Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#141

Post by justin66 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

W-Stool wrote: post #84

Think about this scenario for a minute: You are top designer at an F1 team. You've got an idea that will (maybe) make the car go faster. Say it is a different profile rear wing. So you get the lads to build one up (you have your own carbon fibre maufacturing facility on site) and you mount it on the current car and then arrange for the team to rent (say) Brands Hatch for the day, run the new wing, compare sector time…

> This is all in the name of reducing expenses of course, but it has the opposite effect.

You might not like it, but it certainly does reduce expenses.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#142

Post by spaetzleesser » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #74

x87678r wrote: post #16

F1 isn't what it used to be last century. Races were nail biting epic contests, cars visibly improved every season, drivers were international celebrities dicing with real life ending risk, and passionate fans filled the stadiums. Modern races are just a procession of the same few people each weekend in global rich social events.

Literally everything you've said is still true. Formula 1 stopped being like that in the 70s at the latest. Mercedes are too dominant, but there is nearly always a dominant team in the history of F1. The MP4/4's records were set in the 80s for god’s sake. A Minardi won a race this year (They're called Alpha Tauri now) Don't look back with rose tinted spectacles.

There was a lot of crazy development in the 80s and early 90s with carbon fibre, aerodynamics, turbos, automatic gearboxes and active suspension. I think from mid 90s on a lot of innovation got killed by regulation.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#143

Post by snuxoll » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

alexb7c4 wrote: post #120

GhostVII wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there problem is that it's just boring to watch because they are so fast - it is extremely hard to pass without hacks like DRS, which makes F1 races really boring to watch. And I'm sure most fans would much rather switch back to the v10 engines even though they are more "obsolete", a conventional powertrain doesn't make them any more boring to watch (it actually makes them more exciting imo). And if battery t…

Any suggestions of racing series more interesting than F1? I tried to watch Blancpain, Super GT, IMSA, Le Mans - all of them seem to have almost non-existent level of overtaking (even worse than in F1 imho)

Formula E, it’s what got me to love Motorsport, personally.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#144

Post by snuxoll » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #137

ish wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formula E has a 25 year-long exclusive license for single seaters on electric. That doesn't rule out the possibility of a merger happening at some point in the future. [ https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/18/formula-1-formula-e-merg... ]

I don’t really understand this. Who is licensing rules for car races?

The FIA, seeing as they are the main sanctioning body for Motorsport worldwide outside of America-centric series like NASCAR and Indycar.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#145

Post by justin66 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #11

F-1 has always baffled me as a sport. Not that it's inherently bad or boring, just that there are so many motor sports that make it look that way. Same with NASCAR. I don't understand how an audience for those exists when, for example, rally races exist.

> F-1 has always baffled me as a sport. Not that it's inherently bad or boring, just that there are so many motor sports that make it look that way. Same with NASCAR. I don't understand how an audience for those exists when, for example, rally races exist.

I expect the answer to that involves how well (or how poorly) rallying is televised.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#146

Post by snuxoll » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

hellotomyrars wrote: post #115

GuB-42 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formula E is entirely unlike how F1 was. The big one is that all drivers drive the same chassis and battery, and with strict regulations regarding the engine. Pilots may as well all drive the same car. They also added Mario Kart style boosts. This is a game, mostly intended to provide entertainment and show off the pilot skills. F1 was as much about constructors as it was about pilots, and in fact, being a pilot was…

You should try actually watching Formula E. They have continued to open up the car each season, and there are real differences between them. The "Mario Kart" style boosts serve a functional strategic purpose that is similar to the strategic elements involved in pitting in F1. FE is the racing series driving things forward technologically now. This is why F1 can't attract new manufacturers to the series, and why FE ha…

> The "Mario Kart" style boosts serve a functional strategic purpose that is similar to the strategic elements involved in pitting in F1.

Except for Fan Boost, every FE fan agrees that shit needs to go.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#147

Post by rodgerd » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:21 AM UTC

snuxoll wrote: post #55

znkynz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether you can make a car that is good or not is a factor of budget you can spend on engineering teams This has been true since the 1970s.

Not to the degree seen in F1 since the start of the turbo hybrid era. Scrappy underdog teams could score wins with creative, out of the box thinking that was possible with a small budget. Today the only time you see a team with a budget less than Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull winning is because of some act of god during the race.

Quite. Most innovation over the history of F1 has come from the lower-funded teams (Brabham, Lotus, Williams), and is quickly banned if Ferrari or Maclaren can't make it work. Ferrari and the other well-funded teams have the money to eke out ever-diminishing returns; Lotus and Williams have to rely on "making turbos work", "ground effects", or "introducing aero", or "dynamic suspension", not to mention strangled-in-the-crib tech such as CVT or fan-assisted aero.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#148

Post by ll931110 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #38

MHordecki wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have yearly CPU instruction limits This sounded too ridiculous to me, so I started digging. Lo and behold, [1]. Appendix 8, sections 2 and 3. The entire thing is a fun read, with pearls such as: in the case of an Intel CPU with either the Sandybridge or Ivybridge chipset where the competitor chooses not to exploit the AVX feature; the competitor must explicitly declare and be able to demonstrate that they are…

CPU? wouldn't f1 teams be using GPU for their CFD work

The limit was on TFLOPs, so you don't get to compute more just by using better hardware.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#149

Post by rodgerd » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #75

Auto racing will just never be the same. I don’t even think EV racing will evolve the sport. The golden days of auto racing involved real innovation like creating super chargers, turbos, certain efficiencies, and improvements in potting, etc. There was a time when we just didn’t know what could be done to build an engine that could run near the edge without blowing. I don’t think EV will ever have its equivalent. Jus…

> The golden days of auto racing involved real innovation like creating super chargers, turbos, certain efficiencies, and improvements in potting, etc.

More importantly there's a huge disconnect in many formulae and the general industry on innovation outside the powertrain: driver assists are mostly banned, for example. So I can buy a mid-range, decade-old car with dynamic suspension and stability control, but you'll not see that in pretty much any track car.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#150

Post by mdoms » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

I have a theory that F1 is motorsport for people with no interest in motorsport. You can't possibly watch it for the racing, in a series where 90 minute races routinely end with over 25 seconds between each podium car. Where the fanbase fanatically opposes things like simplified powertrains, simplified aero and control parts, which would all result in far better, closer racing but would (in their minds) erode the prestige of the prototype series. Personally I think prestige comes from winning hard-fought races, not driving a Mercedes to yet another cruising victory.

It boggles my mind that people bother, when there are such incredibly close series like MotoGP, GT World Challenge [Europe|Asia|America], V8 Supercars, etc... The only explanation is that the fans simply don't care about the racing itself.