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Making a single bolt for an FL car

thedrive.com

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#41
post #34

At my university we had a racing team that competed against other colleges in like a mini F1 type league. Every year they would start with a giant empty table and build their race car from scratch. The team was very competitive , i think they won the league championship every year I was there, and it was considered a pretty big deal in the engineering school to get on with them. I remember they had guys who could wel…

Sounds like Formula SAE, I was a little bit involved in my schools team back in the day.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_SAE

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#43

The video that "recently surfaced on Instagram" was uploaded to YouTube by Red Bull six years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iptAkpqjtMQ

Yes, I remember this video. At the time I commented on another forum that I was disappointed when they didn’t cross thread it into the block.

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#44
post #12

As a sponsor of Formula 3, I got to visit a Formula 3 / Formula 2 team yesterday and have to say, the racing sport it just insane. The amount of knowledge and effort and money it takes for a team to operate, just below break-even, it's on another level. I think racing must have some of the most passionate people in any industry. Also a fun fact on one of the businessmodels in racing: the team operates like a speciali…

So Clarkson was right when he said that the fastest car in the world is a rental car?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYt9DO5WXr8

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#45
post #12

As a sponsor of Formula 3, I got to visit a Formula 3 / Formula 2 team yesterday and have to say, the racing sport it just insane. The amount of knowledge and effort and money it takes for a team to operate, just below break-even, it's on another level. I think racing must have some of the most passionate people in any industry. Also a fun fact on one of the businessmodels in racing: the team operates like a speciali…

How do the teams get the truckloads of stuff from race to race, especially internationally? I assume everything connected by land is able to be traversed by road/rail in time to make the next race. Do they put a whole truck on a plane? Do they have trucks on every continent and just move palettes of stuff?

This youtube video does a good job explaining the crazy logistics of the F1 calendar. Multiple cargo ships constantly in motion, overnight truck deliveries, all in very carefully orchestrated ballet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OLVFa8YRfM

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#46
post #2

Insane? I've worked in F1, and seeing making this bolt doesn't sound extraordinaire. It's rather normal engineering technology. There are far more interesting, extremely expensive, specialized engineering methods in F1.

I'm really curious about the simulators they use for testing, if you know anything about that aspect. It seems like a chicken-and-egg issue: you see how a new part affects the car on the track by using the simulator, but the sinulator has to use parameters/assumptions put in by the engineers about how the part works. Won't it always just validate their assumptions?

You do hear about teams struggling with correlation issues, where their simulations just aren’t matching reality.

They do use some of the limited practice time F1 teams are allowed to do things like run the car with aero rakes (lots of pitot tubes on scaffold like structures) attached or the covered in dayglo flow-vis paint to gather real world data.

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#47

> [...] racing machine that only borderline-superhumans can withstand the g's of. Suggestion: Make cockpits tilt inwards. Sideways-g becomes down-g. Much more pleasurable ride. If the driver is really the limit, and not the added mass for this. It's probably against the rules though.

The required minimum level of athleticism among drivers has only increased over time, but "borderline superhumans" is a weird exaggeration.

> Make cockpits tilt inwards. Sideways-g becomes down-g.

The drivers who experience the greatest effect of g forces, really pushing the limits of what's practical for the human body throughout the duration of a race, are the ones racing on ovals (not F1 drivers). Those tracks are already vectoring the g force downward rather than to the side.

For F1, most of their physical challenges come with the forces they experience during braking, and the effect of those forces on the neck. Doing something weird with the cant of the seat could theoretically change that pulling-the-head forward or to the side force into a pulling-the-head downward force, but if you think about what's really needed to do that (you're going to rotate the seat backwards ninety degrees? so the driver is looking at the sky when he's braking?) you can see the problem.

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#48
post #2

Insane? I've worked in F1, and seeing making this bolt doesn't sound extraordinaire. It's rather normal engineering technology. There are far more interesting, extremely expensive, specialized engineering methods in F1.

I'm really curious about the simulators they use for testing, if you know anything about that aspect. It seems like a chicken-and-egg issue: you see how a new part affects the car on the track by using the simulator, but the sinulator has to use parameters/assumptions put in by the engineers about how the part works. Won't it always just validate their assumptions?

I've built those simulators and testing equipment. You test assumptions in simulation, verify and improve it in the tests, and ultimately on the track in Barcelona.

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#49
post #3
post #2

Insane? I've worked in F1, and seeing making this bolt doesn't sound extraordinaire. It's rather normal engineering technology. There are far more interesting, extremely expensive, specialized engineering methods in F1.

Don't leave us hanging like that. Would you mind sharing an example?

NDA

Re: Making a single bolt for an FL car

#50
I worked at BMW for many years. I didn‘t do anything relate to their F1 program but once I talked to an engineer that did.

He was a mechanical engineer that designed different parts for the road cars. Once, people from the F1 team went to him because they had an issue with a part breaking frequently and asked him to improve it.

He designed another part and told the F1 guys that this will easily last for thousands of hours. They weren‘t happy. They told him they only wanted the part to last for 2 hours and the one he designed was too heavy. He had to do it again…

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