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I hope Ground News don't just count news available on a topic on the media, because all it takes is for some rich Asian countries with strict media control and lots of state-run media to bias the reporting statistics
Ferrari pulsing the fuel pump so the flow was lower when the FIA fuel monitoring device was measuring, and higher when it wasn’t, is still the most genius cheat I’ve heard.
@Talasas The fuel sensors measure the fuel flow several times per second. They syncronized the fuel system to push more fuel while the sensor is not measuring.
How is it any different than any of the other loopholes engineers come up with to circumvent regulations...e.g. the sliding skirts, water cooled brakes, the double diffuser etc?
So, am I correct that (A) the air pressure thing is legal for the 1994 rules and (B) it hasn't been disclosed till this video? I am trying to ascertain if I have understand correctly that people accused the B194 Benetton to be a cheat car because it used TCS (illegal) when it is simply a legal way of working around the rules that the team didn't want to disclose and that no body managed to interview someone from inside the team to talk about it till now, and the team was trying to keep their team secret and chose not to do so back then, and then there was no point doing so any more beyond that point. Then of course there are also the fuel pipe thing (explained in the video to be something they rather plead guilty than disclosing their secret) and the option 13 (which they didn't admit doing till now).
@@stormmeansnowork yes, as stated in the video, it wasn’t actively disclosed by Benetton (tho eventually discovered by the other teams) - even to the FIA - because Benetton was afraid, that even someone from the regulators might leak some information to the other teams. The other teams figured it out eventually on their own but it would have taken them less time to do so, had they had the actual explanation.
@@epultimast So FIA and the rival teams (if not Schumacher himself) eventually knew but no one bothered to explain it to the fans that the title won by Schumacher is not as suspicious as many thought? I mean the option 13 thing is still suspicious and we can only take Benetton's words for it, but the rest are totally legit if i understand everything correctly. I guess this is why this video was made because of the many other videos saying / concluding that Benetton cheated.
The fact FIA never wanted to admit was that the 94' cars were dangerous to drive : Lehto, Alesi, Barrichello, Ratzenberger, Senna, Wendlinger, Montermini were the casualties but the FIA could never admit their mistake by removing electronics so fast. Suspicions on Benetton were convenient smokescreen...
@@tonblom1 When Schumacher was suspended, did Benetton deactivate its traction control for the driver who replaced him? Lehto didn't even manage to score any points, and Verstappen could only manage 5th place. It seems to me to be very stupid to think that Benetton would have traction control, but only use it on Schumacher's car, thus sacrificing a constructors' title and even putting Schumacher's championship at risk, since Lehto and Verstappen were letting Damon Hill win.
Great video Scott, not keen on the title but everything in the video is nicely put together. Glad you found some wonderful footage to illustrate the discussion. We did not limit rpm, we limited the rate of acceleration of the engine ("to protect it")...
Thank you for your input in this video! You are absolutely fascinating and I could listen to you for ages :) Ever thought about doing a full scale documentary on this era's story? If you do, I'd _love_ to watch it! It would definitely take me back as I've been watching F1 over 50 years (I started young lol), and I'm still a Damon fangirl 😉😄 Thanks again for giving us this great info. Your time is much appreciated!
@willemtoet_yt: The truth is in this YT video at 59 minutes: “Williams Heritage Podcast, in association with Mercedes Benz” hear for yourself how Benetton cheated. Also very convenient to not mention the team manager was the biggest cheat in the history of F1 (Briatore).
@@gold333 Great that there are knowledgeable people out there paying attention. Had not seen and enjoyed the video. This is exactly why we did not explain how we got close to having a system that worked a bit like traction control without breaking the letter of the law. We knew that everyone would believe we had illegal traction control, but we could not explain how we did it or everyone else would do the same (and the rule makers would modify the rules to ban it). We had worked out an acceleration limiter that worked via spark cut but did not use what gear we ere in or what speed the car was doing (no wheel speed, no air speed, no gear position). It used air pressure changes inside the airbox to change engine acceleration. It therefore needed a lot of setting up and testing to compare it to real traction control. That is what Senna heard in Brazil and what the Williams people saw in testing (where you can test whatever you like including things you cannot race - just as all teams do today in FP1. So no surprise to me that the world thought we were cheating. The FiA even employed a Benetton electronics and software guru to understand it. Other teams learned about it before the FiA did and slowly all teams copied the concept. In parallel Benetton worked with a different engine supplier that allowed for softer means of controlling acceleration that one could not hear so clearly. A good traction control system does not leave dot dash dot marks on the road - it spins the rear wheels at exactly the correct percentage above car speed to maximise grip (which is tyre dependant and at about 4% for a formula 1 tyre). I know we pushed the boundaries but I don't think we crossed the line with that system.
Cool to hear this guys perspective but some of his statements are hard to believe. He knows every technical detail of the traction control system but knows absolutely nothing about option 13 (other than he is sure they didn't use it) because "only the guys on Friday used it" like there was a totally separate Benetton team that only showed up for the practice session and then all went home? Then they removed the filter from the fuel filler hose just for the LOLs and apparently not because it increased the flow at all and certainly the increased flow didn't cause the massive fuel spill that was a bit of rubber... 😵💫
@@fallenshallriseall of the top teams had dedicated, separate test teams but they never actually travelled to grand prix meetings. As for “option 13”, I don’t know how the ECU software was programmed, but having done some basic programming myself their excuse is plausible. They were not the only team to have the fuel filter removed and were given official permission by the equipment manufacturer to do it. FIA later mandated a flap to cover the refuelling port so dirt could not get into it and prevent the hose from locking on.
Without wishing to justify them, it is just possible the reason for (illegal) launch control was to have a baseline against which legal approaches could be compared.
Senna was not just an epic driver , he had a huge understanding of all things related to the car itself - it’s such a shame he wasn’t able to make his own f1 team because I feel he would have been as good as Jack Branham and Bruce McLaren
What a nice thought, a Senna team with Ayrton directing traffic. Probably not what he would have done but a nice thought, to think we all lost such an incredible man at just 34 years old, the world lost when Ayrton died.
Don't forget Colin Chapman. Lotus was one of the most innovative teams in F1 & racing history. Jim Clark winning the Indy 500 is his little Lotus Cooper rear engine against those gigantic American roadsters is one for the ages, and changed racing forever. Yes, Chapman was a bit of a shyster, but he was never-the-less a great innovator and a dynamic personality.
In what world do you live in. No track hold pole lap or the best or fastest ever lap or 2004 car, the only lap is Montoya record in Monza but that was with the world fastest engine but crucially was in race, the lap difference is still 2.2s slower than W11.@@Jesus_H._Tap-DancingChrist
The thing about motorsport, trying to get an edge on the competition, is finding and exploiting loopholes in the wording of regulations. With the wording of the regulations that intended to ban "driver aids", it looks like the Governing Body missed the part that talked about using the software being on the car. In other words, Benetton seemed to interpret it as "as long as you don't use them, there's nothing to say that we can't have the software in the car," There's another theory about these "noises" Senna heard from the Benettons. The exhausts of the B194 were located in the immediate wake of the diffuser, achieving similar effects to that which Red Bull would copy in 2010, the Exhaust Blown Diffuser. Such exhausts tend to result in the engine sounding rougher than it would otherwise be on acceleration and braking
Blown diffusers had a map and it was only on over-run. On throttle there was no cutting. Also they used the exhausts in a different way in the 90s compared to the 2010s blown diffusers.
everyone still had left over code within thei ecu of their cars, it was due t the feact that the regulation changes were announce so late in 93 that there was not enough time to specifically build the cars around that (the Williams basically was the 93 with all the aids deactivated). Also as Scott explained, due to how programs work, you cannot just delete something from the code and expect the rest to work flawlessly, many time over do differnet parts of code interact with each other,and changes to one part will potentially negatively affect a completely different, and seemingly unrelated part.
Being a software guy I remember coming up with my own TC cheat back then. The TC code would have a map of the engine torque, car mass, aero drag vs speed. For each gear ratio it would be able to determine the max acceleration via a lookup table. It would know the actual acceleration by how fast the revs increased. If it exceed the lookup there is wheel spin. I didn't know the selected gear was banned, but the solution described could be used.
That's not what happened.... when they/FIA reviewed the software after begging for it guess what they found? All you had to do was push a few buttons in a sequence and it enabled traction control and launch control. It was so easy a child could enable it. There was no loophole exploited, they were F'ing cheating.
