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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/25158104

by alexkus • 13 years ago

173 193 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

deletes• 13 years ago

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.

maigret• 13 years ago

It's already the case. You cannot refuel (I think for safety reasons, but not sure), so to get a weight advantage you have to take as little fuel as possible at the beginning of the race. So I don't expect changes. And yes, it happened to some, like Hamilton, to have to drive slower to save fuel. http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/formula1/21917717

fredwilkins• 13 years ago

In race refueling has been banned since 2010. Their concern was with the increasing number of fuel related pit row accidents. But on the flip side, many argue that operating with the increased fuel loads is even more dangerous.

masklinn5• 13 years ago

You cannot refuel (I think for safety reasons, but not sure)

Definitely not safety reasons. Refueling on pit stops was allowed from 1994 to 2009 (inclusive). The official reason for refueling ban was lowering team expenses: refueling stops required significant machinery, equipment and crew (much more so than calibration and tyres changes), which had to be carried around the world.

collyw• 13 years ago

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

hudster• 13 years ago

Circles? That's Nascar

cjrp4• 13 years ago

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.

Iuz• 13 years ago

Formula 1 is street circuits.

forgottenpaswrd• 13 years ago

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.

bliti11• 13 years ago

You should give the WRC series a good look. Here is Round 8 in Finland of the 2013 season. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82FgaYyXYwE

philjohn• 13 years ago

There's something in the rules about maximum fuel flow rate, which IIRC is 100kg of fuel per hour, with a maximum of 100kg of fuel in the tank, so the trick has been to make these engines as efficient as possible, it's no use having the most powerful engine if if can't reach it's full capability, or can only reach it when it's using the max fuel flow rate as you'll run out having only completed half the lap.

exDM695• 13 years ago

But do they have to limit fuel. Does the advantage of the turbo outweigh more pitstops?

Refueling is not allowed in Formula 1, it has only been allowed during two brief stints in the early 1980s and late 1990s. It was/is silly dangerous and there were a few quite nasty pitstop fire incidents.

One goal of the new regulations with the turbo, the regenerative braking and the fuel limit is to put emphasis on the efficiency of the engines. The engine manufacturer with the best efficiency is at an advantage.

There's a risk that this will introduce boring fuel saving periods to races. But on the other hand the fuel limit is the same for everyone. If you look at this from a different perspective, there will periods where you can crank up the boost and mixture to allow for more power at the cost of more than average fuel consumption.

masklinn5• 13 years ago

Refueling is not allowed in Formula 1, it has only been allowed during two brief stints in the early 1980s and late 1990s.

Brief? It was allowed from 1994 to 2009, and the official reason for removing it in 2010 was team expenses (they had to move expensive speed-refueling machinery around the world, and highly trained pit staff to match)

po• 13 years ago

One search youtube for 'f1 fuel fire' for some examples of how it can be dangerous but this is a good example of what you're talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdyuN_cUqjA

I don't think F1 had this problem but with some races the fuel is made with methanol and the flames can be impossible to see:

http://boingboing.net/2010/11/03/its-hard-to-fight-a.html

vanderZwan2• 13 years ago

Life... I mean the need for speed will find a way.

I'm quite excited by this, can't wait to see what innovations will come out of the new restrictions!

sanoli3• 13 years ago

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.

retube• 13 years ago

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.

dagw3• 13 years ago

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.

Swizec• 13 years ago

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 suck at cornering. We currently don't have anything that can hold such high average speeds as an F1 car can. Not even in any very lightly regulated sport.

For interestingness' sake, modern WRC cars reach speeds of 220kph over gravel.

Top speeds of F1 cars are around 360kph (the Bugatti Veyron can do 430kph), but F1 cares more about cornering speed than top speed.

