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Software Glitch Robs Formula 1 World Champ of Season's First Win (theregister.co.uk)
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton was left fuming after a software glitch denied him an easy win in the first race of the 2018 season on Sunday. From a report: Hamilton held a comfortable lead in Australia's Melbourne grand prix from the start. After pitting for fresh rubber ahead of the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, Hamilton looked set for an easy win. Then both of the American Haas team's cars had to be taken off the circuit after their wheel nuts became loose. That triggered a virtual safety car (VSC). The VSC is a fairly new concept: while active, the drivers have to slow down, they cannot overtake, and they must not go below minimum times for each circuit sector. Failure to follow the rules will result in penalties. This is all done to preserve the race state while giving safety marshals time to clear debris or vehicles off the track.
While the VSC was active on Sunday, second-placed Vettel ducked into the pit lane, where the virtual car's speed rules did not apply, picked up fresh tires, and emerged ahead of Hamilton to take first place. Vettel was able to do this because Hamilton's car software miscalculated the minimum sector time according to the VSC rules, causing the Brit to slow down more than was necessary. The code thought Vettel would spend 15 seconds in the pits; the Ferrari driver and his team took just 11 seconds.
While the VSC was active on Sunday, second-placed Vettel ducked into the pit lane, where the virtual car's speed rules did not apply, picked up fresh tires, and emerged ahead of Hamilton to take first place. Vettel was able to do this because Hamilton's car software miscalculated the minimum sector time according to the VSC rules, causing the Brit to slow down more than was necessary. The code thought Vettel would spend 15 seconds in the pits; the Ferrari driver and his team took just 11 seconds.
The code thought Vettel would spend 15 seconds in the pits; the Ferrari driver and his team took just 11 seconds.
The code along with everyone else.
That's just one incredibly great pit stop. Kudos to the pit crew would be appropriate, not brickbats for some anonymous developer.
Seems like an oversight of the VSC requirements. If the goal is to preserve the race state and pit stops are somehow exempted, then that seems like a loophole.
It shouldn't be 'guessing' what the pit time is going to be to slow down for, it should be some mandatory amount.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
... this is why I'm not watching F1 anymore.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
...there seems to be a point when the extra rules tacked-on do more to establish that rules-lawyers win, than they do to promote safety. Obviously no one wants a repeat of the 1955 Le Mans crash that killed dozens of spectators plus the driver, but as the audience we want to see drivers with nerves of steel that challenge both track conditions and each other. Over-regulate and we may as well just turn it over to computers, and then we're left with what amounts to an oversized RC car race.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They must have been using some poorly written F/OSS software for their computations. Nobody's gonna fix a bug like that. It's just not 'fun' or 'interesting'.
If you want quality, error-free software you gotta pay someone to fix these these problems.
Trump would never put his future in the hands of SAD open source software. It's just not good business.
The thing is that whether or not it would be in software, his team told the driver that Vettel would be longer in the pitstops than they expected.
His team should've been looking out for the actual pitstop time, so they could correctly pace the safety car, even if the software was giving him an estimate of 12-16s which is the average, if the team does exceptionally well or they decide last minute not to change 4 tires and fill up completely (which some pit stops have been done in 2-3s range) he's going to be overtaken.
In the end, it was a great pitstop and his team miscalculated, whether or not the computer miscalculated, there is an entire team of people that can see and communicate in advance that 'you better catch up now'.
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there should be an referee or judge can that can over rule stuff like this. Even nascar has video review for Yellow flags on the scoring loops
The VSC is a fairly new concept: while active, the drivers have to slow down, they cannot overtake, and they must not go below minimum times for each circuit sector.
So they have to slow down, and they cannot go below the minimum time. To someone who does not follow the sport, the "minimum time for each circuit sector" sounds like "the shortest possible time one can traverse that sector in". If they are already required to slow down, isn't it kinda redundant to add the bit about minimum times?
What am I missing here?
I have seen and heard more people outraged about this than when the autonomous Uber car killed a pedestrian. In fact, some people suggested that it is acceptable for some people to die for the greater good of a future with autonomous vehicles.