In the film "Senna", you see a Williams engineer using a Psion Organiser plugged into the car. My Dad used one to store phone numbers, and other information filing 😂😂
Willem has such an easy to listen to voice. I wish I had someone like him tutoring me, I'd actually pay attention since he makes complex stuff interesting and fascinating to pick apart and learn, and easy to follow along with. Plus he's a joy to listen to as said
I don't imagine the floppy drives were actually on the car while it was racing, probably just a lot of individual computers that each needed flashing from their respective floppy.
This is one aspect I really like with F1. And as long as it's a grey area or loophole and not blatantly cheating I am all for this. And for this reason I don't call RB cheaters like many seem to do at the moment.
Fan or not of these moves, you can't not appreciate how genius these engineers are. It's fascinating. And without these cheeky moves and F1 in general, our cars today wouldn't be as safe and advanced as they are. F1 is so much more than just a sport and i love it.
The best cheating is to rule the rules ! Please make a video which team (Merc!!!!) and which head mechanic (A.C !!!!! )was in 2008-9 , behind rules of 2014 PU ! Also 2013 illegal tyres test in Silverstone , illegal rear wind , rule the rules , (DAS), front wings 2019 etc, etc !!!!
It's a shame that the CVT was banned from F1 because if it was allowed I am sure it would have been developed into something worthwhile not the garbage we get now
Modern CVTS are very reliable . GM and Honda among others make good ones. The physics in racing were very much the same issues that road car CVTs struggle with, and without the need for 100k mile durability, I’m not sure much relevant could have been gained in F1 as it relates to road cars, but perhaps.
FIA was like: -Yeah, we see this traction control option here in the display but surely guys you don’t use it during the race right? -Yeah man, sure we just have it there for no reason -Oh I believe you, have a nice day lol lol lol.
"I mean, we might use it during the race, can you FiA prove it?" "Errrr... you see, a crying brazilian boy reached out to us" "CAN YOU PROVE IT? "No, we can not" "So, we don´t use it"
@@Thiago100Zwetsch" Hey uhm, why do you have that piece of code that explicitely says Launch Control? " " Leftover stuff and unfortunately, we cant delete coconut.jpeg because otherwise the car wont work. " " But you know its illegal, right? " " Yeah, thats why we dont use it. " " Sure man, have a good one. "
Are you aware that in 1994 several teams had such things in their software? McLaren and Ferrari for example? That was simply because at that time one engineer was responsible for developing and writing the software and the teams didn't have the capacity to develop and write completely new software within a few weeks (because it wasn't much longer from the ban to the start of the season). So many teams simply "deactivated" the relevant parts of the software. A little research or better memory (because both Ferrari and McLaren were in the press at the beginning of 1994, even if this was quickly swept under the carpet) would be desirable for some people...
i like how you didn't watch or take in anything from the video, to leave your garbage comment which isn't actually what happened at all, and it wasn't even a traction control system. lol lol lol.
@@schumiisking What happened: Benetton had an option in the car called Launch Control, and when the fia saw it they didn’t do shit about it. Don’t worry, they won’t take any championships from Schumacher. They already had enough after the shitshow in 97
I remember in the first race in Brazil, at last 1/3 of the race, Senna was catching Schumacher before he spun off. From 7 s to around 5s in two laps. Makes sense based on the comment made that the Benetton legal traction control looses effectiveness with older tires.
Without those sensors, it was impossible to recolect enough info for the software to create a specification for old tires, maybe in 1993 it would be possible
But one of the greatest team principals. As the engineer said, innovation in Motorsport is all about pushing the regulations and finding ways to exploit them.
@@kangarht no. Traction control actively cuts ignition in a selected number of cylinders, a rev limiter does it to the whole engine once it reaches the set limiter. Ferrari used the exact same system in 1994.
@@kangarht, no. You still don't understand that "traction control" is a technical term that denotes an active system. Use a rev limiter to *limit* power (and thus aid traction) is not traction control. It is a rev limiter. It's ingenious precisely because it ISN'T traction control.
@@flyingphoenix113 I did perfectly understood the video: they explain how they made traction control cricumventing the ruels. VERY IMPORTANT: they did not control the REV, they did control the acceleration, the benneton guy interviewed in the video, in the comments here corrected that. So you dont even know what they did, yet you try to explain me, its hillarious :)
Thank you for putting the lrogress bar at the bottom of the video when you do you ad read. It makes it muc easier to know exactly how much skipping I need to without accidently going past the real content. Im not being sarcastic. I really appreciate this. I wish more people did this during ad reads.
Nah,the Ferrari fuel flow has got to go down as the most genius cheat ever. To think that you can drive the pump harder while the sensor isnt checking, and actually map out when the sensor is looking, then figure out a way to PWM the pump higher only while the sensor had its eyes closed is pure genius. Oh yeah, and FORZA FERRARI!
Liverpool Data Research Associates (the company who made analyses for the FIA) found something on the 3 systems they analysed (Benetton Ferrari and McLaren). The Ferrari Had a traction control and McLaren a program that permitted automatic gearshifts
I remember after a crash a Red Bull had its nose torn off and everyone could see some sort of weight that would bounce up and down helping the car over bumps. I also remember a team that could transfer fuel from a second small tank into the main tank. Cool stuff.
Don't forget this is the same general time as Intel's floating oint bug. Also a Ferrari with a dozen floppy drives sounds entirely, entirely reasonable. So, were they 5.25 or 3.5 inch drives? No I'm serious, I am genuinely intrigued what Ferrari were doing with the floppies, was it writing data to them for the team to analyze once the car was in the pits and how did they get around the disk being full, cause anyone with a PC in that era dreaded disks being full. 1.44mb of space is a bit like having terabytes of space nowadays, you think it's a lot but it really isn't
i ve read somewhere that a modern f1 car with all its sensors takes about 50gb/lap, so its not entierly unlikely to have a dozen of floppy discs in a 90s car
@@keisuketakahasi4584 Yes the amount of data seems believable, I just mean with weight being such a huge cost in F1, why have all the unnecessary "eject" mechanisms and stuff? Drives with a non removable media would be much lighter.
@@willdarling1 Not just that, but then ensuring the eject mechanisms don't go firing off because you hit a bump too hard or something as well. Makes me wonder just how Ferrari were managing this and just how they were using the floppies. I mean it's a great way of getting a light car up to the what, 600 kg minimum weight at the time after all given how much of a brick floppy drives tended to be in those days as well too. I'd be curious just how many flopppies Ferrari got through since working with DOS on a 191-2 era PC and having to handle several dozen floppies at once seems like a recipe for mistakes
I used to think one of the teams was using the pit limiter button as traction control, because you could see the driver push a button on the wheel coming out of hairpin turns. No reason to talk on the radio every time you come out of a hairpin turn.
Fantastic video. The typical high standard we expect from this channel. Thanks to Willem for his explanations. Hearing it from someone who was there makes it even better. And for those of us older than we like to admit, he helped transport us back to those "good old, bad old days". He's made a comment, btw. So you can go say thanks personally!
Funnily enough, the strange noise going into corners was the exact thing Brundell said about the red bull, circa Vettel driving for them, and its was never looked into.
senna had a insane feel for engines and what noise they should be making . i would never disagree with him on anything like that and i suspect he knew what flavio was like also
When Barnard moved to Enstone, he reorganized the team on the right track. Barnard did most of the job around 90-91. Briatore, Brawn and Schumacher only got the benefits from John handiwork. Had John stayed, Senna move to Enstone was a possibility around 92
Bullshit. He had great feel for the engines in the cars he was driving. He did not have super ears that allowed him to hear things others could not. He wasn’t Superman.
what people dont really understand is that engineers will do ANYTHING in their knowledge and capabilities to produce the most competitive car they can produce
I also hate it when they say Benetton cheated when Williams was still using active suspension parts till San Marino 94 and McLaren and Ferrari were still using automatic gearbox features and all of them didn't give blackboxes to the FIA when the requested it. But yeah Benetton is the biggest devil ever.
I also hate it when they say Benetton cheated when Williams was still using active suspension parts till San Marino 94 and McLaren and Ferrari were still using automatic gearbox features and all of them didn't give blackboxes to the FIA when the requested it. But yeah Benetton is the biggest devil ever even tho they never found anything on the car.
The most used social media argument has never existed. There's never been "In the spirit of the rules" rule, I hope there never is either. Also, Senna was extremely well adapted at using every means possible to get his own way, arguably the greatest manipulator of all F1 drivers.
