The Technology Behind Formula One 586
axlrosen writes "An article in the NY Times about the technology behind Formula One. The wealthiest teams arm themselves with powerful advantages, almost entirely centering on computing controls in the cars and computer simulation in design. Car data is sent in multi-megabyte wireless bursts each time the team's cars flash past the pits, often in excess of 200 miles an hour. It is simultaneously sent over the Internet to a larger data center in Maranello, Italy, where more complex analysis is done. AMD is expected to supply a supercomputer roughly as fast as the world's 10th most powerful machine to the Swiss-based Sauber Petronas racing team... I love the crazy steering wheel - anyone know what all those buttons and knobs do?"
Background article (Score:5, Informative)
steering wheel buttons (Score:5, Informative)
Button uses (Score:5, Informative)
For the American audience (Score:3, Informative)
buttons (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it will take a supercomputer... (Score:2, Informative)
When his own teammates accuse him of not playing as per team rules, you can begin to understand how much hated this guy is.
But give me F1 anyday over Nascar.
Brake Balance (Score:5, Informative)
british touring car championships (Score:5, Informative)
However, the championship do not allow wireless data xfer anymore and only unencrypted voice is allowed to communicate with the driver. There is a sturdy DIN style plug that one of the engineers plugs a laptop into and downloads the data from the car when it is in the pits. A 20 minute race typically will see about 30Mb of data being retrieved. The organisers TOCA stopped wireless xfer because team managers were able to change the cars characteristics mid race and then reset them back before the scruitineers got a look in!
Most of the teams use windows xp on sturdy laptops with more powerful computing back at base - I guess because most of the software is off the shelf.
Formula1 is another ballgame...
Buttons (Score:5, Informative)
The Steering Wheel (Score:5, Informative)
But-
- Behind the wheel are two paddles. Pull one and you get an upshift on the computer controlled sequential gearbox, pull the other for a downshift. The cars have what are essentially normal manual transmissions, but instead of the driver controlling the clutch and shift forks, computer controlled hydraulics do the job and produce perfect shifts. Typically, pulling both paddles will put the car in neutral (allowing drivers to get out of a spin if possible)
- On the upper right and left, the + and - buttons are probably backup shift buttons. For the team I worked with, the paddles behind the wheel could sometimes be problematic, so they had backups in the same place as the wheel in the picture.
- The yellow "N" switch is "Set Neutral." Press it once and the car stays in Neutral even if the steering wheel is removed. Drivers are required to, upon exiting the race due to a mechanical failure or crash, replace the steering wheel (which they need to remove to get out of the car) and place the vehicle in neutral so crews can remove it. If they don't, they are fined an obscene amount of money.
- The red "L" switch is the pit lane speed limiter switch. In F1, the pit lanes have a very rigorously enforced speed limit. Hitting that button causes the computer to limit the car's speed to whatever the track pit speed limit is.
- The LED display can show a whole bunch of data. From moving track maps to onboard telemetry, timing, gear status, Gran Turismo...
I don't know exactly what the rotary switches do on that car, but I have seen them for:
- Brake bias; controls the front and rear split of pressure on the brakes allowing the driver to set the car up based on tyre wear and fuel weight (in F1, fuel is measured by weight, not by volume).
- Engine fuel mapping; drivers can conserve fuel at the expense of raw power or gain raw power at the expense of fuel depending on the tactical situation.
- Oil/Water cooling; they can control how much water and oil is flowing through the coolers. In wet races or if your trapped behind the slipstream of another vehicle, it becomes important to control these things. F1 car engines require heat for all the components to work properly, but too much heat of course, kills them. It is a constant game of keeping these things in balance. Usually, engineers in the pit lane will inform the driver of exactly what changes to make (by the rules, they cannot simply have radio commands control the vehicle).
Of course, the rest of the buttons are for the radio, drinking water pump, the fuel filler flap, rear caution light and those sorts of gizmos.
A few of the buttons are also like the water/oil cooler controls in that they only exist for the driver to press when the engineers tell him to.
All of that for around US$30K per steering wheel...
Steering Wheel Buttons and Controls (Score:5, Informative)
Re:it will take a supercomputer... (Score:2, Informative)
At Albert Park in early March, Ferrari and Sauber had the same V10 engine.
New 'long life' rules meant last year's scarlet unit was not reliable enough to be fitted to the Sauber C23, so the customer team got works- spec Ferrari power. link [racing-live.com]
That's how much difference the REST of the car makes!
