The FIA still have some questions about the legality of the Ferrari ERS because its complexity is making a full evaluation very difficult.
During the Monaco GP weekend, Formula 1’s governing body completed further investigations into the Scuderia’s Energy Recovery System following tip-offs from former team members now at Mercedes that potentially the Italian team was exceeding the permitted amount of battery power.
On Sunday, race director Charlie Whiting said he and the other scrutineers were satisfied that Ferrari had not broken any regulations, but now he has backtracked slightly admitting further tests will be done at the next race.
“Via a complex routine we were able to be satisfied that the Ferrari was OK but we don’t want to have to go through that all the time in order to make sure, so we would rather additional measurements are made,” he told Motorsport.com
“What we will have for Canada will be a better system which will help us get things done much, much quicker, because it’s taken us a couple of races to get to the bottom of it.”
That better system is believed to be an additional sensor which will be placed on Ferrari’s ERS which it was thought was being used in Monaco practice.
“We want them to put extra monitoring on, but at the moment we’re having to do it in a painstaking way,” Whiting explained. “It takes a little longer than we would like, but we’ll arrive at the same conclusion, I would imagine and in Canada they will be providing a change of software.
“What we’re trying to do is to monitor exactly what the differences between the two halves of the battery are. That’s the crux of the matter.
“Other systems treat their battery as one. Ferrari, it’s one battery, but they treat it as two. That’s the fundamental difference, I don’t think it’s a secret I’m giving away there.”
The reason why finding an appropriate way to test the MGU-K, which deploys the energy, is so tough is because the entire system has been put together to be one of the two that are permitted for the year, therefore it is sealed and adding new elements such as a sensor is difficult.
Also proving to the FIA that their design is legal has been harder because it is such a different approach compared to their rivals.
“It was difficult to explain exactly what we were seeing, that’s what we kept going through with Ferrari because it’s a very complex and totally different system to anybody else’s,” Whiting stated.
“Their duty is to satisfy us that the car complies, as you know, but they were finding it hard to satisfy us.
“I think it’s wrong to say that Ferrari didn’t communicate because they’ve been very helpful the whole way,” he added. “It’s just been very painstaking and detailed work to try to get to the bottom of how their system works, and hence give us the comfort that we need.”