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?"
Having bought one of the top flight cycling computers, which came with software far more sophisticated than I need. I could go totally overboard on my power to mass, VO2 Max, heartrate training, etc. For what? To beat guys on my weekend rides? If I were a Pro I would need to have not just a coach, now, but a team behind me to monitor my fitness, nutrition, energy levels, and a slew of other data, where once I'd pretty much only need a coach. The bar is being raised and without money or sponsorship where does this leave the talented natural who can't meet the bar?
There's considerable complaining about how uneven F1 is, with Ferrari's huge budget. It's hitting all sports. Spend to win and use money and technology to remove so much doubt the mystery of the game is ultimately solved.
It was good to watch the Pistons dismantle the Lakers, but how less often are we to see upsets anymore?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...to help a team beat Michael Schumacher. The guy is ridiculously good, and he's paired with a great car. F1 basically is a contest to see who will finish 2nd.
Tiger Woods in golf, Wayne Gretzky in hockey, Michael Jordan in basketball -- all three of these guys dominated their respective sports at one time or another. But I don't think anyone has ever dominated a sport as much as Schumacher has in the past few years. Its getting so bad that F1 is actively NOT promoting Schumacher, as people are losing interest...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
If you've watched the IMAX film "Super Speedway", you'll see how they build a CART racer from scratch. It doesn't focus a lot on applied computer technology in this field, but it's still informative.
Such as this tidbit: modern brakes on CART (and F1) racers can bring the vehicle to a total stop from 200mph in 1.6 seconds. Imagine the g-forces.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Wonder how long it takes before they start either jamming each other's transmissions or playing man-in-the-middle and injecting false data...?
New regulations are being ushered through to eliminate a lot of the computerized systems in F1 cars. No more fancy traction control, the engines are going to be smaller, and there might even be an honest manual gearbox in future seasons. I doubt this will effect the telemetry advances, you still need all that data. What it will do is eliminate the edge Ferrari and BMW Williams have over everyone...
Go out and look for articles on the changes. I read a great piece in Autoweek a month or two ago.
Years ago, when a driver crashed, you would see him get out and throw his steering wheel against something. That doesn't happen any more because those steering wheels cost $50,000.
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
the price of all this equipment is always coming down. I remember when my mates and I were all using toeclips and we had to look on jealously at the pros using Look pedals, nowadays everybody has the Looks. It wasn't so long ago that a wrist/handlebar mounted heart monitor with a radio telemetry strap was out of range of mere mortals, now you can pick them up for less than $70 and with a boatload of functions.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This is a great site for a lot of the technical aspects of F1.
:)
http://www.f1technical.net/
I found it funny that the NYT waited until the Ferrari was in Canada so they could shoot pictures of it without the Marlboro ads the car typically has painted on while racing outside North America.
You mean like the US Grand Prix ? (I know you were joking)
I have been to the Indy 500, and the US Grand Prix. I can tell you that to me, F1 is much more impressive than Indy cars. Thankfully, I have never been to a NAASCOOORRR race, but there were plenty of ignorant rednecks at the Indy 500 for my tastes. What is most impressive to me about F1 is their handling. Holy Crap! When I went, it was raining part of the time, and they were still going insanely fast through the corners. When it dried out, they were even faster. Unbelievable. The downforce on those cars, and the suspension/tires is amazing. Not to mention the braking ability. The sheer speed is nothing sto sneeze at either. Hell, their *average* speeds are impressive.
I have heard NAASCOOOORRR fans say that F1 is too much technology and not enough driving, but F1 has the best of the best when it comes to sheer driving ability. Then there are those absolute FREAKS who do rally. Those guys are nuts.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Participants have too much vested interest in the race to ruin it playing with things like this.
Spectators, on the other hand, may have bets on the outcome - in which caes foul play is much more profitable per the risk.
gpl_dan@yahoo.com. I will be in section C, way up high in row HH. Drop me a line if you will be there. Halfway between S/F line and T1. I'm hoping for Renault to do one of those crazy "we don't have launch control - wink wink" starts from row 3. :-)
A few years ago, F1 used to have two-way telemetry to the car. Computers were adjusting brake-bias settings on the fly on a TURN by TURN basis. Cars were dynamically adjusting settings to optimize for all kinds of things. Really, it was getting silly.
