F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
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
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.
If you have a blog, you should put your url out here.
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"
http://blog.octanenation.com/kubica-accident-pictures-an-aut...
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.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1752888-can-a-formula-1-c...
(I might be able to watch it for longer than three minutes then)
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
The only case of a manufacturer actually wanting to perform a test was Gumpert with Apollo, according to Top Gear UK (take it FWIW).
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.
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.
Besides, constraining the car specs in and of itself stifles innovation. How much F1 tech is there in Tesla, for example?
Tyres very much evolved because of formula 1. Carbon fiber and a few more. No need to underestimate development in F1, especially when manufacturers itself are involved. Prove of that is that Honda announced coming back to F1 as an engine manufacturer straight after new rules was confirmed.
Link gives more details about some F1 innovations in the road cars. http://www.gocompare.com/covered/2013/03/eight-driving-innov...
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.
Then again, that follows their ban in 1989.
(1) Max Mosley and the International Automobile Federation decided 18 months before the 2009 season that all teams must develop a Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or KERS, for use in the 2009 season. It was part of the effort to make Formula 1 more <environmentally clean and relevant>.[1]
(2) Equally, efficiency will be key in 2014. And guess who had the most aerodynamically efficient car and fuel-efficient engine. Yes, Red Bull and partner Renault.
(3) These engines will be governed by two different fuel restrictions: a maximum fuel-flow rate of 100kg an hour; and a maximum of 100kg of fuel to be used through a race.
Now, that being said...the magnetic ers recovery of the turbo over-spin and electronic wastegate seem interesting and quite cool.
[1] From: An A-Z Look at KERS, the F1 Environmental Initiative, http://formula1.about.com/od/car1/a/An-A-Z-Look-At-Kers-The-...
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.
It already wasn't about best car 15 years ago, or in the 90s for that matter. Turbos were banned in 1989 for instance.
Do you not think Vettel is the best driver in F1? How is the fact that he has now won 4 consecutive championships aligned with your statement that the rules promote random outsider wins?
F1 is not what is once was - the romance is gone. Vettel? He's a n00b that does it for the money.
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.
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.
2013 has been a bore - but partly because the past few seasons have been spectacular.
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.
The foreign player rule is about trying to boost national players rather than international players and has nothing to do with trying to even the (metaphorical) playing field.
As to the question whether or not this would make for "great telly" or not, I leave to those far more cynical than me.
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.
Now that's something I'd tune in for! A couple of high budget vehicles and sophisticated driver AIs slugging it out on a racetrack, that would definitely be interesting.
And the driver salaries could be donated to charity ;-)
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.
Ground effect[0], thoroughly used in LMP to gain downforce without suffering as much drag as with a wing.
Here's what happens when the effect breaks down[1].
From the Wikipedia article: "The BT46B generated an immense level of downforce by means of a fan, claimed to be for increased cooling, but which also extracted air from beneath the car. The car only raced once in this configuration in the Formula One World Championship—when Niki Lauda won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp. To the dismay of its designer Gordon Murray, the concept was voluntarily withdrawn from racing again by Bernie Ecclestone."
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.
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.
To keep the audience alive, the track safety upgrades would be unfortunately expensive for track owners.
To keep the cars on the road, I suspect expensive track modifications would eventually be required. Perfectly vertical turns, perhaps.
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/
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.
But by this point, you are effectively left with a rocket that just happens to have some circular things that touch the ground.
It would start resembling aerobatic aircraft like Extra 300.
High aerodynamic acceleration is an old thing, it's how they actually discovered G-induced loss of consciousness. If you are mostly doing the racing with electronic motors, there's less noise and it's not as interesting anymore. Therefore some airstream operated whistle or siren would be useful, as you could deduce the speed directly from it:
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.
Maybe people would want to watch it on video or even VR so it seems like they are actually there. Who knows if done right it could be a better experience then looking at 1 piece of a race track for hours.
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.
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.
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.
The cars have been able to go faster than drivers can handle for a long time.
I don't think a race at 228 mph would be safer than a restrictor plate race and I am pretty sure it would kill more people.
1) look at all the attention to the Nationwide Race where the catch fence failed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8lyBFmkAKw
Actually all his F1 videos are excellent.
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.
I'm not sure this is true in England - most diesel cars on the road have a turbocharger.
Also look at the Audi R10 TDI [φ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volkswagen_Group_petrol...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twincharger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4AGE#4A-GZE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_MA_MA09ERT
[My downsizing of car sizes has seen me go from a 4.4 V8 BMW to a 2.5 V6 Turbo diesel VW to a 1.4TSI VW - perfectly happy with the latter now!]
AFAIK only real sour lemon were the 1.4 petrol engines and those dual charged engines from the mid 00's. But around here everybody knows that only true VAG engine is a diesel. That is the folk lore around here not my own opinion.
I myself drive a Peugeot as for my tastes price/performance of VAG is not as good.
Personally I would steer away from Renault (had several, only "good" car was R4 :)), and basically any American brand. I think that in the value department Asian brands are giving European and US brands quite a run for ther money. Too bad they do not make a Berlingo/Caddy/Kangoo class of a car.
