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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.
brings war driving to a whole new level
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.
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
The blue one labled AC is kinda obvious - all expensive cars come with air.
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
...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?"
"I love the crazy steering wheel - anyone know what all those buttons and knobs do?" "
I'm pretty sure I saw buttons for Ctrl-Alt-Delete on there.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I think the buttons and knobs control things like the oilslick and exhaust cloud. :)
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
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
When I switch on Speedvision at my friend's house to watch Formula One, what amazes me most about these cars is not just their speed but their ability to turn left (of course) but also to the right. As a NASCAR fan, this "bidirectional steering" thing the Europeans are doing is truly amazing. Maybe someday it will come to the states.
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.
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).
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...
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
I think they should remove most of the technology to level the playing field for the smaller teams. F1 should be a bit more in the spirit of man and machine racing each other, not man determines direction computer controlled racing machine is pointing in.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
Who cares about the technology of Formula 1? It took them another 408 attempts to get it right!
(its a joke people)
The
That movie's the next best thing to experiencing the joys of 250mph+ car racing, and an absolute must if you're into car racing games (TD, NFS, etc). I also learnt a couple of neat facts like driving in quick succession (about 5ft apart) helps the successive cars to avoid drag, and the air flow from the following car helps push the leading car along.
Anyway, enough ranting...here's hoping for a 3-D car racing game for the PC.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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.
The buttons control all sorts of aspects of the car. Brake bias, sway bar settings, fuel mixture and horsepower, pit speed rev limiter, etc.
Now the really AMAZING part is that if you watch the races, you can usually see Schumacher fiddling with these settings during a race and often in a turn or at well over 100 MPH.
I race myself in an open wheel car, and I do OK, but my concentration is usually at close to 100% all of the time, so seeing Schumi adjusting things in a turn just blows me away every time.
Eschew Obfuscation
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
And diamonds!
Whoops!
You know what?
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!
About Mach 2, depending on how you hit. Let's ask Dale Earnhardt.
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.
Everytime some engineer dreams up a killer piece of technology, it gets banned. Figured out an effective shape that generates downforce? Get banned. Figure out how to recofigure ur car on the fly? Get banned.
And what about traction control? Adaptive suspension? not to mention 1001 other things that make a car go faster and safer, and turn better.
I hate it the way they keep banning technology. It used to be that F1 was the pinnicle of automative technology. Not anymore. Now you can buy a road car with more technology in it then an F1 car.
Sheesh.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Just my opinion, for the most part (based on facts, sadly)...
He does play by team rules, that's partly the problem.
Who doesn't remember Barricello being in #1 position in front of M. Schumacher on #2 being ordered by the Ferrari team to let M. Schumacher win ?
Those kinds of tactics are exactly what are hurting Formula 1 as a whole, and not just the Ferrari/M. Schumacher image.
Mind you, any team M. Schumacher has been in has also always been cutting-edge to the point of risking safety. This ranges from cars being sprayed with fuel in the pit lane due to cutting corners to make tanking faster to crewmen getting hurt by driving into them.
Not taking away that M. Schumacher is a great driver, mind you, but so were Aeyrton Senna and Nigel Mansell - but those loved the sport. M. Schumacher, I'm afraid, tends to love mostly himself and will do anything to further his image.
Actually f1 racing requires far more skilled pilots than nascar, on nascar you get to see rookies, on f1 piltos have a BIG resume. I hate nascar becasue cable tv s plagued with it and I (and most people outside us) find it terribly boring, but since "gringos" like the sport its on tv
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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...
Well, it looks like one of the buttons on the bottom left is the CNN logo. I guess this is for the straightaways. Maybe the driver doesn't want to miss Larry King Live.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
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.
naeem
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.
There are usually 2 reasons for a technology to get banned in F1. The first is that it makes things too easy. They want to make the drivers have to work for the victory. That's why they removed launch control - launching the car takes skill (since you have way more power than traction). The other reason is to slow the cars down. The safety technology has trouble keeping up with speeds the cars are capable of, especially in the corners (where an accident is most likely). That's why the tyres have grooves, for example. They need to go slower. And this safety focus has helped - just look at 10 years ago when we lost 2 drivers in one weekend (including the great Senna) and nearly lost Rubens...
I consider myself a Tifosi but when Schumi is walking over everyone it's no fun. And then he loses but wins by default...I'd rather see some variety on the podium so that the end of the year is exciting. As it is I'm cheering for Jenson since I think he's doing great this season.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Button A deploys the powerful jacks. This can make the car jump.
Button B changes the tires into special tires for rough terrain.
Button C makes two circular saw blades come out of the front of the car. This lets you drive through a forest; it'll just cut down the trees as you drive through them.
