'Telecommuting' In Formula 1

flewp writes "This New York Times article on Formula 1 racing gives some insight into the workings of one of the most high-tech sports on the planet — consider that a few years ago, Sauber's supercomputer ranked toward the top of all the supercomputers in Europe. The teams bring to each race dozens of mechanics, support personnel, etc.; but back at their home bases, perhaps thousands of miles away, countless more engineers work (with the help of gobs of computing power) to give each team that extra edge."

Comments

Re:Intergalactic Planetary

[mjwalshe]

700 Hp well how else did Felipe survive that crit to the head last year :-)

Off Topic but related, sorta

[Low Ranked Craig]

A couple of weeks ago I was watching qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix on Speed Network, after which they showed the 24 hours of Le Mans, of which I watched about 10 hours worth. I was all excited and expecting the Canadian Grand Prix on Sunday but no, it was some stupid NASCAR recap show (not a race) then some "Two Rednecks in a Garage" show. Pardon me for wanting to actually see racing and not that other crap. If you like racing, (not the kind that is a constant left turn), it's hard to find in the US. I really can't stand NASCAR - it's boring as hell except for the crashes. The rest of the world can have their "football" with their "nils" and whatnot. I just want some real road racing and rally racing, and no, monster truck rallies don't count either. /rant

Re:Off Topic but related, sorta

[tbuskey]

Speed is the NASCAR channel. I try to watch MotoGP on it. There was a 3 way battle for 2nd place going on last week and they cut away from it, just as an attack was going on to show 1st place, 4-5 seconds ahead, cruising across the finish. *sigh*

There's lots of cutting away from a race to show a NASCAR repeat. ESPN used to do it with Supercross & cut off the end to show the football draft rerun. At least Speed treats supercross better then ESPN.

FWIW, I heard about an F1 race with 2-3 lead changes in a race. The next week I saw a MotoGP with 4 lead changes in *1* corner.

Remote driving

[LambdaWolf]

That's interesting, but I'll really be interested when they invent a motor sport where the cars are driven remotely. I'm thinking of kind of a virtual reality rig where the controls simulate being inside the car. No one would go for this in the present types of auto racing even if it were allowed, since they would have a disadvantage even if the technology advanced considerably: the driver would lack certain kinds of information from sound and touch, not to mention signal lag.

But imagine if there were a separate motor sport where everyone drives that way. Not only would the technology itself be cool, but think of how much more riskily they could drive without any danger to human life. It's my understanding that drivers are always trying to push the envelope that way anyway (and the rules have to be revised to push back in the direction of safety), so presumably it would expand the sport with different machinery and perhaps new techniques that would be too dangerous otherwise. And the crash-happy spectators would certainly like it, and might feel less like ghouls for enjoying the spectacular destruction of machinery without the uncomfortable reality that there's a human being in there. (Or is that the appeal? I don't know.)

Also, we need to build military vehicles that work the same way. On the ground, that is—Predator drones already kick ass.

Re:Remote driving

[Risha]

Interestingly, apparently some of the drivers have trained for unfamiliar tracks using... GT4, I think? And Speed had an amusing segment a few years ago where they filmed a driver (Nico Rosburg?) do a virtual run all the way around the track with his eyes closed, with an accompanying feed showing that it would be very nearly a perfect run on the real thing.

Re:Remote driving

[flewp]

Not only that, but driving a car, especially a Formula 1 car, is an extremely demanding activity. Racing in the comfort of your house, sitting on a couch, is nothing compared to sitting in the cockpit of a car, with temps that can exceed 100+ in your nomex racing suit, while dealing with up to 5 lateral g. Not to mention the fact that all the while you're not just driving the car like you do in the GT series, but you have to be in communication with your race engineers and look after your tires, your brakes, the engine, fuel consumption, basically everything.

Re:Remote driving

[Weedhopper]

Heh, you're preaching to the choir.

I have an extremely strong neck. I've been a competitive judo player and wrestler since I could walk and one of the first things an experience training partner or opponent notices about me is my neck strength.

I've driven, co-driven and pre-run some fairly competitive Group N rallies - Safari Rally, Pearl of Africa (rarely finished, never placed). I'd say my neck strength endurance is about average for a upper nationals rally driver.

The neck strength required for F-1 is an order of magnitude higher. Most people don't quite literally physically don't have what it takes to take an F-1 car around just half a lap without either hurting themselves or stalling out.

Countless

[verloren]

"back at their home bases, perhaps thousands of miles away, countless more engineers work (with the help of gobs of computing power) to give each team that extra edge."

Maybe they could use some of that computing power to count the engineers, if only for payroll purposes.