It's strange to if they really used on the speed difference for the traction control. I've tried using derivate of the speed (=acceleration) instead in an electric drive requiring kind of a traction control. It was so much faster to react it was quite hard to tell when it was about to slip because the control reacted so fast there really wasn't any slipping at all. Also the capability of early 90s computers was downplayed in this video. Citroën already had active suspension, Hydractive, in a production car (XM) in 1989. The system selected suspension mode on fuzzy logic. More sophisticated version Hydractive 2 came with Xantia in 1993. The Hydractive I/II ECU isn't big, maybe 20x15x5 cm or so. And in 1994 active body roll control for a production car was introduced in Xantia Activa which had neglible body roll. For a road car it was a rocket in the corners and still holds the record for the Swedish Teknikens Värld magazine's moose avoidance test, being faster in it than for example Audi R8 '17, McLaren 675LT, Mercedes-AMG GT S '15 and Porsche 997 Carrera 4S 2008. So, the technical capability for such system did exist in the early 90s in the price so low it could be implemented in a production car. For a limited series road car the same system could have been more efficient and smaller. One another example of the calculation capability in the early 90s computers is the DTC - direct torque contorl in the asynchronous electric motors (squirrel cage induction motors), which ABB introduced to the market in their ACS600 series in 1995. It was capable of doing motor model calculations such way it made rotor reference frame to stator reference frame conversion, two axis to three axis conversion and vice versa in a single control cycle - and also optimum pulse selection of course. And this all happened multiple times in a millisecond - on one chip. That was the thing that made ABB's drives superior to all their competitors. So already in the 1990s the calculation capability of embedded computers was huge. And how much you can fit on one floppy? Well, the logic program for controlling a paper machine could was small enough to fit on a DD floppy (720 kB) in ABB/Strömberg's Selma 2 control system from the 1980s. The thing is to use all the calculation power efficiently instead of wasting it. So the limitations in the active suspension and traction control systems in the early 90s F1 wasn't caused by the limitations of the computers, but the designers. And I really think they used the acceleration of the rear wheels or the camshaft instead of (only) the speed difference between the axles. I don't know much about the internal combustion engines, but I think it would have been possible even to use the engine's torque/speed curve, throttle position and gear to calculate the greatest possible acceleration. Of course there has to be a margin for a tailwind and a downhill. Or they could have compared the accelaration difference between the axles instead of the speeds.
I love this serie you make about cars of culture and their history. Could you please do a video about the Renault r26 of the 2006 f1 season. It has a nice history and innovations. Thanks for this videos, I love them
Thanks for explaining this well. I’ve heard this approach alluded to in the past but never outlined so well. And as a longtime follower of Willem on LinkedIn, his insights are always really interesting. But hadn’t ever seen him interviewed. Great watch.
So they were not allowed to use wheel speed sensors, but were they not allowed to use an accurate and fast enough engine speed sensor to monitor the rate of acceleration of the engine and detect wheel spin this way whenever a gear is engaged ?
Rules must be precise enough to explain what is banned, otherwise it will cover other areas. FIA banned sensors to prevent reading wheels traction, but teams found clever way to determine it with indirect methods.
That would be legal, but makes hardly any sense. Different tracks provide wastly different traction levels. depending on many things the engineers can't control beforehand. Basically the system needed constant adjustments to work as good as possible.
CVT would have had the same impact as electric cars have today. The industry was not willing to bring cvt in F1 cause it would prove the concept for the market and push development. 30 years later CVT is still a side arm for only a few brands that produce cars with petrol engines.
Active suspension needs to make a comeback. Pretty sure a lot of the problems with porpoising and the cars feeling very heavy under steering would be solved by doing so.
i would still love to see the 2019 mercedes with active suspension, abs, traction control and the rule book thrown out the window to smash every track record
@@themarauder6108 porpoising has robbed us of the ground effect intent. Various teams have got the minimum floor height raised. Should have always had ground effect + active ride
Benetton didn't win the constructors title in 1994. Williams did. If someone wants to have in depth knowledge of the season, they should read Ibrar Malik's "1994: The untold story of a tragic and controvertial F1 season".
at the end of 1993 senna was offered the Benneton car to drive for 1994 alongside Schumacher but he declined the offer, thinking that Williams would be better.
It was. It won the constructor's championship, and would have won the driver's were it not for the fuel filter, traction control, and oh yeah, Schumacher deliberately crashing into Hill in Adelaide. "Oh you can't prove it was deliberate" he tried it again in 1997. He was a cheater. Accept it. Move on.
@@fluffskunk if not for absurd ban of Schumacher in Silverstone so he missed three races - Benneton would have won everything and Schumacher-Hill crash wouldn't have happened. FIA were cheaters themselves. And "traction control" was a grey zone invention, like Renault suspension in 2005-2006, double diffusers for Brawn in 2009, blown diffusers for RB, DAS for Mercedes, f-duct... Against the rules logic, but hiding between actual rules.
@@fluffskunk Hill should not have tried to overtake there. It was Schumacher's corner all along. Hill was impatient because it was about the championship. Yes, maybe Schumacher thought: "Hey if you want to crash. Let's crash" but he didn't make Hill overtake at that particular corner.
@@lars-christianhilleke2503 This is the craziest take I've ever seen. Schumacher made a major error, hit the wall, and was moving slow and off the racing line. Unless Hill comes to a complete stop, there is no way he's not overtaking him there. In fact, Hill even slows down to an extreme degree and even then, has no choice but to pass him. Schumacher was far to the left and in no way would anyone believe he would just dive across the racing line with no other outcome other than hitting Hill's car. He realized his title was lost and took Hill out. Utter travesty Schumacher was allowed to keep that title.
@@psueddie well you dive to the inside to hit the Apex. Hill was there. I think Schumacher thought of it as "if he wants to crash I dont care". And for all the bs that the FIA did to Benetton this year. Schumacher getting this title stolen with only being able to race 12 races and never finishing lower than 2nd(!). Hill taking that title would have been more controversial than the 1st that Verstappen got. :o
People will believe whatever they want. The fact is that every crash at tamburello was due a mechanical failure, it was basically a "straight" corner. Implying a driver of senna's category would forget how to turn the wheel is just ignorant of all the other much stronger evidence presented at the court trials. At least it's not as ridiculous as the people who claim senna "passed out" from holding his breath.... LOL...
Its nice when the drivers are that knowledgeable about the things they see and hear the cars doing. It's not necessary to know all that engineering info to be ablento drive fast, but im sure it obviously helps with these situations and probably helps communicating with the crew setting the car up.
Looved the Geoff Crammond Microprose Grand Prix cameo.... Countless hours, 100% race distance full season racing, printing all season results with our matrix printer to proudly show no one interested... What a time..
Benetton didn’t win the constructors title in 1994, they did in 1995. Michael Schumacher was the only driver in 1994 that could get the maximum out of the B194. Jos came close but was on his own, had no access to data to compare with his teammate. Contractual things from the schumacher management. 2 3rd places was the best the second Benetton achieved in 1994.
Motorsport always has been and will be about gaining a unfair advantage. If you do not win? You are not creative enough understanding what is written and how it can be interpreted or what it did not imply
And yet Herbert was much closer than Jos, because he was an experienced F1 driver, rather than a driver parachuted in from F3 at short notice with little testing perhaps...? Herbert was jumped from Lotus to Ligier to Benetton all at short notice; but was far more used to it. Jos wasn't even supposed to be racing the car that season and was given very little testing between Lehto's neck break and Brazil. He struggled a lot, hardly surprising - only his ego is why he makes these claims about the reasons he was off the pace.
1994 was a absolute shit show, the way the British media in particular went after Schumacher was just naughty and borderline disrespectful. At the end of the day Williams had the best car on the grid especially after they brought their B version ( that fixed some problems of the initial car) for the Spain GP. Schumacher won the Championship despite technically only driving 12 out of the 16 races. And Hill won 4 out of his 6 wins that year when Schumacher was either disqualified or banned from starting the race. The way the FIA tried to stop Schumacher from running away with the championship was a absolute comedy show in itself. Hill winning that title in 1994 ( Williams won the Constructors title tho) would have been one of the biggest crimes in racing history.
I have always believed those penalties were only put in place to prevent a Schumacher white wash of the 94 season. The FIA didn't want the most tragic season to turn into the most boring season
The FIA went after Benetton so much was because Flavio wrote a very incendiary letter to Max Mosley, after the rule changes to the cars after Senna's death. Essentially giving him a vote of no confidence. Max didn't like this so he came down on them hard. Just like he would with Ron Dennis in 2007
The way you explain Bennetons system is wrong. What you said....is not at all what Toet said. The Benneton system was not a simple static system...it was still a sophisticated control loop...it was just based on on a different loop. That loop was the actual acceleration of the rear wheels in comparison to the maximum possible acceleration the tires could actually put down. Basically dv/dt vs a large set of multidimensional lookup tables.