Button D makes the windshield bulletproof and the cockpit crashproof.
Button E turns on the high-beams.
Button G releases the homing robot. It can fly back home and carry messages to your girlfriend or mechanic.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
Thing is, F1 is about putting cars out with the absolute hottest technology possible on board. The current regulations ban so many cool things that would give the less spendy teams a bit more of a chance.
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.
The 2J was as radical as the 2E and 2H had been. Maybe more so. The car looked like a white brick. A very fast white brick. The car carried two motors. A 465 cubic inch Chevy V8 powered the rear wheels and a 274 cc Rockwell snowmobile engine powered a pair of "sucker" fans in the rear bodywork. The fans sucked air out from under the car, creating a vacuum that held the 2J on the track. Sliding Lexan skirts were placed around the bottom edge of the body to seal the "plenum" area under the car. Enough suction could be generated to hold the car upside down on the ceiling of a room! Where a wing generates downforce (good) it also generates drag (bad). The suction device generated downforce with no drag loss.
Reigning F1 World Driving Champion Jackie Stewart qualified the 2J third at Watkins Glen and drove the race's fastest lap, but his race was cut short by brake problems. The Chaparral team missed the next three races but returned to competition in September at Road Atlanta. They also brought a new driver with them, Vic Elford. Elford drove the 2J in three of the remaining four races. (The team would miss one more race.)
Elford was fastest qualifier in all three of those races but he only finished one (sixth at Road Atlanta). Something always broke. But the competition felt that, with a year of experience under their belt, the Chaparral team would bury them in 1971. Competitors were always lobbying the SCCA to ban the 2J. At the end of the season it was. The sliding Lexan skirts were said to have violated the "moveable aerodynamic device" ban. With that, Jim Hall closed up shop. An era in international autoracing had come to a close.
Also, there is another type of racing that approaches the excitement and sheer driving skill of F1, and that would be Rally. The control those guys evince under such conditions is truly mind-boggling. Beyond that, for pure joy of automotive race, it's hard to beat the beauty of GT. The cars, the tracks. Not the same rush as F1, but for a car lover it's heaven.
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.
F1 uses electronically-controlled differentials, which also has its own map. At least one of the rotary controls is a diff map selector.
;)
Another one is probably a TC agressiveness control.
And on Michael's wheel, one is a knob limiting the maximum engine RPM on Rueban's car.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
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.
You might not want to hear this, but when they gotta go - they gotta go.
An average formula-1 race lasts about 90 minutes (there is a 2 hour maximum for any race). Somewhere hot, say, malaysia, the air temperature is 40 degrees C (104F). Or more.
Now, imagine you're dressed up in a fire proof coat sat right next to a powerful engine. You're going to get very hot, right?
They drink lots of water before and throughout the race to prevent dehydration. They can lose 3-4kg throughout the race.
So it's not unusual for them to have to "go" during a race.
Watch out for the dark spots when they get out of the cars... used to show up quite a bit on the silver McLaren suits.
Not quite so glamarous thinking about pissing yourself, is it? You would think with a $400m budget they could sort that out!
The Champ car machines are all standardised. They use the same Lola/Reynard chassis and Ford V8 engine. They're more like Formula 3000.
Until three years ago there was alot of interesting comptetion in CART - engines from Toyota, Honda, Ford, and Mercedes - chassis from Reynard, Lola, and Swift - tires from Firestone and Goodyear - big budgets.
It was a poor mans Formula 1, with great drivers, some great tracks, and the frightening spectacle of the super speedways. I mean a world record 246MPH qualifying lap! And the horsepower they used to run!
Unfortunately, the money is gone now, and Champ car is surviving with as a spec type series. It still has some great drivers, great tracks, and a good fan base -- especially in Mexico and Canada. It's still serves as a feeder series to F1 along with F3000. Let's hope Honda and Toyota come to their senses and bring their money back to Champ cars.
Let's also hope the same thing doesn't happen to F1.
A couple of years ago, Wired had an amazing article about F1 racing, particularly in terms of how it evolved yearly from the technological arms race. A team would develop something astounding, and others might copy it, and by the next year it would be outlawed. Innovation after innovation came and went like this, with few of them being allowed to remain. What I most liked about the article was the picture of a Mercedes-Benz F1 motor mounted to the dyno, looking utterly gorgeous (spotlessly clean, I should add) with its huge shiny exhaust pipes glowing cherry red. :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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/
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.
My God, man. You're watching history being made. Enjoy it.
If incredibly dominant teams damaged the sport, it would have already been terminally ill after the McLaren/Proust/Senna years when other teams were lucky to finish on the same lap with the leaders.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation