F1 testing

[sammyg2]

Remember the good old days when a driver got killed at almost every race?

[Deschodt]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Remember the good old days when a driver got killed at almost every race?

Very well. But that had more to do with track safety and car design than it did with how the cars looked.... They did look good though, damn !

[rusnak]

Honda are the Lance Stroll of engine suppliers.

Time for the McLaren rookie owners to try to persuade Porsche/ Audi/ VW to have a go.

If not, then crawl back to Mercedes. Or just give up and sell the whole thing to some car company and go back to selling oil and airplane rides.

[matthewb0051]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

I'd be happy if they'd just get rid of all the complicated unreliable hybrid crap.

]

I'm ok with the hybrid stuff. Its the aero that they all complain about that keeps passing to a minimum.

On the otherhand, my first race was at Hockenheim in 2002. The main grandstand forms a bowl down the start finish straight. The 3 litre V10 at 19k RPM was chest thumping in the grandstand.

So maybe you are on to something...

V10 or 12, little to no aero. Then lets see who is best.

[sammyg2]

In a perfect world we could just specify maximum displacement and type of fuel.
Then let them have at it. Best design goes fastest and wins. That's how we get innovation.

This wanna be spec racer stuff with all sorts of gimmick energy recovery BS and a go-zillion restrictions just makes the cars more expensive and less reliable.

[legion]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

In a perfect world we could just specify maximum displacement and type of fuel.
Then let them have at it. Best design goes fastest and wins. That's how we get innovation.

^This.

[flipper35]

Wasn't that Can/Am?

[Captain Ahab Jr]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

In a perfect world we could just specify maximum displacement and type of fuel.
Then let them have at it. Best design goes fastest and wins. That's how we get innovation.

This wanna be spec racer stuff with all sorts of gimmick energy recovery BS and a go-zillion restrictions just makes the cars more expensive and less reliable.

F1 racing is on a different planet from any motorsport spec racer championship. LMP1 comes quite close but everything else is decades behind in the technology, materials, computing power, organisational stakes etc

There has been plenty of innovation in recent years but the public never get to see it as teams don't want to give away their competitive advantage their innovation brings.

Opening the rules would actually make the racing less competitive and kill off the competition very quickly. Keeping the rules stable and unchanged over time bunches up the competition to make better racing.

I'd love nothing more than to work on a race car where the only rules are 'if it fits in this size box and has 4 tyres touching the ground and passes stringent safety tests' as the options are unlimited.

Closest thing today to this nirvana is the Aston Martin road car that Adrian Newey and his team at Red Bull are designing. I'm reliably informed it will active aerodynamics, active suspension, monster powerful engine, very lightweight and so much down force the active suspension has been added to stop the tyres from exploding.

Unfortunately the sad reality is this approach wouldn't work with racing teams that spend 100's of millions. Budgets would get out of hand, teams would quit and there would be no racing.

In a past life not long ago I was paid to look at all the teams F1 cars in excruciating detail but I've not had a chance to with the new cars. From the few pictures I've seen I think the level of detail and complexity has taken a massive leap forward.

Will this translate into closer racing? I'm not sure it will.

[nota]

Originally Posted by flipper35

Wasn't that Can/Am?

no they did not have displacement limits
or many other rules or limits

but the limited number of 917 turbo's and their costs killed it

[sammyg2]

The good old days.

The group 7 category was essentially a Formula Libre for sports cars; the regulations were minimal and permitted unlimited engine sizes (and allowed turbocharging and supercharging), virtually unrestricted aerodynamics, and were as close as any major international racing series ever got to have an "anything goes" policy. As long as the car had two seats, bodywork enclosing the wheels, and met basic safety standards, it was allowed.

[Heel n Toe]

LIVE: Follow the Barcelona F1 test as it happens

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/live-follow-the-barcelona-f1-test-as-it-happens-878870/?tp%5B0%5D=31&s=1

[Heel n Toe]

Three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton says fans shouldn't expect "fantastic racing" under Formula 1's new-for-2017 regulations.

Hamilton has long voiced concerns that the new rules could make the racing worse in F1 – and the Briton appears to be even more convinced of that possibility following the three days of Barcelona pre-season testing so far.

"The issue is exactly the same as it was before," said Hamilton. "We’ve got all this downforce and we need more mechanical grip. We need better grip from these bigger tyres, and less downforce, whereas it’s gone the other way.

"Let's hope the racing is fantastic, but don't hold your breath, I would say."

While Pirelli's new tyres are designed to better cope with the dirty air from rival cars, Hamilton is certain that won't make it sufficiently easy to follow others on track.

"I don't think it was ever the case of the tyres going off [in dirty air]," he said. "It was always the aero, in the front wing and in the rest of the car.

"Now the turbulence is easily twice as powerful from the back of the car so this magnifies the issue we had before."
"We weren't listened to"

After Hamilton said on Monday that his first test run suggested his suspicions about the challenge of following rivals in 2017 were correct, Red Bull's Max Verstappen offered a different opinion, saying it felt no different to last year.

[Holger]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Boy, THAT was F1!


The 2017 cars will be ridiculous fast compared with 2016.

[Heel n Toe]

McLaren‏ Verified account @McLarenF1

Nice rooster tails, Stoff. #F1Testing

https://twitter.com/McLarenF1/status/837216672624881664/video/1

[Heel n Toe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVc8WDk8JyU&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_guSPVOIM

[Deschodt]

Not much sound improvement from last year... Oh well... Wishing for a return to small capacity grenades (V12s) naturally aspirated, with KERS being heat and brakes only. Would make everybody happy... manufacturers seem to be walking away from small turbo engines for their road cars at the moment, as they turns out not to be that efficient in the real world (surprise!).. Just dreaming I guess.

[bkreigsr]

Back on topic for a sec.

Experts - What's going on here?
Measuring downforce?
Thanks
Bill K

[Captain Ahab Jr]

Not an expert but I'd reckon you are correct.

The big lump on the LHS rear wing end plate is a multi-port sensor block for measuring various pressure tapping's on the rear wing. The rib below the lump is hiding a bundle of small tubes

In various locations a small hole in the underside of the wing is connected via a very small tube which connects to a sensor which measures pressure at each location as the car is driven around the track.

Unlike an aeroplane wing an F1 wing is always very close to stalling so as to extract maximum down force but the downside is they are very sensitive to tail winds

Its the way the teams measure track performance compared to the CFD and wind tunnel results.

The underside of the floor will have dozens of small holes but the sensor block will be hidden inside the bodywork.

Hope this helps,

[Deschodt]

Horner is still hoping that Brawn might force everyone to ditch the shark fin before Australia ! Would be cool to have cars that don't look like a Bus advert from the side !

[yellowperil]

I don't think Andretti did that well in the Alfa, but it looked good.