Slashdot Mirror
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?"
HowStuffWorks has got an interesting article on CART (not F1, but similar) cars at here. It mentions some of the sensing, telemetry, and computing technology used. There's even an explanation of the controls on that crazy steering wheel.
The McLaren website has an interesting flash doo-dad that explains the steering wheel. Go here and click on "interactive steering wheel.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
The buttons have a couple of uses. Usually 3-4 are for fuel mixture, how much fuel the engine is given. This determines HP and mileage. Then there is usually a rev limiter button for pit speeds. Other things on the steering wheel can include shifters or kill switches.
Hoyty
Formula 1 is Grand Prix racing, similar to Indycars but I believe the speed is slightly slower, tracks are more varied than the ovals that you're used to, and it's the major motorsport that the rest of the world watches. There is also competition between various teams who construct the cars rather than all of them being built by one or two manufacturers as (I think) it is in Indycars. Most of the constructors are British-based with the obvious exception of Ferrari.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
N is the Nuetral button to kick the transmission into N. E is the cockpit extinguisher. L is probably the pit lane speed Limiter. Others control brake bias, fuel mixture, radio communications, the wheel's screen (pi display), and other handling stuff. The steering wheel alone is about $50-100k. (a Champcar figure but should be close).
When his own teammates accuse him of not playing as per team rules, you can begin to understand how much hated this guy is.
But give me F1 anyday over Nascar.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
On a F1 car a car's front-to-rear brake balance can only be adjusted with an analog lever or knob. If you watch Michael Schumacher go down a long straight, you will see him reach with his right hand to adjust the brake balance. Interestingly, the Ferrari has a shifter interface on the left hand that allows both up and down shifts but only downs on the right (I think). When he adjusts the brakes he can continue to shift with his left hand. Also, because the cars use compressed air to shift and are always in gear (essentially) there is a lockout button (N) for stewards to put the machine in neutral on top of the bonnet. So an F1 car is not all high-tech, but a mix. I wish it were more like the the 60s though. Rolling death rides. Those guys had to be brave, talented AND FUCKING NUTS.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
However, the championship do not allow wireless data xfer anymore and only unencrypted voice is allowed to communicate with the driver. There is a sturdy DIN style plug that one of the engineers plugs a laptop into and downloads the data from the car when it is in the pits. A 20 minute race typically will see about 30Mb of data being retrieved. The organisers TOCA stopped wireless xfer because team managers were able to change the cars characteristics mid race and then reset them back before the scruitineers got a look in!
Most of the teams use windows xp on sturdy laptops with more powerful computing back at base - I guess because most of the software is off the shelf.
Formula1 is another ballgame...
Article on the steering where here that describes hat each button does. I think this one is from the 2002 season but most things are the same.
The steering wheels are all proprietary items for each team, so I can't tell you exactly what Ferrari's does.
But-
- Behind the wheel are two paddles. Pull one and you get an upshift on the computer controlled sequential gearbox, pull the other for a downshift. The cars have what are essentially normal manual transmissions, but instead of the driver controlling the clutch and shift forks, computer controlled hydraulics do the job and produce perfect shifts. Typically, pulling both paddles will put the car in neutral (allowing drivers to get out of a spin if possible)
- On the upper right and left, the + and - buttons are probably backup shift buttons. For the team I worked with, the paddles behind the wheel could sometimes be problematic, so they had backups in the same place as the wheel in the picture.
- The yellow "N" switch is "Set Neutral." Press it once and the car stays in Neutral even if the steering wheel is removed. Drivers are required to, upon exiting the race due to a mechanical failure or crash, replace the steering wheel (which they need to remove to get out of the car) and place the vehicle in neutral so crews can remove it. If they don't, they are fined an obscene amount of money.
- The red "L" switch is the pit lane speed limiter switch. In F1, the pit lanes have a very rigorously enforced speed limit. Hitting that button causes the computer to limit the car's speed to whatever the track pit speed limit is.
- The LED display can show a whole bunch of data. From moving track maps to onboard telemetry, timing, gear status, Gran Turismo...
I don't know exactly what the rotary switches do on that car, but I have seen them for:
- Brake bias; controls the front and rear split of pressure on the brakes allowing the driver to set the car up based on tyre wear and fuel weight (in F1, fuel is measured by weight, not by volume).
- Engine fuel mapping; drivers can conserve fuel at the expense of raw power or gain raw power at the expense of fuel depending on the tactical situation.
