The firmware situation is mixed. The ECU hardware is a standard TAG700 from McLaren. Basically these are software-defined ECUs where you can do whatever. However, FIA has some rules on what you're allowed to modify and has some "compulsory" software in there for monitoring and competition regulatory reasons. It appears there was very limited testing of this module in wet conditions which seems to have affected a lot of vehicles. (I work in Motorsports)

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AsmaraHolding 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

McLaren sold McLaren Applied, the makers of the TAG700, in 2021 and it’s now known as Motion Applied.

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jcomp 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Adding to this summarizing my reading from elsewhere: It sounds as if the cause was going too slowly through a sector, and due to to combination of wet conditions and the specific layout of the sectors at Sepang it was triggered for the first time. Since everyone was driving in formation on the formation lap, multiple drivers triggered it.

Would this be safety-related, something like "going this slowly through a sector indicates a problem, kill the throttle"? Still seems heavy-handed since the cars were moving, if dangerously slowly.

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jrflo 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wow. I just assumed it wouldn’t be firmware because going from making a fix in 50 minutes to having cars flying at hundreds of miles per hour on that firmware is kind of nuts

	▲	OtherShrezzing 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's a pretty intense sport & that kind of timeline is fairly common. They'll do a full car rebuild right before the race, if the driver's had a crash in the session before it. So, the driver will be approaching a corner at 250kph+ in the full knowledge that the brakes were wired up to the pedal just ten minutes earlier. They'll make brake-balance adjustments on the fly in the car as they're speeding down the straightaway. I think the drivers have some extraordinary capability for trust, because the chain of people who need to have got their job correct for that brake pedal to work in that moment is in the dozens, and the consequence for any of them getting it wrong is a particularly violent crash.
	▲	vanviegen 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Move fast and try not to break things.
	▲	esseph 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Every race is a different car, maybe a different engine, with different software, basically.

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rurban 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still a Realtime Simulink ECU? In my times it was from Ilmore, round the corner of McLaren.

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xeonmc 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So basically like the anticheat rootkits used in online games to detect ilicit software controls on the player pc's?

	▲	vsskanth 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		F1 vehicles have a lot of actively controlled systems - Engine, MGU, Diff, Brake Bias, Aero etc. Their way of allowing active control but preventing "driver aids" like traction control, torque vectoring is to tightly regulate and give them a box where they can place their controls and what inputs they are allowed to use.

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JetSetIlly 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is the FIA code available for the teams to inspect, or is it just a binary blob they have to install?

	▲	venzaspa 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As far as I'm aware the FIA can inspect whatever element of the car they like.