How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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hollus
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How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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Reading about engine unfreezes, and testing bans, and other freezes in general, and hearing about how much it would cost to have a limited number of piece upgrades in a season...
How much would it really cost?
If there is any finite number of upgrades a season, say, 2 engine design changes, you'd save somewhat in hardware compared to an unlimited arms race, but the design team would surely be running 24/7 365 days a year anyways.

So where is the money (of a winning team) actually spent?

How much money goes into designing the car? I guess this would count to the point where metal is cut of carbon fiber is laid.
How much money goes into actually building the car? I guess test pieces, as well as dyno engined and crash test parts whould be included here.
How much goes into running the car? I guess this means consumables, mechanic's saliries and hotels, data logging, etc.
And how much money goes into logistics, factory buiding, PR, etc, where a small team could arguably compete in a level playig field with 10% of the bugdet?
For example, how much does it cost to build a new nose to the old specification as opposed to building it to a new specification?
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marcush.
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Re: How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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Wait ..How many people work in those offices? 300? 500? how many of them are actually designing things ? how many are involved in R&D and how many in pur e manufacturing ? Sure the development guys and Designers are woking all year on the car ..so all of their workforce has to be counted towards car design cost ..Assuming they have around 150 to 250 people in the "brain and boffin department " and they pay very lowly ...you are already at 25 mill € for car design human recources alone.
Sure that´s also including design of molds and fixtures but it´s also the area were you can save a lot money by keeping things simple and not put too much research into it ,cutting off alternative lines of thought and parallel projects asap.In other words
HRT did not even spent 5€ in this area maybe ....it may have gone as far as not even all parts had their cad model and the whole thing was not fully documented...
To actually build the thing is much more calculable methinks .Even though I´d tend to believe the lower teams need a lot more effort to build their cars as a result of less recources spent to develop the thing resulting in less sophisticated detailing and more carry over of "legacy" parts as a matter of saving cost in design .

Mercedes change in build quality over the years is a good example how more people involved in a project allow the design team to go in much more detail with their product resulting in a more fluent overall design result.Cut off 100 people and some things cannot be done in detail .The car will still run -but look a bit rough around the edges.
Last edited by marcush. on 19 Oct 2014, 22:52, edited 2 times in total.

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Juzh
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Re: How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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10 complete PUs alone is 20 mil.

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Forza
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Re: How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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Hollus you will have to combine the avaliable data a bit ( some of it is obsolate) but you can get the general view into it. The current figures are a bit harder to find as teams don't want to give away accurate infos.

Part 1

The Costs of a Formula One Car
A modern F1 car is the pinnacle of years of research, design and trial and error. Each year a race team spends tens of millions of dollars to develop lighter materials and more aerodynamic exteriors. The result is a very expensive racing machine. Not including the driver, pit crew, fuel and transportation expenses, a single F1 car can cost upwards of $16-17 million for a season of racing. Running two of these cars requires a lot of money and teams like Ferrari are reported to have a yearly budget of over $300 million. Current champions Red Bull Racing drove their way to victory with a budget of over $270 million. Why so much? Well, the amount of research and development which go into the various car parts means they are inherently expensive. You can’t find parts for a F1 car in your local parts store. From the steering wheel to the spoilers, parts often need to be manufactured specifically for each team with the highest level of precision using advanced equipment and software.

Taking research and development costs out of the equation, the bare bones parts that go into a F1 car still make it a multimillion dollar project. Some of the more notable expenses include:

Engines:

A 2.4 litre V8 engine provided power to all F1 cars from 2006 until 2013. Teams could utilize several of these motors per car over a season. At a cost of over $170,000 each, a single F1 seasonal car engine budget can reach $1.75 million.

Gearbox:
F1 teams generally keep the specifics of their gearbox under wraps. It is estimated, however, that the five gearboxes allocated per car cost a combined $530,000.

Monocoque:
Excluding the millions spent on R&D, a seasonal cost for monocoques is estimated at around $200,000.

Spoilers:

These are the aerodynamic pieces at the front and back of the car which help push the car down as it speeds up. Together, these parts can cost as much as $200,000.