From Wikipedia:

The large downforce allows an F1 car to corner at amazing speeds. As an example of the extreme cornering speeds; the Blanchimont and Eau Rouge corners at Spa-Francorchamps are taken flat-out at above 300 km/h (190 mph), whereas the race-spec touring cars can only do so at 150–160 km/h (note that lateral force increases with the square of the speed). A newer and perhaps even more extreme example is the Turn 8 at the Istanbul Park circuit, a 190° relatively tight 4-apex corner, in which the cars maintain speeds between 265 and 285 km/h (165 and 177 mph) (in 2006) and experience between 4.5 g and 5.5 g for 7 seconds—the longest sustained hard cornering in Formula 1.

marvin• 13 years ago

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.

sanoli3• 13 years ago

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.

lloeki2• 13 years ago

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.

oijaf8884• 13 years ago

I wonder how a modern day CanAm car would compare to F1 cars. At the time the CanAm cars were producing far more power (Porsche 917/30 ~1,580hp) than F1 and still had to handle.

nikcub• 13 years ago

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 the new F1 formula is a 1.6L V6.

k__• 13 years ago

Would it get any faster if they didn't need a driver?

martindale• 13 years ago

Let's just have robots drive them, then.

davej• 13 years ago

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/

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

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 vehicles are capable of going faster, even mach 1, but they have the same controllability problems.

If we were to hypothesize a future extreme sport of ultra fast racing in the 300mph or 400mph speed range then a few problems become immediately apparent. First, you'd need a specially designed course with very gradual turns. Also the roadway would have to be kept immaculately clean of debris. Second, the races would not last very long due to high rates of fuel consumption. For example, the Bluebird CN7 consumes fuel at top speed at about 260 gallons per hour (and has a 25 gallon tank), while the ThrustSSC consumes fuel at a rate of 24 gallons/mile. Third, passing would be extremely dangerous because even disrupting another vehicle's aerodynamics in any way, let alone physical contact, could cause it to become uncontrollable resulting in a very damaging and life threatening crash.

joosters• 13 years ago

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.

exDM695• 13 years ago

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 what the name "formula" refers to), there have been periods when the cars have been ridiculously quick, despite all the limiting regulations.

In the late 1970's ground effect cars were able to produce a huge amount of downforce with very little drag, and the cars would corner at high speeds and had a rock hard suspension, the drivers hated the cars because of the rough ride.

In the 1980's, there were turbo engines that developed more than 1300 horsepower in qualifying trim. They could spin the wheels on top gear when the boost kicks in. This was expensive, stupid and dangerous but the audience loved it.

In the early 2000's, aerodynamic advances and improvements in computational fluid dynamics made it possible to get immense amounts of downforce. Cars regularly reached top speeds of 340-360 km/h, and ran at more than 400km/h outside of regular racing/testing in special top speed configuration. The costs were ridiculous and only a few top teams were competitive. The teams used up to 8 engines per weekend (that's roughly as much as they use in the whole season).

"Anything goes" is just not a good idea when it comes to motorsport. There are things that have been banned in the past that could be incorporated in a fast and safe racing formula, though.

mseebach• 13 years ago

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.

beat2• 13 years ago

There used to be an "anything goes" series… the original Can-Am (1966-1986) - what Car and Driver called "the vehicular equivalent of great white sharks in a goldfish bowl". The regulations were basically "two seats, enclosed fenders". There was effectively no regulation of engine size or configuration, or of aerodynamics. It was abandoned in part due to extreme cost, and in part due to the safety problems.

The last straw for Can-Am, really, was Porsche simply pouring money into it with the 917 until no one could compete with them, rendering the racing kind of boring. Tight regulation in F1 and other racing forms keeps the focus on the driver, not the car.

corresation• 13 years ago

Tight regulation in F1 and other racing forms keeps the focus on the driver, not the car.

F1 has always been about the car, and the most heralded of driver in one car often becomes completely humdrum in another, and vice versa. Tight regulations simply change the parameters that the car makers have to optimize, and ultimately came about because without continually restricting the engineering, the cars were becoming impossibly fast.

The only series that are really about the driver have identical cars. I believe that is how the Formula E thing is planned, for instance, at least to begin.

stan_rogers2• 13 years ago

Safety problems, indeed. The 917/30, f'rinstance, had a chassis and bodywork you'd be leery of building into a child's pedal car wrapped around a twin-turbo flat twelve that could deliver 1800 bhp when turned up to eleven (and, given the turbos of the time, that power was pretty much on/off rather than something you could lay on gradually). But those were the days when "retirement" and "race car driver" were practically mutually exclusive terms.

josephlord• 13 years ago

I don't think "anything goes" would be wise but there may room for an interesting race with very minimal rules. e.g.

1) Total fuel limit (of specified type etc.). Gives all cars equal energy budget to use. Maybe some fuel could be traded for pre-charged batteries for KERS type systems.

