Mercedes had the courage to make public a solution of the power unit that has made the team successful since the beginning of the hybrid era: we are talking about the compressor separated from the turbo with the MGU-H in the middle. This idea will also be developed in 2022 by Ferrari and Renault: And in Maranello they are ready to go even further with an innovative concept before the engines freeze.
Piero Ferrari, vice president of Ferrari, recently pinpointed a flaw of Formula 1, the fact that huge sums are spent to develop solutions which remain secret for years.
“We have very fast single-seaters with very advanced technology that nobody knows about – explained Ferrari – it’s the teams who want to keep certain solutions top secret, rather than divulge the most innovative concepts. Sure, some ideas are covered by patents, but frightening sums are spent and then kept secret. Why?” – he asked.
The statements made by Piero Ferrari are flawless: at the power unit level we often talk about MGU-H, the motor generator that uses the energy of the turbo to generate electricity to be exploited in the power supply of the MGU-K, the other motor-generator which recovers kinetic energy during braking and which transfers up to 120 kW to the crankshaft of the endothermic 6-cylinder.
MGU-H and MGU-K are fundamental in defining the performance of a power unit, but they make the news only on the occasion of a failure. So far the few images that have been seen of these details have been “stolen” during a pit substitution, because the teams do everything possible to keep these parts hidden, as if they were to be hidden in Fort Knox.
We must give credit to Giorgio Piola for having been able to make a drawing of the Mercedes compressor, MGU-H and turbo assembly. Let’s say it right away: in a video released in recent days, Mercedes has decided to “declassify” the first images of this complex and delicate system that has characterized hybrid single-seaters since 2014.
The version shown is certainly not one of the most recent, but credit must be given to those who are dominating F1 for not being afraid to show one of the top secret solutions. Mercedes, in fact, was the first engine manufacturer who divided the supercharging system, placing the turbo at the end of the endothermic engine, exhaust direction, while the compressor was moved to the other end of the 6-cylinder. By regulation, the two elements must be connected by a tree and the MGU-H has been inserted in the middle.
The engineers of Brixworth, headquarters of Mercedes AMG HPP, have seen fit to couple the electric motor generator to the compressor, keeping the MGU-H as far as possible from the turbo, the heat source.
This architecture allows for a more favorable packaging of the components of the power unit: at the beginning of the hybrid era the problems were related to the reliability of the connecting shaft which can turn up to 150 thousand revolutions per minute. Then with the evolution of materials and alloys, the problem was definitively solved, so much so that the Mercedes engine became the most powerful.
Honda has already implemented this solution on last year’s engine, while Ferrari and Renault are both moving towards the Mercedes concept for the power units that will equip ground-effect cars in 2022.
All manufacturers involved in the GPs are converting to a constructive philosophy, a sign that it can give indisputable advantages both in terms of performance and packaging, allowing an advantageous layout for the aerodynamics.
According to the indiscretions collected by Motorport.com, Ferrari would like to venture into an extreme form of the Mercedes concept: the compressor, separated from the turbo, could be integrated into the intake box, pushing the research far beyond the limits experienced at Brixworth. The doubt is that even in the English office they are moving in the same direction …
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