(no subject)
I've been away from this blog for so long I've actually written most of a "so let's get back to talking F1" post and it's now sort of out of date and remains unfinished. I promise I'll rewrite it later because it actually has potential as a topic for me to preach on. But first, more recent news:
The Formula One world is on the verge of annoucing new rules about engines. These new regulations will take the F1 engine from a naturally aspirated (i.e. non-turbo-charged, non-super-charged) engine with eight cylinders and a total capacity of 2.4 litres to a turbo-charged, four cylinder engine with a capacity of 1.6 litres. In terms of speed and power, these new engines won't be far behind - turbo-charging should allow them to pull around 80% of the current unit's power and then this will be supplemented with KERS.
The official rationale behind this decision is two-fold, though neither of them remains convincing after a fairly basic analysis of the state of play.
Reason 1 : Car manufacturers would be better served by Formula One engine regulations in line with the technologies being used in road cars today.
It is entirely true that the car industry is going in the direction of getting more for less, that by adding super-chargers and turbo-chargers to relatively small engines they can achieve their emissions targets without losing much power. And with hybrid cars up and coming, despite claims that their fuel efficiency isn't much better than that of a standard car, it's fairly evident that energy recovery systems will win in the long-run whether petrol-driven cars stay or go. However, saying that car manufacturers would be better served by putting this sort of thing in F1 is a bit of a misnomer, and is open to reasonable attack on two fronts.
First up, justification of parity between race engines and your roadcar are tenuous. Based on current engine regulations, the average F1 engine runs for approximately 15 hours. They're probably designed for more, but given the teams often tell drivers to reduce power to protect the engine, there's clearly little confidence in their reliability. By contrast, your car should be expected to make ten thousand of miles or more before a service, and even at that point we're not talking about replacing the engine. A standard car engine shouldn't give out for anything less than 500,000 miles - taking a stab in the dark at 20mph average speed whilst the engine is running, that'd cover you for about 25,000 hours of operation. The usage cycles are also totally different, the F1 engine is going to be either at 0% or 100% throttle the vast majority of the time, it'll never be sat cruising at 3,500 rpm for two hours along the M6, it'll very rarely work through the bottom of the rev range and never need to sit stationary and idling. For anyone who's not an engineer, imagine you've got to choose an athlete to run a race for you : do you pick Usain Bolt or Haile Gebrsalassie? The decision depends massively on the race to be run, and the ways to get to those engine-metaphors, the training regimes that they follow, are markedly different.
Secondly, the FIA's application of logic regarding aiding development of road-cars is inconsistent at best. Formula One certainly has potential as a searing fire of developmental pressure, its influence on modern driving is beyond question, from the obvious (flappy paddle gearboxes, idiots wearing Ferrari fleeces) to the less-visible but game-changing (anti-lock brakes, traction control, ground-level aerodynamics, advanced materials). But there are key technologies which could have been added to this list, which could have gone even further to save fuel, energy, CO2, the polar bears, etc. Go away and look up "continuously variable transmission", and whilst Wikipedia is loading, reflect on the fact that Williams were at the verge of putting it in a race car (you can see Coulthard driving a straight line test with it - the car makes one constant tone throughout) about 15 years ago when the FIA finally came along and said "yeeeeaaah we're not letting you do that any more, you're already kicking too much ass around here".
I'll probably come back to CVT at a later date, but suffice it to say that the principle is sound, the advantages are certain and the development is finally arriving, no thanks to the FIA.
In fact, this move on engine technologies brings into focus a change in the wind of Formula One and its status in the automotive world. At other times when Formula One has been seen to cut out technologies or take a backwards step in terms of speed the move has been justified in the sense of better racing, more driver control, safer speeds - sporting reasons effectively, or at the worst, to curb the spiralling costs of research and development "bidding" wars. But now F1 is increasingly being forced to follow rather than lead in the world of automotive technologies, catching up with advances such as active aerodynamic surfaces, hybrid power systems & turbo-chargers.
Reason 2 : Certain large companies are not keen to get involved with what is perceived as a "wasteful" sport.
This argument is so full of holes I barely know where to start. How's this : the perception of wastefulness in F1 has nothing to do with the cars' engines and everything to do with the general sense of glamour and glitz that comes with the whole circus, that the jet-setting, glamourous lifestyle it portrays is the very antithesis of environmentalism. The cars, their engines and their own emissions are a drop in a vast sea of waste generated by the whole event. If the FIA wants to appear to care about the environment, stop holding grands prix all over the planet, restrict the season to Europe to slash the insane air freight costs (both financial and environmental) and restrict the number of people each team can bring to an event - sponsors included.
