Mercedes Is Owning This Formula 1 Season
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Trick engineering in F1 usually just tricks the regulations or the kinds of physics that only apply to racing prototypes. An example of tricking the regulations would be the double-deck and blown diffusers that were just clever interpretations of the rulebook. Tricking physics is a bit more interesting, a good example would be McLaren's F-Duct which used fancy fluid dynamics to turn a driver's leg into an on/off switch for drag on the rear wing. They basically ran a duct from the front of the car all the way to the wing, with a hole cut into it by the driver's leg. Cover the hole and pressure sucked air through to the wing, smoothing it's profile and reducing drag. Very cool, except I don't know many family sedans that need over 1 ton of downforce at 150mph.
The timing of this innovation in turbocharging couldn't be better. Every manufacturer is trying to gain efficiency with small, turbocharged engines. Small displacement engines are efficient but consumers don't want to trade half their horsepower for 5-10mpg. So companies like Ford and VW are slapping turbos onto these engines and cranking boost levels through the roof. The Fiesta ST runs 21 lbs of boost off the showroom floor. That kind of boost means a lot of heat (the same issue Mercedes' F1 engineers were faced with) so engineers are using every trick in the book to keep temperatures in control (direct injection, temporary overboost, expensive aluminum intercoolers).
What Mercedes' has done isn't so much about the innovative layout, it's that they've made it work without turbo lag. Bring whatever technology they've developed to combat the weight of the turbine shaft to the road and you've made it possible to operate on lower octane fuel while making more power from even smaller displacements.
This is what I like to see from motorsport.
edit: special because any imbalance in the shaft would rip the bearings apart.
The motor/generator sits in the middle of the two turbines so that can help keep shaft length down but gearing 280,000 rpm down to something that wouldn't blow up the motor creates a whole new world of complexity. All I know is that this is very impressive engineering and that there are tons of unique innovations needed to make it all work together.
Better turbos will make for better engines, but I would think you can never fix turbo lag with turbo improvements alone...
The innovative layout is what enables the reduction in turbo lag. The latter is entirely predicated on the physical positions of the turbine relative to the compressor.
And in any case there are better ways to harness energy if you want create downforce.
That, to me, is equivalent of saying who cares what the cars look like? It's all part and parcel of the appeal of the sport - if somethings amiss, you've lost a little bit of that appeal.
That said, I do think some people overdo it a bit and I actually like that FIA is willing to force innovation, even if it's (initially?) unpopular.
It is the most interesting chapter in the book.
What would F1 be like if they relaxed all the rules?
Edit: Just got through the chapter, the author speculates on what would be possible without bans.
The smell of a hot engine, and the shaking of the car also add a lot of fun.
One of the best movie montages ever is the opening sequence of the movie "Grand Prix" where they start the engines and warm em up.
In "Rush" they ruined the movie by having a rock soundtrack laid over the sounds of the cars.
"Bullitt"s car chase has never been equaled because the director had the guts to let the V8s and various car noises be the whole soundtrack. The music overlay stops when the chase starts, the complete opposite of every other movie.
Besides what I already mentioned, Bullitt is cool because:
1. the setup where the guy puts on his seatbelt
2. the total lack of dialog - the driver and the gunman understand each other just by looks
3. the deadpan expression on the driver
4. when Bullitt slides off the road, the slightest, most barely perceptible smile on the driver's face
5. McQueen's expression of complete focus and concentration
6. the 68 Mustang and Charger just totally rock. I never understand having a chase sequence with boring cars
7. the lack of CGI, models, and special effects
8. the skid marks from earlier takes
9. the amazing teleporting Green Beetle :-)
10. I love the shot of the rearview mirror when the hunter becomes the hunted - it's just classic
I'll have to (try and) watch the movie again.
Personal favourite is the car chase from Ronin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVaNBrYLvFg#t=339
Link to Bullitt chase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lbs_nYW3-o
What stops me is I don't have the garage space for it, or I'd get one. If you don't need one fully restored, or numbers matching, or all original, the prices aren't too bad.
I'm a bit surprised by the "single provider" system used there. Read the Wikipedia article and it sounds like McLaren will supply all teams? Doesn't sound ideal to promote research. Also would love to see a Tesla Formula E team.