You're right, he misquoted him by describing it as an RPM limit, rather than an acceleration limit. However, when he describes it as 'static' it's in relation to limiting acceleration (based on a pre-programmed allowance for wheel slip) as opposed to measuring wheel slip directly. This is why it's not nearly as powerful as traditional TC, which automatically deals with changes in grip level.
@@GamezGuru1 but it is not static. It depends on many factors, such as lateral acceleration and speed. The way they did it was just as a I said... The actual acceleration measured and compared to the theoretical max, which is based on a many factors...hence a multidimensional look up table.
@@shooter7ait's static in that it is based on fixed variables, whereas an active TC based on the front wheel speed is dynamic data. Hence it wouldn't work with fresh rubber the same way it worked with worn tyres. Also it is still an RPM limit, technically, the TC will cut the revs to limit power. Just the limit changes at different speeds or "slip" (although it's not actually measuring slip)
@@benjimc1 Nope. The torque target is not fixed. It changes. The thing it changes most with is lateral G. The residual of the friction ellipse changes a lot depending on how hard you are turning, and at what speed.....hence multi-dimensional look up tables. To the control system, a multidimensional look up table is just like dynamic data....
@@shooter7a from what I understand though, this is not measuring slip, as there are no wheel speed sensors, only air pressure sensor. So it's based on a theoretical maximum torque output at a given speed/gear
CVT is fine for kids mopeds, but abysmal for motorsports. Most people complain about the sound of hybrid F1 cars, but CVT F1 would have killed off the sport 20 years before that. Dumb dumb dumb idea.
It's always weird hearing the likes of Willem and Brawn talk about this. I don't know what kind of collaboration goes on at an F1 team but, if there's a cheat (or clever obfuscation of the rules), some plausible deniability is invaluable. Make sure nobody on the team knows everything, rather than getting so many stories straight. As for the engine limiting, that's a clever fix. It's also the third proposal I've heard about the '94 Benetton (Traction control, a primitive blown diffuser system and now this). The only thing we know for certain are the fuel rigs and option 13. It's got an enigmatic quality few F1 cars have.
Schumacher using something illegal & cheating? I'm SHOCKED, do you hear, SHOCKED! The "Greatest Of All Time" wouldn't cheat, ram competitors off the road & accuse others for crashes HE caused, block a faster driver from taking Pole Position during practice, would he?
As you can hear, it was not cheating. FIA just banned the use of some computer programs and some sort of sensors with the target to ban traction control. FIA did not ban traction control as it was build by Benetton. For our personal feeling of justice, it should be illegal, but broken down to naked rules and facts, it is not illegal.
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One of your best videos btw. Love these semi-historic deep dives.
What about deep dives from 1993 Tyrell F1 car?
This sounds a lot like engine mapping
You're only making this video to hide Redbull’s ongoing controversy.
Yes, RedBull were caught cheating, why don't you talk about that?
I hope Ground News don't just count news available on a topic on the media, because all it takes is for some rich Asian countries with strict media control and lots of state-run media to bias the reporting statistics
Ferrari pulsing the fuel pump so the flow was lower when the FIA fuel monitoring device was measuring, and higher when it wasn’t, is still the most genius cheat I’ve heard.
Ooh more info pls
Similar to VW's Dieselgate. Having the ECU detect when it was observed and turn on economy mode to pass emission tests was CRAZY!
Toyota's 1995 WRC cheat is absolutely up there. It's not F1 but to get called the most ingenious cheat Max Mosely ever ran across is high priase
Binotto is a big time cheater. #sbinalla
@Talasas The fuel sensors measure the fuel flow several times per second. They syncronized the fuel system to push more fuel while the sensor is not measuring.
That air pressure workaround is ingenious in a Bond villain sense
How is it any different than any of the other loopholes engineers come up with to circumvent regulations...e.g. the sliding skirts, water cooled brakes, the double diffuser etc?
So, am I correct that
(A) the air pressure thing is legal for the 1994 rules and
(B) it hasn't been disclosed till this video?
I am trying to ascertain if I have understand correctly that people accused the B194 Benetton to be a cheat car because it used TCS (illegal) when it is simply a legal way of working around the rules that the team didn't want to disclose and that no body managed to interview someone from inside the team to talk about it till now, and the team was trying to keep their team secret and chose not to do so back then, and then there was no point doing so any more beyond that point.
Then of course there are also the fuel pipe thing (explained in the video to be something they rather plead guilty than disclosing their secret) and the option 13 (which they didn't admit doing till now).
@@stormmeansnowork Is the full stop button knackered on your keyboard?
@@stormmeansnowork yes, as stated in the video, it wasn’t actively disclosed by Benetton (tho eventually discovered by the other teams) - even to the FIA - because Benetton was afraid, that even someone from the regulators might leak some information to the other teams. The other teams figured it out eventually on their own but it would have taken them less time to do so, had they had the actual explanation.
@@epultimast So FIA and the rival teams (if not Schumacher himself) eventually knew but no one bothered to explain it to the fans that the title won by Schumacher is not as suspicious as many thought? I mean the option 13 thing is still suspicious and we can only take Benetton's words for it, but the rest are totally legit if i understand everything correctly. I guess this is why this video was made because of the many other videos saying / concluding that Benetton cheated.
“There is no spirit of the technical regulations” is the best line of the interview, and the most honest about how F1 still works to this day.
i fully agree, the delusion people have that nobody is cheating or having workarounds to the rules is crazyy.
I heard that mentioned of business contracts and thought perhaps it might have been more comprehensive then.
Yes, and it's a disgrace really. What happened to 'sporting ethics'?
@@Xandergre It can't be called cheating if it's not in against the rules...
@@Nkkdxn45jF1 isn't a GENTLEMANS sport. If you gain an advantage and it's not against the rules you use it.
18:36 No, they didn't. Williams won the Contructor's, not Benetton.
Williams won the Constructors title by 13 points over Benetton.
@@purwantiallan5089 Yes the teammates couldn't drive that benetton without traction control.
only because schumachers bans of 4 races i believe?
The fact FIA never wanted to admit was that the 94' cars were dangerous to drive :
Lehto, Alesi, Barrichello, Ratzenberger, Senna, Wendlinger, Montermini were the casualties but the FIA could never admit their mistake by removing electronics so fast.
Suspicions on Benetton were convenient smokescreen...
@@tonblom1 When Schumacher was suspended, did Benetton deactivate its traction control for the driver who replaced him? Lehto didn't even manage to score any points, and Verstappen could only manage 5th place. It seems to me to be very stupid to think that Benetton would have traction control, but only use it on Schumacher's car, thus sacrificing a constructors' title and even putting Schumacher's championship at risk, since Lehto and Verstappen were letting Damon Hill win.
If anyone hasn't read Adrian Newey's book, it talks in depth about this era of F1 history. Well worth the read!
My dad has bought that for me for two christmases in a row. Still haven't read actually, cheers for the prompt, Newey is a legend.
Newey in his book basically taking a dump on Schumacher. No respect at all
Brilliant book.
whats it called?
@@keisuketakahasi4584 I think it was titled "How to build a car"
Great video Scott, not keen on the title but everything in the video is nicely put together. Glad you found some wonderful footage to illustrate the discussion. We did not limit rpm, we limited the rate of acceleration of the engine ("to protect it")...
Thank you for your input in this video! You are absolutely fascinating and I could listen to you for ages :) Ever thought about doing a full scale documentary on this era's story? If you do, I'd _love_ to watch it! It would definitely take me back as I've been watching F1 over 50 years (I started young lol), and I'm still a Damon fangirl 😉😄
Thanks again for giving us this great info. Your time is much appreciated!
have massiv respect for the clever thinking.
The title is awful click bait, but the video is top notch.
@willemtoet_yt: The truth is in this YT video at 59 minutes: “Williams Heritage Podcast, in association with Mercedes Benz” hear for yourself how Benetton cheated. Also very convenient to not mention the team manager was the biggest cheat in the history of F1 (Briatore).