2) Size limits. Must be narrow enough to overtake, short enough to fit in a pit box and maybe a height limit too.

3) Safety requirements and possibly a minimum weight to allow for sufficient safety without overly compromising safety.

There would still be plenty of things that could be done that are currently forbidden such as active aerodynamics so the car could actually have one or more rudders to assist with cornering etc. and that wings could flatten into aerodynamic shapes.

I could almost imagine the cars no longer using their brakes before corners but instead increasing downforce enough to take the corner and that increased drag being the only reason that they slow down at all.

protomyth6• 13 years ago

Well, even Indy had to tone down the cars for places like Texas Motor Speedway because the drivers were passing out in the corners. Daytona and Talladega are run with restrictor plates in NASCAR for much the same reason.

The cars have been able to go faster than drivers can handle for a long time.

ericcumbee6• 13 years ago

Nascar put restrictors on the car because they were hitting 212 average laps. And Nascar was not comfortable pushing the cars or tires (Nascar had open tire competition back then) farther than they wanted. so the solution was limit the amount of air an engine could take in. which created massive packs that cause 30 car wrecks. In my opinion it's probably killed more people than the cars running at 212 would have.

jdietrich• 13 years ago

There's a reason for those rules - F1 is a sport haunted by the memory of dozens of dead drivers. The only way to ensure driver safety is to keep cornering speeds manageable and restrict the use of high-risk technologies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8t_QzZJn7M

CraigJPerry• 13 years ago

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

codfrantic4• 13 years ago

There was a story on Ars[potato] about a small team a couple of weeks ago, they bring their servers with them (for this team only a couple in a half size rack) So I'm guessing they're doing the calculations they need during the race locally...

[potato] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/galler...

jeremysmyth• 13 years ago

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.

exDM695• 13 years ago

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

sheri• 13 years ago

The video mentions that the aerodynamics of the car generates so much down-force that it could ride upside-down on the ceiling. Wow.

vanderZwan2• 13 years ago

While certainly impressive, that's been true of F1 cars for decades.

logicallee• 13 years ago

As you say "decades" I did a cursory search for a video (assuming perhaps at some point during that time someone thought to make one.) I found this interesting video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcPsSI4O2S0

but would certainly like to see an F1 care drive literally upside-down (normal to horizontal) if you have anything like that. I just searched for a second on YouTube.

tobylane2• 13 years ago

I heard that several types of race cars could stay upside down at 100km/h. In 2000 F1 was reaching 300km/h on most circuits, less now. I guess that means it could be upside down on a higher gravity planet.

nodata• 13 years ago

Let's hope that they'll introduce that for next year then.

(I might be able to watch it for longer than three minutes then)

ohwp• 13 years ago

It's called Trackmania ;)

monk_e_boy• 13 years ago

I think the fuel and oil are gravity fed, or aren't under enough pressure to work upside-down.

I love watching the cars as they come out of a slow corner, they look like they are prancing on their toes, then as they speed up they 'suck' down to the ground... really cool

drivers99• 13 years ago

I'd like to see this attempted, Mythbusters style.

vadman• 13 years ago

I think the majority of such claims are misunderstandings of "generates downforce equal to its own weight" which is most certainly not enough to drive upside down.

The only case of a manufacturer actually wanting to perform a test was Gumpert with Apollo, according to Top Gear UK (take it FWIW).

T-zex4• 13 years ago

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.

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

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.

T-zex4• 13 years ago

Absolutely. Tire management is important, but it should not be essential. Reckless breaking with wheels locked should have its consequences. I'd rather see wheel to wheel action than listen to the comments about how this guy in a second place will have to save his tires and give up positions to score a few points.

k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

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.

widdershins• 13 years ago

Huh? Tires have always been one of the most strategic elements of F1.

TylerE• 13 years ago

Not "always". Prior to the downforce era, it wasn't unusual to use a single set of tires for several race weekends.

bliti11• 13 years ago

The interesting bit here is the development of the turbochargers. This is an area that has been slow to change over the years, due to the small amount of turbocharged vehicles available new[1]. Most turbos are used in heavy machinery (garbage trucks, big rigs, etc.), a slowly changing industry. They do not face the same regulations as regular autos.

