How to fix F1?

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Of course with their heavier weight, they were going to be slower than F1 cars around road and street courses, but they weren’t that much slower. The more important thing was those CART cars with their ground effect and less upper body aero they could follow each other and race, which is what people come to see

'Big F3000'!

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Because it's a drivers championship and feel drivers still have a part to play, rather than the aero doing all the work?

That doesn't make sense. The driver has to be brave enough to go faster to get the aero to work in the first place since it goes with the square of speed, and they are still driving on the limit of grip pending a crash or spin at any moment -- the limit of grip is just higher because the normal force on the tyres is greater than the weight of the car. The driver will relish the high downforce car knowing they can push it to the limit harder and it will stick.

Originally Posted by S griffin

Because it's a drivers championship and feel drivers still have a part to play, rather than the aero doing all the work?

Compare 2015 Rosberg low-downforce Suzuka pole to 2004 Schumacher high-downforce Suzuka pole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDv0vmujafE

As for Rosberg needing to "drive more" in his low-downforce 2015 Mercedes it's just not true. Schumacher is hustling his high-downforce 2004 Ferrari far more as he goes so much faster through the corners, while (sadly) there is nothing Rosberg can do but wait as his car just has no grip in the corners and there is nothing he can do it about it, except for wait for the straights where he can plant his foot and make the time back up (which is dull, there is nothing exciting about that!).

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

but they don't seem slow to me.

Check the midcorner speed, or lack thereof. There is nothing interesting about going fast in a straightline, drag racing is a bore.


Remember this?
2015 Super Formula @ Suzuka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87_wQf8gsbM
(compare to the lazy 2015 low-downforce F1 which Robserg is driving above)

In 2015, Formula One cars were so much slower in the corners than the lowly Super Formula (Japanese F3000) cars that it was ridiculous. Where the Super Formula drivers (Japanese Formula 3000) could attack every apex, the F1 driver was waiting for their sluggish, dawdling car to finally make the apex. There would NO benefit in going back to such dawdling, sluggish mid-corner speeds in F1 IMO.

The 2017 regulations fixed this disparity, got rid of the lazy cornering in F1, and were absolutely the right thing to do.

There is nothing exciting about going fast in a straightline, the excitement comes from going fast in corners!

Besides, was the racing any better when the F1 cars had low downforce in 2014 and 2015? No, the racing was still rubbish anyway, but the cars were also boring to watch. Not much of a win there!

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

Check the midcorner speed, or lack thereof. There is nothing interesting about going fast in a straightline, drag racing is a bore.

There is nothing interesting about a race, where drivers can't overtake, like Monaco, .

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

Remember this?
2014 Formula One vs Super Formula @ Suzuka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkYvaFYCdYw

In 2014, Formula One cars were so much slower in the corners than the lowly Super Formula (Japanese F3000) cars that it was ridiculous. Where the Super Formula drivers (Japanese Formula 3000) could attack every apex, the F1 driver was waiting for their sluggish, dawdling car to finally make the apex. There would NO benefit in going back to such dawdling, sluggish mid-corner speeds in F1 IMO.

The 2017 regulations fixed this disparity, got rid of the lazy cornering in F1, and were absolutely the right thing to do.

No, I've never seen either before. Interesting.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

Check the midcorner speed, or lack thereof. There is nothing interesting about going fast in a straightline, drag racing is a bore.


!

Really! You clearly don't know much about drag racing!

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by wnut

Really! You clearly don't know much about drag racing!

I went home, it's so boring and wasteful -- throwing out pistons after just 400m seems incredibly environmentally-unfriendly.

So they are incredibly loud? I don't care. A nice flatplane V8 sounds so much better than some crossplane American thing!

The crowd at the drag racing seemed very, very different to the kind of crowd at a hillclimb or Formula One. Compared to the latter, drag racing seems to attract much more of a singlet-wearing, Bourbon drinking crowd ( refer this classic Australian ditty ), than an anorak enthusiast crowd.

[S griffin]

Drag racing isn't for everyone and there's no point comparing it to F1. I can see why plenty love it though. Loud, fast, plenty of history. It can be a great spectacle, but again I don't really compare it to any other motorsport or whatever. So there you go. Let's get back to F1 now and how to make cars fast and exciting without needing too much technology

[V8 Fireworks]

Hmm...

While the specific details of the future engine rules may take some time to be sorted, F1's current teams and the sport's bosses have agreed on some key principles that need to be met.