F1 Rules (Score:3, Informative)
Formula 1, if you didn't know, is the premiere motorsport in the world. Every rule about car design in F1 falls into one of two categories. Rules that prevent the egineer from killing the driver and rules that say the car must not fall apart. The result is the most technologically advanced cars in the entire world. These are the fastest four wheeled motor vehicles on earth that can make both left and right turns. Every race car driver falls into 3 categories. Driving F1, wanting to drive F1 and too afraid to drive F1. If you think Nascar is dumb because they go around in circles, F1 is for you. I've heard it described as driving a go-kart with a jet engine. (it's really just a V10).
Oh, and some other information. Michael Schumacher is the greatest driver in F1 today, he has won the championship the last 6 times. He is the highest paid athlete in the entire world. He drives a ferrari, the best car there is. It looks like he is going to win again this year, he has lost only one race so far. And while it seems boring to watch the same guy win every time it shows you why F1 is so great. The best driver wins every time. And this guy is the undisputed greatest driver of cars to ever live.
The US grand prix in Indianapolis is this sunday at 1pm. It is the only race in the US this year. If you haven't seen an F1 race I highly reccomend you check it out. Imagine Nascar, with right turns and no rednecks. It doesn't suck.
NASCAR does go both directions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The New Direction In Sports (Score:5, Informative)
Even with equal budgets Schumacher would probably still be sneaking the championship, but currently no team spends like Ferrari and that is damaging the sport.
Re:steering wheel buttons (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The New Direction In Sports (Score:5, Informative)
One one hand, the bar has always been raised. Rowing has been a popular sport for some time now. But what do you do if you are in the 99.9% of the world that cannot get access to a boathouse? You don't compete in rowing, that's what.
On the other hand, if you are able to meet the basic requirements to compete, talented amateurs rise up through the ranks and tend to get sponsorships. As an example, I started racing triathlon a few years ago, and used an old bike and cotton gear and no wetsuit. I couldn't shell out $1300 for race wheels, so that made me less competitive. I trained hard, read books, and starting finishing on the podium, and got ranked All-American. I read a book on how to get sponsorships, applied for a bunch of them, and got some for this season. One of those sponsors loans me $1300 race wheels for my big races in exchange for my being a billboard, so now I don't have to buy them. If I can go that little bit faster, I can win bigger races, get bigger sponsorships, and so on.
Incidentally, cycling deserves a lot of credit for sticking to its roots. The rules on bike frame geometry are strict and have kept much faster frame designs out of the peloton, mainly in deference to tradition, AFAIK.
Re:it will take a supercomputer... (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike JPM, Villnevue, Senna, Prost, Coultard, Ralf S., or any other the other winning drivers?
I actually think Michael has a good diplomatic approach during the post race interviews. Most people appear not to like him because he's not lovable like Jordon or Tiger Woods.
But, to bring this back on track: yeah there is a ton of money spent on F1. Guaranteed that once tobacco money is taken out of the picture (I'd say by 2008 at the latest), overall spending will go down unless the FIA finds some way to compensate for it.
Personally I like that the teams innovate. Anti-lock brakes, traction control, ECU development, etc. and examples of technolgoy that has been tested in race cars first (although not necesssarily developed there) and then deployed in production run vehicles.
Plus, they are damned fast!
Re:it will take a supercomputer... (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely. Ferrari's dominance in recent years is similar to McLaren's in the mid-late 1980s, but with the crucial difference that in McLaren's most dodminant season, 1988, although the team won 15 of the 16 races with John Barnard's revolutionary MP4/4, and took 199 Constructor's points to second-placed Ferrari's 65, since Ayrton Senna took eight of their wins and his team-mate Alain Prost took seven, the season was gripping to the very end, Senna finishing with 90 points to Prost's 87. You knew a McLaren was likely to win each race, but as to which one...
Meanwhile, it's staggering to see what *can* be achieved by teams with a tenth of the budget of the frontrunners, and what *can't* be achieved, yet, with Toyota's budget, rumoured to be even bigger than the half-billion dollars Ferrari are said to spend each year.
Nascar (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What does Formula One mean? (Score:5, Informative)
I Might Also Add... (Score:5, Informative)
The steering wheel body is all carbon fiber and all the teams can do composite work like that in their sleep (I have some cool CF toys that a couple of the composite shop guys made for me, they are scary good artists with the stuff).
The buttons are all hardcore off the shelf units from the aerospace industry.
The computing components are all well inside the body work, usually up in the nose or above the driver's legs.
The god damn connector though! It was something like 30 pins and they absolutely need to be hardcore because the wheels get taken on and off the car over and over again. They need to also twist with the wheel and lock up tighter then a bankvault without any extra levers or other things to fiddle with. When I was working with the team, I was shocked at how much effort it took to make those damn things...
