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Comment by jrflo | Hacker News Reader

A question for someone who knows more about F1: Is this firmware shared by all cars? Or some local server at the track the cars connect to? Why is F1 able to control individual cars like this? The article is very light on details as to what exactly is going on...

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The firmware situation is mixed. The ECU hardware is a standard TAG700 from McLaren. Basically these are software-defined ECUs where you can do whatever. However, FIA has some rules on what you're allowed to modify and has some "compulsory" software in there for monitoring and competition regulatory reasons. It appears there was very limited testing of this module in wet conditions which seems to have affected a lot of vehicles. (I work in Motorsports)

Wow. I just assumed it wouldn’t be firmware because going from making a fix in 50 minutes to having cars flying at hundreds of miles per hour on that firmware is kind of nuts

Move fast and try not to break things.

It's a very simple question - is this act statistically likely to improve the results? If the answer is yes, and either it is within the rules, or unlikely to be detected, then it will happen. There are billions on the table, reputations and careers on the line; if you don't pick them up, someone else will.

"But the driver's head might get chopped off". Not sure why you bring that up, it is not part of the equation. Will we likely get more points, will we get caught? Those are the only metrics that matter.

I suppose I exaggerate, but not by much. Drivers didn't want the halo because they thought it would hinder their driving. The first season out Verstappen literally drove over the top of Lewis' helmet, leaving tire marks (he would have been dead w/o the halo).

Every race is a different car, maybe a different engine, with different software, basically.

It's a pretty intense sport & that kind of timeline is fairly common. They'll do a full car rebuild right before the race, if the driver's had a crash in the session before it. So, the driver will be approaching a corner at 250kph+ in the full knowledge that the brakes were wired up to the pedal just ten minutes earlier. They'll make brake-balance adjustments on the fly in the car as they're speeding down the straightaway.

I think the drivers have some extraordinary capability for trust, because the chain of people who need to have got their job correct for that brake pedal to work in that moment is in the dozens, and the consequence for any of them getting it wrong is a particularly violent crash.

In 2020 Hungarian GP, Red Bull rebuilt the front end of Max's car, /on the grid/, after he crashed out during a recon lap[1]. They had 20 minutes, but but finished comfortably early with 25 seconds to spare. Max finished that race in second position.

[1] it was a wet race so the race start was delayed after the initial recon lap.

There is a 20-minute video that shows Red Bull repairing Max's car on the grid while they wait for the formation lap.

>See how incredible teamwork from the Red Bull Racing mechanics enabled Max Verstappen to recover from a pre-race crash to taking the start of the 2020 Hungarian Grand Prix.

[1] https://www.formula1.com/en/video/hungarian-gp-red-bulls-inc...

Rebuilding cars between sessions is a story as old as racing.

Even in stock car races, where they run those little 1.2 liter cars with 50 on track, they switch engines or rebuild the car, between sessions.

They can completely destroy their car in a heat and have the car ready again by heat 2.

There's definitely some trust there, but the drivers have been doing this since they were kids in karts with dad turning the wrenches, through the lower formula series, and into F1.

And the race engineers and mechanics have mostly all done the same, with many of them having studied in college for just these jobs. The UK has quite a few unis and technical schools with motorsports programs for both roles (typically motorsports engineering for the former and certificate programs + apprenticeships for the latter). And they likely started in F3 or elsewhere, then F2, then F1.

Haas runs the "TGR Haas Driver Development Program" to train younger drivers, mechanics, and engineers using historic cars (thanks to the rule change for this season, the 2025 cars qualify). I assume the other teams have analogous programs.

So basically like the anticheat rootkits used in online games to detect ilicit software controls on the player pc's?

F1 vehicles have a lot of actively controlled systems - Engine, MGU, Diff, Brake Bias, Aero etc. Their way of allowing active control but preventing "driver aids" like traction control, torque vectoring is to tightly regulate and give them a box where they can place their controls and what inputs they are allowed to use.

McLaren sold McLaren Applied, the makers of the TAG700, in 2021 and it’s now known as Motion Applied.

You're technically right. I was just speaking industry parlance because everyone still just say McLaren. You'll get blank stares if you say "Motion Applied".

Adding to this summarizing my reading from elsewhere: It sounds as if the cause was going too slowly through a sector, and due to to combination of wet conditions and the specific layout of the sectors at Sepang it was triggered for the first time. Since everyone was driving in formation on the formation lap, multiple drivers triggered it.

Would this be safety-related, something like "going this slowly through a sector indicates a problem, kill the throttle"? Still seems heavy-handed since the cars were moving, if dangerously slowly.

Is the FIA code available for the teams to inspect, or is it just a binary blob they have to install?

As far as I'm aware the FIA can inspect whatever element of the car they like.

FIA can inspect, yes, but can teams inspect software provided by FIA?

Still a Realtime Simulink ECU? In my times it was from Ilmore, round the corner of McLaren.

The FIA has this software to stop teams from creating a form of traction control (which has been banned for a good while now)

Why? To increase chances of crashes that produces more views?

