Jarno Trulli said that some teams have already learned how to control traction on launch, and he's right. The teams have been making impressive inroads in replacing the controls lost to the Standardized ECU. We have all talked before about the loss of TC and electronically controlled engine braking, but we have not discussed the ways to recover some of the loss through mechanical means.

The teams have been testing a variety of equipment. New clutches that allow some slippage on launch before they fully engage are one of the ideas that have been tested. The RPM of the clutch does not match the RPM of the flywheel on launch because it slips at the start. It becomes fully engaged later by mechanical devices (springs).

F1 teams may have something like this up their sleeve. If you could get the clutch to slip during engine braking, then you would avoid all of those akward spins we've seen in testing, and they continue to occur in the Sepang practice sessions today at the last turn. OZ did not have 7th gear straights ending in 2nd gear downshifts like Sepang does. So, the rear wheel lock ups and spins we are seeing are due to engine braking. You must match the throttle to the wheelspeed. The ECU did that before, but now the driver must do it.

I think almost every driver did the off tarmac dance at Oz. At least half have done that in Sepang.

And so it goes.

Nice to hear from you Flood.

It was inevitable that they would find an alternative, but with the gear box having to last four races wouldn't this put a higher risk of gearbox failure having that mechanical assistance on the clutch? Or would it in fact put less strain on the gearbox and effectively cure two problems?

Well, mechanical clutch slipping devices aren't exactly a new thing. In drag racing, the NHRA top fuel and funny cars use a system of weighted levers to gradually increase the clutch pressure after the car has been launched, part of this reason being that they have direct drive transmission. Racing bikes, and some road bikes have slipper clutches which don't transmit all the engine braking back to the rear wheel to avoid it skipping or locking, which at best causes the bike to be unstable, and at worst leads to an earth-sky-earth-sky-earth-sky-ambulance experience...

Well, it's very good for wearing clutch plates, but I assume as consumable components they would be exempt from the 'endurance' rules for the drivetrain...?

Isn't mechanical TC already banned under regulations passed before 1994?

Depends on how exactly you define 'traction control'. Slipper clutches and whatever you call the devices they use in NHRA aren't really traction control, all they do is control how the clutch plates engage - it's not an 'intelligent' process as such. The mechanics have already set the clutch in NHRA so that full engagement happens in a predetermined manner, and slipper clutches merely allow the clutch plates to slip should the torque applied when the rear wheel is trying to drive the engine reaches a predetermined level. Neither of these can sample the wheel speed relative to ground speed and check for slipping, which is exactly what the processor controlling the TC device does.