The Technology Behind Formula One

axlrosen writes "An article in the NY Times about the technology behind Formula One. The wealthiest teams arm themselves with powerful advantages, almost entirely centering on computing controls in the cars and computer simulation in design. Car data is sent in multi-megabyte wireless bursts each time the team's cars flash past the pits, often in excess of 200 miles an hour. It is simultaneously sent over the Internet to a larger data center in Maranello, Italy, where more complex analysis is done. AMD is expected to supply a supercomputer roughly as fast as the world's 10th most powerful machine to the Swiss-based Sauber Petronas racing team... I love the crazy steering wheel - anyone know what all those buttons and knobs do?"

Comments

Re:Background article

[Shadowlore]

Americans can't get past the drive-fast-turn-left NASCAR mentality!

Not insightful, but quite trollike.

Especially after the third LeMans win in four years by the American Corvette Team, the win of the MLP2 class in Lemans by Clint Field (an All American team), and of course that an American team won the GT class as well. Yup, Americans won all but one class at Lemans this year. Twenty four hour endurance race on a long and varied course.

Not to mention the American Lemans Series, or the SCCA.. I'd bet there are more Americans involved in actually racing other than NASCAR than in all of Europe.

But hey go ahead, keep comforting yourself with that belief. That way should you ever find yourself in a race like the above you can be even more shocked when the Americans run right past you and are standing on the podium while you look on.