Eccelstone, the guru who presides over Formula 1 and looks like a cross between an evil elf from LOTR and Andy Warhol, had to make changes. He banned that. before last year's season, he reduced qualifying to a one lap shot instead of your best lap over time, and he created the parke-ferme, a parking garage that cars had to roll into after they pulled off the qualifying lap. Teams were (are) not allowed to touch the cars between the end of qualifying and the race start. At all.
this created goofy things, such as last week's Canadian race where Schumi qualified back because his brother Ralf (we call him Little Ralfy) and the BMW-Williams just decided to go totally lite on fuel for the purpose of getting the pole. He had to pit 12 laps into the race, but it was part of the strategy. michael went for a 2-lap strategy and won.
So, now - the rule changes have created a more boring sport. Unless you are some hard charger with brass ones (hello Montoya and Sato) you rarely risk passing for position, except at the start. It's just not worth the risk, wait for the pit strategy to kick in. It also promotes blocking. Rubens blocks for Michael and executes Team ferrari strategy, that's his role in life.
The technology is shattering the smaller clubs. Arrows is gone, Minardi will probably be gone, Eddie Jordan is constantly broke and needs Ford engines to run. Now the dollars are cutting into teams that are bigger. Jaguar may pull out of F1 if they lose Webber, a promising driver. Honda was thinking of dropping BAR, after they dropped Jordan and leaving altogether, knowing they could not match the spending that Toyota was going to do. Toyota is something like 5x the size and wealth of Honda, something I didn't know until I started wacthing F1.
Drivers are no longer valued for just driving prowess, but the engineers they can bring WITH them, and their leadership abilities within the organization. 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.
There are the big six in F1 right now - Honda, Toyota, Renault, Mercedes, BMW and Ferrari. Everyone else is an also-ran. Sauber uses 2 year old Ferrari engines, I think this year they upgraded to 1-year old engines. And to emphasize how big of a disadvantage that is - this year at Canada, the times were approaching 3 SECONDS faster than last year. The difference between a 1:12 and a 1:15 per lap is so large, old tech will leave you in the dust.
In contrast, if you attend Champ Car (formerly CART) it's like going to a damn vintage race. Spec chassis with spec Ford engines, standard turbo, no traction control, no ABS, manual gearboxes. It's like watching F1 in 1989. And IRL is KILLING it, this is almost certainly the last year. Nobody wants to see those tanks doing makeshift street courses. Americans like ovals, and speed speed speed.
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 carbon fiber chassis and cutting edge brake tech is stunning to see in person. Seeing a car brake from 200mph to 40mph in 200 feet really can't be described until you see it happen.
One of the neat tricks teams can use to spy on other cars is monitoring their in car camera feed and sending the audio through a dsp to find out stuff like what valve timings they're using. It works with a mic on the side of the road too, but then you've got to correct for the doppler effect.
I hate NASCAR. Nothing puts me to sleep faster (except motocross racing). If you want to see some *real* racing watch FIA World Rally. Some of the in car footage is insane.
I used to work for the Benetton F1 team when Schumacher was around. I joined in 94 as their sole software engineer tasked with writing data analysis, strategy and telemetry sw. 94 & 95 were great years - we won around 60% of that year's GP's and the bonus was $$$$ :-)
In those days the on-board data loggers contained 4mb(now 128Mb) and the real-time telemetry was a pitiful 9600 baud, which didn't work 100% on every track (e.g. Hockenheim and Monaco).
I found Schumacher to be a good egg, fairly quiet, polite and interested in your work.
Happy days.
wrt the super computer etc, I'd take that with a slight pinch of salt. F1 teams are prone to exagerate slightly. PC's are adequate for most of their tasks excepting cfd and design work which is usually done on unix boxes.