Kers

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That's the idea: to make the prospect of running with a budget cap so attractive that as many teams as possible jump aboard it; those that don't will hopefully see the success of the capped teams and nominate to run under those regulations for 2011.
 
Taken from here:
KERS Available to Brawn GP

05/16/2009

The Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) is now available to championship leaders, Brawn GP - as if they need it.

The KERS system has been released by their engine supplier - Mercedes - who's KERS system appears to be the most reliable and consistent system within the F1 paddock with Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen both using it for all of this years races.

The newest team on the track will now benefit from the extra boost (80bhp), but will also have to deal with the added weight, at a compromise of ballast.

“Mercedes have made it available to us. We’ve just got to find a way of fitting it to the car and not compromising the handling, because the car wasn’t designed for their system," said Brawn.

"The biggest issue that we have is overall weight, because in fitting the Mercedes engine we added a reasonable amount of weight to the car with all the modifications we had to make."

Adding, "Although theirs is a very light system, we’ve lost the capacity that we need to install their system and add the ballast that we need to get the right weight distribution."

Whether the team will indeed use the system is yet to be seen, I suppose Monaco will be a tell-tale sign.
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I guess this is going to prove whether KERS is worth it or not. Because lets be honest: Ferrari, McLaren and BMW-Sauber are all only midfield efforts this year. Now that Mercedes have made it available to Brawn to use - and to Force India, of course (but I doubt we're going to see Sutil and Fisichella at the business end of the field any time soon) - KERS will finally be equipped to a car that is more than capable of winning races and therefore we'll finally get to see its true potential. That said, I'm not expecting to see it anywhere at Monaco; the streets of the principality make it seem impractical at best. Sure, they driver might squeeze it down the main straight, up Beau Rivage and through the tunnel, but I can't picture them using the full seven seconds per lap. It'd be suicide, especially on the run own to Ste. Devote and the climb towards Massanet. Turkey it probably the earliest we'll see it on the Brawns and Force Indias.
 
There's time to use it at Monaco - plenty of it - but it's just not worth it, because at Monaco, downforce and handling are more important than power. Renault stated they won't use it, as did another KERS team, but others said they will.

Also, dyr?, you're making the classic mistake of correlation vs causation. Ferrari, McLaren and BMW are midfield, and they have KERS - but that doesn't tie the two together. Even without the systems, Ferrari and BMW havne't improved much: It's the aero which is inferior on these cars. Ferrari's latest aero upgrade rocketed them up the grid - and Massa didn't even have the lighter F60B chassis! - without any changes to KERS. Tactically, it's still as useful as ever - if the car is fast enough in the first place.
 
Actually, I kind of meant that because McLaren, BMW and Ferrari haven't been anything stellar this season, we haven't really had the opportunity to see how KERS would behave in a car out the front. For all we know, the aerodynamics of the cars could have negated the effect. Yes, Ferrari got better and rocketed up the grid, but that was just one race; they've been a little too inconsistent to thoroughly gauge the performance of KERS.
 
They're the only ones that can gauge KERS. If it makes a car faster, it's beneficial - simple as. They ran back-to-back, they'll know - and they (McLaren especially) said it's beneficial for them, meaning the MP-4/24 is slower without the system.

As for Ferrari, the update only arrived at Spain - how could they have gained benefit from it earlier? :odd:
 
Metar
As for Ferrari, the update only arrived at Spain - how could they have gained benefit from it earlier? :odd:
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Sorry, I'm having a little trouble conveying this. I only have the most basic understanding of this kind of physics, but from what I've been led to believe, the full effect of KERS would be felt on a car with the best aero. If they had a lesser package, like Ferrari pre-Cataunya, some of the added power would be lost in the excess drag generated by the bad aerodynamics. I think. I'm not a science student and I'm not particularly articulate to begin with, so this is probably one of those times when everything I think I know is wrong. Again.
 
Isn't Monaco more of a slow track? The KERS would be very effective there helping with faster corner exit. The cars wouldn't be going fast enough at Monaco to generate that much downforce so I don't see why downforce would be much of a big deal there.
 
Exactly because they're slower, downforce counts more than ever: The "Monaco specials" are often as extreme as their opposing "Monza specials" - extra planes and flipups were added in past years, because drag doesn't matter much anyway.

KERS won't help at Monaco much, because at Monaco, what counts is the car's balance and and traction - two things that KERS hampers - as well as downforce (unrelated to KERS). Power (with it, KERS) doesn't really matter as much as the way it's delivered.
 
And I very much imagine that by the time you've pressed the KERS button and gotten the extra juice, you're going to be in the braking zone for the next corner. The more power you have, the greater the braking distance - after all, you don't want to lock a wheel or get a flat-spot - so going into places like Tabac or Mirabeau, you'd jus be your own worst enemy.
 
I can't see BGP using the KERS any time soon. The extra ballast and contruction to fit it will take some time to configure along with a testing ban. May not see it until the summer break is over.
 
That might depend upon what the competition do, though. Adrian Newey has said Red Bull are getting their new diffuser this weekend - and while given the complexity of it I wouldn't be surprised if there are teething problems - and if it's as good as claimed, Brawn may be forced to run KERS from Turkey simply to keep them at bay.
 

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