I am not big in F1, but my understanding is that the primary goal is to have the driver be more relevant over the car/firmware producers.

Then why not have standardised vehicles and have the driver be the only variable?

Presumably because they also see at least some value in technical innovation.

It's possible for driver skill to be important without being the only thing that matters.

There have been series' like that, but its equally bad, in the other direction. In that scenario drivers qualify in speed order, then they do the race in the same order. It's not much fun to watch.

Every track is the same because all the cars have the same strengths and weaknesses.

In other words, there are too few variables.

Good races are where teams are involved to make the best car, drivers are involved to execute the best driving, strategists are involved to make the best decisions, and luck creates jeopardy for all.

With different cars (any they are remarkably different given the extensive regs) some do well at high speed tracks, others prefer corners and so on.

I mean that's pretty much the IndyCar spec and they have pretty decent racing. They've done things like embracing underbody aero to cut down on dirty air to allow them to follow closer, low downforce specs on ovals to force them to race the track. Even a spec car, a drivers ability to communicate setup issues to the team, the team to implement them, the budget to do it. F1 is some of the best in the world, but none since Mansell have really came over and dominated, not even Alonso.

Current IndyCar is pretty good compared to the IRL years, this isn't an argument to make F1 a spec series. I was IndyCar for close exciting racing, I watch F1 for the engineering battle as well as the drivers. I think for a lot of F1 fans, the off track drama, the development of the teams through out the season, and the cool ideas they come up with to try to push the boundaries are about as good as the on track entertainment.

The spectacle is still very important, there is nothing like seeing F1 cornering speeds in person. IndyCar isn't close, they have their oval thing with ultra high sustained top speeds, but not even close to F1 on a road course. When you see how fast an F1 car can change directions, it genuinely boggles the mind that a human is behind that. And they've really dropped the ball in that aspect this season. The fans aren't happy, the driver's aren't happy. Something needs to change.

> I mean that's pretty much the IndyCar spec ... but none since Mansell have really came over and dominated, not even Alonso.

Didn't Alonso's first attempt at the Indy 500 (with McLaren?) result in him making it into the final qualification category, and see him leading the race until his car blew up, forcing him to retire? On his first attempt?

No; he led multiple times but was in 7th when his engine went.

They have that, it’s Indycar.

F1 has always been about the combination of excellence in driving and in engineering.

Because that’s also not desirable all the time either. There are lots of one make series out there but they can be pretty mixed in how fun they are to watch. I was at Croft a few weeks ago and the BTCC rounds were incredible, close racing with overtakes and near miss crashes.

The Porsche GT and GT Sprint Cups (911 and Cayman respectively) were a lot more like a procession where the faster drivers quickly ordered themselves and drove away from the rest of the grid. Granted there were fewer cars starting, which didn’t help, but it still didn’t make for exciting viewing.

that would make the engineering fans unhappy, it's in the DNA of f1 as much as driver skills, plus they still need to beat their teammate.

It's called normal race?

F1 seems to be the result of a tension between normal people wanting to see the driver in control, and engineering teams wanting to one-up each other in tech. The two ideas don't actually mix, but like with two fluids that don't mix, you can still pretend they do if you keep stirring.

IMO that tension is what making this sport interesting.

Because then it's not Formula 1 anymore, Formula 1 is about the prototype engineering competition paired with the driver's competition. Without one of them it's a different motorsport.

Generally, the way F1 was originally supposed to work is that manufacturers develop tech to skirt regulations, which then means that tech makes it eventually into consumer cars. A lot of the core technology in modern cars (TC, ABS, Turbo control, e.t.c) got properly developed in F1 before it was brought to the masses.

The entire purpose of traction control is to reduce the driver skill required when cornering and braking. This is why traction control is omnipresent in consumer vehicles, because the vast majority of road drivers are awful.

FIA bans traction control so as to place more emphasis on driver skill.

Basically, there's an endless struggle between "how much do we let automation control?" If there were no such rules, the role of the driver would be far less than it is now, which would effectively reduce competition.

There's some debate but it's kinda settled, it's the pinnacle of motorsports so no driver aids, they are moving away from hybrids, realizing road car relevance/parity is no longer the direction

I don't think it is the hybrid per se that is the issue. It is the heavy computer directed control of harvesting and deployment that it is disliked by both drivers and fans.

Traction control was allowed before 2008. The problem was that it trivialized some aspects of driving - drivers could floor the throttle through turns at little to no risk. (I suspect there may have also been some concerns that drivers who pushed traction control too far could have easily ended up in unrecoverable situations.)

There's some interesting discussion of the history and technical aspects at: https://www.f1-forecast.com/pdf/F1-Files/Honda/F1-SP2_25e.pd...

We should allow batting machines for baseball players to hit the ball more reliably as well. Poker players should play with their cards face up. I agree.

Manually controlling to the limits of the car is a big part of the skill of racing.

Traction control removes of the most fundamental skills of a driver. It’s like allowing ABS.

