FIA have announced that their wet weather power unit software will be updated for the US Grand Prix after the formation lap disaster at the Sepang International Circuit ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
Last weekend saw F1 head to Sepang, Malaysia for a relocated Bahrain Grand Prix but after a 40 minute delay due to heavy rain showers, several cars encountered issues with their power on the formation lap whilst Lewis Hamilton, Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas came to a stop and reboot their systems.
Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson meanwhile initially failed to get off the line due to the issue affecting his car, whilst others reported sudden power loss, which led to the field being spread out and the start aborted whilst the software was rebooted with an upgrade.
FIA officials subsequently launched an investigation which found that a selection of cars which ran on low engine RPM in certain sectors of the circuit ‘experienced a loss of power beyond the original intent’ which couldn’t be recovered when applying 250kW of power reduction.
With rain now forecast for this weekend in Singapore, the FIA have confirmed that the configuration which was used for the eventual start will be reinstated this weekend in the event of wet racing as the circuit hosts the final sprint weekend of the season.
Teams will also receive an upgrade to the wet weather software ahead of the US Grand Prix on weekend of 23-25 October aimed at addressing the issues raised in Sepang.
FIA have also announced plans to act on a recommendation to implement software testing to prevent any future repeats of the farcical scenes, for which they will work alongside all 11 F1 constructors and power unit manufacturers to strengthen their test programme and verification capabilities.
The supplier of the standardised Electronics Control Unit will also be involved in the test improvements.
FIA also clarified that the teams and power unit manufacturers had previously ‘conducted simulation exercises to validate the software package,’ which had also been tested on track in FP1 at Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix earlier this year.