Q: We regularly hear descriptions of the horsepower boost gained from electric propulsion, but all that horsepower has to come from somewhere. We don’t hear as much about the harvesting process. What is the power/speed loss when the F1 hybrid systems are in harvesting/recovery mode?
J.J. Gertler, Scientists’ Cliffs, MD
CM: This is where F1 power units are so impressive, because there’s essentially no power or speed loss to recover energy. It’s all recovering energy that used to be lost – heat and kinetic from the power unit exhaust gases and the brakes – so that energy is being harvested both when the car is accelerating as well as when it is slowing on the brakes.
The only time you might hear about a power loss is in terms of ‘clipping’ or de-rating, where the power unit runs out of the extra 160hp it is receiving from the battery (being deployed through the MGU-K), so drops that much power at the end of the straights. But that’s more of a deployment issue than harvesting, and that is when the red lights flash on the rear of the car to warn a driver behind the car might not keep accelerating at the same rate.
Q: They probably mentioned it and I somehow missed it, but why in the world did several cars make pit stops on the very last lap at Baku to come in and change tires? There must be some good reason, but it is mindboggling to me.
Dave, Cincinnati, OH
CM: It was a proper bit of Las Vegas gambling, Dave! It was the two drivers – Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg – who started from the pit lane and had nothing to lose but needed a lot of luck to gain something, so they just went for the hard tire at the start and ran as long as they could. That got them far up the order when everyone else made their pit stops (and it was tough to overtake) and Ocon and Hulkenberg just sat there hoping for a crash or incident that could lead to a Safety Car, or ideally, for a red flag to change tires for free. It never came, so in the end they had to make the stop on the last lap to comply with the rules requiring that they use two different tire compounds.
Q: So you [ED] felt a need to poke the Senna-Prost hornets’ nest? Since Robin’s comments on Suzuka 1990 would be akin to him saying that ‘25 & 8’ was on reflection a great idea, I wonder if he was because he was surprised to learn of the Senna-Balestre contretemps. It received little or no notice in the United States at the time, where coverage focused on the bad blood between Senna and Prost.
After going to Google and YouTube to refresh my memory, I am left with a question: My recollection was after Prost ran into Senna and both went off the track, the marshals pushed Senna back into the race. That’s confirmed by YouTube videos. So why wasn’t that an instant DQ? The ensuing bitterness over the post-race DQ for cutting a chicane wouldn’t have happened.
Parenthetically, the 1989 and 1990 races preceded the modern-day internet, so I find it fascinating that one can actually know more about those events now than I did at the time.
Al, Boston, MA
CM: I have to admit Al, I don’t have 100% certainty on the answer to this one as I don’t have access to the sporting regulations from 1989. But I believe from a bit of research and memory of talking to others who were there, it was because you were allowed to be pushed to a safer place if your car was stuck somewhere dangerous (as Senna’s was) and in that case if it meant you got back into the race that was allowed.
You’re right though, it’s great how much stuff is now available for more people to look into and find out about. There are huge numbers of fans who have been following for decades who can discover more about past events, plus newer fans who show an interest in the history have a heck of a catalogue to dig into.
THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, 10 May, 2017
Q: I was recently listening to the podcast “Dinner with Racers” and Janet Guthrie was the guest. They were discussing how things were for her back in the day, and were talking about how writers and reporters treated her. The hosts were mentioning names of “legitimate” journalist from that era and when your name came up she said “No, not Robin Miller.” They got a chuckle out of it, as did I. She didn’t go into any details, but it was pretty clear you were not her favorite. Do you have a Janet Guthrie story you could share with us or why she said that about you?
Randy Holbrook, Resaca, GA
ROBIN MILLER: I gave Janet props for her courage under fire as the first woman at IMS, and I wrote that she was capable of going fast for four laps or by herself but just wasn’t very racy. Certainly not like Sarah, Danica or Simona in recent years. And I think I got on her when she kept saying she “beat” Johnny Rutherford, Gary Bettenhausen, Rick Mears and Danny Ongais in 1978. No, she out-lasted them while being lapped 10 times. So I get why I’m not one of her favorites, but she was a very brave pioneer.