Lisa Lilley here, Shell Technology Manager for Ferrari. It’s about 11pm Thursday night in Kuala Lumpur and I’ve just got back from the track. After the 40 degree temperatures in Australia last weekend, it’s been surprisingly cool today – a relief actually, since we’ve only had a few days to ship our equipment up here and get it sorted on time!
The mood around the Ferrari garage seems very positive and optimistic ahead of this weekend’s race. From our side, Mark (Farley, Shell Trackside Analyst) and Dan (Jamieson, Shell Trackside Analyst) have been busy getting the Shell Track Lab set-up and talking to the guys back in the UK about the results from our analysis in Australia.
We are working under quite a few tough regulations this year, including the ongoing “engine freeze” and the new four-race gearbox rule the FIA has just introduced. This makes our job analysing the fuel and lubricant that Kimi and Felipe use each race even more important. These tests help Ferrari know what is happening inside the engine, without having to take it apart. We have a new piece of equipment for lubes this year – the Rotating Disc Electrode oil analyser (RDE) – try saying that 10 times fast! It is very sophisticated, it uses a technique called Optical Emission Spectrometer (OES) to detect an increased selection of wear metals in the oil. It’s quite cool actually, because it tends to give off a blue flash of light when its working – quite space age really!
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