alt Hacker NewsThe 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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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.
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
So basically like the anticheat rootkits used in online games to detect ilicit software controls on the player pc's?
Still a Realtime Simulink ECU? In my times it was from Ilmore, round the corner of McLaren.
Is the FIA code available for the teams to inspect, or is it just a binary blob they have to install?
McLaren sold McLaren Applied, the makers of the TAG700, in 2021 and it’s now known as Motion Applied.