GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => Pit Pass => Topic started by: John S on May 27, 2009, 04:00:35 PM
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Despite rumours that the flywheel does not work in the actual race car, Williams give another account of why they are not running it. The Williams team admits that it is unlikely to use KERS for the majority of 2009, as the team's technicians believe the weight of the device would yield a greater disadvantage than its power boosts' positive effects over the course of a Grand Prix distance.
New to Formula One this season, the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) was used by only Ferrari and McLaren in Monaco last weekend, weighing in at no less then 30 kilogrammes (4.7 stone) in added weight to a car, forcing many drivers who have used the unit to cut down on body mass this year. Williams is the only team, however, to develop a system which stores its energy in a flywheel - as opposed to a battery - although it is yet to be seen at a race weekend.
"The fundamental problem is, and this was raised early on, that - even though our system has got a lot of capacity - it weights 35kg (5.5st)," explained Patrick Head, the English team's executive director of engineering. "We can't get the optimum weight distribution if we're running the system. We're still working on our KERS, I'm not saying we won't run it this year, but it will be difficult to run it on the car and have the car set in its optimum performance window; but if you go to a slower speed track, your optimum weight distribution moves rearwards anyway."
Although he is pessimistic over the chances of the device debuting this season, Head does believe that it will yield significant performance improvements for all teams in future years. "KERS is certainly still under development," he continued. "We've developed our own motor and they are amazing things, quite small - about the size of a part-used lavatory roll - and it puts out 80 brake horse power. It's been running on our rig back in the factory, both absorbing and feeding power back in."
He finally explained the progress of development of KERS at the team's Grove base: "The inverter (device which coverts the kinetic energy - generated when a driver is off the throttle - to electrical energy) is all done and that's running well. The flywheel (stores the kinetic energy until the driver wishes to deploy it) has been running on the rig and we had a few development problems - associated with mounting a flywheel within a car - but we've solved them now."
taken from f1.gpupdate.net ,27 May 2009
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KERS appears to be a flop as most teams are not running with it and the added weight does not get justified by the added short-term power boost.
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KERS appears to be a flop as most teams are not running with it and the added weight does not get justified by the added short-term power boost.
I don't know why they put a power limit on KERS. So much of the equipment is a static cost for weight... the same recovery system could give 30 seconds of boost instead of 6, or whatever.
If they could use ANY power they can store, THEN KERS would be a great idea