Re:The New Direction In Sports (Score:1, Informative)
I'm willing to bet that if you shifted the top five drivers from their teams, the finishing order of the races will be more based on the quality of the car than the quality of the driver. Example, how good would Michael Schumaucher had been in an '03 BAR Honda? Or a Minardi or Jordon? Probably not as good as they all think he is. What would happen if Jenson Button was in a Ferrari?
Spending budget analogies work when you apply it to buying technology. When a team can afford a P4 3.0GHz over a PII 133Mhz how doesn't this analogy apply?
Where it doesn't work is when you apply it to baseball teams and their budgets because then you are applying subjective values to human players. Given A.Rods salary of $100M, does it mean he's 100x better than a player with a salary of $1M?
You can actually use "quantitative" measurements in F1, ie "this engine is 10.3% more efficient than last year's engine", where as in baseball you use "qualitative" measurements as in A.Rod is better than Joe 2nd Baseman.
Think again.
Re:Background article (Score:5, Informative)
Pneumatic valves vs. valve springs, composite materials vs. non, and the list goes on and on.
However, the rising costs of F1 are making teams reign costs in by banning some of the more exotic stuff
The proof is in the pudding as they say, compare budgets:
Formula 1 - $350 million dollars a year for a top competitive team
CART - $50 million dollars a year
Re:steering wheel buttons (Score:4, Informative)
The team has (for example) 500ms to let the computer control the engine to execute a gear change. Renault has got gear changes down to a science, and only needs 10ms. The other 490ms are still "ok" to have the computer control the engine. It's not a lot of time, but every little bit helps...
My numbers might be off, but this is the way I understand how they do it..
Re:Auto/Semi-Auto Gearboxes may stay (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Background article (Score:5, Informative)
Sky Sports(UK) has a race day program(1 hour) before every formula1 race starts. Once every 2-3 races, they examine the technical aspects of formula1 racing. The steering wheel is discussed twice during the racing year.
The steering wheel costs more than your average luxury sedan. For this 2004 season, FIA made manual shifting mandatory but the top teams still manage to work their way around it and have part of it computer controlled.
About sponsorships, formula1 car workings, upto date news- see BBC Formula1 [bbc.co.uk] Many articles on the RHS.
For those who don't get Speed Channel, you can follow live timing(and a lot more) and unbiased commentary on the formula1.com website.
If you are a car collector, you can buy actual parts of the BAR forumla1 car from the pure racing club at BAR [barf1.com](flash).
Also take a look at its quarterly magazine( its nice).
I hven't read the article yet but there is a lot of money sloshing around in F1. Ferrari alone spends 500 million$ a year(and this was 2 years back). BMW vaulted to one of the top teams because they put some of their best engineers and spent a buttload of money(350 million+) initializing the team.
Even Minardi which is the poorest team in f1 spends as much or more than the top Indy racing teams.
During 2000-2002 there was a lot of controversy regarding sale of global tv rights to Kirch(German media company). A lot of F1 teams threatened to form a new series of their own from 2008. The threats aren't so loud now but the issue still simmers [businessweek.com].
Re:Jeff Gordon (Score:3, Informative)
He's a hell of a driver and I would love to see him leave NASCAR and go race F1. He said driving that car was the most incredible experience he ever had driving.
Um, Formula 1 machines are racing prototypes (Score:1, Informative)
An F1 car costs an order of magnitude more than a champ car, prototype chassis, prototype engines, prototype electronics all the manufacturers make their own and that order of magnitude more spent doesn't even buy you a winner. Not that the hundreds of millions spent on the cars gives you interesting racing.
MotoGP and WSB are far more interesting.
200 mph is no big deal (Score:3, Informative)
The effects of a tire blowout at that speed are intense, but within the capabilities of even the top end street-legal sports cars, a $10 M formula 1 racing system.
driven by alert and experienced drivers.
There are also plenty of examples of fatal crashes at 55 mph, so i don't know what to make of that.
But the point remains: if you can react against a damn blowout at 200mph, you can definately snake your thumb over to click a button on the steering wheel.
Re:steering wheel buttons (Score:4, Informative)
I remember that show!
(it's Speed Racer http://www.speedracer.com/ , for the clueless)
Actually, it's on SPEED Channel all the time now. I watched it again for the first time in may years a few weeks ago. Many of the drivers faces are based on '60s F1 drivers. There is one recurring villan that looks just like Graham Hill. http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/hill_bio.htm
-geekd
More technical info on F1 cars ... (Score:2, Informative)
Articles [formula1.com] on other technical aspects of F1.
I think last spring F1 became the biggest sport in the world according to TV viewing numbers (excepting the Wolrd Cup finals).
Americans are retards when it comes to racing. Which is a shame because F1 was thriving in America in the 60s and 70s and we actually had some Americans drivers.