Even if VAG is total shit, dual charged engines are not something you would want in your vehicle. I think hybrids are a much better and simpler option.
There is another phenomena around diesels in the USA. Which is the perception of the general population towards them. People often think of them as noisy, smelly, and unreliable autos. This due to the awful diesel engines produced by American auto manufacturers during the 70's and 80's. General Motors is the one to blame for the awful engineering and cost-cutting practices that led the public to see diesels as a non-option.
Funny how the perception of a technology can be tainted by poor implementation. I'm not sure how European diesels were in the past, but as long as I've bothered to pay attention (~10 years), diesel has been more popular here since fuel is so darn expensive. Will be interesting to see if the gain in popularity of Euro/Asian cars over there will have any effect on the number of diesels on the road.
It makes sense that diesel costs more because it contains more energy per unit volume and fuel is sold by volume.
And most EU countries(with the stark exception of UK) have diesel a lot cheaper than petrol.
One of the things that has kept diesel out of the USA until recently is the diesel fuel was good enough for heavy trucks to meet truck emissions standards but wasn't good enough for diesel cars to meet car emissions standards. This wasn't the case in the EU for some years because truck emissions standards in EU are more strict and car emissions standards were less strict compared to California. Now that you can get ultra-low sulfur diesel in all 50 US states it is becoming easier to market diesel cars in the USA. But the new fuel standards (since 2010) also make diesel cost more.
>Here in Switzerland
The last time I checked Switzerland was not in the EU.
I've been driving various turbocharged cars for 20 years, and both cars in the garage right now have turbos. I'd be surprised if you could drive on a highway more than a couple of miles without seeing one.
So, based on my own observation, I'd says that gas-powered turbocharged passenger cars are common yet still greatly outnumbered.
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.
While significantly noisier these are very fuel efficient and even quite fun to drive due to their torque output.
One interesting point is that none of the American manufacturers has paid much attention to centrifugal superchargers. The only centrifugal supercharger equipped auto I remember working on was the VW Corrado G60.
I never heard nice things about the reliability of the Corrado's G-lader... not that the 12V VR6 is a marvel of easy maintenance either, but people seem to prefer them.
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.
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).
You don't need to remove the resistance to get boost if you've only used the resistance to avoid overspeed. You've limited the turbine to max RPM and thus max boost. You only need to remove resistance or even reverse it and have the electric motor spin up the turbine when the RPMs drop below the boost value you want.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-speed/the-...
Not F1, but very much a case of wiggling through the rules.
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.
The only reason he is in 2nd place is because he didn't save his tyres - and the reason he has to now lose places is because the guys behind did. In the end it usually works out the way it should be and we get some fighting on the last few laps. Even 5 years ago the last 15-20 laps were a procession to the line. I think introducing a bit of excitement towards the end is much better.
But it's better than the Schumacher era, with absolutely no challenge to him.
I think all teams will be doing this in 2014.
I'm afraid races might get boring when drivers will have to conserve their fuel or just lose the race.
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.
Even circle tracks have tremendous local variation from a racing point of view.
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.
I like NASCAR because F1 feels too teched up and NASCAR doesn't even give the driver a fuel gauge or speedometer. Plus all that weight and those small breaks. And just to stop another stereotype, I hate wrecks and cautions and I haven't met anyone who does.
NASCAR is also the most fan friendly sport with a huge amount of fan interaction with the drivers and cars. NASCAR fans can even go on the actual track in training vehicles.
Be nice.
Isn't the lack of fuel gauges more due to them being inaccurate if you are at a 30 degree slant and back to level? I believe they use fuel pressure gauges to indicate if they are running out of fuel.
I cannot remember Cup racing a street course, but the Nationwide did in Canada and the Trucks raced on dirt[1] this year, so they might be a Cup date in the future. Nationwide ran a road course in Mexico City, so that might be a possibility for Cup.
They just don't let drivers have much info or else they'd let the drivers have a speedometer. Heck, they've banned cellphones in the car since that could be used to get performance information.
1) a Cup race on dirt is a scary thought, pitting would be odd
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.
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)
However, it appears that it wasn't until 1983 that a team (Brabham) deliberately built a car with a tank too small to hold enough fuel to finish a race [2]. Brabham went on to win the 1983 championship and refuelling was banned from 1984.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_German_Grand_Prix [2]: http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/refueling.html
So using the historical argument, it's the refueling ban whose stint has been brief (1984 - 1993, and 2010 - ?)
Both mid-race refueling and the refueling rule have had brief stints.
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:
Here's another disturbing pitstop fire of Heikki Kovalainen leaving the pit stall with the fueling hose still attached and the fuel gets sprayed on his compatriot Kimi Räikkönen, who went on to finish the race in 5th spot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvgjhfQLTNk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzg_9UXo9s8
Trying to refuel 50 liters (15 gallons) or more in less than 10 seconds is bound to be dangerous.
I'm quite excited by this, can't wait to see what innovations will come out of the new restrictions!
[potato] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/galler...
In short, the latency introduced by voice comms far outweighs any geographical distance introduced by sending data to and from the cray at homebase.
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