Merc do a 1.8 and a 2.0L turbo L4 and a 5.5 and 6.0 L V12 twin turbo
Last edited by WhiteBlue on 17 Sep 2010, 00:03, edited 1 time in total.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
It transpires that the engine working group for 2013 is considering a spec turbo charger. That would be a crying shame IMO. There is huge development potential in both the turbine and the compressor side. This is particularly true with emerging technologies like e-boosting, turbo compounding and hybrid turbo charging.
A hybrid TC could be regenerating three times the energy needed for the boost and feed that back as electric energy to be used for front wheel electric torque. It could spin the compressor to full boost pressure in idle or even before the engine would be fired up. In effect the whole business of heat energy recycling could be done by an electric exhaust turbine with some sophistication if it is not compromised by closely matching it's power to the requirements of the boost compressor. IMO the net energy regeneration of such a perfectly specified exhaust heat regenerator could be of the same or bigger magnitude than the whole KERS installation.
It would be silly to kill off such potential before an attempt is made to exploit it. A hybrid TC has huge packaging advantages compared to a standard TC while weight and power could vary significantly. Big differences in mechanical or aerodynamical design strategy can be caused by such choices. This would make it interesting for the viewers when manufacturers exploit different strategies. This is also exactly the kind of beneficial technology that could be developed by F1 and transferred to road cars. Efficiency of the engine much depends of the temperature level of the exhaust and this is steadily going up in modern petrol engines. To exploit this potential by turbines requires materials that withstand higher and higher temperatures. Using a spec unit would mean that development is cut off and the positive drive from competitive engineering would be lost.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
Just_a_fan wrote:I think they'll be choosing a spec turbo system to cap costs.
It would be a sucker move. Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. For all this talk about tech transfer to road cars F1 should spend some money where it can do some good.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
Don't forget SAAB who were the first to bring the turbo to the family car in 1976(?). For the last few years (10?) a turbo is standard, they don't sell cars with noramlly aspirated engines.
WhiteBlue wrote:It would be a sucker move. Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. For all this talk about tech transfer to road cars F1 should spend some money where it can do some good.
Perhaps it would be a sucker move but an understandable one - for the last few years they've been told to cut costs or go under. To suddenly open a new avenue of spending would seem a little perverse. Look at how much was spent developing KERS. For what real benefit? For the teams to pretend to be green?
As for transfer to road cars - does anyone really believe that the teams are in F1 to do that? The manufacturers might have said it but really it's just a business for the teams and a way of beating their market rivals for the manufacturers. Anything else is just marketing spin IMHO.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
I'm pretty sure that this spec move is not coming from the manufacturers. It smells of the independent teams which have no interest in giving the power train of a particularly successful developer a competitive advantage. It would suit them all much better to have a level playing field where the chassis determines who wins. But following that route means to stifle the development speed of efficiency technologies which is not a good way forward.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
WhiteBlue wrote:I'm pretty sure that this spec move is not coming from the manufacturers. It smells of the independent teams which have no interest in giving the power train of a particularly successful developer a competitive advantage. It would suit them all much better to have a level playing field where the chassis determines who wins. But following that route means to stifle the development speed of efficiency technologies which is not a good way forward.
It is the right way to go for the smaller teams who have no way of competing with the big boys in this sort of development area. As I said, the teams are not in F1 to develop feely/touchy tech for the man on the street. They're in it to make money by (hopefully) winning races and titles.
Granted, Williams have been able to license their hybrid tech to Porsche but I think that's more to do with Porsche seeing the marketing potential of a hybrid race car than road car relevance.
Repeat after me: "F1 is not relevant to road cars or the world at large"
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
It would make a lot more sense to spend some of the available development money on things like hybrid turbo chargers than wasting it on double diffusors and other meaningless aero configurations that will never do anybody any good but the team that first introduces them. They get copied within one season where the teams collectively spend 100 mil $ on them and then they get banned and the games starts from scratch again. If you attach competitive advantages to efficiency technologies like hybrid turbo charging, turbo assisted downsizing and direct fuel injection everybody profits in the end even the automotive end customer.
KERS isn't such a bad example. Initially when F1 KERS came out the first test samples had a specific weight of 2.5 kg/MJ over one race. Now we are down to 0.88 kg/MJ. If the restrictions would be lifted they would be at 0.33 kg/MJ pretty soon and that would be a point where such systems start being quite attractive to the real world. KERS will never make any sense from a weight to energy ratio point of view if you compare this to a naked thermal working engine but it would be silly IMO to look at it that way.
If you compare KERS with the engine and the fuel weight it will never get anywhere near that in a time frame of a formula. The engine weights 95 kg without ancillaries and probably 145 kg effectively with the gear box, exhaust, radiators, fuel tank and all ancillary sub systems. You add 75 kg of average fuel weight during a race and get a total of 225 kg. The engine provides 2.02 GJ mechanical work during the race. We end up with 0.11 kg/MJ specific weight of the primary drive system. If we would do KERS just to provide mechanical work during a race it would be pretty stupid considering that a good system is still three times heavier than our primary source of mechanical energy. The development will probably have to run another ten years from 2013 to 2023 to get close to the V8 engine that we have now in 2010.
