QUO VADIS or where are you striding formula
Jiří Král | 5.5.11 | Komentáře - J.Král 2011
F1 comments Ing.Jiří Král
I remember with nostalgia the seventies and eighties, when it was not easy to see a F1 race in Czech, but it was an honest sport. However, the sport has changed to business today, thanks to the astronomical costs the F1 became as closed competition as the NHL and watching the F1 is not wellness any more...
Last year brought on a lot of excitement in Formula 1, but not on the racecourse. At first, the car manufacturers tried to take the Championship over through FOTA, only so as it could be immediately abandoned by most of them again.Formula 1 has been struggling with the loss of attraction to viewers. The absence of overtaking manoeuvres began to worry not only Bernie Ecclestone and FIA, which tried to change the situation with administrative tools. It set up The Overtaking Working Group, but after three years of work its results are questionable - The GP will be decided in the first 500 meters, Mark Webber said in Malaysia this year. The grid breaks up to several top teams and the rest of the world. There are almost no overtaking manoeuvres on the track, the races are decided by the speed of engineers during refuelling (until the last year) or changing tires. Or by the bad weather in better case. Canada proved that Formula 1 is just an accessory to the tires. One of the compounds was almost useless for the race (true enough, that as well can help to make the race more dramatic) and in Valencia we learned there were so many crumbles outside the ideal line that it was impossible to drive there.For the season 2011 the overtaking should be helped by the fact that the rear driver gets the chance to reset his rear wing and decrease its drag, but not the front driver. It is similar to the situation when climbing up to Touremalet during Tour de France, the rear cyclist would be allowed to use drugs and the front not...Bridgestone finishes after the season. The new supplier Pirelli is thinking of using 18" wheels in future. That would ultimately remove the biggest anachronism of formula cars, changing the rims from 13 to 18 inches would at last make space for adequate brakes for decelerations from 300 kph, improving thus the passive safety.From the season 2013 the cars will be most probably powered by overcharged in-line four-cylinders, which will allow slimmer body. That might consequently allow FIA to come up with regulations, that would really help overtaking as well as save costs - in spite of the proclaimed intention to cut costs, the technical regulations still limit badly the constructors' creativity and in the end, it is the thousands of hours in aerodynamic tunnels and CFD simulations, that allow to gain several tenths of a second per lap.The last race showed again the risk potential of the open wheels (F1 and GP2). The latest projects of INDY 2012 all feature covered wheels. Delta or Wings even take a way similar to the Czech formula Bohemia (image 1,2). That has the wings integrated into the bodyworks and does not have so called aerodynamic bottom, which allows for driving cars close to each other and safe overtaking. The absence of tens of winglets lowers the development costs because of less time spent in aerodynamic tunnels and CFD.The announced budget ceilings were immediately boycotted by the strong teams, claiming that they would have to fire some employees and that F1 is the technological top. The cancelled testing have been substituted for by advanced simulators, and therefore this particular saving appears to be at least debatable. The question is, whether F1 really wants to cut costs or to restrict the contest, similarly to NHL, to several teams with more cars?Lets us merge both problems - the need for overtaking and cutting costs. What does it imply - reduce the turbulence behind the car, which spoils the aerodynamics of the following car. Remove the necessity to use costly tunnel tests and CFD that comes along with the use of tens of aerodynamic elements. The result of our thinking is sketched in the picture 3. Simple aerodynamics, wheels with mass produced tires 18"/20" protected against hooking. Similarly to Rally Championship (S2000) with an engine derived from the most used category with recuperation of energy (KERS). With such a concept FIA can claim benefits of F1 to the mass production.
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The design formulas F1
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