- Oil/Water cooling; they can control how much water and oil is flowing through the coolers. In wet races or if your trapped behind the slipstream of another vehicle, it becomes important to control these things. F1 car engines require heat for all the components to work properly, but too much heat of course, kills them. It is a constant game of keeping these things in balance. Usually, engineers in the pit lane will inform the driver of exactly what changes to make (by the rules, they cannot simply have radio commands control the vehicle).
Of course, the rest of the buttons are for the radio, drinking water pump, the fuel filler flap, rear caution light and those sorts of gizmos.
A few of the buttons are also like the water/oil cooler controls in that they only exist for the driver to press when the engineers tell him to.
All of that for around US$30K per steering wheel...
The steering wheel controls, as a couple posters above have said, are used to change fuel mixture, rev limiters for pit speeds, as well as adjusting launch and traction control systems. What they DONT tell you in the article is one of the things that makes Schumacher so good is how he utilizes that wheel during a race, aside from steering the car :) He adjusts his mixture, TCS systems and gearbox on the fly during the race, sometimes in the middle of one corner anticipating the needs of the next corner (!) This adjustability and all the testing he does is one reason he dominates the competition. Schumi's wheel has even more controlls than the wheel they pictured in the article, which belongs to Barachello.
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
At Albert Park in early March, Ferrari and Sauber had the same V10 engine.
New 'long life' rules meant last year's scarlet unit was not reliable enough to be fitted to the Sauber C23, so the customer team got works- spec Ferrari power. link
That's how much difference the REST of the car makes!
it's in my head
F1 Steering Wheel
Formula 1, if you didn't know, is the premiere motorsport in the world. Every rule about car design in F1 falls into one of two categories. Rules that prevent the egineer from killing the driver and rules that say the car must not fall apart. The result is the most technologically advanced cars in the entire world. These are the fastest four wheeled motor vehicles on earth that can make both left and right turns. Every race car driver falls into 3 categories. Driving F1, wanting to drive F1 and too afraid to drive F1. If you think Nascar is dumb because they go around in circles, F1 is for you. I've heard it described as driving a go-kart with a jet engine. (it's really just a V10).
Oh, and some other information. Michael Schumacher is the greatest driver in F1 today, he has won the championship the last 6 times. He is the highest paid athlete in the entire world. He drives a ferrari, the best car there is. It looks like he is going to win again this year, he has lost only one race so far. And while it seems boring to watch the same guy win every time it shows you why F1 is so great. The best driver wins every time. And this guy is the undisputed greatest driver of cars to ever live.
The US grand prix in Indianapolis is this sunday at 1pm. It is the only race in the US this year. If you haven't seen an F1 race I highly reccomend you check it out. Imagine Nascar, with right turns and no rednecks. It doesn't suck.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
ummmm.... actually NASCAR does go turn both directions. There are round courses where they only turn left, but there are also "road tracks" where they turn both ways. An example is the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. Click on the map on the right side of the page to see what it looks like.
Ferrari budget was over 250 million last year. The next biggest spender was McLaren at 120 million. Jags budget last year was in the region of 70 million.
Even with equal budgets Schumacher would probably still be sneaking the championship, but currently no team spends like Ferrari and that is damaging the sport.
"My parents were strict, but they never pitted me against livestock" - Doug Stanhope
One one hand, the bar has always been raised. Rowing has been a popular sport for some time now. But what do you do if you are in the 99.9% of the world that cannot get access to a boathouse? You don't compete in rowing, that's what.
On the other hand, if you are able to meet the basic requirements to compete, talented amateurs rise up through the ranks and tend to get sponsorships. As an example, I started racing triathlon a few years ago, and used an old bike and cotton gear and no wetsuit. I couldn't shell out $1300 for race wheels, so that made me less competitive. I trained hard, read books, and starting finishing on the podium, and got ranked All-American. I read a book on how to get sponsorships, applied for a bunch of them, and got some for this season. One of those sponsors loans me $1300 race wheels for my big races in exchange for my being a billboard, so now I don't have to buy them. If I can go that little bit faster, I can win bigger races, get bigger sponsorships, and so on.
Incidentally, cycling deserves a lot of credit for sticking to its roots. The rules on bike frame geometry are strict and have kept much faster frame designs out of the peloton, mainly in deference to tradition, AFAIK.
Yes, and the fact that, that guy has an ego that would put hitler to shame doesn't help the overall F1 image either.
:)
Unlike JPM, Villnevue, Senna, Prost, Coultard, Ralf S., or any other the other winning drivers?
I actually think Michael has a good diplomatic approach during the post race interviews. Most people appear not to like him because he's not lovable like Jordon or Tiger Woods.
