I really hope this will reduce the number of times commentators have to say a word "tires". Couldn't care less about saving tires. Its like a footballer saving a ball, or boxer his gloves. The same applies to the engine.
F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
41–50 of 197 posts
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#42I really hope this will reduce the number of times commentators have to say a word "tires". Couldn't care less about saving tires. Its like a footballer saving a ball, or boxer his gloves. The same applies to the engine.
Well, the thing is, it costs time to replace tires
So you have to balance tire wear with the time gained by pushing it to the limit
They also have an increased engine life this year, I think each team must go through 5 engines during the season, as opposed to 8 engines
And you can bet they're designed to last as much as needed but not much more.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#43There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.
Not much. The top speed for controllable driving in a wheeled vehicle is in the 300mph range. The power and aerodynamics requirements to step up to 400mph are severe. Specifically, the wheel-driven land-speed record is a bit over 400mph (although just last year it climbed up to 440mph) and the vehicles capable of going that fast are nearly incapable of taking turns of any significance at those speeds. Jet powered veh…
Perhaps the turning could be improved if jets were used for steering as well?
But by this point, you are effectively left with a rocket that just happens to have some circular things that touch the ground.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#44Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're all topologically equivalent
It may well be the case that they are all topologically equivalent, but they needn't be, so long as bridges are allowed. Perhaps that's how they could make F1 more interesting.
Suzuka has a bridge:-
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#46There 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…
What I meant was what if an F1 team of designers didn't have to be constrained by any rules and could build their dream F1 car.
For example, there was one car a couple of decades ago (I think early 80's maybe?) that used a sort of vaccum effect to keep the car sucked to the ground. It improved cornering speeds greatly, but the device was banned.
I googled some and found this: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=598933&hw...
Couldn't find a link to the original article though. Pretty interesting.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#47But 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.
That's NASCAR, not F1.
In F1 you see real cars, doing real curves, not the thing NASCAR does like having a car that only could turn one way.
In F1 you see cars going through the streets of Monaco or Valencia, or German circuits that you could race yourself with your own car. BTW I do it.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#48There 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…
Anything goes does not exist in a vacuum though, there's over-the-top regulations aiming at a specific goal (here, driving research on efficiency) and there's what you want to achieve within a set of basic rules (e.g drag race, best lap, best 10 laps, max laps under 24h...).
Take for example LMP, which used to go well above 400kph, but not so much car regulations as much as track regulations made that impossible/useless (e.g old Mulsanne Straight), designing top speed out of the cars because it simply was too dangerous. Mulsanne now has a brake zone from ~320kph down to ~100kph, much more humanly manageable.
More downforce also means more drag, and for LMP's long running races this means too high a fuel consumption. Also, ground effects and closed body vs open wheels. Reliability (or lack thereof) is on the F1 side since LMP has to run hundreds of long laps, while a F1, even with "X races per engine" rules has to run continuously for a couple hours at most. Lift such a regulation and you could make a bloody efficient engine that self-destructs over a single race.
LMP have a minimum regulated weight of ~900kg, and as every fellow driver knows, "weight is the enemy of performance". Barring that, and tuned to the problem, LMP would kick the pants off a F1 because F1 is (comparatively) insanely regulated.
The beauty of F1 is that it achieves incredible performance in spite of suffering extremely limiting regulations. My bet is that lifting all regulations would quickly put the human as the sole limiting factor to performance, because the poor pilot of a guy would be on the verge of passing out at braking and inside every corner, unless they're on a balancing seat and have anti-g suits.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may well be the case that they are all topologically equivalent, but they needn't be, so long as bridges are allowed. Perhaps that's how they could make F1 more interesting.
Suzuka has a bridge:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuka_Circuit
Unfortunately, the presence of a bridge is necessary, but not sufficient. Think knots.
Re: F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
#50I really hope this will reduce the number of times commentators have to say a word "tires". Couldn't care less about saving tires. Its like a footballer saving a ball, or boxer his gloves. The same applies to the engine.
Without the excitement generated by the tyres these last few seasons the sport would have been as boring as during the Schumacher days (and I say that as a Ferrari supporter). Vettel was able to run away at the front but we still got exciting racing further down the grid. I think the tyres unfairly penalise some drivers (because their driving style doesn't suit them) but you can't deny they've made races that could have been incredibly boring more exciting. Not to mention the fact that because we've taken away refuelling, if the tyres were made as good as they could be, pit-stops and strategy would pretty much be taken out of the sport.