Seems they are doing away with the wastegate and replacing it with an electric motor. Using the energy of the engine exhaust to generate electricity. This energy is normally lost or wasted on a typical turbocharged or naturally aspirated engine. The interesting part is that wastegates are simple flow valves that control how much exhaust gasses go through the turbo's turbine. Doing away with the wastegate means that they will be limiting the amount of airflow that goes into the engine in some other way. I doubt that they are using all of the boost that the turbo creates, because it would be a risky proposition to do so. Changes in ambient temperature would greatly impact the fuel delivery system. Not to mention it would increase the possibility of the fuel pre-igniting inside the combustion chamber.

There have been developments in the turbocharger industry, most have been in the way of better materials and turbine/compressor blade designs. I know that Garret (a manufacturer of turbos) has developed a turbocharger with a built-in electric motor. The motor is used to eliminate lag by spinning the turbocharger to a pre-defined RPM. Turbo lag is simply the period of time that it takes a turbocharger to spin up to the speed and start producing boost (back pressure inside the engine). By having an electric motor spin the turbo to a given setting, turbo lag is eliminated, and fuel economy is improved. How may fuel economy be improved? In many vehicles, turbo lag is fought against through the fuel maps (the amount of fuel deliver at a given RPM point). In cases, more fuel is fed to the engine to increase the expansion of the exhaust gases. An exhaust gas that has more unburned fuel in itself will burn most of that excess in the high temperature area between the engine block and the turbocharger. This expansion greatly increases the turbo speed. Though this comes at a cost of higher exhaust emissions, and lower fuel economy.

There have been developments into a new type of turbocharging system. Where the turbo unit is driven by by a hydraulic pump, rather than the engine exhaust. In this system, the turbo speed would rise by increasing the pump speed. For some reason this never reached production. But it could have revolutionized the industry. In a way, having an electric motor in place of the wastegate might turn out to provide the same benefits this system would have provided to passenger autos. Being able to re-capture energy lost in the exhaust system would be a win in terms of efficency.

[1] In the USA market. There are plenty of turbocharged diesel autos in the rest of the world. They are not common in the USA, though.

cjrp4• 13 years ago

This is an area that has been slow to change over the years, due to the small amount of turbocharged vehicles available new. Most turbos are used in heavy machinery (garbage trucks, big rigs, etc.), a slowly changing industry.

I'm not sure this is true in England - most diesel cars on the road have a turbocharger.

codfrantic4• 13 years ago

Most of europe, especially VAG[π] cars are turbocharged, either TDI for basically all Diesels and more and more (T)FSI gasoline powered cars.

Also look at the Audi R10 TDI [φ]

[π] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group

[φ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10_TDI

bliti11• 13 years ago

You are right. My point was that there not many petrol or gasoline powered turbocharged autos. Diesels powered autos are commonly turbocharged. In the USA, diesel autos are not common. Thus, turbos are mostly seen in high-performance vehicles (like the 911, WRX, etc.).

paulyg• 13 years ago

Turbocharging has been making a huge comeback in the US over the last 5 years, driven mainly by the increase in fuel economy it affords. The biggest example of this is Ford's Ecoboost engines, which are all turbocharged and direct injection. Many 2014 Cadillacs are V6 turbos. There are countless 1.8 and 2.0 VW and Audi turbos on our roads. Let's not forget all the WRXs and Mini Cooper S, Acura RDX (<=2012), Mazda CX7, Hyundai Veloster and Sonata.

bliti11• 13 years ago

CAFE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy) is the reason more new cars are being produced with small turbocharged engines. Manufacturers are able to get the same power from a small turbocharged engine with less fuel consumption through the use of direct injection, variable valve timing and lift control, and better engine controls/sensors.

ericcumbee6• 13 years ago

I have one of the New Ford Escapes with the 1.6L 4 Cylinder ecoboost engine and it is wonderful. I got 35MPG on the highway in a small SUV.

gambiting4• 13 years ago

" due to the small amount of turbocharged vehicles available new"??? Pretty much 99% of diesel cars available now in Europe have turbochargers, I don't remember when was the last time I saw a car without one. And most newly announced cars for 2014(for example - new Nissan Qashqai) got rid of their naturally aspirated petrol engines in favour of smaller but turbocharged petrol engines.

Maybe in the US the situation is different,but in EU the non-turbocharged engines are a dying breed,and have been for at least a decade now.

