Official Formula 1 thread

[headlikeahole]

Originally Posted by F1fletch

Read an interesting article about noise and RBR made comment that with current fuel restriction and low revs there is no real way to increase sound. The cure.... Higher revs encouraged by higher fuel flow. Perhaps they will eventually allow more fuel and higher revs during certain portions of the lap at least....

He said at 18k those engines would be more impressive and that no one is using 15k especially on the straights so they are even quieter than they could be

The problem is, with limited fuel they could limit the motor to 20k rpm and it wouldn't make a difference, no one is going to use those kind of revs while they are trying to save fuel.

They can keep the engines the way they are and drive the cars at 80/90%. Or they can increase revs and fuel flow and drive the cars at 50%. The end result will be the same.

[mike the snake]

Watching the in-car coverage, they are only revving their engines to 10,000rpm.

They Would sound better if they were revved to the 15,000 limit, no doubt.

This year the engines need to last longer, so I'm sure they are taking advantage of the extra torque the turbo engines make, and purposely keeping the revs as low as possible.

I know on my old Porsche race car, my engine was BUILT, and could rev to 8000rpm, where it was maybe a 40 hour engine. With the revs limited to 6500 it was a 100 hour engine.

[7thgear]

really, people

the sound? the sound is what makes or breaks F1 for you?

seriously?

gud lawdy

[cfusionpm]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

really, people

the sound? the sound is what makes or breaks F1 for you?

seriously?

gud lawdy

Not so much on TV, but definitely live. I was prepared to throw down ~$1500 for a trip to Austin for the USGP this fall. Now... not as much. Part of what I wanted to experience were screaming engines.

[mike the snake]

Not completely, I'm a diehard F1 fan, and have been for well over 30 years.

The awesome sounds of the last 20 or so years to me are part of what made F1 stand out above all other forms of racing though.

Originally Posted by 7thgear

really, people

the sound? the sound is what makes or breaks F1 for you?

seriously?

gud lawdy

[rice_classic]

I'm with Nikki Lauda on this one.

People will "get over it", they do every time the engines change. The advancement of "relevant tech" is VASTLY more important than noise. People will get over the noise but without the relevant-tech there is no F1.

The cars make more torque, have less downforce and put a greater emphasis on the driver. Once Renault gets their engines sorted it should make things more interesting too. Sergio Perez is wrong and his latest comments kind of illustrate why he's not a top tier driver (complaining about the lack of downforce and increase in torque).

I think the lack of noise is a non-issue.

The real issues are:
1: Cost control. It's too damn expensive and part of that leads to another problem..
2: Talent walks and money talks. IMHO, F1 is NO PLACE for gentlemen drivers. It's the pinnacle of Motorsports, it better damn well have the pinnacle of talent, period.
3: Relevance and OEM interest. The recent changes have helped fix some of this, but it isn't enough, I think #1 still need to be crucially addressed to bring in even more interest.
4: Aero/Tires. We need big fat, run-flatout, loads of mechanical grip kinds of tires and IMHO a great reduction of downforce. They need to solve issue where the aero from the lead car creates "dirty air" making it hard to follow a car closely. This is directly related to the need for shit like DRS. Fix the aero so a car can drive close to the tail of another car, therefore allowing for a setup and overtake to happen, instead of relying on gimmicks like DRS. While DRS has improve overtaking, it's still a gimmick, a bandaid on the symptom as opposed to a cure for the ailment.

[strat61caster]

Ecclestone is saying Haas has a pretty good chance of entering the field:

http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/152109.html

Wonder where they're going to set up facilities...

[7thgear]

Originally Posted by rice_classic

3: Relevance and OEM interest. The recent changes have helped fix some of this, but it isn't enough, I think #1 still need to be crucially addressed to bring in even more interest. .

question

is this a case of the chicken/egg/if you build it they will come

F1, and other motorsports are dishing out some neat stuff, but is OEM not biting because they don't really see a need to make any radical improvements or because the technology simply does not apply?

[rice_classic]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

question

is this a case of the chicken/egg/if you build it they will come

F1, and other motorsports are dishing out some neat stuff, but is OEM not biting because they don't really see a need to make any radical improvements or because the technology simply does not apply?

F1 caters to 2 crowds: Rich folks who show up with the toys and the people who like to watch these rich folks play with their toys. Guess who's more important. The OEM's are biting, but if F1 failed to act they would be biting elsewhere like the ACO (LeMans) where there's several OEM's already that F1 would love to have and don't.

F1 isn't Aussie V8, it isn't NASCAR. The racing is seldom close, the crashes happen much less often and usually a car wins by 20-60 seconds. The reason why most folks watch the sport is the reason they always have... It's Grand Prix racing, it's the pinnacle. Pinnacle of speed, engineering and talent. There's a reason it's called "Bernie's Circus". If you take away the engineering, the big names and the allure of being the "pinnacle", then what you'll be left with is something like Indy car or the failed A1-GP series.