@@gold333 Great that there are knowledgeable people out there paying attention. Had not seen and enjoyed the video. This is exactly why we did not explain how we got close to having a system that worked a bit like traction control without breaking the letter of the law. We knew that everyone would believe we had illegal traction control, but we could not explain how we did it or everyone else would do the same (and the rule makers would modify the rules to ban it). We had worked out an acceleration limiter that worked via spark cut but did not use what gear we ere in or what speed the car was doing (no wheel speed, no air speed, no gear position). It used air pressure changes inside the airbox to change engine acceleration. It therefore needed a lot of setting up and testing to compare it to real traction control. That is what Senna heard in Brazil and what the Williams people saw in testing (where you can test whatever you like including things you cannot race - just as all teams do today in FP1. So no surprise to me that the world thought we were cheating. The FiA even employed a Benetton electronics and software guru to understand it. Other teams learned about it before the FiA did and slowly all teams copied the concept. In parallel Benetton worked with a different engine supplier that allowed for softer means of controlling acceleration that one could not hear so clearly. A good traction control system does not leave dot dash dot marks on the road - it spins the rear wheels at exactly the correct percentage above car speed to maximise grip (which is tyre dependant and at about 4% for a formula 1 tyre). I know we pushed the boundaries but I don't think we crossed the line with that system.
"Yep... we have the system but don't use it."
The systems seem to be very interesting on B194 Benetton.
Cool to hear this guys perspective but some of his statements are hard to believe. He knows every technical detail of the traction control system but knows absolutely nothing about option 13 (other than he is sure they didn't use it) because "only the guys on Friday used it" like there was a totally separate Benetton team that only showed up for the practice session and then all went home? Then they removed the filter from the fuel filler hose just for the LOLs and apparently not because it increased the flow at all and certainly the increased flow didn't cause the massive fuel spill that was a bit of rubber... 😵💫
@@fallenshallriseall of the top teams had dedicated, separate test teams but they never actually travelled to grand prix meetings. As for “option 13”, I don’t know how the ECU software was programmed, but having done some basic programming myself their excuse is plausible. They were not the only team to have the fuel filter removed and were given official permission by the equipment manufacturer to do it. FIA later mandated a flap to cover the refuelling port so dirt could not get into it and prevent the hose from locking on.
@@fallenshallrise Maybe you should do a bit more research into what happend with the refuelling before yapping.
Without wishing to justify them, it is just possible the reason for (illegal) launch control was to have a baseline against which legal approaches could be compared.
Benetton didn't win the Contructor's Championship in 1994, Williams did. They won it in 1995.
But Schumacher won cheating! Finally revealed!
jos was to slow :)
As as a engineering friend in touring cars said:
"It's all about exploiting the grey areas in the rules"
3:55 minor nitpicking: continuously not constantly variable transmission 🙂
Edit because of typo.
I actually remember that crash as Berger came out of the pits. It's only today that I found I why.
And although I love James Hunt's commentary in general, he was totally wrong when he blamed Gerhard in this case.
Senna was not just an epic driver , he had a huge understanding of all things related to the car itself - it’s such a shame he wasn’t able to make his own f1 team because I feel he would have been as good as Jack Branham and Bruce McLaren
What a nice thought, a Senna team with Ayrton directing traffic. Probably not what he would have done but a nice thought, to think we all lost such an incredible man at just 34 years old, the world lost when Ayrton died.
Senna>Schumacher >Bottas>Prost>DonningtonPark>Mansell >Trump
@@albeback5234 Did we really need to drag Trump into this? Yeesh.
Don't forget Colin Chapman. Lotus was one of the most innovative teams in F1 & racing history. Jim Clark winning the Indy 500 is his little Lotus Cooper rear engine against those gigantic American roadsters is one for the ages, and changed racing forever. Yes, Chapman was a bit of a shyster, but he was never-the-less a great innovator and a dynamic personality.
@@albeback5234need to move senna right two spots.. and bottas way right
I wonder how fast F1 cars can be with traction control and active suspension with current technologies
There's a reason a lot of track records are still from the 2004 season. And it's not the V10s.
If they applied TCS and Active Suspension on 2026 F1 cars, it could get very interesting. As long as it is not DRS that is.
Probably fast enough where the limit is the human body, specifically staying conscious in corners due to g forces pushing blood out of your brain
In what world do you live in. No track hold pole lap or the best or fastest ever lap or 2004 car, the only lap is Montoya record in Monza but that was with the world fastest engine but crucially was in race, the lap difference is still 2.2s slower than W11.@@Jesus_H._Tap-DancingChrist
i think the human body becomes the limit, we already have fighter jets that could kill a person.
Those 93 Williams cars were sponsored by Sega. So I guess Blast Processing was to complicated so the FIA banned them.
Did 1994 F1 cars also sponsored by SEGA and 2024 F1 cars are sponsored by "Nijigasaki High School Idol Club"?
@@purwantiallan5089??
Williams does what Nintendon’t
really cool with sonic and fits so well
The most extraordinary thing in this video that Willem Toet still fits into something he last wore in 1994. I would be very interested in that secret.
Exercise and eat only enough to maintain your ideal weight.
Funny thing is he’s commented like four comments above you. You could just ask him.
I can still fit into the same clothes I wore in 1988....it's no secret....it's common sense [obviously not so common].
Everyone telling you that is easy, just eat that or exercise. In reality it’s has a lot to do with your genes.
he removed fat factor😂
The thing about motorsport, trying to get an edge on the competition, is finding and exploiting loopholes in the wording of regulations. With the wording of the regulations that intended to ban "driver aids", it looks like the Governing Body missed the part that talked about using the software being on the car. In other words, Benetton seemed to interpret it as "as long as you don't use them, there's nothing to say that we can't have the software in the car,"
There's another theory about these "noises" Senna heard from the Benettons. The exhausts of the B194 were located in the immediate wake of the diffuser, achieving similar effects to that which Red Bull would copy in 2010, the Exhaust Blown Diffuser. Such exhausts tend to result in the engine sounding rougher than it would otherwise be on acceleration and braking
Blown diffusers had a map and it was only on over-run. On throttle there was no cutting. Also they used the exhausts in a different way in the 90s compared to the 2010s blown diffusers.
everyone still had left over code within thei ecu of their cars, it was due t the feact that the regulation changes were announce so late in 93 that there was not enough time to specifically build the cars around that (the Williams basically was the 93 with all the aids deactivated). Also as Scott explained, due to how programs work, you cannot just delete something from the code and expect the rest to work flawlessly, many time over do differnet parts of code interact with each other,and changes to one part will potentially negatively affect a completely different, and seemingly unrelated part.
Looks like Flavio and Controversy go hand in hand when it comes to F1 😂
Same thought. Also in combination with Michael, who has been without a doubt one of the greatest, but he also was one of the greatest known cheaters.
Just like Schumacher and cheating go hand in hand.
@@alexk.8081 more like Brawn was into tricks a lot.
Not just F1. Briatore was a convicted gambler who managed to steal money and avoided jail by fleeing to Virgin Islands for 10 years.
@@kristoffer3000 Not a cheater as much as he was aggressive and ruthless. A lot like Fangio and Senna in that sense.
Being a software guy I remember coming up with my own TC cheat back then. The TC code would have a map of the engine torque, car mass, aero drag vs speed. For each gear ratio it would be able to determine the max acceleration via a lookup table. It would know the actual acceleration by how fast the revs increased. If it exceed the lookup there is wheel spin. I didn't know the selected gear was banned, but the solution described could be used.
The Benetton in 94-95 was such a beautiful car
Imagine how a Benetton would look like if they are still competing nowadays
The 2005 Mclaren MP4/20 2005 is beatiful too.
Most people then called the B193 and B194 the ugly duckling because of the his nose (and early yellow color)
Genius engineers exploiting loopholes are as much part of F1 as hotshot drivers, champagne, crowds and... constant moaning!
That's not what happened.... when they/FIA reviewed the software after begging for it guess what they found? All you had to do was push a few buttons in a sequence and it enabled traction control and launch control. It was so easy a child could enable it. There was no loophole exploited, they were F'ing cheating.
Hell yeah!!
In the film "Senna", you see a Williams engineer using a Psion Organiser plugged into the car. My Dad used one to store phone numbers, and other information filing 😂😂
I used a succession of them from 1987 until 2021!
Willem has such an easy to listen to voice. I wish I had someone like him tutoring me, I'd actually pay attention since he makes complex stuff interesting and fascinating to pick apart and learn, and easy to follow along with. Plus he's a joy to listen to as said
Bit of Winnie the Poohs voice.😁
He's made a comment that nobody seems to have noticed! I've asked him to make a proper documentary about this time.
3 youtubes ads + 2 ads by you. That's a lot mate...
And in 94 williams are the constructors champions.
Revanced, no ads anymore
@@staalejonko thank you ✌️
Just downvote
“12 floppy drives” ….. I didn’t expect that. No wonder they were buggy and twitchy. 🏁😉
I don't imagine the floppy drives were actually on the car while it was racing, probably just a lot of individual computers that each needed flashing from their respective floppy.
