Humiliating F1 power unit failures show why complicated battery tech is set to be ditched

The world feels in a crazy place at the moment and Formula 1, as ever, is a microcosm of that world. This was never more apparent than in the opening stages of the ‘Bahrain Grand Prix at Sepang’. The first clue to the craziness is right there in the title. Why the Bahrain Grand Prix was happening in Malaysia was, of course, to do with the ongoing Israel/Iran conflict and how a race in actual Bahrain – permanent host of the Israel-aligned US Fifth Fleet – might be a target for Iranian missiles.

But Bahrain’s rulers place a lot of PR value on the race and pay a huge fee to F1 to have it. F1 in turn is very happy to take that money. So both parties thought it was a shame to lose the race. It just needed a different venue – one that wasn’t in Bahrain. Malaysia surrendered its F1 slot after 2017 because it could no longer justify the hosting fee after losing around 87,000 spectators once the nearby Singapore GP got established. But it still had the superb Sepang track. Surely a deal could be done. It was. The Bahrain GP organisers would lease the track and run their event on it.

The Bahrain Grand Prix organisers run their race in Sakhir very efficiently but in a brand new environment without the local knowledge, the infrastructure of the Sepang race weekend was woefully inadequate, leaving thousands of fans stranded at the circuit for hours after the last track activity.

Then the crowning glory of the nonsense; the reconnaissance laps behind the safety car before the race, necessary because of the equatorial downpour which had delayed proceedings for 40 minutes. They were about to be delayed more as, one by one, cars slowed to a walking-pace crawl or stopped altogether. The planned four laps of reconnaissance were swiftly abandoned and replaced by a red flag. ‘Pretend that bit never happened’ seemed to be the message.

What had happened was that a software glitch, hiding in there since the ‘50/50’ hybrid regs had taken effect, had finally been exposed by a combination of circumstances. This was the first time these PUs had done any serious slow wet weather running, the first time the ‘wet weather’ map – which reduces the electrical deployment from the usual 350kW to 250 – had been deployed.

With engine rpm so low (at Turn 9 in particular), the turbos were starved of exhaust flow, causing them to spool down to nothing, losing all boost pressure. Usually, any power shortfall from turbo lag will be infilled by the MGU-k which provides instant electrical torque for a few seconds while the exhaust/turbo loop sorts itself out. In the software of the wet weather 250kW restriction was an instruction to shut down the MGU-k if the rpm reached a set crawl speed – which most of them did.

With the internal combustion engines choked by dead turbos and with no electrical assistance, the software policing system detected a possible fraud, as if a team was trying to bypass the hybrid system’s set limits on deployment or fuel flow, as if the monitoring had been removed by someone hacking the system. So as to guarantee compliance, the software then initiated the forced shutdown sequence, essentially reducing the engine to tickover. Once triggered, this default was then locked in for all of that sector. Meantime, the safety car had disappeared off into the distance.

“You can generate huge power from a battery. But not for very long”

So a negative unintended consequence of the ’26 PU regs was revealed. This in addition to those well-established ones of energy starvation on certain tracks which require the drivers not to be flat-out on a qualifying lap and the big mismatches of power between dicing cars at different times, etc. The regulations and technicalities which are needed to compensate for every outcome resulting from trying to combine this much electrical power with an internal combustion engine are insanely intricate. This type of power unit is inherently unsuited to use in a high-downforce, open-wheel racing car – a point we’ve made many times this year. This has now been recognised and F1 is trying to move away from it as quickly as possible.

It begs the question of why it was chosen in the first place. We did a feature on this in the magazine a few months ago [Last chance power play, July], but essentially it was about the money the automotive manufacturers bring to F1. So F1 is always eager to accommodate their wishes. Wishes about technology which in this case were driven by government legislation in the wider world in response to environmental concerns – about both global greenhouse gas emissions and local air quality.