Suspension:
Made up of dozens of parts, including shocks, springs, torsion bars and push rods, a modern F1 suspension can cost approximately $120,000.

Steering Wheel:
The F1 wheel has controls for the radio, differential, driver feeding pump, clutch, fuel, torque, oil pump and many more. It’s no surprise that this unit can cost upwards of $80,000.

These are only some of the parts costs of a Formula One car. If one adds in the extras, such as brakes, exhaust, dashboard, tires, rims, fuel tank and telemetry sensors and software, an estimated parts value of a modern F1 car reaches around $3.6 million. This price is set to increase further given Formula One’s upcoming switch from the 2.4 litre V8 to a 1.6 litre turbocharged V6 developed by Mercedes, Ferrari and Renault. The new motor is reported to put out around 800 hp and redline at 15,000 rpm. The drop in horsepower from the V8 will be somewhat compensated by the addition of a turbocharger as Formula One moves to make lighter and more fuel efficient motors the norm. In terms of car expense, the new drive train alone is expected to cost teams approximately $13 million per season.


There were some numbers from Mercedes HPP recently about their PU development budget so I will add few from Renault Sport side provided by Finacial Times/JAF1 site.

The cost of competing in F1
John Reed spoke with Jean Francois Caubet, who manages Renault’s F1 engine programme, and he spelled out the amount Renault used to spend on the sport and how that compares with what they outlay now, being just an engine supplier. He also confirms that Renault threatened to quit the sport completely this summer over the 2014 engine rules.

“We are a total cost around €120m,” said Caubet, explaining how much they spend on the existing engine programme. “The net cost – total cost minus sales – is €60m. For €60m you have a big exposure in the world”

This is interesting for a number of reasons. It shows that
the costs are still high; Renault still spends €120 million a year even though the V8 engines are frozen from a development point of view. The company supplies 16 racing engines a year plus test engines to Red Bull, Lotus Renault and Team Lotus (soon to be renamed Caterham). Next year they will add in Williams to the roster.

This is a huge saving compared to the time when the French car maker ran its own team, which it sold at the end of 2009.

“In the past the total cost of the team was between €250-280m. (But after deducting) sponsorship and TV rights, net cost about €180m.”

In other words Renault is now spending a third of the amount it spent to run its own team in 2009. It has won the world championship for the last two years with Red Bull Racing. This arrangement seems to be working well.

“We have a five-year deal with Red Bull. In the past it was difficult to have a long-term strategy, because the strategy was linked to results. 
For a carmaker, you can’t explain what’s your budget in 5 years on a team,” added Caubet.
A bit older but insightful info nevertheless.

The Economics of Entertainment and Sports - Concepts and Cases: The economics of F1 racing
Exhibit 14.2 displays the average team budget during the 2003 season. The slice \other" under \driver salaries and other" includes items such as wind tunnel operations, travel & accommodation, corporate entertainment & catering, and car manufacturing. Perhaps surprisingly, engines represent almost one half of the total budget. By contrast, actual car manufacturing accounts for less than 1%. Driver salaries, at about 6% are about one third of total salaries (about 15%).

Formula One is not just a race between drivers; it is also a race between constructers, who will spare little expense to shave an extra second from average lap time. In fact, without any regulations, constructor competition can easily turn into a sort of arms race.

Two areas where \the sky is the limit" are (a) testing and (b) car engines. For example, developing a new engine may cost tens of millions of dollars. By 2008, engine manufacturers were selling engines for about $25 million a piece.
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Last edited by Forza on 20 Oct 2014, 00:59, edited 2 times in total.

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Forza
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Re: How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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Part 2: The Epsilon Euskadi F1 project report for the rear wing optimization from 2011 is actually one of the most detailed and current studies you can find around the internet net. It gives a full insight into a development cycle (including costs, resources and workforce) for a certain part of F1 racecar. This only shows one of many parts that consists the whole F1 project. Recommended reading for those interested.