Look at it like this : a Boeing 747-400 as used by British Airways for long haul flights has 14 First Class seats, 80 Club World seats, 30 World Traveller Plus seats and 185 World Traveller seats. Once you include all the mechanics, engineers, public relations staff, managers, chefs, and the sponsors, their friends, families, secretaries etc etc, each team probably fills at least half a 747. And according to a combination of wikipedia, some safe estimates and BA's own website, the carbon emissions of all 24 Formula One cars for the entire official season (20 races, constant running in practice, qualifying and the entire 2 hour maximum race duration) is matched by taking two teams to Melbourne and back for the first race of the season. That's without air freighting all their gear, computers and car parts. Just to fly the people back and forth to the first race of the year, for one-twelfth of the grid.
Seriously, I'm a geek, I actually did some calculations on this : the yearly CO2 ouput of the entire F1 grid is matched by British Airways in one day. On the Heathrow to JFK route alone. By lunchtime.
Formula One doesn't appear wasteful because of car emissions. Formula One appears wasteful because it is, because it sends hundreds of people around the world so that a handful of modern day knights can do battle. It appears wasetful because half the tracks have been built at great expense in recent years on the whim of a government trying to push tourism or the reputation of their country and who are prepared to pay through the nose for it. And in the case of the oil-rich states, Formula One pretty much stops by to pay homage to the lords of the black gold who by their whim allow the whole automotive world to turn.
Now I've nothing per-sé against the reduction of engine capacities nor RPM in F1,(oh yeah, the engine speeds will drop from 18k to 10k rpm, there were proper debates about whether the noise would be too feeble) but the justification needs to make sense. For instance, slashing straight-line speed will inherently reduce the pressure on top-speed aerodynamic performance, hopefully making over-taking easier. It will shake up an engine formula which is currently locked down. It will seemingly bring VW-Audi into the sport. It might even reduce the annual ear-plug budgets around the paddock. But seriously, don't just trot out some PR rubbish with no sound justification.
References for the nerdy number-crunching:
Wikipedia entries on CVT, Boeing 747-400, British Airways, Carbon Emissions, Formula One Engines; Seat Guru; Formula One Official Website.
The Formula One world is on the verge of annoucing new rules about engines. These new regulations will take the F1 engine from a naturally aspirated (i.e. non-turbo-charged, non-super-charged) engine with eight cylinders and a total capacity of 2.4 litres to a turbo-charged, four cylinder engine with a capacity of 1.6 litres. In terms of speed and power, these new engines won't be far behind - turbo-charging should allow them to pull around 80% of the current unit's power and then this will be supplemented with KERS.
The official rationale behind this decision is two-fold, though neither of them remains convincing after a fairly basic analysis of the state of play.
Reason 1 : Car manufacturers would be better served by Formula One engine regulations in line with the technologies being used in road cars today.
It is entirely true that the car industry is going in the direction of getting more for less, that by adding super-chargers and turbo-chargers to relatively small engines they can achieve their emissions targets without losing much power. And with hybrid cars up and coming, despite claims that their fuel efficiency isn't much better than that of a standard car, it's fairly evident that energy recovery systems will win in the long-run whether petrol-driven cars stay or go. However, saying that car manufacturers would be better served by putting this sort of thing in F1 is a bit of a misnomer, and is open to reasonable attack on two fronts.
First up, justification of parity between race engines and your roadcar are tenuous. Based on current engine regulations, the average F1 engine runs for approximately 15 hours. They're probably designed for more, but given the teams often tell drivers to reduce power to protect the engine, there's clearly little confidence in their reliability. By contrast, your car should be expected to make ten thousand of miles or more before a service, and even at that point we're not talking about replacing the engine. A standard car engine shouldn't give out for anything less than 500,000 miles - taking a stab in the dark at 20mph average speed whilst the engine is running, that'd cover you for about 25,000 hours of operation. The usage cycles are also totally different, the F1 engine is going to be either at 0% or 100% throttle the vast majority of the time, it'll never be sat cruising at 3,500 rpm for two hours along the M6, it'll very rarely work through the bottom of the rev range and never need to sit stationary and idling. For anyone who's not an engineer, imagine you've got to choose an athlete to run a race for you : do you pick Usain Bolt or Haile Gebrsalassie? The decision depends massively on the race to be run, and the ways to get to those engine-metaphors, the training regimes that they follow, are markedly different.