These are:
1. Environmental sustainability and social and automotive relevance
2. Fully sustainable fuel
3. Creating a powerful and emotive power unit
4. Significant cost reduction
5. Attractiveness to new power unit manufacturers

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f...-emotive-2025/

Half of these objectives are contradictory. Meanwhile the 2020 Porsche 718 Boxster GTS with a 4.0L naturally aspirated flat-six engine is receiving rave reviews, far beyond the praise given to the 2019 718 Boxster GTS 2.5 turbo flat-four model...

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by V8 Fireworks

Half of these objectives are contradictory.

Thanks for posting that. I saw that yesterday and figured it would show up here. I do think their goals are at somewhat at odds with each other, but not totally. My thoughts...

1. Environmental sustainability and social and automotive relevance

Environmental sustainability: Likely biofuel. Will it (or the entire sport) be 100% sustainable? No, but the specific tech will allow a good PR spin on F1.

Social Relevance: I assume this means being inline with the world at large regarding moving to more environmentally friendly solutions. Electrification, etc. In short, I think this prevents any type of "throwback" solution such as a fire belching V12 that is basically giving the middle finger to a slew of people and would play to old school subset of fans.

Automotive Relevance: Mostly the same as Social Relevance. Manufactures follow the demands of consumers. Probably a larger hybrid component. Larger battery, etc.

2. Fully sustainable fuel

Biofuel as mentioned above. I wonder if there might be some level of "batteries are solar charged at events"... even if for token purposes.

3. Creating a powerful and emotive power unit

Power: Defining a spec that is powerful is no problem.

Emotive: I think this is the core challenge here. Who are they trying to arouse intense feelings in? Drivers (probably not), Old school fans who like legacy ICE designs (probably), those who are looking to the future with alternate energy and power solutions (probably).

My guess, it will be powerful engines that are maybe just a bit louder than today. Might they drop the turbos?

4. Significant cost reduction

Drop the turbos, or if they keep the turbos, then drop the turbine based energy recovery. Basically a simple KERS solutions. More aggressive methods might be to try to cap/limit combustion efficiency so as to try to reduce the impact of ongoing development costs. Basically one step short of "Balance of Performance" and somewhat much closer to a nearly spec solution (with each team providing something that works to the spec). Note.. this is an anathema to many long time F1 fans.

5. Attractiveness to new power unit manufacturers

See cost reductions and limits on performance from above. If there is effectively a cap on things like efficiency, then a new manufacture knows EXACTLY what the performance target is. So they can easily figure out that X investment is needed to get them to at least a "competitive" power unit. Currently the unbounded efficiency results in a R&D effort that some are not able to crack to get to the Mercedes level. What is "best" is an ongoing moving target that requires more and more money to match. Or... it has taken them a long long time to get parity (or near parity) with Mercedes. And even then, some stumble and fall along the way (Honda in their early return and recently Ferrari with the banning of whatever solution they were using previously).

Richard

[crmalcolm]

Did they say the emotive part had to be positive emotions?

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Did they say the emotive part had to be positive emotions?

Good point. Let the hate mail roll into F1 HQ!

Richard

[Mike Harte]

This thing about full sustainable fuels is, I think, a real nonsense. It is trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes, but the cost to the environment can be just as bad in many ways as using fossil fuel. Whatever base is used for the fuel has to be grown and harvested, both of which will require fuel to complete, and will thereafter need vast amounts of energy to convert to fuel to burn in an engine. Plus, of course, the fuel costs of the transport of the harvest to the plant where the conversion takes place.

This is somewhat similar to the con about using recycled paper over virgin paper, and also the paper versus plastic argument. Making virgin paper is far less toxic to the environment than the recycling process, and the resources for the virgin pulp can be grown within just a couple of years (Sweden and other countries have been planting at least two saplings for every tree that is cut down for decades, so that they have far, far more pulp trees available now than they did 50 years ago).

And assuming that fossil fuel is the provider of energy to manufacture paper, both virgin and especially recycled, then it requires considerably less fossil fuel to manufacture a tonne of plastic film, both the manufacturing overheads as well as the material required for the film, than it does to manufacture the equivalent amount of paper; as paper is usually not as strong as plastic, it probably requires a greater quantity, in weight that is, of paper.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

This thing about full sustainable fuels is, I think, a real nonsense. It is trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes, but the cost to the environment can be just as bad in many ways as using fossil fuel. Whatever base is used for the fuel has to be grown and harvested, both of which will require fuel to complete, and will thereafter need vast amounts of energy to convert to fuel to burn in an engine. Plus, of course, the fuel costs of the transport of the harvest to the plant where the conversion takes place.

This is somewhat similar to the con about using recycled paper over virgin paper, and also the paper versus plastic argument. Making virgin paper is far less toxic to the environment than the recycling process, and the resources for the virgin pulp can be grown within just a couple of years (Sweden and other countries have been planting at least two saplings for every tree that is cut down for decades, so that they have far, far more pulp trees available now than they did 50 years ago).

And assuming that fossil fuel is the provider of energy to manufacture paper, both virgin and especially recycled, then it requires considerably less fossil fuel to manufacture a tonne of plastic film, both the manufacturing overheads as well as the material required for the film, than it does to manufacture the equivalent amount of paper; as paper is usually not as strong as plastic, it probably requires a greater quantity, in weight that is, of paper.

Of course there is more to it than that. Such a paper vs. plastic. on the biodegradable aspect. But your point is taken. And I expect most of these goals are about public perception and not reality.

Car will use sustainable fuels. I tossed out the idea of solar chargers in the paddock to charge batteries. But yet the fuel spend to haul the circus all around the world. Yikes!!! The most environmentally friendly thing F1 can do is to stop racing!

Richard

[Peter Mallett]

Once they go full electric I can imagine the uproar when the death of fluffy bunnies increases at the tracks due to the "silent" cars.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Once they go full electric I can imagine the uproar when the death of fluffy bunnies increases at the tracks due to the "silent" cars.

Regulations will specify that they make "Vroom Vroom!" noises to keep fans happy and bunnies safe.

Seriously, I think F1 has said they are not Formula E. So I expect full electric F1 is not in this 2025 spec. I will not say about after that.

Richard

[S griffin]

They are making noises about biofuel, so it seems the electric motors will stay in Formula E and not go into F1, so no worries there

[chillibowl]

i might be more curious about waiting years before changing. if sustainability plus social and automotive relevance is the priority then surely the sooner the better no?

the manus must already be well into their development of both electric and biofuels by now and surely the market place is ready for it now.

not intending to belittle how difficult a change will be but is 2025 the earliest?

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

Seriously, I think F1 has said they are not Formula E. So I expect full electric F1 is not in this 2025 spec. I will not say about after that.

Richard

Yes agreed, but I fear the as mentioned biofuels option will be equally difficult. The loss of wild habitats due to the need to farm the constituents of bio fuels and still be able to feed the growing vegan culture will create all sorts of conflicts.

[P38 in workshop]

I'm picking up a notion that biofuel and synthetic fuel are considered one and the same.Is there somebody with enough knowledge of chemistry to explain if synthetic could mean anything other than biofuel?I know that commercial shipping is looking intently at ammonia,would this have possibilities?


One thing to be very aware of is that restrictions often have the opposite effect to that which was intended.Each time the number of engine changes during a season was reduced it just led to a vast amount more dyno testing to ensure the actual race engines had the durability.The large pile of scrapped engines was never taken into account as they weren't part of the racing pool.Similarly,the testing limitation led to the development of simulators with an eight figure price tag-but the mechanics got to go home every night instead.


The other thing that irritates me is the insistence on noise,lots of it.It annoys the neighbours and deafens the mechanics.It ought to be a by-product and not the focus of efforts.There isn't an engineer in the business who wouldn't be delighted to have a silent car if it was worth a couple of tenths per lap.


It would probably be a move forward to limit the total number of aerodynamic surfaces in some way.I was speaking to somebody who worked on wind tunnel models a couple of years ago and he was telling me that if a particular part was put forward for investigation they would have umpteen sets made,often 3D printed and all with minor variations,and unless the first few tested showed gains the rest went in the bin.Such was the effect of limiting tunnel time.Lots of wastage and chasing smaller and smaller gains as the number of avenues for investigation and exploitation closed.


Although Pirelli might not like the idea I would like to see tyre use freed up.Allocate the cars the same number of tyres but don't insist on the car's weight distribution.Then let the teams mix and match within that allocation so that they might run a harder front left,for instance,or somebody bold might try for a single stint lasting the whole race.It wouldn't mean giving the teams more tyres but it would require them to think about the best way to use resources and that seems entirely in keeping with the prevailing trends.

[Greem]

Originally Posted by P38 in workshop

I'm picking up a notion that biofuel and synthetic fuel are considered one and the same.Is there somebody with enough knowledge of chemistry to explain if synthetic could mean anything other than biofuel?I know that commercial shipping is looking intently at ammonia,would this have possibilities?

Biofuel is (perhaps self-evidently) fuel which is derived from biological sources, like using the cast-offs from the sugar cane industry or indeed sugar cane itself to make ethanol.

Synthetic fuel is subtly different. A number of companies are currently making relatively small quantities of hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 & water from the atmosphere - this is a pretty energy-intensive process in and of itself and it's yet to reach a full-scale industrial scale where the economics work sufficiently well to make it viable. It's also possible to make fuels from waste streams, basically taking plastics (which are mostly hydrocarbon products) and "rendering" them back to the shorter chain molecules that are in HC fuels. This is also an energy intensive process, and also yet to reach a fully viable industrial scale.

Ammonia isn't something I'd want near large numbers of people as a fuel though - it's immensely toxic, very corrosive and has a nasty habit of creeping into things it shouldn't be in. The containment for ammonia would have to be rather more stringent than that for petrol. It can (and is, on some scale that still isn't "industrial") made from the air we breathe, albeit (you guessed it) needing quite a large amount of energy to do so.

Something I think that's often missed in terms of sustainability is that when it gets mentioned, lots of people immediately head towards the 100% value and consider it impossible to reach. But even 10% is better than where we are now, and another 10% on top is better than that, etc etc. We have to start somewhere to get anywhere!

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Greem

Something I think that's often missed in terms of sustainability is that when it gets mentioned, lots of people immediately head towards the 100% value and consider it impossible to reach. But even 10% is better than where we are now, and another 10% on top is better than that, etc etc. We have to start somewhere to get anywhere!

Well put.

[hondafan37]

The future F1 with 3.5-liter hydrogen V8 hybrid engines?

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/la...ogeno/5386092/

[Casper]

Originally Posted by hondafan37

The future F1 with 3.5-liter hydrogen V8 hybrid engines?

https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/la...ogeno/5386092/

Won't happen, the next PU will be for ten years and that gets us into the mid 30's when the ban on ICE cars will be in full swing in Europe and possibly the US as well. To facilitate that change all the manufacturers apart from a few are going to electric power and the huge amounts of money being spent will not allow them to do it twice and change to Hydrogen when they have not recouped their costs from the change to electric. I would in fact not be surprised to see a ban on ICE in racing as well but that might not be necessary as the manufacturers could call time on it themselves.

[P38 in workshop]

I fear that is the likely outcome.Unless some miraculous way is found to push the thermal efficiency up by another large step it seems that ICE vehicles are on their way to becoming a bit like old steam traction engines.They go to rallies and run a bit while people wander over to watch them for a while and get nostalgic.Then they get home and find themselves rebuked for smelling of coal smoke.....


There are a few forums for people whose leisure activity is building model steam vehicles,maybe they will add new sub-sections for scale ICE racing cars.I suspect such things may already exist if you look hard enough.Who knows,there could be a business opportunity for somebody to supply 1/4 scale DFV's to those who need a fix of exhaust noise.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by P38 in workshop

I fear that is the likely outcome.Unless some miraculous way is found to push the thermal efficiency up by another large step it seems that ICE vehicles are on their way to becoming a bit like old steam traction engines.They go to rallies and run a bit while people wander over to watch them for a while and get nostalgic.Then they get home and find themselves rebuked for smelling of coal smoke.....


There are a few forums for people whose leisure activity is building model steam vehicles,maybe they will add new sub-sections for scale ICE racing cars.I suspect such things may already exist if you look hard enough.Who knows,there could be a business opportunity for somebody to supply 1/4 scale DFV's to those who need a fix of exhaust noise.

Ha! I think you are right. If you dig on YouTube, you can find working scale versions of engines like a DFV, Auto Union GP car and engine and classic aircraft radials. They usually are methanol powered.

Richarc

[chillibowl]

sort of related to the RB/Honda situation but what future PU configuration most lends itself to allowing independent manufacturers to enter the sport as PU suppliers?

with a growing number of EV manufacturers as well as independent battery suppliers, there seems to be an opportunity here to break the hold the established manus have.