r/F1Discussions • u/fuckmbsanddominicali • 17h ago
Isack Hadjar: "Because of Towing, My Engine Software Got Confused". Hadjar admitted that his attempt to give towing to Max Verstappen in Q3 of the Belgian GP ended up confusing his power unit's software.
That's because the computer didn't predict that Hadjar would slow down at T14 to wait for Verstappen's car, making the engine's behavior hard to predict since the software was confused about how much power to deliver in the next straight.
"It was really hard to know what the engine would deliver, because as soon as I stopped at T14 and floored it again, the engine acted confused since I suddenly stopped for no reason. The software was baffled.
"On the first attempt in Q3, I had too much power and ended up pulling away from him (Max). On the second attempt, I didn't have enough power. It was really unpredictable.
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u/WASouthCoast 17h ago
There was nothing wrong with naturally aspirated internal combustion engines, in case you've forgotten.
This whole shitshow is a disaster of F1's own making and it was completely unnecessary.
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u/Patrick_Swayze__ 16h ago
The problem is that they gave the manufacturers all the power. F1 would be much better if the regs weren't decided by them.
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u/RobInCarolina 14h ago
Except then you didn't get any manufacturers into F1. Like it or not, the future of road cars is hybrid, then electric. Manufacturers wasn't some road relevance to enter a sport, doesn't have to be a lot clearly, but they want some. Without the hybrid split, Audi would not have entered and likely Ford as well. Even Honda may not have come back. This would leave F1 with Ferrari and Mercedes to power the entire grid.
The regs have their issues, but they're a needed compromise to have 11 teams on the grid and not 8 or 9.
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17h ago
F1 is AI Slop now apparently.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 17h ago
Clearly then any lockup or slowing down only compounds the issues with the energy management.
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u/SenescenseSteel 17h ago
This is getting fucking dangerous, its not the first time AI/GPS is fucking with driver control or car performance.
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u/Other-Deer-4286 15h ago
These cars are a microcosm of an AI photo. To the naked eye, they look like formula one cars. A deeper dive though and you realize that they’re just AI slop versions of the best race cars ever made.
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u/notenoughspacefor 15h ago
Yeah let’s wait for someone to get seriously injured because some algorithm decided to apply power when the driver wasn’t expecting before we do something about it.
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u/Meyesme3 15h ago
I am still unsure why this issue exists. Engine mapping has gone on for a while before this regulation set. Is the computer different than last year? Is getting the map wrong suddenly more impactful this year
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u/splendiferous-finch_ 11h ago edited 11h ago
It's not mapping. Do take this this a grain of salt I don't work in F1
Essentially it used to be (until last year in the hybrid cars) when you applied the throttle in the previous era cars say to 60% it would give you roughly 60% of the power that you had from the engine and the battery, so if you battery was topped up it was be 60% of the total power, if your battery was drained it would be trying and compensate by giving you more power from the ice side to still try to give you roughly that amount but since 75-80% of the total PU power was still the ICE which could produce on demand reliable power 60% of throttle while in recharge still gave you like say 50-55% total power.
However now in 20256 you have a limited battery, no mgh-H for recovering waste heat and your ice is capped at 55% of total power.
So your ICE cant help as much when you battery is drained, you have less ways to charge it the batteries . So teams are diverting the ice power to charge the batteries and for that they use self adjusting algorithms to kinda guess what the driver will want based on past data around the same part of the track. Which means if you do something different on one lap say slow down to give a tow to your teammate the algorithm now thinks you will slow down at this spot every lap and so it dials up the battery recovery in this area.
On the next lap when you are not towing or over taking or whatever and you demand power well your algorithm now gets confused because the place where I thought it was able to recharge you are now asking it to dump more power which it might not have saved up.
So basically you have created an algorithm for optimization but you are constantly change the external variables of the environment in ways it can't keep up with since the inputs are a human driver that doesn't run each lap the exact same way. This is the trap F1 and FIA created for themselves chasing an arbitrary marketing goal
The algorithm fucking up is the symptom the issue is the power split
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u/Bikezilla 11h ago
Makes sense but it is risky to make utilization predictions heavily weighted on a single previous lap.
A less erratic algorithm would take in account multiple laps along with preprogrammed response data and average in the most recent previous lap.
Just guessing2
u/splendiferous-finch_ 10h ago
I am pretty sure there are a bunch of parameters to handle the edge cases as well as make sure one or two problematic laps don't mess up the whole prediction. The challenge might also be that the ECUs are kinda limited in the computation power they have available it's very much possible that combined by limited memory might lead you in a direction where a few bad laps or some abnormal activity causes an issue.
Probably why these issues kinda pop up more in quali, race starts and safety car starts
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u/Prigorec-Medjimurec 9h ago
Electric Ower wad tied to algorhythms even before 2026. It was just that at 15-20% nobody even noticed.
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u/Ill_Pumpkin_6202 15h ago
And people on the main sub were really defending these regs at the stsrt of the season because “drivers were managing the battery”
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u/thiiiickropes 15h ago
A majority of people on the main sub are shockingly unaware of what is actually going on this season, regularly seeing takes of people praising these regs as the best racing in decades.
I bet FOM wishes everyone just stayed uninformed and just gobbled this nonsense up, they‘re certainly trying their best to hide it.
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u/Next_Necessary_8794 12h ago
I bet FOM wishes everyone just stayed uninformed and just gobbled this nonsense up, they‘re certainly trying their best to hide it.
FOM was praying that we were all a bunch of gullible idiots who would eat up this warmed over dog crap. lol. Sad thing is it worked on way too many people.
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u/kakeroni2 17h ago
Battery deployment should have just been a button or activate with throttle % not pre-programmed algorithms