It’s really important – it’s what makes
you go forwards,
and the earlier you are on it, the faster you go.
It depends on the amount of power that the
car’s got.
Obviously in a lower-powered car, in a normally-aspirated
powered car, you can jump on the throttle.
Formula E’s a little bit different with
the linear torque curve, so it has to be a
little bit more controlled, and then you’ve
got cars like GP2 and F1, where you have to
be…
I wouldn’t say careful, but you have to
not only think about traction, but you have
to think about your tyre life, also.
Every driver has a different style of how
they use the throttle.
Some of them are very progressive in their
application of the throttle, and others are
a little bit more digital.
We need to be able to cater for all of that.
For us as engineers, we want to try and get
the power down as fast as we can from the
slowest speed, so it’s a case of managing
a way that the driver can manage to have control
of it, but also get as much down as possible,
and that’s then combining throttle control
with traction control.
If you just kept smashing into the traction
control, using more throttle than was required,
the engineers would be on your case very quickly
to look at your fuel number at the end of
each lap.
Every time that we’re on the pedal, we know
that we’re burning fuel and yes, it gives
you momentum of course, but it also means
that your fuel cuts throughout the lap are
going to be bigger.
Sometimes something we adjust as drivers is
the distribution of front-to-rear, and how
that’s working, but generally we get fixed
on a pretty linear throttle map that we all like.
Most cars have a more or less fixed setup
and travel, but if you’re not happy with
it, you can try to make it a shorter travel,
which will decrease a bit the drivability
because you have a bit less play, or you can
make it longer if you find it hard to have
smooth drivability.
So that would definitely give them the ability
to be a bit more fine with their adjustments,
so they could put a 20% movement on the
pedal, but that only changes the torque by,
let’s say, 10%.
So as a result, you’ve got a finer increment
for driver input in this region, so you can’t
get this the whole way along, obviously at
some point you have to have a steeper part.
But in this point, you’ve got a finer control
for the driver.
That could be especially useful, say, in the
wet.
The biggest thing is, you don’t want something
that is very short in the throw, so you lose
a feel for what’s going on.
In the dry conditions when you’ve got a
lot of mechanical grip, that’s no problem,
but in the wet conditions you want a bit more
control in the way that you feed the power in.
You need that window to be able to operate
with that extra bit of control.
There’s no wire so it’s actually electronic,
so you’re pushing against – you’re not
pushing against a cable or pulling a throttle
body like you would on a car from years ago,
so that’s something they can set up, to
have a damper behind the throttle.
And having a little bit of damping is actually
quite nice as well, because going over a bump,
at least if it’s damped, and you have a
bump, then it’s… damping is good to have.
You can work with your engineers and play
with the engine settings to have a smoother
pickup, or a more aggressive one, depending
also on what engine you have – if you
have a turbo engine, or a normally-aspirated.
Many many aspects, and it’ always important
to go into all the details to make sure you
get the maximum out of it, and that you’re
happy with your drivability.
The driver also has the ability to change
the way the engine responds to his foot operates
on the pedal.
So, the engines are drive-by-wire, so we have
the ability to subtly change just the response
of the engine, and perhaps as the tyres are
wearing out, he can go to a less-aggressive map.
It’s something that comes quite instinctively
to the drivers as well, it’s amazing that
we have this team of engineers that have all
the strategy tools and simulations, but at
the end of the day, the driver still has the
ultimate feel for when you need the throttle
application and how we use it, and we can
relay that information back to the engineers,
they can feed it into their simulation tools
and know what we’re going to like, or what
we’re not going to like, on different parts
of the track.