The rational behind it as you said is the promotional effect it has by reducing the fuel consumption and giving a competitive advantage of having additional power in acceleration phases that is not available to cars without it. The reduction of fuel consumption makes no sense in an ivory tower F1 but is a massive point for road cars which are subject to penal taxes for exceeding fuel consumption limits. The FiA just plays the same game with F1 as the tax man plays with the automotive manufacturers. If you want to be successful in automotive you have to have class best fuel efficiency in the real world.
Automotive manufacturers promoting their cars through F1 should be subject to similar mechanisms to prevent them using false advertising. If F1 and GP racing was a game of non automotive sponsored teams I would agree with your view but it isn't and it has never been in more than 100 years of history. From 1960 to 1990 F1 was lined up with the most important marketing trend in the automotive world, getting ever higher power to weight ratio from the engine. Already in 1990 that wasn't true any more for the real world. As a replacement F1 started to play aerodynamic games that had no relevance to the realm world. If F1 is to become relevant again to automotive technology is has to drop the silly aero game and deal with issues that are relevant to the industry. The FiA certainly has been committed to achieve that for the last decade. It would be marvelous if all those efforts would be rewarded from 2013. So read my lips:
"F1 has to be relevant to the real world to be exciting, meaningful and have a chance to survive politically."
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
All interesting stuff WB but I disagree wholeheartedly with the following issues. F1 does not have to be relevant to the real world to be exciting; motor racing isn't about relevance it's about enjoyment and distraction from the real world.
It can be meaningful in its own right (just as much as any competition is meaningful in any real way). As for political survival, there's no way of second guessing that either way.
F1 will survive as long as there are enough people watching to attract the sponsors. If the titel race is season long with varying race winners throughout the season (as it has been recently) then there will be audiences and thus sponsors and thus survival. Don't forget that most people watching F1 do not care about the technical niceties of energy densities or drag coefficients. They usually support a driver (normally on national lines) and only want to see their guy do well.
We technical nerds are a rare breed and F1 must not be run to keep us happy or it will surely die. It needs to appeal to the 'mindless masses' to maintain its income. The 'mindless masses' are less interested in fuel efficiency than they are about who the driver is taking to bed at night or what clothes he wears.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
Just_a_fan wrote:We technical nerds are a rare breed and F1 must not be run to keep us happy or it will surely die. It needs to appeal to the 'mindless masses' to maintain its income. The 'mindless masses' are less interested in fuel efficiency than they are about who the driver is taking to bed at night or what clothes he wears.
But this is F1technical so we can use the insights we have. When you talk formula politics it is not so difficult to satisfy the "Hoi polloi". You make it more performant and noisier than any other road racing formula, you have a bunch of drivers, teams and tracks from different countries, you allow some performance differentiators for seasonal performance fluctuation, you keep the over all performance somewhat level and you are done. It is much more difficult to balance the other stake holders like the automotive manufacturers, the private teams, the sponsors, the commercial rights holder and the series owner. ATM I think F1 isn't doing such a bad job in that respect. It simply has to stay affordable and meaningful for the stake holders which includes the automotive industry and the FiA.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
I think just a fan has some point´s - F1 is the moden version of the Roman chatriot races - >> Bread & Games <<.
I can see where you are coming from WB, and you have some points too, bt the FIA is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
This "relevance" to the car industry is coming at a cost, it´s not for free. I does nothig to improve the show as such, may you and me get a kick out of it, when you think about the technology behind, but the masses want be bothered.
The FIA tries to be all things to all man, and that is difficult. Chances are, we will end up somewhere in the middle, with a hell of a lot of money spend, for little gain. The current KERS exercise is a good example.
I´m all for technology, but it needs to be sensible in the overall theme of things.
with the move to the new I4 turbo formula with all the bells and whistles of technology, the FIA will depent once again on the interest and goodwill of the manufacturers. If they open up the rule book to allow an all out engine and /or KERS/turbo war, chances are that a company like Cosworth can´t compete in the long run.
I do think that Cosworth is a competent company, don´t get me wrong, and they may have some cost adventages compare to Ferrari or Mercedes, but they will not be able to compete on the same scale for long.
They where a competent company with a decent V10 engine, when they left F1.
The same thing for the same reasons can be happen again, and I fail to see, why Cosworth should have any specific know how when it comes to i4 turbo engines which Mercedes or Renault don´t have. A I4 turbo, is not really there signiture engine. I know they did the Ford Cosworth thing, but even the WRC engines for the factory team did not come direct from Cosworth.
To keep people like Cosworth in the game, as a "fall back" option, if the OEM´s wake up one morning and decide that they don´t need F1 to sell there road cars, like BMW,Toyota and Honda just did, the FIA need to limit the costs somehow, a mandatory TC and ECU is just such a move.
By doing so, they will limit the appeal for some OEM´s which may want to showcase their know how in a specific field.
So it´s not flesh and it´s not fish, let´s hope that the whole experiment does not back fire big time.
We don´t want to see a repeat of the KERS thing with an 180° U-turn after one year.
The road to hell, is paved by good intentions.
But it´s the money which keeps the show on the road. Let´s see how it pans out, but I have my doubts, that it is the best way forward for F1 as such, because at the end of the day, it´s more an entertainment business then anything elese.
I cant see that the new rules will turn it into the R&D labatory of the automotive world.
But I would be happy, if I´m wrong with this assessment.
"Make the suspension adjustable and they will adjust it wrong ......
look what they can do to a carburetor in just a few moments of stupidity with a screwdriver." - Colin Chapman
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” - Leonardo da Vinci