VBprogrammer• 13 years ago

Just to expand on that a little, turbo diesel engines are extremely common in Europe in even the smallest of cars. Diesel engines are particularly good candidates for turbo charging as diesel requires more air per unit of fuel to burn.

While significantly noisier these are very fuel efficient and even quite fun to drive due to their torque output.

sk5t2• 13 years ago

Forced induction is now much more common in the US than it was five or ten years ago, even on gasoline engines. Most new BMWs in the US are turbocharged, Ford is EcoBoosting the venerable F-150, and GM has an interesting mix of turbo- and supercharged engines.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

Most new vehicles today are turbocharged in Europe. Either turbo diesels or turbo charged petrol engines. Audi, VW, BMW, Mercedes actually have more turbo engines than normally aspirated in their lineup, much more in fact!

pedrocr2• 13 years ago

Doing away with the wastegate means that they will be limiting the amount of airflow that goes into the engine in some other way. I doubt that they are using all of the boost that the turbo creates, because it would be a risky proposition to do so.

If I understood it correctly that's not what's happening. Basically you're coupling an electric motor to the turbo. When the turbo is spinning slow you feed the electrical motor some electricity and spin the turbo up, eliminating turbo lag. When the turbo starts to overspeed you run the electrical motor as a generator imposing an extra load that you store as electricity in the battery, limiting the RPMs and thus limiting the boost.

bliti11• 13 years ago

I'm still a bit confused with the article. It does mention that they are not using wastegates.

Excerpt: Instead of a waste-gate, the motor will convert that excess energy into electricity by preventing the turbo from over-speeding.

I reason that they are using resistance on the electric motor to reduce the speed of the turbine. It makes more sense now. They can control the electric motor better than any wastegate by means of a computer. The resistance can then be immediately removed and boost would become available instantly because it would be spinning near the full-boost RPM (or island, as it is commonly called in the performance industry).

ericcumbee6• 13 years ago

Audi was developing a system similar to this for the R18 for 2013. However the FIA steped in at the last minute and nixed it. http://www.mulsannescorner.com/newsmarch13.html

So, what is (was) the new mystery hybrid system? I hear through the grape vine that it is an "Air Hybrid" system and understand that it works like this: a compressed air reservoir is charged by the engine cylinders during braking/coasting and then released on acceleration, eliminating turbo lag. The beauty is that it augments the engine without the need for heavy, environmentally unfriendly, batteries.

mbell• 13 years ago

Not to mention it would increase the possibility of the fuel pre-igniting inside the combustion chamber.

Detonation isn't all that much of a concern with F1 engines. When running at 15,000-18,000rpm there just isn't enough time for pre-ignition to occur.

grecy• 13 years ago

Also, the article says they're moving to direct injection, so only gets into the chamber at the instant it's supposed to ignite.

elyrly• 13 years ago

Important to the discussion is superchargers are still being built on JLR vehicles. Instant HP boost is still a defining quality for superchargers.

Spearchucker4• 13 years ago

I stopped watching F1 about 10 years ago, and these new changes just reaffirm that decision. It's no longer about best car + best driver. It's about mixing it up, making it random, to maximise viewer numbers. Not the kind of racing I go for.

oliveoil• 13 years ago

Same here, stopped watching around 1998. I though it's mostly about the car (which is largely random per-season, yes) and instead of celebrating the design/engineering behind the only things celebrated around f1 are the personalities of drivers, their excesses and their egos.

CWuestefeld2• 13 years ago

the only things celebrated around f1 are the personalities of drivers

I don't think that's quite true. Quite a lot gets said about at least a couple of designers, most especially Adrian Newey (all agree that Vettel is an amazing driver, but also that the recent RB cars that Newey has designed are dominant). We hear a lot from team principals like Horner, Brawn, Kaltenborn (first female in this role!). And race engineers like Rob Smedley and Rocky Rocquelin get their voice heard as well.

spacecadet• 13 years ago

No it isn't! Racing has always been the source of innovation in automotive- safety harness for example.. ABS, etc

Its exactly the fact that racing became "about best car + drive" that innovation slumped and we still drive cars that are pretty much no different than when Fuel Injection was introduced in the 70's!

I welcome these challenges.

I have been slowly developing my own diesel/electric hybrid using similar technology, it makes more sense than full electric at this point in time. Hub motors are very inexpensive and modern diesels running on waste bio can last upwards of 1,000,000 miles. Thanks to Audi and their endurance Diesel R8 racecar... They challenged themselves under no regulation and it helped prove a technology.