Source: Epsilon Euskadi
Epsilon Euskadi: Formula One Rear Wing Optimization

The main goal of this project consists in the aerodynamic development of the rear wing of the Epsilon Euskadi Fo rmula One prototype, which is being prepared for 2011 season. The quantity of computing resources for its development in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) limits the evolution of the car. Therefore an optimization of the procedure is needed. In order to accelerate the development and improve the decision making when testing new wings, it is used ModeFrontier to automate all the 3D design, CFD simulation and further data treatment. Moreover,through internal algorithms of this software, new candidates are found to improve the wing without the intervention of any engineer.

To obtain a design which can be automatically improved, CFD Formula One model is analyzed with StarCCM+, and it is created a parametric design of the rear wing in CATIA V5. Moreover, mesh complexity and model size is reduced up to 30 times the original CFD model of the full car, although entails some limitations when developing the lower beam wing of the rear wing. Finally, once implemented the reduced model and with positive correlation results with the full model, it is started in a powerful workstation, looking for the best rear wing design, periodically reviewing the results and deciding new development paths in meeting with the Aero Team. Through several improvement stages, a new rear wing is obtained, which improves race car lap time by more than one tenth of a second.

The full project has been developed in the Aerodynamics Department of Epsilon Euskadi team, working together with the Formula 1 development team, which means that the project has been driven by the full car requirements, and by the development style of this sport, looking for the maximum performance with the resources available, working under very tight deadlines. This increases notably the value of this project, as it reflects perfectly the real development inside a Formula One team of a rear wing.
3.1 Economical Analysis

In the budget for the Rear Wing development it is considered only human resources and material resources. However, it is not taken into account some other concepts, like the manufacturing process of a carbon fiber prototype and wind tunnel testing, as it finally has not been done, although it would be the next logical step.

Therefore, the only costs directly included in the economical study are the ones which has been purchased for the solely purpose of this project. For instance, the computer used, internet access, and licenses of different software are property of Epsilon Euskadi, which has some a greements with Basque Government and software companies as Technological Center and for academic purposes, so they will not be listed as costs. However, all resources needed are listed to show all the resources used to develop the project.

Resources used not considered in the cost of the project

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Resources like computers, Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Professional licenses come from agreements with the Basque Government. More expensive licenses, like ModeFrontier, StarCCM+ and Catia V5 come from agreements with their companies.

Human resources cost

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The cost for working hour of a Mechanical Engineering student is considered regarding current economical crisis in Spain (2010), and the high demand of jobs in Motorsport. The amount of working hours is the real one, which is considered a workload of 8 hours per day during 5 months. The cost for working hour of the supervisor is approximately the cost of a Senior Aerodynamicist, who should guide the development of the project and frequently assessing the student in short meetings.

Material resources cost

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The cost of the scale model is a 15% scale rear wing, manufactured with a rapid prototyping machine which heats a polypropylene wire, and uses a kind of wax as a support material. Engineering hours corresponds to the configuration of the rapid prototyping machine, and modeler hours correspond to the work of the modeler removing the wax and adding the carbon fiber parts in the model.

Total project cost

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All costs have IVA already included (Spanish VAT). As it is an in house project (not for other companies), for academic purpose only, it is considered an inter nal cost so there is no point in calculating profit margins nor IVA

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Forza
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Re: How much $/£/€ to design a F1 car? How much to build it?

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Autosport wrote:A letter written to Todt by Caterham, Marussia, Sauber and Force India, a copy of which has been seen by AUTOSPORT, laid bare just how expensive F1 was. It provided an example of what a midfield team was now spending - excluding driver salaries, building leases, hospitality, marketing and media. Bigger teams are spending more, in some cases much more, while F1's minnows Caterham and Marussia have been trying to get by on much less.

The breakdown for an average team went as follows:

Hybrid power system: $28 million
Gearbox and hydraulics: $5 million
Fuel and lubricants: $1.5 million
Tyres: $1.8 million
Electronics: $1.95 million
IT: $3 million
Salaries: $20 million
Travel and trackside facilities: $12 million
Chassis production/manufacturing: $20 million
Windtunnel/CFD facilities: $18.5 million
Utilities and factory maintenance: $2 million
HR and professional services: $1.5 million
Freight: $5 million
TOTAL: $120.25 million

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