This is one aspect I really like with F1. And as long as it's a grey area or loophole and not blatantly cheating I am all for this. And for this reason I don't call RB cheaters like many seem to do at the moment.
I am not sure if I'd call it a "cheat". They found loopholes and workarounds. More power to them.
It's amazing how many people who worked at Benetton at the time, who have been asked the Option 13 question, have no idea about it.
"Flavio". Not a name that I associate with sportsmanship.
Fan or not of these moves, you can't not appreciate how genius these engineers are. It's fascinating. And without these cheeky moves and F1 in general, our cars today wouldn't be as safe and advanced as they are. F1 is so much more than just a sport and i love it.
It's amazing how cheating and exploiting loopholes in F1 drives innovation in car engineering!
The best cheating is to rule the rules ! Please make a video which team (Merc!!!!) and which head mechanic (A.C !!!!! )was in 2008-9 , behind rules of 2014 PU ! Also 2013 illegal tyres test in Silverstone , illegal rear wind , rule the rules , (DAS), front wings 2019 etc, etc !!!!
It's a shame that the CVT was banned from F1 because if it was allowed I am sure it would have been developed into something worthwhile not the garbage we get now
Modern CVTS are very reliable . GM and Honda among others make good ones. The physics in racing were very much the same issues that road car CVTs struggle with, and without the need for 100k mile durability, I’m not sure much relevant could have been gained in F1 as it relates to road cars, but perhaps.
Actually a Very Informative Video - with Fascinating Behind the Scenes Visuals.
I literally have a huge part of the rear wing of this car from the Adelaide GP in 94 when he crashed in quallies
Briatore cheating, you don't say.
No, he's not. He's bending the rules. That's actually what we all expect and want the teams to do.
Or did Brawn cheat in 09?
FIA was like:
-Yeah, we see this traction control option here in the display but surely guys you don’t use it during the race right?
-Yeah man, sure we just have it there for no reason
-Oh I believe you, have a nice day lol lol lol.
"I mean, we might use it during the race, can you FiA prove it?"
"Errrr... you see, a crying brazilian boy reached out to us"
"CAN YOU PROVE IT?
"No, we can not"
"So, we don´t use it"
@@Thiago100Zwetsch" Hey uhm, why do you have that piece of code that explicitely says Launch Control? "
" Leftover stuff and unfortunately, we cant delete coconut.jpeg because otherwise the car wont work. "
" But you know its illegal, right? "
" Yeah, thats why we dont use it. "
" Sure man, have a good one. "
Are you aware that in 1994 several teams had such things in their software? McLaren and Ferrari for example? That was simply because at that time one engineer was responsible for developing and writing the software and the teams didn't have the capacity to develop and write completely new software within a few weeks (because it wasn't much longer from the ban to the start of the season). So many teams simply "deactivated" the relevant parts of the software. A little research or better memory (because both Ferrari and McLaren were in the press at the beginning of 1994, even if this was quickly swept under the carpet) would be desirable for some people...
i like how you didn't watch or take in anything from the video, to leave your garbage comment which isn't actually what happened at all, and it wasn't even a traction control system. lol lol lol.
@@schumiisking What happened:
Benetton had an option in the car called Launch Control, and when the fia saw it they didn’t do shit about it.
Don’t worry, they won’t take any championships from Schumacher.
They already had enough after the shitshow in 97
2:28 the drivers there where so insanely lucky there omg
If they had HALO, everybody would say HALO saved his life! :D
I remember in the first race in Brazil, at last 1/3 of the race, Senna was catching Schumacher before he spun off. From 7 s to around 5s in two laps. Makes sense based on the comment made that the Benetton legal traction control looses effectiveness with older tires.
Without those sensors, it was impossible to recolect enough info for the software to create a specification for old tires, maybe in 1993 it would be possible
it's like "boost by gear" except for RPM limits, but also the rest is really clever stuff. I love this kind of problem solving.
Can't believe they're letting Flavio come back to F1. The guy is shady AF.
Oh please F1 is nothing but a boreshow without guys like him
But one of the greatest team principals. As the engineer said, innovation in Motorsport is all about pushing the regulations and finding ways to exploit them.
@@srxt6758 Singapore 2008 was not fun for the Brazilians.
If all F1 drivers were in the same car... it would be very cramped!
Good but very silly !
In other words, it was not a traction control, it was a rev limiter perfectly legal and genius.
in other words it was traction control.
@@kangarht no. Traction control actively cuts ignition in a selected number of cylinders, a rev limiter does it to the whole engine once it reaches the set limiter. Ferrari used the exact same system in 1994.
@@ventisette. its cleary explained in the video above that it was used to do traction control. have you seen it ?
@@kangarht, no. You still don't understand that "traction control" is a technical term that denotes an active system. Use a rev limiter to *limit* power (and thus aid traction) is not traction control. It is a rev limiter. It's ingenious precisely because it ISN'T traction control.
@@flyingphoenix113 I did perfectly understood the video: they explain how they made traction control cricumventing the ruels. VERY IMPORTANT: they did not control the REV, they did control the acceleration, the benneton guy interviewed in the video, in the comments here corrected that. So you dont even know what they did, yet you try to explain me, its hillarious :)
Some decades later, we will be watching videos on today's F1 cheating stories!
Thank you for putting the lrogress bar at the bottom of the video when you do you ad read. It makes it muc easier to know exactly how much skipping I need to without accidently going past the real content. Im not being sarcastic. I really appreciate this. I wish more people did this during ad reads.
This soundtrack slaps, good pick!
Kinda reminded me a lot to the soundtrack from F1 2020 PS4.
Soundtrack?
Found a bot guys
BOT
@@gmanuk1986 he forgot his pills
Nah,the Ferrari fuel flow has got to go down as the most genius cheat ever. To think that you can drive the pump harder while the sensor isnt checking, and actually map out when the sensor is looking, then figure out a way to PWM the pump higher only while the sensor had its eyes closed is pure genius. Oh yeah, and FORZA FERRARI!
Move with "water cooled" brakes was bolder)
I mean I love it and FORZA FERRARI but this is indeed cheating when the 94 Benetton Team wasn't so I'd still have to give it to them.
Liverpool Data Research Associates (the company who made analyses for the FIA) found something on the 3 systems they analysed (Benetton Ferrari and McLaren).
The Ferrari Had a traction control and McLaren a program that permitted automatic gearshifts
Williams won the constructors title in 94
Benetton didn't win Constructor Champ in 94
I remember after a crash a Red Bull had its nose torn off and everyone could see some sort of weight that would bounce up and down helping the car over bumps. I also remember a team that could transfer fuel from a second small tank into the main tank. Cool stuff.
Its like saying they have a turbo in the car, but the butterfly valve to activate it wasn't used. Trust us.
The Benetton B194 saved their turbo uses for later uses.
Don't forget this is the same general time as Intel's floating oint bug. Also a Ferrari with a dozen floppy drives sounds entirely, entirely reasonable. So, were they 5.25 or 3.5 inch drives? No I'm serious, I am genuinely intrigued what Ferrari were doing with the floppies, was it writing data to them for the team to analyze once the car was in the pits and how did they get around the disk being full, cause anyone with a PC in that era dreaded disks being full. 1.44mb of space is a bit like having terabytes of space nowadays, you think it's a lot but it really isn't
They can't really have been floppy 'removable media' drives !?!?! That is blowing my tiny mind. Surely a bunch of NVRAM would have been the way?
i ve read somewhere that a modern f1 car with all its sensors takes about 50gb/lap, so its not entierly unlikely to have a dozen of floppy discs in a 90s car
@@keisuketakahasi4584 Yes the amount of data seems believable, I just mean with weight being such a huge cost in F1, why have all the unnecessary "eject" mechanisms and stuff? Drives with a non removable media would be much lighter.
@@willdarling1 Not just that, but then ensuring the eject mechanisms don't go firing off because you hit a bump too hard or something as well. Makes me wonder just how Ferrari were managing this and just how they were using the floppies. I mean it's a great way of getting a light car up to the what, 600 kg minimum weight at the time after all given how much of a brick floppy drives tended to be in those days as well too. I'd be curious just how many flopppies Ferrari got through since working with DOS on a 191-2 era PC and having to handle several dozen floppies at once seems like a recipe for mistakes
Video actually starts at 7:42 He doesn't even explain what traction control is. Everything before this just skip.
I used to think one of the teams was using the pit limiter button as traction control, because you could see the driver push a button on the wheel coming out of hairpin turns. No reason to talk on the radio every time you come out of a hairpin turn.