Spearchucker4• 13 years ago

Respectfully disagree. Your post suggests that motor industry innovation is driven (pardon the pun) by F1. Some of it is, but typically for super cars. Certainly not all of it, or even most of it.

Besides, constraining the car specs in and of itself stifles innovation. How much F1 tech is there in Tesla, for example?

001sky3• 13 years ago

I agree. The silly cost and stil 840 hp @ 1x,000 rpm is just a bunch of window dressing for the Lefties. The entire enterprise of F1 will never be "green", once you take into account the production of the cars, the crash repleacements, fuel used in training and lower Fxx series, and...the fact that these clowns fly all of this junk around the WORLD to drive. They are doing to f1 what they did to the America's cup. Basically turning a sport into a spectacle to which no 'normal' sportsman can really relate.

gambiting4• 13 years ago

Have you considered,that technologies developed for F1 by lets say....Mercedes, can later be used in their regular cars and therefore improve efficiency of not just a single F1 car,but millions of cars on the road?

With the promotion of turbochargers in F1, a stupid amount of research is going to go into them - and they are used in pretty much every diesel car on the road now, so if the technology can be improved further, then it's all for the best.

I've read the article and I don't think it mentions making F1 greener - it's not what it's about.

oijaf8884• 13 years ago

Have F1 cars been remotely close to something that normal people could relate to since the 60s?

Are you sure its just them trying to make F1 green? The cost standpoint helps keep large companies involved and aids smaller companies so they are competitive. The power limitations I believe have always been tied to price and safety. I doubt they were trying to appear "green" when they banned turbos in 89.

ryguytilidie2• 13 years ago

Wait you seriously are blaming liberals here? Hey why not i guess...?

masklinn5• 13 years ago

It's no longer about best car + best driver.

It already wasn't about best car 15 years ago, or in the 90s for that matter. Turbos were banned in 1989 for instance.

Spearchucker4• 13 years ago

You're right, but up until 10 years ago the best driver still had a chance. Schumacher turned Ferrari around, proving it. And that's when they really started changing the rules to promote random outsider wins.

DanBC• 13 years ago

"Best car" in 2014 technology could be seriously very dangerous. It would also be so expensive that you'd get 4 companies competing.

And best driver? Well, one guy seems to do quite well year after year, so maybe he's pretty good.

It'd be cool to see (even simulated) how a Computer driver would do.

prof_hobart• 13 years ago

But a lot of the regulation changes aren't really about safety - things like standardised suppliers of tyres, or limiting the amount of track testing allowed. Sure, unlimited budgets would allow some companies to absolutely dominate - but that's not really any different today.

And yes Vettel is possibly the best driver. But the car and the support he gets from the team give him a pretty good head start.

F1's not about the best car you could build (or even the best "safe" car you could build), or about the best driver. It's mostly about the best car you build within the set of sometimes arbitrary constraints set by the FIA.

rlu• 13 years ago

Yikes. You ought to watch the 2008-2011 (maybe 2012) seasons. Truly awesome.

2013 has been a bore - but partly because the past few seasons have been spectacular.

chaz2• 13 years ago

Just about every pro sports league needs to manage its rules to ensure that the playing field gets leveled every season. For example, NFL draft picks are in reverse order of season success. If last year's Super Bowl winner was able to choose their next team on a completely free market, they would simply use their boosted revenue and pay the most for the best players, thus making it much more likely that they'll increase their domination. No one wants to watch a dominating team shut out clearly inferior teams game after game.

F1 needs rules to tighten gaps between the team and to prevent one team from spending their way to success. I think we can argue about whether the new power units, DRS, and tire management are the right way to do this, but I'm glad they're trying something.

corin_2• 13 years ago

Outside of America there are far more sports that don't try to even the playing field artificially. Motor racing (I don't know much about non-F1 racing anyway) is pretty much the limit in the UK, team games generally work on the free market, individual games can generally be dominated by great individuals.

colin_jack• 13 years ago

As with F1 races, the article seemed interesting at the start but quickly bores the heck out of you.

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

Is this one better?

Not F1, but very much a case of wiggling through the rules.

pbo3• 13 years ago

I wrote firmware (~20kLocs) for a power (electrical) supply that's part of one such power train.