That being said, with people's lives and livelihood ever more dependent on software, when are the so-called software engineers going to step up to the Professional Engineer level (like REAL engineering disciplines do), stand behind their software, and accept legal responsibility when it goes wrong?
There is, but seemingly no rules were broken.
I'm not at all sure how this is a software problem, because the intent of the rules is clearly to keep the racers moving slowly and in order, and if you can shortcut your way through the pit lane to get ahead (intentionally or not), the solution surely isn't to speed up the cars that are slowed down for safety purposes, but to speed down the pit lane, or to make sure that any "accidental" passes are corrected before the race restarts.
It looks like someone is using software to do something stupid rather than software being stupid; that seems to fit with the theme of this century so far.
I don't watch F1 anymore.
I love motorsport, (used to compete, too), and as a fully paid-up BSD geek neckbeard, am far from being a Luddite...but this kind of crap is what puts both drivers and audiences off F1
Hamilton's a fantastic driver, and like the "greats" before him, has said publicly that he would like nothing better than to have more control over the car.
Yes, they're technologial marvels, but it's all gone too far - a comeptitive driver with a good, working car should not lose this way.
From the headline I half expected the article to show a picture of Vanellope holding an F1 trophy.
Professional Engineer for an game rule set? Yes stuff like autonomous cars need it. But this seems more like the rules picked had loops holes in them that other players can use to get an boost.
Come on , the guy is a robot, he has less personality than a boiled potato.
There are Race Stewards, but there was no question of anything wrong here.
Bernie before and now the current owners of F1 have lost sight of what motorsport is about. Its supposed to be spectacle, not some techno wank fest with drivers almost along for the ride. The whole hybrid engine thing is a joke as now there isn't even a sound spectacle to make up for the lack of decent racing. If they truly gave a damn about the enviroment as they claim then stop the whole circus - the amount of fuel saved with the new engines is an insignificant blip compared to the thousands of tons used in transporting cars and drivers around the world.
Frankly no one would miss it - racing enthusiasts have moved on.
They used to be about the technology developments, but now its just about making money. The rules that are now implemented are mostly to create drama to keep people tuned into the races because there is not enough opportunity for passing or even semi decent racing. From the F1 site about this VSC:
"Under the VSC, drivers must reduce their speed and stay above a minimum time set by the FIA at least once in each marshalling sector. Stewards can impose penalties for any transgressions."
In other-words they must slow down but not go too slow because they don't want cars bunching up? And then people wonder why multi class racing is becoming much more popular, both endurance races and sprint races. Its because people want to see passing and people mixing it up, for example when two faster cars battling for the lead must pass a car from a slower class. That makes the racing more interesting and also raises the chance of what people really want to see, the crashes! I think that open wheel racing will eventually die and that time cant come soon enough, the problem with open wheel racing is that it is inherently more dangerous but less exciting for spectators in the long run. On the other hand GT racing has a lot more action because the drivers are more willing to take risks and its possible to have multi class racing
Schadenfreude!! Loved it. Ever notice how the English (deliberately not saying Brit) will find something else to blame.
There's Formula One in a nutshell: Once in a blue moon the car behind somehow, inexplicably, overtakes the car that was ahead, and everybody freaks out. The cars didn't finish the race in the same order they started, and people start crying about what went wrong and how to fix it.
So, how is this different from a yellow caution flag?
Kimi Raikkonen was ahead of Hamilton when the VSC came out, Kimi had not pit yet, which was part of Ferrari's strategy. With all the cars going slow Kimi could pit and Lewis was not close enough to get by him before Kimi was out of the pits. The software glitch calculated the gap Lewis needed to maintain to be ahead if Kimi if a VSC came out and Kimi went to the pits. Lewis could have pushed harder to shorten the gap but he thought he didn't need to so he was saving his tires.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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In the Canadian GP of 2007 both Massa and Fisichella were disqualified due an error they made reentering in the pit lane. In this case no rules were broken, but a lucky pit stop from Ferrari and a miscalculation from Mercedes team caused the overtake by pit stop.
I think if an overtake by pitstop during the safety car is mandate could have unwanted conequence, like all cars going to the pit lane.
