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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

> Turbochargers have come and gone and there hasn't been a switch to two-stroke or rotary, scotch yoke engines

This is tangential to the article but these things are not in F1 because they are bad but because several of the configurations are too good. Most of the above are banned. Today only 4-Stroke engines with reciprocating pistons are permitted in F1. See page 12:

http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.nsf/C5F0793AC322A70CC12...

The FIA also banned Rotary engines in Le Mans after the 787B won, enforcing all participants afterwards to use 3.5L F1 engines (correct me if I'm wrong there, might have changed since 1991?)

It kind of saddens me because racing platforms (esp. Rally) are big drivers of car innovation (suspension, safety, power). Arbitrarily banning things like rotary engines has - in a way - killed an immeasurable amount of research money that might have gone towards the topic.

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I agree with your sadness over the FIA's micromanagement of design.

I remember the cars when I was growing up, like the Brabham fan car (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Brabham_BT46 ) or the Tyrrell 6-wheeler (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tyrrell_P34 )

We've lost a lot, both in terms of the pure entertainment of seeing the new ideas, and in terms of lost opportunities for improving our everyday transportation through innovation.

BTW, I'm planning on giving a Toastmasters speech in 2 weeks on F1. Maybe I'll mention this.

From a pure engineering perspective I absolutely agree. I'm too young to remember the P34 or BT46 in person but the shock of seeing different approaches is definitely sadly missed.

In sporting terms though, I (sadly) think they've gone down the right general path. Partly for containing safety as there's no denying that some of the developments have been less than ideally safe to put it delicately - the idea of the combined evolution of an MP4 ground-effect car with the 1500BHP Honda V6 turbo, but with another 25 years of development, just wouldn't be manageable or safely driveable with the lateral G it could generate. Also though, for cost containment - F1 had spent too long going up expensive blind alleys that served no competition benefit.

This is a benefit of LMP racing though for me, which I love to watch. The diesel cars may sound a bit odd but the sight of a Peugeot 908, Audi R10 and Lola Aston LMP1 thundering through the Becketts-Maggots complex while picking their way through the GTs is just awesomely impressive, and you can continue to see genuine differentiation and innovation in the chassis.

Agreed. While I feel curious about what sort of spectacle we'd be seeing if they were still allowed to run 1.5l turbo motors with active suspension and ground effects all at the same time, I understand the need to both keep costs within reasonable bounds, and to keep drivers alive...

Here's something I don't understand: Why do they ban technologies on cost grounds? Why not just force the teams to sell one of their cars (chosen by random) in an auction at some minimum price at the end of the season? Banning technologies to control costs just results in more money being poured in to old technologies, when it should be poured into new technologies that could finally set us free from the tyranny of traditional IC engines.

Well, at present the cars are pretty much written off at the end of the year as total losses anyway - you might see a few cropping up for sale, but for well below the manufacturing costs in my experience. So forcing a sale wouldn't really change the economics of the situation in the way you're thinking.

Who would buy though? The cars gain new parts on a race-by-race basis - they're never line production vehicles so there'd never be a stock of parts available to support them. The support infrastructure to run them is horrendously intricate, components are designed to be inspected every few hundred miles.... I can't see how it'd be viable - the current market that buys the few cars that crop up is hardly enormous.

Recent winners of Le Mans have been powered by diesel engines.

I went 3 years ago and it was very strange - the diesel power LMP1 cars were almost inaudibly quiet compared to the petrol powered cars. Almost like they were floating round the track - most surreal.

Diesel engines have advanced incredibly in the last 15 years.

(Yeah the new Audi's are incredible!)

And they were trying everything to cut the balls of them, weren't they?

The Diesels aren't banned but they restricted their fuel-tank size. They also have to refuel slower than non-diesels (not by design but by regulation) and they have a new +30kg weight increase restriction just for diesels.

There might be more. I suppose its not a bad thing to try to equalize the cars for racing by putting handicaps (and thus leaving it up to the drivers skill) but I dislike the outright banning of certain technologies.[1]

> I dislike the outright banning of certain technologies.[1]

So do I. Did you forget to include some link you intended to include?

Yeah, but FIA also has a mandate to keep the race safe. So it tries to restrict maximum speed and power, without killing the sport. For example, air inlets have a maximum area limit. This clearly restricts air intake.

F1 is not the only sport with such restriction. The Tour de France has imposed minimum bike weights and the actual 2 wheel upright bike configuration, which is far from optimal. All other cycling competitions have followed. Recumbent bikes allow the racer to better use his legs and are more aerodynamic, thus faster. You can also buy bikes that are lighter than Tour de France bikes. It's just that they're really expensive, of course.

Restricting power is a very good idea and I find it pretty agreeable (See: Group B). This is what they've been doing with the diesel cars in Lemans.

But restricting entire technologies is something else entirely and kind of frustrates me.

If the need is to limit power, then why not directly limit power: make a rule stating "no more than 600bhp" or something like that?

Improved technologies could still flourish. If a new approach could deliver more than the power limit, it might instead be re-tuned to provide better durability or better fuel efficiency or lighter weight.

But the FIA has interfered with any of these possible paths of innovation, because it's thinking more like a government and less like a group whose very purpose is to compete.

There is a lot that goes into engine performance rather than just raw power. This is why the rules become so intricate and convoluted.

More expensive? hardly, you can put a bike lighter than tour de france spec for less than two grand. Mind, for all but the most dedicated amateurs that level of equipment won't make a difference.

Personally, I'd like to see a new road class in le mans, perhaps < 700kg and 2L naturally aspirated, IE: Road cars. (Stuff that we could actually buy)

>It kind of saddens me because racing platforms (esp. Rally) are big drivers of car innovation (suspension, safety, power). Arbitrarily banning things like rotary engines has - in a way - killed an immeasurable amount of research money that might have gone towards the topic.

While I do agree with that sentiment, FIA is the difficult postion of balancing innovation with fairness. They tend to use bans to keep the playing field somewhat level. Also, in the past few years fuel efficiency is playing a bigger role with KERS and the switch to 1.6l I4 coming 2013. Those restrictions should lead to some interesting consumer level technologies.

An idea I heard floated, but never got as much consideration as I would have liked: Teams get a fixed amount of fuel for the race, how they go about converting that into energy is entirely up to them.

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