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

The buttons

[ministry92]

Control the car... (duh!!)

Reaction Time?

[artlu]

That is amazing that there is that amount of data streaming down the pipelines, however, does this help the driver in the actual race? If so, is there regulation for that? I understand that the data can be later analyzed and then used for tuning, but the data should also be able to recognize if there is an engine error and the car is going to instantly explode.

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