Mercedes' dominance is ridiculous - and I don't want to take engineering credits away, but there are no fights to watch at the top. Just take a look at the 22 second difference they managed to create in just 11 laps, the laps left after the safety car at Bahrain went in the pit lane. The fun was behind, Force India vs Red Bull vs Williams (vs Ferrari, sigh). Lets hope that other teams can catch up.
Were we watching the same race? The last 11 laps were an epic battle between Rosberg and Hamilton, and the mob contending for points was no less thrilling. I thought it was a great race, at least at the end.
And have you already forgotten 2013? Red Bull won every single race in the second half of the season. Yeah, Mercedes is on top, for now, it's not like a constructor has never been dominant before.
> (It's true that the Hamilton-Rosberg fight in Bahrain was also fun to watch)
My point is: this year looks like the last years' championships with RBR... same dog, different collar.
Anyway my point was - the lack of a real fight doesn't have much to do with the rule change, since it was present last year as well. And anyway, the season's just beginning - let's see what happens.
This doesn't even get into new arrivals like Magnussen and his amazing debut. This season is far from over and getting more interesting by the day.
This year the cars look amazing on track, the torque out of corners is great to watch, the skill of the drivers is now more important than ever. Gone are the days of Vettel sticking his foot down and hitting the apex with ease. Other teams will catch Mercedes up, the the engine unfreeze at the end of the year if not before.
Hardcore fans don't care about this noise. They're there to watch a race not listen to it. Sure it enhances the atmosphere but it's the racing that's important and judging by todays race that's only getting better.
CVT's were previously used but they were banned pretty quickly.
I was 19 years old and the only thing I remember about the trip is 1) the noise! 2) crazy Italians 3) crazy Brazilians 4) strip club under a Burger King
The JPS 98Ts are still possibly the best looking cars ever.
Lap times are about 1% away from last year, not a huge difference. I would expect that by the end of the season, lap times will have caught up.
I have nothing against the turbo engines, but the lack of noise takes away a lot of the atmosphere, especially live.
But particlarly odious is the fuel metering. This is racing - not hypermiling. When stupid rules interfere with racing, racing suffers.
Many hardcore fans are more than happy that the cars sound again like they did back in the 80s before turbo was banned, a deep sound full of power.
Then, five years or so, Mercedes bought what was the Honda/Braun constructor team. Both the engine business and the car constructor part of the empire are in the UK albeit geographically separate.
It would be unsporting for Mercedes to supply their on-track rivals with lesser engines, particularly since they pay top money for them. So the official PR story for this is that the separate constructor part of the business came up with this innovation all on their own for packaging reasons, i.e. a more aerodynamic car.
http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12472/9243875/revealed-how...
Your engine point is moot, because it is up to the team to implement the supplied engine and there are huge monetary differences between teams. A team buying supplied engines is always at a disadvantage in terms of time and design because they didn't design the engines. They have to adapt their car to the engine, while the manufacturer team can develop both in concert. Its similar to Android vs. the iPhone, Apple's products use similar parts but the experience was better because its OS and hardware were developed together, instead of hooked together at the end like Android phones. Also, F1 is not fair in terms of money. Manufacturing teams, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes etc, have R&D budgets multiple times the size of the smaller teams. Even though, Force India buys Merc engines, they have a fraction of the budget to figure out how to optimize it, and terrible drivers in comparison.
Ilmor was founded by 2 Cosworth engineers who disagreed with the development direction of the DFX CART engine, they started with funding from GM to design an Chevy-branded engine for CART which went on to win 6 straight Indy 500s. Despite their immense success, the Ilmor team wanted to design a one-off engine around a loophole that allowed much more regulatory freedom if the engine used pushrods instead of overhead cams. That loophole could theoretically allow an engine to make ~200hp more than the competition butGM was winning trophies hand over fist. They declined to fund the concept so the two companies parted ways.
They still saw enormous potential in the pushrod concept and found willing partners in Roger Penske and Mercedes. Shortly thereafter the Mercedes 500l had been born, also known as Mercedosaurus Rex. It's the spiritual predecessor to this year's engine in that it was in a completely different league than its competition.
If you're interested in motorsport history and engineering you should read this: http://8w.forix.com/penske-mercedes-pc23.html
It's nearly book length but it does a great job of explaining why the 500l deserves its place in motorsports legend.
