Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

amelius

How about F1 cars?

View on HN

Back in the 1960's and 1970's F1 was pure carnage. Things have gotten a lot better.

Here is a summary of improvements: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/149628/history-of-safety-d...

Here is a quite scary crash that Fernando Alonso walked away from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x45fLUTHCuk

The basic idea is the car is designed to be completely destroyed except for the survival cell for the driver.

The only safe way to drive an F1 car is with remote control.

No, you could also safely drive an F1 car from the driver’s seat by limiting your speed to 40 km/h.

I doubt a normal driver would be able to drive a F1 at any speed. Just keeping it below 40 km/h would be impossible.

The car itself can limit speed like they already do in pit lanes

Maybe. Last I checked, the tires on F1 cars are optimized for traction at actual racing speeds (when they get hot and stickier), which means that at low speeds F1 cars actually have much poorer traction than one might think. Only matters on turns, presumably, and 40km/h might be slow enough that it does not matter, but I'd really want to see some experimental data before deciding on anything that happens so far out of a vehicle's intended-use envelope.

Could you? Here[1] is Richard Hammond driving an F1 car on Top Gear, and he says it can't go slowly, safely - no downforce, no heat in the tyres, no heat in the brakes. If you're coming off a lot of fast laps into the pit lane they will still be warm, if you try to drive it at 40km/h all the way they won't be.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGUZJVY-sHo

Hammond is correct, however the term "slowly" in an F1 car would refer to speeds like 60–100 km/h. Note that the pit lane speed limit is generally 100 km/h during a race. I picked 40 km/h as it's a speed which even the hardest rubber tyre would not present difficulty retaining traction even without the aid of any downforce.

And indeed, if my memory of Hammond's experience is anything to go by, the F1 engine may not even be able to handle being driven exclusively at such slow speeds without stalling out.

Has there ever been a full or partial head-on collision with an f1 car?

My guess would be one car spinning 180 degrees and another one hitting it must have happened, even with the spinned car at rest and the other one at high speed, but two cars moving at speed in reverse directions? Unlikely.

They’ve been T-Boned in modern times and although not exactly a head on collision with another vehicle, they do crash at high 100+ MPH straight into barriers with very limited injuries.

Yes, in Abu Dhabi in 2010, Michael Schumacher spun 180 and Vitantonio Liuzzi then hit him head on.

It was at relatively low speed (for F1) but Schumacher's head was very nearly hit as the other car rode over his.

Colliding with a rigid stationary object is generally just as bad as a head on collision with a similar vehicle. The shortest short hand for why this is so is because each car brings its own momentum and it’s own crumple zone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com