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Scuderia Ferrari has raced every year since Formula 1 began but few seasons have proved quite as challenging, competitive and controversial as 2010.
For the team, its partners and many fans and followers, the Scuderia's 61st campaign was an exhilarating ride from delight to despair and back again.
After a blistering start in Bahrain for drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe *** and podium positions elsewhere, Ferrari's early season promise deserted them.
But a memorable 1, 2 finish at Monza marked the beginning of a remarkable resurgence and a string of wins for Fernando Alonso, who started the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi as leader of the Drivers' Championship.
This being Formula 1, the reversal in Ferrari's fortunes and the season's events as a whole were set against an on-going story of technological innovation and development.
In 2013, new rules will require that fuel efficiency is doubled within five years using fewer and smaller engines, making the teams' relationships with their technological partners more important than ever before.
This programme looks at just one of them – the oldest in Formula 1, as both partners come to terms with the changes introduced in 2010 and the challenges they face together in the future.
As well as introducing a new fuel specification for the 2010 season, F1's governing body decreed that cars could no longer be refuelled during races, requiring teams like Ferrari to re-design their cars and re-think their race strategies.
Shell, Ferrari's long term technical partner, would also have to revise its approach to produce fuel and lubricants that delivered just as much power but even greater efficiency.
The drivers had their own concerns – what effect would enlarged fuel tanks and a longer wheelbase have on the handling of their cars? Winter testing hours were limited and the first GP of the season in Bahrain was fast-approaching.
In anticipation of the new regulations, F1's fuel formulators had begun their painstaking work several months previously. But before they could burn the midnight oil, they first had to find the right one...
The art of fuel formulation is getting the best power and the best efficiency so we work very hard to understand all the chemical elements that go into a fuel to make sure we select the right one. So this is where we take lots and lots of refineries streamed from around the world and mix them together to make the fuel for the F1 car.
We have to understand the way the compounds react, how quickly they burn—the engine is doing 18,000 RPM, so we’re looking for compounds that burn really quickly and give the best in efficiency.
More than 200 individual components had to be modelled and analysed but, in 2010, power and efficiency were not going to be the only considerations.
Normally when you re-fuel two or three times during a race, you're refuelling with cool fuel, so without that cooling effect something that a lot of people may not realise is the fuel is actually going to get a lot hotter inside the car.
One of the ways to get around this is in the fuel formulation itself. We are designing the fuel to be able to deal with these hotter temperatures and not to vapourise in the fuel tank - you can get vapour lock issues...
...or the other problem is you can get air bubbles in the fuel and this can cause what's called cavitation and if you've got the most extreme circumstances, the fuelling system would be damaged beyond repair.
Then there were two further factors – the new fuel's weight and volume.
You're talking 20% of the weight of the car at the start is made up of fuel so we've put a lot of effort into the fuels for this season to give them the best fuel efficiency on a weight basis. Conversely, if you've got a tank on a car that's a little bit small, you want good fuel performance on a volume basis, so we're having to cover both angles.
So we had all these challenges and I have to say the initial reaction was probably 'Oh God!'
We've got the density down as low as we can. As I said to Alessandro before, the last one looks the best...
Mike Evans' first batch of candidate fuels for the 2010 season is being tested in Maranello.
...You can see from our measurements that the fuel economy that is predicted is exactly what we're seeing, so that should give us a good advantage, I guess...
The co-operation between team and technological partner is close and continuous – not least in 2010 when both are climbing a steep learning curve.
The emphasis used to be on power, power, power. Now fuel economy’s coming into it and we’re all learning.
When you develop a fuel and oil, you cannot just take a good fuel, put it in an engine and expect it to work. Engine and fuel and lubricant have to be developed together.
After exhaustive modelling at Thornton, the most promising formulations are made up in small batches and tested for performance and reliability during long run tests on static engines at Maranello. It's a measured and methodical approach.