This kind of development is very demanding, because you can't afford to leave any bugs in your program but at the same time you're always shipping late because of tight schedules and often blurry specifications.

On top of that hardware and software development cycles are concurrent, so no target hardware available when you're writing your code.

In these conditions the only way I found to have something that works is to keep it very simple:

    1. Simple algorithms
    2. Simple data structures
    3. Few abstractions
    4. No dynamic memory allocations

Also, no compiler optimizations.

T-zex4• 13 years ago

Wow! Have you developed the software for the ECU?

pbo3• 13 years ago

Actually I distribute power from the battery to other subsystems, so it's rather far from the ECU.

kayoone2• 13 years ago

as a huge F1 fan and software hacker id love to hear more, but i guess its all under NDA right ? :/

zdrummond• 13 years ago

Can you do an AMA? I would love to hear more!

pbo3• 13 years ago

Even though the work environment is peculiar, the technical contents itself is far from exceptionnal, really.

If you'd like to read more about this kind of systems, this document could be a starting point: http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/slup232/slup232.pdf

It sums up pretty well the stakes and technical challenges with digital power supplies.

pavanred• 13 years ago

I love F1 and am really interested to know more. But, as kayoone mentioned there probably would be a NDA.

If you have a blog, you should put your url out here.

cabbeer• 13 years ago

"Bernie Ecclestone has done a magnificent job with Formula One and he needs these last-minute showdowns. But we, the keen viewers, need to be assured that it is still motorsport with young men going wheel-to-wheel in a life or death struggle for glory. And not panto." -Jeremy Clarkson

pacofvf• 13 years ago

I read sometime ago about how supposedly the KERS was used as Traction Control System by Red Bull, so this new "ERS", which is not even activated by the driver, seems more suited to be modified to act as a TCS.

Fuzzwah3• 13 years ago

The "traction control" part of the KERS system wasn't controlled by the driver. The best guess is that a system monitored wheel slip by the oscillation of the rear suspension. The extra power was fed into the recovery system rather than being wasted as wheel slip.

I think all teams will be doing this in 2014.

Fuzzwah3• 13 years ago

This guy's video explaining the new F1 2014 regulations is very good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8lyBFmkAKw

Actually all his F1 videos are excellent.

fduran• 13 years ago

I just want to mention the great safety advances in car (and race) security in the last 20 years; since 1994 and the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna there has been no driver fatalities in F1 racing.

edit "Following Senna's death in 1994, no driver had died from injuries sustained in a World Championship-related accident until María de Villota died in 2013 from complications of injuries she sustained in a testing accident the previous year"

TillE• 13 years ago

It is quite remarkable. For example, the Kubica crash in 2007 looked absolutely horrific, but he walked away with only minor injuries.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=685_1181547684

mtr• 13 years ago

I was in the stands in the hairpin when I saw Kubica go flying by. Seeing his head bobbing from side to side made me think that he was dead. I managed to capture some pics of the crash and wrote a blog post about it, and other racing accidents.

http://blog.octanenation.com/kubica-accident-pictures-an-aut...

ryguytilidie2• 13 years ago

Even the de Villota death was a huge huge fluke. She lost control of the car outside of the track (no idea why she was driving outside of the track) and hit a moving trucks lift face first. If she had just ran into a wall on the track there is basically no chance she would have died.

msantos• 13 years ago

Several F1 teams are hiring C/C++ engineers currently. Mostly looking for C brainers with experience in embedded systems and C/C++ Matlab programmers.

walshemj• 13 years ago

Interesting I am in the process of doing a cheeky spec job application to my nearest f1 team - will probably hand deliver it to the factory - maybe its time to dust of my old FORTAN skills.

I suspect engineers with expertize in cooling electronics will be in demand as if the kers/battery conks out it will destroy a cars race now.

geoka9• 13 years ago

I wonder what'll happen to F1 when the consumer car industry shifts to driverless cars. Will F1 "catch up" and the teams get rid of the drivers? Will it still be considered a sport?

alexeisadeski3• 13 years ago

Can't racing just be about fun loud cars? Leave the environmentalist somewhere else?

sp332• 13 years ago

F1 has always been intended to move tech into production cars. It was never just about fun loud cars. It's definitely true that a few dozen cars running laps for a day isn't going to have much effect on the climate, the point is to improve millions of cars in the future.

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

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