE, just maybe ECU can look at the tables and correct for the boost or anouther factors, apply slightly different torque at different RPM, so driver has a easier to controll car.
@@volodumurkalunyak4651 Agreed, but still, it's the job of the engine management to handle such subtle corrections. Throttle-map is just one of many INPUT of the ECU (how much torque the driver is asking regarding the pedal position)
My feeling is this; if two different drivers raced the same car with the same mapping programme their lap times better be within 1/100 's of a second of each other if they are so called "professionals". If not, someone needs to get fired. What happened to the old days when the throttle was controlled by linkage or cable? Those drivers were real racers, real warriors! 🤓
3:03 Great video and explanations but please since the video is about F1 as the title suggests, take some realistic torque number in accordance with current F1s. Other than that good one 🙂
Well done, but you could have added, that any modern car has an ECU doing all of this and more (like the catalytic converter that F1 cars don't worry about). So, even the cheapest cars have more complicated Ecu's nowadays than F1 cars. Furthermore on street cars the input values like temperature have far greater variance. When has an F1 engine ever had to start and run at -40 C?
I have one; What does "I want everything" means? Why do engineers wait for the pilot's demand before "giving him everything"? If they can magically make the car faster, why not do it sooner?
Uluç Özcan I think it means full power, max allowed fuel flow, etc. basically opening up the full capabilities of the car. Drivers aren’t given everything at the beginning of races because of tire wear and fuel consumption. Plus power components and gearbox, which have to survive for multiple races. I remember one race “give me everything” was denied because “we have to get the car home”. So it seems to be usually near the end if there’s a battle for places.
After watching this I'm convinced that F1 should ban electronic throttles and restrict the use of ECUs in general, sounds like control of the peddle should be a driver skill.