You have to understand what you're doing. Just throwing ideas is not good enough – we need to do genuine research work to understand what happens in an engine working at ridiculously high loads and speeds.
Thornton's research environment is invaluable to us because we have a continuous development programme of fuels and oils, which needs bespoke resource and needs bespoke people and also needs to be very reactive because we need to keep an advantage over the competition.
Evans and his colleagues are regular visitors to Maranello where their every effort and each new development is rigorously scrutinised, then fast-tracked – or sidelined. The demand for improvement is incessant.
Yes, we normally apply a lot of pressure but they know us so they accept this pressure because they are part of the team, they are part of the game.
Dave is the team leader, he's English, he knows how to ring me up and challenge me, saying he wants this fuel or likes this fuel, he's always pushing, always pushing for developments, Alessandro Rosetti looks after the combustion side of the engine, combustion efficiency - he gives you a really good insight into how the fuels are performing, so it's a rewarding part of the job coming over here and chatting with the guys.
Formulation and testing complete, the new race fuel for the first four races is now subject to ratification by F1's governing body, the FIA.
When we design the fuel and send it off for approval, we clearly want it to be as close to the limit as possible. So if we get one or two error messages telling us we're right on the limit, that's a good thing. We want it to come back telling us we're right on the edge of the formulation space because otherwise we've over-engineered it and not really exploited all the opportunities.
When approval is granted, production of the fuel finally begins in large quantities. One consignment will be despatched to clear customs in time for the first GP of the season, while another is prepared for the more imminent challenge – F1 testing in Spain.
At Jerez, car and fuel come together on one of the few remaining occasions before the F1 championship begins. Speed is still king but the significance of fuel efficiency is not lost on the drivers.
Let's say your engine uses a bit less fuel than another engine. Maybe you can do the whole race with 10 or 15 kilos less fuel than another car, which is lap time.
While many factors lie beyond their control, fuel consumption is, to some extent, in the hands of the drivers.
So we have some mix on the engine...
All of the drivers on their steering wheel will have a button which enables them to make the engine run more lean or more rich and really what that’s doing is affecting the ratio of fuel and the air inside the engine. By changing that ratio you can use less fuel but you will ultimately have less power.
We have the torque map, which is rainy or dry – you have different maps, we have the revs... We have so many things on the steering wheel... We are also working a lot when we are driving.
This season, drivers may also be forced to adopt one or two other options at their disposal.
We have been practising some lift off before the corners, braking a little bit earlier - that can make two tenths slower a timed lap, but around two or three per cent fuel saving.
When you have a heavy car, the way you go into a high speed corner, you can go in a different way which you use a little bit less the throttle, taking away the gas a little bit earlier but braking much later. So you have many things you can do to save a little bit more fuel.
Because each circuit is different, ensuring that drivers have enough fuel to finish but carry the minimum weight across the line presents a major challenge for the race engineers.
Monaco itself is a very high downforce circuit. That means basically that you use more fuel... If you look at Monza, Monza is a very low downforce circuit so you tune the car to have a very low drag level.
Whichever circuit they're racing on, drivers will have a very heavy car to start the race and a lighter one to finish. Ultimately, the aim will be the same – to drive at the very limit, wherever that limit may be.
You’re talking about completely two different cars to drive but you are in the limit in both directions, you need to be in the limit otherwise you’re losing time.
I think we are ready – we have some innovative products from Shell that we’ve been testing all winter and I think we’ve found the right compromise. I think we have to be very optimistic.
After nine months of work, push is coming to shove. Three weeks later, all the effort proves worthwhile...
There is more cause for celebration ahead of the Australian Grand Prix – the 450th race of the two partners' long-standing technological collaboration.
Shell with Ferrari together now since the beginning have had 12 drivers' championships and ten constructors' championships and it has been a tremendous partnership. And obviously since ‘96, the period has been probably the most successful period for any one team in motorsport.