I can understand whu Mercedes is upset: the give a nice car to be used as a real safety car and they used instead the virtual one....
TV (on Channel 4 UK at least) and subsequent (UK) press coverage didn't seem to pick up what was arguably a mistake by race control. When a car stops/crashes, race control must decide if it's a dangerous position (this one was - it was on the track!) and if it can be moved quickly (this one couldn't - there was no easy way for marshals to push it through a gap in the circuit barriers - they ended up having to bring a truck with a recovery arm on it onto the track to drag it off).
Race control should have known that where the car had stopped warranted a full safety car, but bizarrely instigated a virtual safety car instead. One lap later, they flashed up "MAJOR INCIDENT" on the TV feed and then switched it to a full safety car (which basically admitted that the original virtual safety car was a mistake). If it had been a full safety car from the start, Hamilton would have won the race because Vettel's pit stop wouldn't have gained him the time he needed (because you can drive as fast as you can until you reach the back of the safety car queue).
You definitely could argue that race control's poor judgement cost Hamilton the win just as much as the software miscalculation.
It might as well be a video game
There is, but seemingly no rules were broken.
I'm not at all sure how this is a software problem, because the intent of the rules is clearly to keep the racers moving slowly and in order, and if you can shortcut your way through the pit lane to get ahead (intentionally or not), the solution surely isn't to speed up the cars that are slowed down for safety purposes, but to speed down the pit lane, or to make sure that any "accidental" passes are corrected before the race restarts.
It looks like someone is using software to do something stupid rather than software being stupid; that seems to fit with the theme of this century so far.
It's not so much the pits are a shortcut, it's that they are less of a long-cut in circumstances where the VSC is applied, so in this particular case you have an advantage if your competitor has stopped but you haven't when the VSC happens. The software problem was that the necessary gap wasn't calculated properly so given Hamilton probably could have closed the gap if he needed to, it wasn't shown that he needed to.
God, I hate modern Formula One.
It's no longer a race. It's a bore-fest. All the cars are so heavily regulated, there's nothing to differentiate them. All the timings are so tiny that there's no fun... winning by one-thousandth of a second is boring, lads, unless quite literally it was a head-to-head photo-finish with no other competitors near, and a rare exception.
"Rules on overtaking".. in a race? Beyond "don't kill people", what's the point of that?
Then all that safety-lap nonsense. Just stop the race, or don't. Either way, make sure it starts back how it was before you stopped it. When a computer-controlled timing box inside the car tells you what speed to go, and allows mistakes like this, it's not a race any more.
I think I'd honestly rather watch 100 separate drivers all attempt the same circuit, on the track, on their own, and then superimpose their times (e.g. rally, etc.), or cars doing one-hundredth the speed, but proper overtaking, etc.
Honestly, a go-cart race, or a drag race is infinitely more interesting, and the latter would bore me to tears after the first few runs.
can we move to vr with no safety car? and fireballs when the cars crash?
The actual problem from a race strategy perspective was not during the VSC, but before. Hamilton could have been going faster during the race before the VSC, but since Mercedes software said he needed a 15 second gap in case of a VSC, he did not need to get closer to Vettel since Vettel was required to do a pitstop as per the requirement for 2 different tire types in a race (and the fact that he had not made any pitstops yet). Obviously this was not the case and he probably needed to be 10 second (or less) behind Vettel which Hamilton's car could have certainly done during the race prior to the VSC.
In the last few years, and even more so this year with the 3 engine limit for the year, it's a lot more about long-term management of the car and its key components (engine, gearbox, etc...) over 6-7 races so they don't go full-out during the race, but just "fast-enough" as to not get passed. In the end, it's this managing for the long-term that's cause Mercedes to take this approach (and why many might say is one of the main factors that the current F1 format is not interesting).
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Than a team having the car fall off the jacks, or a wheel lug not coming off. The people who write the software are every bit as part of the team, and being prone to making a mistake, as any tire changer or refueler.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Way to miss the point!
No, not just for game rule sets, but software products in general. The bar is VERY low.
Personally, I couldn't care more about enforcing rules for F1, NFL, NBA, FIFA, or any other organizations playing games.