Ferrari’s fuel partner Shell has brought in a new fuel at this week’s Belgium Grand Prix working with Ferrari and its V6 Turbo engine. The fuel is supposed to contribute to 20% of the team’s gains in Spa.
“This circuit will exaggerate the difference because it’s longer and power-demanding, which is a good thing,” Shell motorsport technology manager Guy Lovett told Motorsport.com
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“Over the past three seasons, through our fuel and lubricants development work, we’ve contributed to over 20 percent of Ferrari’s power unit gain in performance.
“You always expect to make big gains at the start and then for development progress to taper off. We’ve not found the taper yet.
“That’s enabling us to make significant performance contributions to Ferrari, in that ‘over 20 per cent’ bracket.
“It surprised us a few years ago that the fuel could make so much difference to the new V6 engine but we’ve been able to continue that.”
The regulations do allow for sufficient scope for innovation and that can be from different component and chemistries, how we formulate the fuels, the mix,” Lovett explained.
“If you look at it from a food standpoint, we’re fine-tuning the ingredients but also the recipe.
“How we do that is a combination of experimental work at our technical centre in Hamburg, a big amount of activity in modelling and simulation and testing and proving those products on the engine dyno in Maranello and at the race track.”
Shell further revealed that the company will halt development from 2018’s front and focus on 2019 especially since fuel usage regulations are being changed from next year.
The new engine and improved fuel couldn’t help either of the Ferrari drivers as Sebastian Vettel missed out on a potential pole owing to battery issues while Raikkonen had his own bizarre issues. But none the less both the drivers are in a comfortable position to deliver a strong performance for their team.