What I do find interesting is GT3 cars have both ABS and traction control these days and they have great racing. I believe prototypes have TC but no ABS. I realize the mix of talent is much different, especially in GT3 where there are Pro/AM teams and stuff like that, but I'm not sure TC makes that big of a difference on the racing. I don't think ABS should ever be allowed in open wheel as it inspires too much risk taking in overtakes. The whole reason NA F1 revved so high was partially to help keep the power band reasonable exiting slow corners.

As you say, the driver skill is very different between F1 and GT3. If traction control was allowed in F1, the teams would not settle for something like in GT3, it would become an arms race. In the end we might end up with racing determined by who has the best control algorightms, and not who has the best dirver/chassis.

I mean sure if you want the best racing you want a complete spec series. The point being that you'd make the cars as close as possible in times so they they're all bunched together. Adding TCS and ABS would then compress the delta that driver skill creates so you'd compress the field further. Then fully automatic gearboxes and auto-steer would make it even closer.

But F1 is not just about good racing. One of its USP is that it has the world's best drivers. I think that's mostly but not entirely true due to the presence of pay drivers like Stroll.

Crashes don't directly make for a better race; what matters is the amount of actual competition, and for that you need variation.

If every driver drove exactly the same way, then the race would be 100% down to basically just team strategy and the car itself. For fans of strategy that might be fine, but I think most people would find it much less interesting.

> Why? To increase chances of crashes that produces more views?

Why not allow traction control? To increase crashes?

Why not allow "lane keep assist"? To increase drivers crashing into walls?

Why not allow "automatic braking"? To increase drivers slamming into walls and other drivers?

Why do we still have the human in the car when a brick on the accelerator could do the same job? So when the cars crash people feel there are real stakes?

(Presumably they've decided they want the sport to be about the drivers to some extent.)

There’s room for debate but automated safety features on a racetrack isn’t like having them for normal highway driving. What if an edge case isn’t found in testing and automatic braking causes a crash instead of prevents it? How do you consider all edge cases when there’s 22 cars driving at 300km/h?

Aside from that it’s preposterous to think the FIA wants crashes or less safety. A large chunk of regulations are for safety and historically the drivers fight against many of the safety measures (in other words, FIA is historically not the ones blocking safety measures).

F1 is about “cars + the best drivers.” Things like automatic gearboxes, traction control, and other driver aids shift that toward “the best software.” If you’re asking why not just have autonomous competitions—I agree, but they’ll never be as popular, because when drivers aren’t driving, they’re doing marketing.

They all run the same ECU and the same firmware on it, yeah. Teams can control some parameters though. It's to stop any kind of traction control.

Wow, crazy that all cars have to run the same firmware (sans parameter tweaking). I thought as an outsider to the sport that F1 was all about engineering the best possible car and putting the best possible driver in the seat, but the control systems engineer in me is sad that they're all stuck with the same control algorithms.

They want them to engineer everything except the things that replace driver skill.

I think it's been a long time since any motor racing was just about engineering the best possible car. The problem is that engineering got too good - the best possible car we could make would simply be far too fast to be safe. So F1 (and all motor racing) are always playing the rules to try and keep an even field (otherwise the best funded teams would be leagues ahead) and to stop the engineers from killing the drivers.

Am I the only one that can't wait for a no rules FSD enabled carmageddon ?

> I thought as an outsider to the sport that F1 was all about engineering the best possible car and putting the best possible driver in the seat

The clue is sort of in the name; you make the best car within the "Formula", that's why its called "Formula One". The "Formula" is essentially the set of rules that sets constraints on what you can and can't build. You build the best possible car within the Formula. It's "One" because it's meant to be the pinnacle of single seat racing. It's been roughly this way since WWII.

One of the oldest rules in F1 is that the driver must drive the car alone and unaided. That's been explained as no traction control, ESC, ABS brakes etc. etc.; Teams kept cheating so the only good way to prevent this was to standardize the ECUs.

Yeah I was wondering this also. I had no idea they had some shared blob (or maybe they have source code access) that runs in all of their cars. Would love to read more about how this process works if anyone knows!

Wonder if they all get given a thumb drive at the start of the weekend with the latest patch. Release notes saying "library updates and bug fixes, now go drive 200mph around a track! Have fun!"

TLDR: this wet weather mode stuff is FIA mandated because it is basically a rule enforcement around traction control. The loss of traction was related to a weird interaction in low-revving engines, turbos not kicking in, and the rest of the systems trying to do something that anti-traction control stuff would prevent.

During the Sky commentary, Anthony Davidson explained the specific electro-mechanical interactions based on what teams were telling him.

The FIA absolutely do need the ability to enforce regulations, but perhaps they should be monitoring for traction control and then stewarding that, rather than managing parts of the ECU firmware...

The teams use a single homologated ECU to prevent driver aids. I would assume it doesn’t have a downlink on-track to prevent tampering, but presumably with umbilical cord connected in the garage during red flag they can make changes, which the FIA probably sent over. Who knows.

No this all happened during the formation lap. So teams could clearly push settings changes live.

The problem happened during the formation lap. They red-flagged the race and brought all the cars off the track. I don't know any more about the update mechanism than you do, but GP's theory is plausible.

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