But, to bring this back on track: yeah there is a ton of money spent on F1. Guaranteed that once tobacco money is taken out of the picture (I'd say by 2008 at the latest), overall spending will go down unless the FIA finds some way to compensate for it.
Personally I like that the teams innovate. Anti-lock brakes, traction control, ECU development, etc. and examples of technolgoy that has been tested in race cars first (although not necesssarily developed there) and then deployed in production run vehicles.
Plus, they are damned fast!
Schumacher is a genius, but it is about time that he put his foot down and demanded that the team get a second driver of close to his caliber, so we can see some actual racing.
Absolutely. Ferrari's dominance in recent years is similar to McLaren's in the mid-late 1980s, but with the crucial difference that in McLaren's most dodminant season, 1988, although the team won 15 of the 16 races with John Barnard's revolutionary MP4/4, and took 199 Constructor's points to second-placed Ferrari's 65, since Ayrton Senna took eight of their wins and his team-mate Alain Prost took seven, the season was gripping to the very end, Senna finishing with 90 points to Prost's 87. You knew a McLaren was likely to win each race, but as to which one...
Meanwhile, it's staggering to see what *can* be achieved by teams with a tenth of the budget of the frontrunners, and what *can't* be achieved, yet, with Toyota's budget, rumoured to be even bigger than the half-billion dollars Ferrari are said to spend each year.
I know /.ers love tech gadgets, but if you want
to see the drivers compete - NASCAR.
They do not allow squat of computing on board
during the race.
You're not far from the truth. Formula-1 USED TO MEAN the simplest of all regulations: no restrictions, just go win. Things have gotten stricter and stricter and now it doesn't mean the same. There are other formula feeder-series, like Formula 2 (spec engine, all else open), Formula 3 (now Formula 3000) with a spec chassis and engine block but all else open) Formula Ford, and some other minor series with manufacturers' names attached.
The most expensive part of the steering wheel is, by far, the custom connectors.
The steering wheel body is all carbon fiber and all the teams can do composite work like that in their sleep (I have some cool CF toys that a couple of the composite shop guys made for me, they are scary good artists with the stuff).
The buttons are all hardcore off the shelf units from the aerospace industry.
The computing components are all well inside the body work, usually up in the nose or above the driver's legs.
The god damn connector though! It was something like 30 pins and they absolutely need to be hardcore because the wheels get taken on and off the car over and over again. They need to also twist with the wheel and lock up tighter then a bankvault without any extra levers or other things to fiddle with. When I was working with the team, I was shocked at how much effort it took to make those damn things...
Ferrari does have the most money. If you check, their budget for R&D is the highest amongst all teams, including Williams, Toyota, and etc. albeit they are not all that far behind. Ferrari does in fact have a very good car and team, however, too much emphasis is placed on drivers.
I'm willing to bet that if you shifted the top five drivers from their teams, the finishing order of the races will be more based on the quality of the car than the quality of the driver. Example, how good would Michael Schumaucher had been in an '03 BAR Honda? Or a Minardi or Jordon? Probably not as good as they all think he is. What would happen if Jenson Button was in a Ferrari?
Spending budget analogies work when you apply it to buying technology. When a team can afford a P4 3.0GHz over a PII 133Mhz how doesn't this analogy apply?
Where it doesn't work is when you apply it to baseball teams and their budgets because then you are applying subjective values to human players. Given A.Rods salary of $100M, does it mean he's 100x better than a player with a salary of $1M?
You can actually use "quantitative" measurements in F1, ie "this engine is 10.3% more efficient than last year's engine", where as in baseball you use "qualitative" measurements as in A.Rod is better than Joe 2nd Baseman.
Think again.
You're right that sequential gear boxes would be obvious (no reason to ban those), but it would be pretty hard to start after a pit stop without a clutch!
There was a show on SpeedVision about a year ago with Jeff Gordon and Juan Montoya. They swapped cars and ran laps on Indy's F1 course. Gordon was absolutely awestruck by the F1 Williams/BMW he was driving. It took him several laps to get used to it. He was constantly braking early in the turns. Eventually he got the hang of it and actually posted some lap times that would have qualified him for the 2002 Indy Grand Prix.
He's a hell of a driver and I would love to see him leave NASCAR and go race F1. He said driving that car was the most incredible experience he ever had driving.
The Champ car machines are all standardised. They use the same Lola/Reynard chassis and Ford V8 engine. They're more like Formula 3000.
An F1 car costs an order of magnitude more than a champ car, prototype chassis, prototype engines, prototype electronics all the manufacturers make their own and that order of magnitude more spent doesn't even buy you a winner. Not that the hundreds of millions spent on the cars gives you interesting racing.