If I was a billionaire I'd upgrade Watkins Glen, kickout the proffitable but contemptable Wiston Cup jerks, and try to get F1 back on the best road coarse in the country.
Formula 1 steering wheel explained (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Background article (Score:2, Informative)
The F1 site has some nice general information regarding the engineering etc here [formula1.com].
bmw williams steering wheel diagram (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Going to the USGP... drop me an email (Score:3, Informative)
F1 is brilliant, but they know they can't keep going as is. You hear crazy rumors all the time. One is that the V12s will get chucked, and everyone has to go to V8s. The spectacle and sound of a V12 revving at 19k RPM is amazing. THe cars will deafen you from 100 yards away.
The cars only have V10s already. V12s are long gone. They had 3.5 liter capacity a few years ago and that's down to 3 liters and speeds are up.
The next frontier seems to be either max revs (unlikely) or minimum engine numbers (if Ferrari, Honda, BMW etc had to make 100/year then they'd have to sell a good few - might cut overall costs and help the lesser teams).
Re:Background article (Score:3, Informative)
Ferrari never won a championship before Schumi? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, where have you been...
Ferrari has 13 constructor championship titles and 9 Ferrari driving pilots won the drivers championship...
Rally in USA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:These are truly amazing cars (Score:2, Informative)
That does not diminish the exceptional skill of the rally drivers. There are simply too many obstacles and sharp turns on the narrow roads for the driver to react unless he is reminded of what is approaching. It takes quite a bit of concentration to listen to the co-driver, who is 5-6 directions ahead of the driver, and still drive the car. On gravel/mud/snow. In the rain/sleet. At 200 km/h.
Speedvision's coverage of the WRC is excellent, as well. The announcer actually has the ability to shut the hell up for minutes at a time, so that we can listen to the driver/co-driver and the car. I've never seen any other coverage like that.
Re:Going to the USGP... drop me an email (Score:2, Informative)
I dunno about CEO and engineer, but he did take a large slice of the Benetton team with him...but he forgot about me
When he left it was Benetton Renault. We dumped Ford after winning the championship with them in 1995.
Re:steering wheel buttons (Score:2, Informative)
Re:CART was the model for safety (Score:2, Informative)
All the races are controled by Charlie Whiting who manages all the marshalls and other aspects reagarding saftey during the race.
F1 steering wheel functions (Score:1, Informative)
http://saltire.weblogger.com/2003/09/17#a77
has a fairly authoritative background on the functions on the F1 steering wheel.
Re:Background article (Score:5, Informative)
When Michael Andretti signed on with McLaren, the cars were powered by the all conquering Honda motors. By the time he actually drove the car, those motors had been replaced by Ford Cosworth V8s. At the time, hardly in the same league as the then massively dominant Honda.
There was a rule change at the end of the 1992 season which severly limited the testing the teams could do. This had the effect that every track Andretti showed up to in 1993 was completely new to him. Huge disadvantage.
You might have also mentioned that the dismal 5 laps in the first few races was caused by mechanical failures and getting punted off the track, not by lack of skill.
Andretti fanboy? Not really. The traitor SOB went IRL racing...
Mansell V Mi Andretti (Score:3, Informative)
Mansell moved across the pond to Florida. Andretti tried to commute to Europe from Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, he did earn some kind words of respect from the late great Ayrton Senna, and did finally manage a podium finish before his premature departure from F1.
However, as an epilogue, it should be noted that upon returning to CART, Michael Andretti won the very first race against Mansell and the rest of the field. In fact, in his second season, Mansell wasn't able to accomplish much at all against the CART field.
Since that time, CART has had two drivers graduate quickly to F1 success and two who haven't been that impressive.
Re:Background article (Score:4, Informative)
A small(?) nitpick, there is no BMW team in Formula One, they just supply the engines for the Williams team, just as Michelin supply the tyres and HP supply computer systems.
Williams is one of the most successful Grand Prix teams of them all with a long and rich history and this is my real pet hate, living in Germany, to always hear it being referred to as BMW when BMW has no influence over anything to do with the car or the team. They just make the engines, like Honda, Renault, Judd and many other companies have done before them.
Not picking on you, it just gets my goat when people get this wrong.
Re:Background article (Score:3, Informative)
The real context here [planet-f1.com]:
Michael Andretti competed in 13 races. He retired from the first four races following three collisions and a spin. The collisions may or may not have been his fault. His other three retirements were another spin, another collision and a throttle failure. So that's one mechanical failure and at least two driver errors.
In that year Mclaren had five wins and nine podiums and finished second in the Constructors championship. That doesn't suggest uncompetitive to me except in respect of Williams who were miles ahead of everybody that year and the next three.