Flavio Briatore. That name says it all...
@@Ding_Bat says everything about liberiys integrity, and we thought we would get something better than Bernie
2:43 missed opportunity to use Come Fly With Me "computer said noo"
Suuuure he doesn't know anything abput the launch control....
Fantastic video. The typical high standard we expect from this channel. Thanks to Willem for his explanations. Hearing it from someone who was there makes it even better. And for those of us older than we like to admit, he helped transport us back to those "good old, bad old days".
He's made a comment, btw. So you can go say thanks personally!
Ayrton Senna tinha um ouvido afiado!! 🇧🇷
Funnily enough, the strange noise going into corners was the exact thing Brundell said about the red bull, circa Vettel driving for them, and its was never looked into.
senna had a insane feel for engines and what noise they should be making . i would never disagree with him on anything like that and i suspect he knew what flavio was like also
When Barnard moved to Enstone, he reorganized the team on the right track.
Barnard did most of the job around 90-91. Briatore, Brawn and Schumacher only got the benefits from John handiwork.
Had John stayed, Senna move to Enstone was a possibility around 92
Bullshit. He had great feel for the engines in the cars he was driving. He did not have super ears that allowed him to hear things others could not. He wasn’t Superman.
Kinda like now when Red Bull and Ferrari have flexible wings it’s really bad but when Mercedes do it, it is totally OK
Ditto dodgy brake valves.
i hate when people say they cheated while being just not informed well enough
They dont understand that engineers are really cheeky bastards
its like that in every category, people think they re smart and know everything when they clearly dont
what people dont really understand is that engineers will do ANYTHING in their knowledge and capabilities to produce the most competitive car they can produce
I also hate it when they say Benetton cheated when Williams was still using active suspension parts till San Marino 94 and McLaren and Ferrari were still using automatic gearbox features and all of them didn't give blackboxes to the FIA when the requested it. But yeah Benetton is the biggest devil ever.
I also hate it when they say Benetton cheated when Williams was still using active suspension parts till San Marino 94 and McLaren and Ferrari were still using automatic gearbox features and all of them didn't give blackboxes to the FIA when the requested it. But yeah Benetton is the biggest devil ever even tho they never found anything on the car.
Finalmente vcs voltaram com o canal, por favor, continue trazendo vídeos para a gente. E com a voz anterior por favor.
The most used social media argument has never existed. There's never been "In the spirit of the rules" rule, I hope there never is either. Also, Senna was extremely well adapted at using every means possible to get his own way, arguably the greatest manipulator of all F1 drivers.
It's just normal in F1 and in 1994 Benetton were best (actually 2nd best) at it. I don't see a problem. We want these geniuses to bend the rules.
It's strange to if they really used on the speed difference for the traction control. I've tried using derivate of the speed (=acceleration) instead in an electric drive requiring kind of a traction control. It was so much faster to react it was quite hard to tell when it was about to slip because the control reacted so fast there really wasn't any slipping at all. Also the capability of early 90s computers was downplayed in this video.
Citroën already had active suspension, Hydractive, in a production car (XM) in 1989. The system selected suspension mode on fuzzy logic. More sophisticated version Hydractive 2 came with Xantia in 1993. The Hydractive I/II ECU isn't big, maybe 20x15x5 cm or so. And in 1994 active body roll control for a production car was introduced in Xantia Activa which had neglible body roll. For a road car it was a rocket in the corners and still holds the record for the Swedish Teknikens Värld magazine's moose avoidance test, being faster in it than for example Audi R8 '17, McLaren 675LT, Mercedes-AMG GT S '15 and Porsche 997 Carrera 4S 2008. So, the technical capability for such system did exist in the early 90s in the price so low it could be implemented in a production car. For a limited series road car the same system could have been more efficient and smaller.
One another example of the calculation capability in the early 90s computers is the DTC - direct torque contorl in the asynchronous electric motors (squirrel cage induction motors), which ABB introduced to the market in their ACS600 series in 1995. It was capable of doing motor model calculations such way it made rotor reference frame to stator reference frame conversion, two axis to three axis conversion and vice versa in a single control cycle - and also optimum pulse selection of course. And this all happened multiple times in a millisecond - on one chip. That was the thing that made ABB's drives superior to all their competitors. So already in the 1990s the calculation capability of embedded computers was huge. And how much you can fit on one floppy? Well, the logic program for controlling a paper machine could was small enough to fit on a DD floppy (720 kB) in ABB/Strömberg's Selma 2 control system from the 1980s. The thing is to use all the calculation power efficiently instead of wasting it.
So the limitations in the active suspension and traction control systems in the early 90s F1 wasn't caused by the limitations of the computers, but the designers. And I really think they used the acceleration of the rear wheels or the camshaft instead of (only) the speed difference between the axles. I don't know much about the internal combustion engines, but I think it would have been possible even to use the engine's torque/speed curve, throttle position and gear to calculate the greatest possible acceleration. Of course there has to be a margin for a tailwind and a downhill. Or they could have compared the accelaration difference between the axles instead of the speeds.
Please do a driving style analysis of Nico Hulkenberg.
Or driving style from Mick Schumacher or Nicholas Latifi.
@@purwantiallan5089 don't think Nico can be compared to Mick or GOATifi. Like Adrian Sutil, he has done very well in many races despite no podiums.
raghunathan
@@keisuketakahasi4584 Lord Rags , GOATifi, Guenther Steiner & Bruno Famin - the Schumi/Barichello, Jean Todt & Ross Brawn of our time.
@@sreekrishnanmuralitharan520 ?
Just heard a story about a NASCAR team cutting cyls to 7 in corners at a short track race. Their version of traction control.
Time to return to 3 litre naturally aspirated manual transmission no electronics cars and see proper racing again.
Man where is that 1997 Benetton you drag raced and kept saying you were going to use it more but never did? Its why i subbed...
1994 was something else man
I love this serie you make about cars of culture and their history. Could you please do a video about the Renault r26 of the 2006 f1 season. It has a nice history and innovations. Thanks for this videos, I love them
I love this story, my dad always told me for sure they did in a secret menu.
Special secret menu?
@@purwantiallan5089 It was Mongolian Lamb with fried rice...not really secret, but unexpected.
Thanks for explaining this well. I’ve heard this approach alluded to in the past but never outlined so well. And as a longtime follower of Willem on LinkedIn, his insights are always really interesting. But hadn’t ever seen him interviewed. Great watch.
Why are you name dropping Scott? Couldn’t you just say Benetton
So they were not allowed to use wheel speed sensors, but were they not allowed to use an accurate and fast enough engine speed sensor to monitor the rate of acceleration of the engine and detect wheel spin this way whenever a gear is engaged ?
Rules must be precise enough to explain what is banned, otherwise it will cover other areas. FIA banned sensors to prevent reading wheels traction, but teams found clever way to determine it with indirect methods.
What if the traction control system was used in testing only to inform engineers on how to manually calibrate the workaround they devised?
That would be legal, but makes hardly any sense. Different tracks provide wastly different traction levels. depending on many things the engineers can't control beforehand. Basically the system needed constant adjustments to work as good as possible.
It wasn't even traction control. Two completely different things... Also, one was the engine and the other was in the gearbox.
CVT would have had the same impact as electric cars have today. The industry was not willing to bring cvt in F1 cause it would prove the concept for the market and push development. 30 years later CVT is still a side arm for only a few brands that produce cars with petrol engines.
Active suspension needs to make a comeback. Pretty sure a lot of the problems with porpoising and the cars feeling very heavy under steering would be solved by doing so.
iirc it will in 2026
i would still love to see the 2019 mercedes with active suspension, abs, traction control and the rule book thrown out the window to smash every track record
Lotus' twin chassis would also address the porpoising issue. Unlike Active Suspension, it didn't do the driver's work for them.
@@themarauder6108 porpoising has robbed us of the ground effect intent. Various teams have got the minimum floor height raised. Should have always had ground effect + active ride
Great retrospective and interview, many thanks @Driver61 it's awesome!
Um did you just wing it or something? Much of this information is incorrect. Maybe research
Benetton didn't win the constructors title in 1994. Williams did.
If someone wants to have in depth knowledge of the season, they should read Ibrar Malik's "1994: The untold story of a tragic and controvertial F1 season".
As they say in NASCAR, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying"
i've seen your videos all the time from smaller! seeing you from then to now is Crazy!
at the end of 1993 senna was offered the Benneton car to drive for 1994 alongside Schumacher but he declined the offer, thinking that Williams would be better.
