I read in the middle of the thread that MS had traction control in the
benneton (True BTW) and that they were not using it (UNTRUE as someone said
if you have an advantage you use it...) and then there was a justification
saying that benneton told FIA that it was too complicated to remove it from
the software so they just removed it...
I would like to state some points on the general idea.
As some of you know I am involved in truck racing, we have telemetry systems
(PI research, same as Jaguar and Arrows) and since it is my job I know a
little bit how hard it is to remove or add a piece of software in the main
control boxes.
1) the total software update for the boxes comes into a rougly 120 Ko file
that can be loaded in about 5 seconds into the software boxes without
special equipment (I am not a PI employee and yet I can do that, no need of
special computer or password).
2) No one in motor racing will ever upgrade a system without having about 26
backups of the old system.
3) It is VERY difficult to see if a system is "activated" or not if the guy
in charge doesn't want to tell you.
4) Since most of the problems are caused by the telemetry you can have 2
simple solutions.
4.1) Like in truck racing make the telemetry "one way" which means that I
can only read and send when the truck comes back into the pits with a cable,
not IR, or wireless or anything, I can't send anything into the truck during
a session. With the way the F1 teams work there is no way to tell if they
activate "something" and "deactivate" it a few laps/minutes later....
4.2) For this time our american Nascar friends have a good idea. ALL Nascar
teams have telemetry systems (advanced ones like what we have an F1 has) but
in the races ALL sort of electronic help is forbidden, so what they do is
REMOVE all the boxes from the cars and install them only for the tests.
This final solution may seem a bit extreme for F1 but then again maybe less
electronic and more driving would make the races more interesting.
Discussion opened.