Throwing countless hundreds of millions at developing Naturally aspirated V10's or V8 when only a small fraction or in the case of Honda, none of your road going cars have 10 or 8 cylinders, makes no sense. It was a wake up call to F1 when Ford, Jaguar, Toyota, BMW and eventually Honda all left the sport. And this is only 10 years after the mass exodus of privateers that made the sport so interesting in years past like Brabham, Lotus, Jordan, Tyrell, Dallara, Simtek, etc etc. Between the late 1990's and late 2000's the sport saw two waves of departures. I'm convinced a 3'rd would have broken the camel's back.

Heck, had we not come from V10's to V8's there's a good chance Mercedes wouldn't have rejoined the game. If I recall correctly it was Renault in recent years talking about leaving if changes didn't take place. We would been left with 2 engines: Ferrari and Mercedes.

At the end of the day F1 can stand to lose fans and race venues, there's already a lot of races on the calendar. It can withstand those losses and easily recover from them but it cannot exist without the teams, without the OEM's, because just as racing around in NA V8's or V10s in 2014 might make F1 seem irrelevant... F1 without the OEMs is definitely irrelevant. The one thing F1 can definitely not afford to do is be irrelevant.


Sorry if post was too long

[rice_classic]

The components of the F1 cars are massively expensive but it's the R&D that is the most significant piece of the pie. An engine might cost 7.7 million per unit, but the development cost of that engine might be 500 million!!!

http://www.auto123.com/en/news/f1-pa...n?artid=165594

As the German marque looks set to dominate the 2014 season with a superior 'power unit' for the new era, paddock rumours indicate Mercedes might have spent a staggering EUR 500 million on the development of its turbo V6.

[torqdork]

I wonder how many who think the lack of racing engine sounds in F1 today is a non-issue have added louder exhausts to their FR-S/BRZ?

__________________________________________

FTA:

But for the series’ commercial director, Bernie Ecclestone, the notion of small, quiet engines had long represented a potential nightmare.

“I was sorry to be proved right with what I’ve said all along,” Ecclestone said after the Grand Prix in Australia on March 16. “These cars don’t sound like racing cars.”

After that first race, one of Ecclestone’s allies, the local race promoter in Melbourne, Ron Walker, not only complained, but said that he thought it was a breach of contract with Formula One.

“I was absolutely delighted with the whole weekend,” Walker said on Australian radio, “but I was not happy with the sound. We are resolving that with Bernie. It’s clearly a breach of our contract.”

Some fans and Formula One regulars said that without the noise, the series had lost its sparkle. Many said loud engines provide a direct injection of macho bravado, a sense of danger, speed, urgency and wonder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/sp...bate.html?_r=0

[mike the snake]

It's not totally about the switch to V6's for me. If the cars sounded good, I wouldn't be saying anything at all.

If the new engines actually revved to their 15K limits, no doubt they'd sound better.

Another BIG reason the new cars are so quiet, is the HERS heat energy recovery system. Normally, the wastegates dump excess exhaust directly out, which is pretty noisy, but now all or most the exhaust is going to HERS and not being dumped, making them even quieter than your normal turbo V6.


Personally, I would rather see F1 and OEM development separate. There's other classes of racing where their designs can impact OEM, like Lemans and Touring car, where what you are watching resembles what you drive, and some racing development might directly trickle down into OEM.

F1 is the top, the pinnacle, and IMO should'nt be impacted by issues like fuel economy. It's all so over-the-top, I don't care if they're saving a little gas, especially if doing so takes away from the overall feel and enjoyment.

I'm not alone, the sound is a big deal to me. No way I'm buying a ticket to go see a race until I can actually hear the cars on track.

I don't mean to always post negative posts, I'm just SOO disappointed, but I still do LOVE F1, and I just hope it gets better in the future. We're stuck with what we have for this year at least.

M

[rice_classic]

Originally Posted by mike the snake

If the new engines actually revved to their 15K limits, no doubt they'd sound better.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by mike the snake

F1 is the top, the pinnacle, and IMO should'nt be impacted by issues like fuel economy. It's all so over-the-top, I don't care if they're saving a little gas, especially if doing so takes away from the overall feel and enjoyment.

I'm not alone, the sound is a big deal to me. No way I'm buying a ticket to go see a race until I can actually hear the cars on track.

Define Pinnacle.

In the hypothetical world of F1 you're talking about where it doesn't have any relevance to OEM's and isn't, to some degree, a test bed for future auto tech, it simply won't be the pinnacle, it will be Indy and trust me, Indy is not "pinnacle" and will never be a global juggernaut like F1.

As for fuel... How long have you been watching F1? Fuel restrictions absolutely aren't new. Fuel economy has been a huge part of the sport for much of its existence. This isn't the 1950's or 1960's anymore.

As for sound..
Even Bernie himself admitted they sound rather good in person. The TV isn't doing the sound justice.

[rice_classic]

MERCEDES using a Split-Turbo! Very cool:

http://jalopnik.com/mercedes-f1s-sec...alf-1558154190

As Sky F1 reports, Mercedes has split its turbo in half. The turbine that takes the hot exhaust gas is at the back of the V6 and the turbine that compresses the cool air is at the front of the engine. The two are linked by some kind of complicated shaft running through the vee of the engine. I mean, I say it must be complicated, because noone else has figured out how to do this, so it's got to be complicated.