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Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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.

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.

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

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?

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