MotoGP and WSB are far more interesting.
There are hundreds of example of drivers recovering from tire blowouts and suspension failures at that speed. (usually on a straightaway, though). I've done it myself at ~150 mph.
The effects of a tire blowout at that speed are intense, but within the capabilities of even the top end street-legal sports cars, a $10 M formula 1 racing system.
driven by alert and experienced drivers.
There are also plenty of examples of fatal crashes at 55 mph, so i don't know what to make of that.
But the point remains: if you can react against a damn blowout at 200mph, you can definately snake your thumb over to click a button on the steering wheel.
Articles on other technical aspects of F1.
I think last spring F1 became the biggest sport in the world according to TV viewing numbers (excepting the Wolrd Cup finals).
Americans are retards when it comes to racing. Which is a shame because F1 was thriving in America in the 60s and 70s and we actually had some Americans drivers.
If I was a billionaire I'd upgrade Watkins Glen, kickout the proffitable but contemptable Wiston Cup jerks, and try to get F1 back on the best road coarse in the country.
http://www.usgpindy.com/news/2004/images/williamsg raphic
F1 is brilliant, but they know they can't keep going as is. You hear crazy rumors all the time. One is that the V12s will get chucked, and everyone has to go to V8s. The spectacle and sound of a V12 revving at 19k RPM is amazing. THe cars will deafen you from 100 yards away.
The cars only have V10s already. V12s are long gone. They had 3.5 liter capacity a few years ago and that's down to 3 liters and speeds are up.
The next frontier seems to be either max revs (unlikely) or minimum engine numbers (if Ferrari, Honda, BMW etc had to make 100/year then they'd have to sell a good few - might cut overall costs and help the lesser teams).
Well, where have you been...
Ferrari has 13 constructor championship titles and 9 Ferrari driving pilots won the drivers championship...
While it's true that the only World Rally Championship event in North America is in Mexico, you can see rally events in the US with the SCCA Pro Rally series. If I remember correctly the past season saw the tragic death of a driver and co-driver from a Subaru team in this series.
Just a nitpick-- the drivers _do_ know the course--they're the ones who write the course notes. They get to drive the stages some time before the race.
That does not diminish the exceptional skill of the rally drivers. There are simply too many obstacles and sharp turns on the narrow roads for the driver to react unless he is reminded of what is approaching. It takes quite a bit of concentration to listen to the co-driver, who is 5-6 directions ahead of the driver, and still drive the car. On gravel/mud/snow. In the rain/sleet. At 200 km/h.
Speedvision's coverage of the WRC is excellent, as well. The announcer actually has the ability to shut the hell up for minutes at a time, so that we can listen to the driver/co-driver and the car. I've never seen any other coverage like that.
Michael Schumacher is part CEO, part engineer, part driver and basically gets what he gets because he is a large reason that Ferrari executed the plan it had. He brought Ross Brawn with him from Bennetton Ford.
:-) When Schumacher arrived at Ferrari, they recruited Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne (Chief Designer), a few top of designers, + 1 Aero + 1 electronics guy. It was a blow to Benetton, but you have to remember that the team comprised 300+ people.
I dunno about CEO and engineer, but he did take a large slice of the Benetton team with him...but he forgot about me
When he left it was Benetton Renault. We dumped Ford after winning the championship with them in 1995.
The marshalls may be local. But Sid Watkins is the head doctor and travels to all the grand prixs and drives in a car that is driven by a F3000 (race level below F1) driver. At each GP Sid has meetings with all the local hospitals and the doctors who are going to be on duty over the weekend.
All the races are controled by Charlie Whiting who manages all the marshalls and other aspects reagarding saftey during the race.
http://blog.karit.geek.nz/
The web log:6
http://saltire.weblogger.com/2003/09/17#a77
has a fairly authoritative background on the functions on the F1 steering wheel.
It's true that Mansell won the CART championship as a rookie and Michael Andretti washed out of F1. But the reasons were more about commitment than the quality of CART's talent pool.
Mansell moved across the pond to Florida. Andretti tried to commute to Europe from Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, he did earn some kind words of respect from the late great Ayrton Senna, and did finally manage a podium finish before his premature departure from F1.
However, as an epilogue, it should be noted that upon returning to CART, Michael Andretti won the very first race against Mansell and the rest of the field. In fact, in his second season, Mansell wasn't able to accomplish much at all against the CART field.
Since that time, CART has had two drivers graduate quickly to F1 success and two who haven't been that impressive.