Please help!

[Sparky]

Please pose this question in the Tech Forum for me, an anonymous mailer asks:

When they spend $Zillions on Formula One cars, why do they have such a large number of hydraulic and gearbox failures, when less expensive cars last for years??

A good question! Thanks!

[KC]

Because the teams seek every tiny advantage, the chance for failures is much higher. Parts are made from extremely expensive aerospace alloys, machined and lightened to produce a gearbox with minimal drag and maximum efficiency. The gearbox is rebuilt after every GP and so the engineers attempt to build in just enough reliability to see them through the race. If a driver starts banging more curbs than normal or has a few offs it begins to stress the mechanism too far. Every team could build the bulletproof engine and gearbox, but it would only win the race where no one else finished because they would give up too many seconds to guarantee 100% reliability.

The only way to make sure that these super-light parts can finish is to soak thousands of man-hours of time in hand fitting every piece, and this begins to take its toll in money. First the material is made and checked and certified to be free from manufacturing defects such as slag or voids inside from the forging process. Then it is machined into a component and checked by the machinist. An insspector then checks it for dimensional correctness. It then gets heat treated (if required) and subsequently tempered. Thi sis then inspected and rechecked for dimensional again. the part is then finish ground (if necessary) and then magnafluxed (checked for cracks) and some are also fluoroscoped (x-rayed) for other problems. many of the parts are then cryo-treatd (dipped in liquid nitrogen) for strss relief. All of this costs a lot of money and time and it still has not made it to the car yet.

[Sharky]

The thing is that you don't need your F1 car to last and last and last as you can afford to "buy a new one" for every race. Therefore you can demand the most out of each component knowing that it only needs to last one race. Of corse, being so close to the limit is no guarantee that it won't fail during the race.....but when you need those thousands of a second you must take that risk.

A pretty good example of this is the Ferrari F50. The car has the engine of the Ferrari F1 car that Prost drove (if i'm not mistaken). However nobody would pay half a million dollars for an car with an engine that would only last for 400 or so Km's. So what Ferrari had to do was "de-tune" the engine to make it reliable and lose some 300 HP in the process.

[Liz]

Is that why the Champ Car engines blow up on the speedways where they are run full out for 500 miles - they're only built to last (they hope) to the end of the race?

I also heard that the gearboxes at Road America were destroyed by the bumpy nature of the track and by all the shifting the guys had to do. I know they are supposed to last only a certain length of time, but they've raced at that track a number of years now and shouldn't they know about how long the gearboxes are likely to last, by now?

It's honest bewilderment so pardon my ignorance. :confused:

[Sharky]

Well I recall Montoya's father saying before the race at michigan that he was very optimistic because Toyota had tested the engine with the specs that they would use at the race in the dinamometer and it lasted 600 miles.....but I guess that the dinamometer played a joke on Toyota at the season finale at Fontana.

I think I heard that the problem with the gearboxes happened mainly with they reynard chassises because they had changed an aspect of the design and the gearbox was slightly "tilted" wich in turn caused extra stess in the gearbox and therefore causing all those problems.

The other thing is that when you engineer all the pieces you can't always take into account all the variables. Anything could go wrong and according to Murphy's laws....anything that could go wrong will go wrong sooner or later. For example. A very small flaw in one of the teeth of any gear could create a stress concentrator and in a matter of time that flaw could turn into a crack and break the gear ending the race.

[KC]

Part of what happened at Fontana was that a good portion of the field had no chance of winning the title and thus pulled out all the stops running development pieces and high strung motors as a way of testing.

When a team buys a chassis, the gearbox is an integral component and comes with that chassis. One of the reasons a chassis is so expensive is that thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars have gone into developing the gearbox. It is too expensive to have a lightweight 'box for smooth tracks and a heavy duty 'box for rough tracks and so they expect the driver to compensate for the track by shifting on smooth sections and not being too rough with it. The same can be said for engines. If a driver is constantly banging the rev limiter and pounding the throttle, the engine will most likely not finish the race. Especially at places like Road America and Cleveland.

A quote from Ivan Stewart, offroad desert racer, " We must build the unbreakable truck, and then not break it." The same applies for all forms of racing. The driver is responsible for not destroying the car. Thats what makes it so hard for some drivers like Montoya. He needs an ultra-reliable car because he is harder on the equipment than other drivers. No doubt he can wring every last iota of performance from it, but sometimes it is too much for the mechanism.

[Liz]

Then, to paraphrase George Wallace, perhaps what we need is not a better class of engine and gearbox, but a better class of pilot.