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F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 197 posts

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#21
post #4
post #2

But do they have to limit fuel. Does the advantage of the turbo outweigh more pitstops? I'm afraid races might get boring when drivers will have to conserve their fuel or just lose the race.

Cars going round in circles? I already find that fairly boring.

Circles? That's Nascar

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#22
post #19
post #5

There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.

> There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go. The cars could be made so fast that humans could not drive the cars any more. In addition, safety of the audience would be compromised and the costs would be prohibitively expensive to maintain competition. While there has been a set of rules and regulations always in Formula 1 (that's…

A meaningful "anything goes" tournament (compare "freestyle chess") would probably have as the single rule that there can't be a driver in the car. That, on the other hand, would probably remove most of the audience appeal, as it's just not that interesting to see machines compete (as is also the case with freestyle chess). No audience means no money and no money means no R&D budget. So that's probably why it wouldn't work.

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#23

How do they handle network latency back to simulation / data processing environments when travelling?

Network latency isn't really an issue, because the team has no direct control over any aspect of the car aside from what they say to the driver; Pit-to-car telemetry is explicitly prohibited, and radio comms from the team to the car are voice-only.

In short, the latency introduced by voice comms far outweighs any geographical distance introduced by sending data to and from the cray at homebase.

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#24

How do they handle network latency back to simulation / data processing environments when travelling?

Latency does not matter because the driver must do all the work controlling the car and the engine.

They use data links (at some point they used direct radio links, don't know what happens these days) back and forth from the car to the pit wall and all the way back to the factory. There's around 20-50 engineers working every time the cars are out on track.

But the telemetry is all one way, it's not allowed to control the car from the pit wall. There are computer programs and engineers analyzing the telemetry all the time but all they can do is give instructions to the driver.

You can regularly see/hear this happen in races. There may be a slight collision between cars and e.g. the front wing gets damaged a little. The driver will radio the pit wall and ask whether they have damage or not. The engineers behind the pits and in the factory will analyze the data from the suspension travel vs. pitot tube telemetry and conclude whether there's damage to the wings and whether that damage is grave enough to warrant changing the front wing at the pits (~10 seconds stationary).

Here's an amazing video from McLaren mission control in their factory in Great Britain while the cars are out on track in Korea on the other side of world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhl7csZJHw

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#26
post #4
post #2

But do they have to limit fuel. Does the advantage of the turbo outweigh more pitstops? I'm afraid races might get boring when drivers will have to conserve their fuel or just lose the race.

Cars going round in circles? I already find that fairly boring.

I used to think it was dull, but then I read up on the aerodynamic and engineering work that goes into each car's design and suddenly it became a lot more interesting.

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#27
post #8
post #5

There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.

This video is an interesting comparison of just how fast F1 cars are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0 IIRC some of those GT cars that look like snails compared to F1 cars are "anything goes". However, here is a truly anything goes car (that has broken the speed barrier on land): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKQ-xj5C2m8 So yeah, an anything goes car will go much faster than an F1 car. But it's going to su…

The real question is how fast an "anything goes" F1 car would go around a racetrack. Especially if you remove the human driver, or make the car remote-controlled.

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#28
post #9
post #5

There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.

Adrian Newey (most successful F1 designer in the history of the sport) designed the Red Bull X2010 for the game Gran Turismo based on the concept of building the fastest car possible in an 'anything goes' scenario: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_X2010 The limit becomes G-forces that a driver can bear, especially over a race distance. They limited it to 6G. For an engine they interestingly picked a 3L V6, where…

Here's the X2014: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/03/red-bulls-gran-tu...

Also here's an interesting comparison betweek the X2010 and X2011: http://xn-games.net/okra/2011/10/29/gran-turismo-5-red-bull-...

Finally, tech specs and diagrams (indicating load & downforce) for the X2010: http://jonsibal.com/blog/2010/10/red-bull-x1/

Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

#30
post #7
post #5

There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.

Yeah! I always thought it would be mint to be able to do whatever you wanted, put a saturn V engine in it you wanted. Would make great telly. Ditto the paralympics - there should be a class where they can pimp up their kit to the max.

What you're describing sounds very close to F1 of the 60's, 70's and early 80's, now keep that in mind and take a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_Formula_One_accid...

As to the question whether or not this would make for "great telly" or not, I leave to those far more cynical than me.

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