Secondly, the FIA's application of logic regarding aiding development of road-cars is inconsistent at best. Formula One certainly has potential as a searing fire of developmental pressure, its influence on modern driving is beyond question, from the obvious (flappy paddle gearboxes, idiots wearing Ferrari fleeces) to the less-visible but game-changing (anti-lock brakes, traction control, ground-level aerodynamics, advanced materials). But there are key technologies which could have been added to this list, which could have gone even further to save fuel, energy, CO2, the polar bears, etc. Go away and look up "continuously variable transmission", and whilst Wikipedia is loading, reflect on the fact that Williams were at the verge of putting it in a race car (you can see Coulthard driving a straight line test with it - the car makes one constant tone throughout) about 15 years ago when the FIA finally came along and said "yeeeeaaah we're not letting you do that any more, you're already kicking too much ass around here".
I'll probably come back to CVT at a later date, but suffice it to say that the principle is sound, the advantages are certain and the development is finally arriving, no thanks to the FIA.
In fact, this move on engine technologies brings into focus a change in the wind of Formula One and its status in the automotive world. At other times when Formula One has been seen to cut out technologies or take a backwards step in terms of speed the move has been justified in the sense of better racing, more driver control, safer speeds - sporting reasons effectively, or at the worst, to curb the spiralling costs of research and development "bidding" wars. But now F1 is increasingly being forced to follow rather than lead in the world of automotive technologies, catching up with advances such as active aerodynamic surfaces, hybrid power systems & turbo-chargers.
Reason 2 : Certain large companies are not keen to get involved with what is perceived as a "wasteful" sport.
This argument is so full of holes I barely know where to start. How's this : the perception of wastefulness in F1 has nothing to do with the cars' engines and everything to do with the general sense of glamour and glitz that comes with the whole circus, that the jet-setting, glamourous lifestyle it portrays is the very antithesis of environmentalism. The cars, their engines and their own emissions are a drop in a vast sea of waste generated by the whole event. If the FIA wants to appear to care about the environment, stop holding grands prix all over the planet, restrict the season to Europe to slash the insane air freight costs (both financial and environmental) and restrict the number of people each team can bring to an event - sponsors included.
Look at it like this : a Boeing 747-400 as used by British Airways for long haul flights has 14 First Class seats, 80 Club World seats, 30 World Traveller Plus seats and 185 World Traveller seats. Once you include all the mechanics, engineers, public relations staff, managers, chefs, and the sponsors, their friends, families, secretaries etc etc, each team probably fills at least half a 747. And according to a combination of wikipedia, some safe estimates and BA's own website, the carbon emissions of all 24 Formula One cars for the entire official season (20 races, constant running in practice, qualifying and the entire 2 hour maximum race duration) is matched by taking two teams to Melbourne and back for the first race of the season. That's without air freighting all their gear, computers and car parts. Just to fly the people back and forth to the first race of the year, for one-twelfth of the grid.
Seriously, I'm a geek, I actually did some calculations on this : the yearly CO2 ouput of the entire F1 grid is matched by British Airways in one day. On the Heathrow to JFK route alone. By lunchtime.
Formula One doesn't appear wasteful because of car emissions. Formula One appears wasteful because it is, because it sends hundreds of people around the world so that a handful of modern day knights can do battle. It appears wasetful because half the tracks have been built at great expense in recent years on the whim of a government trying to push tourism or the reputation of their country and who are prepared to pay through the nose for it. And in the case of the oil-rich states, Formula One pretty much stops by to pay homage to the lords of the black gold who by their whim allow the whole automotive world to turn.
Now I've nothing per-sé against the reduction of engine capacities nor RPM in F1,(oh yeah, the engine speeds will drop from 18k to 10k rpm, there were proper debates about whether the noise would be too feeble) but the justification needs to make sense. For instance, slashing straight-line speed will inherently reduce the pressure on top-speed aerodynamic performance, hopefully making over-taking easier. It will shake up an engine formula which is currently locked down. It will seemingly bring VW-Audi into the sport. It might even reduce the annual ear-plug budgets around the paddock. But seriously, don't just trot out some PR rubbish with no sound justification.
References for the nerdy number-crunching:
Wikipedia entries on CVT, Boeing 747-400, British Airways, Carbon Emissions, Formula One Engines; Seat Guru; Formula One Official Website.