Teams again playing with oil.
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/...-wird-haerter/
"Fuel consumption has risen significantly in all this year. Because the drive units deliver the same amount of power despite the longer running times . And the cars have up to five percent more downforce. As a rule, this also means more air resistance. The top speeds have dropped compared to last year. This means more time on the straights, more time under full load and thus a higher consumption.
The engine technicians have calculated that on the critical routes would need 109 instead of 105 kilograms to get through carefree.
So far it is not clear who is affected. Renault seems to hit hardest. The Renault drivers had in Melbourne even after seven laps under safety-car conditions to take the foot off the gas. In Bahrain even Honda made a better figure. Ferrari operated in Bahrain more lift and coast than Mercedes. However, an engineer from the silver camp warns: "We drove there most of the time in the slipstream. This helps."
Mercedes has another problem, you can hear under the hand. The cars with Mercedes engines are not as fast on the straights as they should be. This has supposedly to do with the oil specification. We hear that Petronas dug up a 2016 oil grade to be on the safe side with oil consumption. Until the beginning of the season, the oil consumption of Mercedes and Ferrari was only 0.01 liters below the permitted limit of 0.6 liters per 100 kilometers.
After the oil correction, Mercedes should be on the safe side when it comes to oil consumption. But that also costs power . Ferrari is obviously still full risk just below the pain threshold. And it benefits relative to the competition. No wonder that Mercedes engine chief Andy Cowell says: "In qualifying Ferrari and we are on par." So far, this was the domain of the Mercedes engine.
The oil theme could boil up soon. The opponents of Ferrari are trying to find out why the Ferrari engine in the factory car smokes so much when starting. And even when driving smokes more than the other Ferrari teams. Should not all engines of a manufacturer be the same this year ?
Some suspect some trick behind that will allow Ferrari to add oil to the combustion process. Meanwhile, it is also known how the oil tricksters have practiced in the past. A gasket in the compressor of the turbocharger was carefully constructed "leaking" so that a pre-calculated amount of oil could enter the combustion chamber."
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