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Comment by barkingcat | Hacker News Reader

F1 racing bans a lot of tech. For example, anti-lock brakes and AWD are banned in F1.

Just because all cars can get it easily doesn't mean F1 want it. Most often the quoted reason is to have a better spectator sport and to make it safer. I really doubt those reasons because you can still have a difficult and tight race while having all the modern safety features. For example why don't F1 cars have entire car air bags (ie air bags that envelop the entire car that deploy when the car goes airborne in a crash/rollover)? if it's too "heavy" just make a rule that all F1 cars need to have air bags so the playing field is even.

F1 cars should have self driving collision avoidance that can activate faster than human response times as well. that would be way safer for everyone involved.

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So, fun racing/physics lessons learned here: the reason fan cars and (in general) primarily ground effect cars are banned are because of unpredictability leading to unsafe situations. In a car that uses underbody suction to create downforce, any loss of a seal suddenly reduces grip that could leave cars unable to steer, brake, etc and cause much more severe accidents than a car with over-body downforce that still has that benefit of downforce even in an accident to slow down as much as possible before impact.

This is mostly a bad argument. F1 rules cause all kinds of similar problems due to their arbitrary rules. It's very easy for the aerodynamic rules to result in unpredictability.

The last 10 years many of the F1 cars due to the rules had catastrophic loss of downforce if they got too near other cars. The drivers had to work around this by not following too closely. F1 rules changes recently have tried to reduce these kinds of issues.

But even this last season was somewhat ruined by one team figuring out to work within the current rules and not have the porpoising problems that wrecked the other teams cars because they'd lose their downforce. That made the racing less exciting. And the whole problem never had to exist if it wasn't for the rules.

> The last 10 years many of the F1 cars due to the rules had catastrophic loss of downforce if they got too near other cars.

But I don’t remember catastrophic loss of downforce as bad as this: https://youtu.be/e21ZjwZGjiQ

> catastrophic loss of downforce if they got too near other cars. The drivers had to work around this by not following too closely

While the downforce loss was significant, it was predictable and could be easily avoided. The equivalent for ground effect, e.g. hitting a bump or curb mid-corner and lifting the skirt just far enough for the pressure seal to fail and your downforce to go from 100% to near 0% in an instant, is far more likely to lead to a catastrophic accident.

I wonder whether an airbag enveloping the whole car would have been advantageous in the case of Romain Grosjean’s crash in Bahrain in 2020.

He might have bounced off the guard rail or be stuck in it just the same with extra material surrounding him and catching fire.

There have been also at least two cases I remember of race cars becoming airborne after touching wheels and being able to continue the race. This usually happens when the field is packed after (re)starts. Deploying airbags in such cases would probably entail a chain reaction that might resemble corn being popped.

I would watch F1 popcorn edition!

Why not go all the way and just have RC F1 cars that are remotely driven like FPV drones? Then the cars can do truly insane stuff without any danger to the driver. But I feel it wouldn't be F1 anymore if this happens.

FPV1 would be a different sport. The element of danger is part of why so many are drawn to it.

As far as anti-lock brakes and collision avoidance goes, most racing leagues tend to avoid tech that automates driver actions. The argument is that it makes it less sporting if the computers are doing the driving. Of course, those policies can be at odds with driver safety at times.

Anthony that causes the car to behave in a way the driver isn't expecting (collision avoidance) would probably lead to less safety rather than more. Besides, even Tesla autopilot can be fooled and certainly isn't designed for cars driving inches apart.

The air bags have been covered in other comments but similarly would probably reduce safety, not increase it. The cars are very much designed for safety, and to absorb impacts, which is why they are so much heavier than previous generations.

I thought F1 was used by manufacturers as a way to justify tremendous R&D, is that the case still? was it ever?

The problem is a lot of the R&D is focused on a very esoteric end itself. Sure, some of that technology ends up back at the parent companies and makes its way to consumer tech, but most of it just solves the problems of the moment to win races. They do push the envelope for material sciences more than anything else, but a lot of the engine design and other such things are wildly inapplicable to consumer tech and never will be. They can build million dollar engines out of rare and exotic materials that will never be consumer facing because they need 12 of them or whatever.

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