F1 2014 is more exciting than season 2013 where Red Bull was superior (and '12 & '11) - that was boring.
Now that we've seen the split turbocharger with the turbine at the back, the compressor at the front and the motor-generator unit in between on top of the engine block it seems all too obvious. But coming up with this is ingenious, and making it work on such short notice is quite a feat of engineering.
I can't wait to have this in my road car, 40% fuel saving with only a little drop in performance.
Of course, my knowledge is based on media reports, it is possible that none of the media have seen it in Jerez and Bahrain tests but it was first reported by Craig Scarborough during the Australian GP weekend.
Finally Hamilton's choice to leave McLarren paid dues. I remember him saying last year that "I have the change to run for a team that builds the car piece by piece, from the engine to the tiniest screw, the only other team that can do this is Ferrari". But although the car was fast last year, it was not consistent, too many breaks. This year seems to be the good one.
Also I have to say that I admire Hamilton for not applying any first-second driver policy on Rosberg. After the all he is without doubt the star-driver for Mercedes. I wish him good luck, he deserves another championship, after all the fist one he got was kind of obscured by the McLaren scandal[1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_cont...
To me Formula 1 represents the pinnacle of engine/chassis engineering uninhibited by any green standard of the day. For once just let the creative minds of auto engineering have their day at the track and let the best team win.
There is nothing more sexy to a car guy than hearing a V10 scream down the straights at Fuji Speedway at 21k RPM and nothing more exciting than seeing a V10 engine detonate at 21k RPM. I certainly miss the days of Schumacher and Alonso battling in the final days of the V10 engine.
Mercedes may be currently winning it by the years of preplanning for this day, but the race is already over by using today’s standard.
EDIT: In case you never heard a V10 engine http://youtu.be/MGEqlNU30Tg
I'd like to think some of the immense amount of research and development that went into the Bishop Rotary Valve for Mercedes F1 has not gone to waste.
http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/PDF/AutoTechBRV.pdf
"Only reciprocating poppet valves are permitted"
For blast furnaces you want to preheat the air going in so that it does not cool down the furnace. Is it just about cooling the engine down, or is it something else?
If your combustion chamber grows too hot, you can suffer from pre-ignition, where your fuel-air mixture ignites sooner than it should. This results in wasted power and increased temps as the engine has to compress the now-expanding combustion charge.
What often follows pre-ignition (provided nothing has melted or blown up yet) is detonation. In normal combustion, you have a flame front that expands smoothly from the ignition spark and causes a smooth increase in pressure. It occurs quickly, but it's not an explosion. Detonation is the opposite. Pockets of fuel-air mixture in any part of the combustion chamber ignite explosively, sending out sharp shockwaves that are too fast to be absorbed by the rotating mass of the engine. If the detonations are too powerful or too frequent, they can cause catastrophic damage.
There's plenty more that can be explained on the subject and I'm sure somebody can find something to correct, but that's the gist of it. The engine is already hot enough, higher intake temps make things worse, go too far and you get abnormal combustion which results in spontaneous disassembly.
Car engines are heat engines, they extract mechanical work from differences in temperature. Heat engine efficiency is n = 1 - sqrt(Tcold/Thot)
If Tcold, the cold end, isn't cold enough, then you lose efficiency, and thus horsepower. A badly overheating engine loses a lot of power. If you can cool the compressed air back down to ambient, then your engine produces more power.
For pure efficiency, it is actually beneficial to capture waste heat in the exhaust to heat the intake air. But it destroys your power density, for the reasons already mentioned (hot air has less mass at the same pressure). I believe some automotive engines actually do this under light load conditions, but you wouldn't see it in F1.
It's among a myriad of new tech introduced this year, and Mercedes just happen to have the most complete package available.
I say tough. They will catch up eventually. But there should be no drastic changes that hurt all the work Mercedes put in.
As an example: Stephen Fry uses it, and he is a.) a geek and b.) not the kind of person to insult people for that kind of thing - when he uses it he always just means that they're people doing something complicated that he doesn't know about.
It might have a dismissive or mocking connotation, depending on the intention of the person using it. I guess in the worst case, its use could be described as 'othering'
ps. Funny how fast all these vivid thoughts crossed my mind in less the 2 seconds.
That's nothing, though, compared to this: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_02_02_newy...
http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/2...