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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.
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 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
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.
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...
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
Ferrari isn't winning because they have the most money. BMW-Williams, Toyota, Ford (Jaguar-Cosworth), etc. aren't exactly collecting foodstamps you know.
Ferrari is winning because they have assembled a fantastic team. From the engineering talent that designed the car to the logistic support to the pit crew and, of course, one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport - Michael Schumaker.
I'm also trying to remember who won the World Series last year. The Yankees, right, cause they have the biggest payroll? Ooops, no, it was the Florida Marlins with a payroll at the other end of the spectrum.
Analogies are great except when they don't hold up.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.