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Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#121

Post by 2almalki »

LandR wrote: post #113
leokennis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have occasionally (and very recreationally) raced on track days. I do not know kart racing well, but even in a relatively slow (15 year old BMW) car, it's incredibly scary to race towards a brick wall at ~180 km/h and only brake at the last moment. So I think that 10% is a lot of skill and dedication, but also a sort of numbing to that fear.

I've done a lot of track days. You realise how big the skill gap is between an average person like me and a proper fast driver. I've occasionally gone into a corner way faster than I should with my abilities, frightened myself, but the car has stuck to the track. It made the corner. I couldn't do this intentionally, even knowing that I can throw it into the corner x mph faster than I'm comfortable with and I will com…

Agreed, I'm much more at the limit of the kart for every corner. If i crash, its not much $ out of my pocket. The value of the car is always at the back of my head when doing track days - even when its relatively "cheap", and thus I am slower. It take me much much longer to get up to the limit on the car :/

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#122

Post by woliveirajr »

axegon_ wrote: post #19
eaurouge wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been some boring seasons, but you probably haven’t watched much recently if you think this weekend was one of the best in recent years.

I have watched almost all of them actually. And while I was ~10 in the late 90's and not interested, I have recently watched GPs from that era and none of the recent GPs can stand up to the Schumacher vs Hakkinen races. Many of the drivers these days lack character if you ask me, with very few exceptions. And some shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a race car imo. The Austrian GP was interesting simply because of all…

Try to go a bit earlier in the Senna, Prost, Mansell, Piquet era. Character was much more present and some funny stories from the backstage. [0]

[0] https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/december-...

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#123

Post by 11235813213455 »

olyjohn wrote: post #106
11235813213455 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The fact our planet has enough pollution to deal with already, I'm not saying Formula1 is extremely polluting, but whatever it adds is quite unnecessary for just an entertainment purpose (my opinion of course)

There's always Formula E...

I didn't think about the gas consumption really. I'd have said the same about a cycling race (and I love bike, but practising, not watching). The pollution comes from all the surroundings, transports, materials, organizations, services, broadcasting, littering, ..

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#124

Post by 0xcafecafe »

axegon_ wrote: post #10
beaker52 wrote: post #2

There are a couple of aspects of Formula 1 that make it very compelling to watch (my opinion of course, take as you will): - Accessible aerodynamics (it's on the road in front of you, not up in the air) - Technological developments (e.g. this year, one of the teams has a steering wheel they pull toward/push away themselves to change the geometry of the front wheels) - Watching high-performing athletes demonstrating t…

I agree completely with all points, though it's nowhere nearly as entertaining as it was up until ~2007. I mean there have been only a handful of GPs that were interesting over the last few years. Coincidentally yesterday's GP was definitely one of them. I mean it's not often you see almost half the cars break down.

I agree with your general sentiment. I have stopped watching lately but the last great season I remember was the one when Lewis Hamilton won the championship in the last corner of the last race over Felipe Massa due to some other driver not finishing. I think it was in the late 00s.

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#125

Post by wastedhours »

newsclues wrote: post #118
wastedhours wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting though that compared with most individual series vs motorsport as a whole, F1 has more races (or at least, this season certainly would have done), and Liberty was rumoured to even be pushing for a 25 race calendar (nudging even closer to the BTCC calendar, and they do 3 per weekend...). If the double-headers do well this year, I can see that being how they manage that many next year.

2019 F1 21 races vs NASCAR 36.

Yeah, but Indycar was only something like 18, WEC 8, WRC 14, Blancpain 10. An F1 race isn't a rarity in itself compared with most other motorsports, even MotoGP was only scheduled for 20.

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#127

Post by squidofbits »

kavinskyy wrote: post #126

As someone who wishes to work in the field of motorsport specially Formula 1, what opportunities are present for software engineers at a junior role?

Most teams have career opportunities on their websites. I suggest starting there.

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#128

Post by gripfx »

logicx24 wrote: post #99
gripfx wrote: post #56

If anyone is interested, the software team I work for is hiring! F1 is definitely an interesting challenge and a unique work environment. Find out more here: https://jobs.redbull.com/at-de/bicester-scuderia-alphatauri-...

I'm probably not up for a move to the UK, but if you don't mind, could you tell us a bit more about your job? What sort of projects have you been able to work on? What's the work culture like? Do you find the actual technical problems you work on exciting, or is it more the domain that excites you (i.e. building and operating a racecar)?

Sure. The role (and myself) are in the aerodynamics department, developing and maintaining software for the aerodynamicists. The role of the aerodynamicist is to develop the bodywork of the car (wings, ducts, chassis shape etc) to improve aerodynamic efficiency. This is done primarily in computational fluid dynamics simulations [1] (virtual) and scale model testing in a wind tunnel [2] (physical) before being tested on the actual race car. My group works on the software to analyse the data output. Think data science dashboards with lots of real time and historical data. Due to our requirements, the tools are designed in house with input from users. In my time here I have worked on interfacing with the HPC cluster, improving visualisations and improving our backend stack amongst other things.

For your last question, it is a bit of both. I went to university with the goal of working in F1 and the competitive aspect is definitely there but as I was not a comp sci student the technical problems are still interesting. Developing aero is very visual heavy as ideas are implemented as 3D CAD designs and often reviewed as such. So it's not just a more complicated stock ticker that needs to be shown.

[1]: https://static.carthrottle.com/workspace/uploads/posts/2016/...

[2]: https://images.cdn.circlesix.co/image/2/1000/425/5/uploads/p...

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#129

Post by ajoy »

I used to like watching it, until it became boring.

The cars got wider and more sensitive to the car in front, that overtakes became rare, even with DRS (*Drag Reduction System - that allows the back wing of the car in the back to fold to reduce drag at certain points in the track, if the car is close enough to the car in front).

Also, Mercedes started dominating it, to a point that the only battle in the race was in the mid-field. The winners were almost always, already decided at qualifying (unless some reliability issues happened during the race).

Re: Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist – are capes the key?

#130

Post by jecel »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #32

Watched a lot of F1 in 90s/00s, stopped after 2017 season. Current regulations make it very predictable. Most offending rules are: - limit on testing means that whoever makes the best car after regulations change will win until next regulations change (2010..2013 Red Bull, 2014.. today Mercedes), others have very limited means to catch up - scoring system introduced in late 00s rewards reliability over racing, and gi…

There were years when not all results counted - each driver had to discard the four worst results or something like that. That favored "win or crash" drivers over reliability.
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