It was. It won the constructor's championship, and would have won the driver's were it not for the fuel filter, traction control, and oh yeah, Schumacher deliberately crashing into Hill in Adelaide. "Oh you can't prove it was deliberate" he tried it again in 1997. He was a cheater. Accept it. Move on.
@@fluffskunk if not for absurd ban of Schumacher in Silverstone so he missed three races - Benneton would have won everything and Schumacher-Hill crash wouldn't have happened. FIA were cheaters themselves.
And "traction control" was a grey zone invention, like Renault suspension in 2005-2006, double diffusers for Brawn in 2009, blown diffusers for RB, DAS for Mercedes, f-duct... Against the rules logic, but hiding between actual rules.
@@fluffskunk Hill should not have tried to overtake there. It was Schumacher's corner all along. Hill was impatient because it was about the championship. Yes, maybe Schumacher thought: "Hey if you want to crash. Let's crash" but he didn't make Hill overtake at that particular corner.
@@lars-christianhilleke2503 This is the craziest take I've ever seen. Schumacher made a major error, hit the wall, and was moving slow and off the racing line. Unless Hill comes to a complete stop, there is no way he's not overtaking him there. In fact, Hill even slows down to an extreme degree and even then, has no choice but to pass him. Schumacher was far to the left and in no way would anyone believe he would just dive across the racing line with no other outcome other than hitting Hill's car. He realized his title was lost and took Hill out. Utter travesty Schumacher was allowed to keep that title.
@@psueddie well you dive to the inside to hit the Apex. Hill was there. I think Schumacher thought of it as "if he wants to crash I dont care". And for all the bs that the FIA did to Benetton this year. Schumacher getting this title stolen with only being able to race 12 races and never finishing lower than 2nd(!). Hill taking that title would have been more controversial than the 1st that Verstappen got. :o
Waw, 30yrs later and you have explained what actually happened. With the greatest sincerity,, thank you , subscribed.
To this day I'm convinced this was the cause of Senna's passing: he knew beneton were cheating so he pushed extra hard to keep pace.
People will believe whatever they want. The fact is that every crash at tamburello was due a mechanical failure, it was basically a "straight" corner. Implying a driver of senna's category would forget how to turn the wheel is just ignorant of all the other much stronger evidence presented at the court trials.
At least it's not as ridiculous as the people who claim senna "passed out" from holding his breath.... LOL...
Benetton just built a better race car (at least during the early part of the season). That's why Senna had to push hard to keep pace.
@lars-christianhilleke2503 No, they were cheating with illegal tcs software. Watch the full length Senna documentary.
@@lars-christianhilleke2503 just because it makes sense in your head doesn't mean it's true
I agree with OP
Its nice when the drivers are that knowledgeable about the things they see and hear the cars doing. It's not necessary to know all that engineering info to be ablento drive fast, but im sure it obviously helps with these situations and probably helps communicating with the crew setting the car up.
Was it only Schumacher that knew how to operate the cheat code?
you do know Michael decided to leave the team in 1994 due to this apparent cheat code.
Looved the Geoff Crammond Microprose Grand Prix cameo.... Countless hours, 100% race distance full season racing, printing all season results with our matrix printer to proudly show no one interested... What a time..
Benetton didn’t win the constructors title in 1994, they did in 1995.
Michael Schumacher was the only driver in 1994 that could get the maximum out of the B194.
Jos came close but was on his own, had no access to data to compare with his teammate.
Contractual things from the schumacher management.
2 3rd places was the best the second Benetton achieved in 1994.
Motorsport always has been and will be about gaining a unfair advantage.
If you do not win? You are not creative enough understanding what is written and how it can be interpreted or what it did not imply
And yet Herbert was much closer than Jos, because he was an experienced F1 driver, rather than a driver parachuted in from F3 at short notice with little testing perhaps...? Herbert was jumped from Lotus to Ligier to Benetton all at short notice; but was far more used to it. Jos wasn't even supposed to be racing the car that season and was given very little testing between Lehto's neck break and Brazil. He struggled a lot, hardly surprising - only his ego is why he makes these claims about the reasons he was off the pace.
Yeah, let's interview one of the people accused of breaking the rules. They'll totally confess.
16:06.. That's our Public House Quizzing team 'Ignited colours of Benetton"
1994 was a absolute shit show, the way the British media in particular went after Schumacher was just naughty and borderline disrespectful.
At the end of the day Williams had the best car on the grid especially after they brought their B version ( that fixed some problems of the initial car) for the Spain GP.
Schumacher won the Championship despite technically only driving 12 out of the 16 races.
And Hill won 4 out of his 6 wins that year when Schumacher was either disqualified or banned from starting the race.
The way the FIA tried to stop Schumacher from running away with the championship was a absolute comedy show in itself.
Hill winning that title in 1994 ( Williams won the Constructors title tho) would have been one of the biggest crimes in racing history.
I have always believed those penalties were only put in place to prevent a Schumacher white wash of the 94 season. The FIA didn't want the most tragic season to turn into the most boring season
So cheating is perfectly fine?
Benetton fuhr mit Traktionskontrolle, was nicht erlaubt war.
@@janawisestarsso9922 did you watch the video???
The FIA went after Benetton so much was because Flavio wrote a very incendiary letter to Max Mosley, after the rule changes to the cars after Senna's death. Essentially giving him a vote of no confidence. Max didn't like this so he came down on them hard. Just like he would with Ron Dennis in 2007
Only one of the Benetton's in Aida had the strange engine sound. Ofcourse he doesn't remember anything about the launch control...
The way you explain Bennetons system is wrong. What you said....is not at all what Toet said. The Benneton system was not a simple static system...it was still a sophisticated control loop...it was just based on on a different loop. That loop was the actual acceleration of the rear wheels in comparison to the maximum possible acceleration the tires could actually put down. Basically dv/dt vs a large set of multidimensional lookup tables.
You're right, he misquoted him by describing it as an RPM limit, rather than an acceleration limit. However, when he describes it as 'static' it's in relation to limiting acceleration (based on a pre-programmed allowance for wheel slip) as opposed to measuring wheel slip directly. This is why it's not nearly as powerful as traditional TC, which automatically deals with changes in grip level.
@@GamezGuru1 but it is not static. It depends on many factors, such as lateral acceleration and speed. The way they did it was just as a I said... The actual acceleration measured and compared to the theoretical max, which is based on a many factors...hence a multidimensional look up table.
@@shooter7ait's static in that it is based on fixed variables, whereas an active TC based on the front wheel speed is dynamic data. Hence it wouldn't work with fresh rubber the same way it worked with worn tyres.
Also it is still an RPM limit, technically, the TC will cut the revs to limit power. Just the limit changes at different speeds or "slip" (although it's not actually measuring slip)
@@benjimc1 Nope. The torque target is not fixed. It changes. The thing it changes most with is lateral G. The residual of the friction ellipse changes a lot depending on how hard you are turning, and at what speed.....hence multi-dimensional look up tables. To the control system, a multidimensional look up table is just like dynamic data....
@@shooter7a from what I understand though, this is not measuring slip, as there are no wheel speed sensors, only air pressure sensor. So it's based on a theoretical maximum torque output at a given speed/gear
CVT is fine for kids mopeds, but abysmal for motorsports.
Most people complain about the sound of hybrid F1 cars, but CVT F1 would have killed off the sport 20 years before that.
Dumb dumb dumb idea.
Disappointed to have such a guest in the video but have Scott talking 90% of the time, such a shame.
It's always weird hearing the likes of Willem and Brawn talk about this. I don't know what kind of collaboration goes on at an F1 team but, if there's a cheat (or clever obfuscation of the rules), some plausible deniability is invaluable. Make sure nobody on the team knows everything, rather than getting so many stories straight.
As for the engine limiting, that's a clever fix. It's also the third proposal I've heard about the '94 Benetton (Traction control, a primitive blown diffuser system and now this). The only thing we know for certain are the fuel rigs and option 13. It's got an enigmatic quality few F1 cars have.
Schumacher using something illegal & cheating? I'm SHOCKED, do you hear, SHOCKED! The "Greatest Of All Time" wouldn't cheat, ram competitors off the road & accuse others for crashes HE caused, block a faster driver from taking Pole Position during practice, would he?
As you can hear, it was not cheating. FIA just banned the use of some computer programs and some sort of sensors with the target to ban traction control.
FIA did not ban traction control as it was build by Benetton.
For our personal feeling of justice, it should be illegal, but broken down to naked rules and facts, it is not illegal.
He was ruthless but never as dirty as Max on track take-outs