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Comment by rurban | Hacker News Reader

Insane? I've worked in F1, and seeing making this bolt doesn't sound extraordinaire. It's rather normal engineering technology.

There are far more interesting, extremely expensive, specialized engineering methods in F1.

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I have a bit of a pet hate around the use of words like “insane” to mean “unusual to the general public”. There’s nothing insane about this, they’re applying a tool designed for the job to doing the job. “Insane” would be hiring a team of chimps to slowly whittle away the metal using banana peels.

I'm really curious about the simulators they use for testing, if you know anything about that aspect. It seems like a chicken-and-egg issue: you see how a new part affects the car on the track by using the simulator, but the sinulator has to use parameters/assumptions put in by the engineers about how the part works. Won't it always just validate their assumptions?

You do hear about teams struggling with correlation issues, where their simulations just aren’t matching reality.

They do use some of the limited practice time F1 teams are allowed to do things like run the car with aero rakes (lots of pitot tubes on scaffold like structures) attached or the covered in dayglo flow-vis paint to gather real world data.

I've built those simulators and testing equipment. You test assumptions in simulation, verify and improve it in the tests, and ultimately on the track in Barcelona.

Well, I think most bolts don't go through that extensive QA process in general

But yeah I agree this one is your run of the mill engineering, if only done for a part that normally doesn't see such testing (maybe in Aerospace and military applications)

It seems it's part of the suspension so it would be natural to be a part that has tighter tolerances

"Run of the mill"…was that a pun?

Don't leave us hanging like that. Would you mind sharing an example?

Different commenter but one such example is how for years they were pushing the limit on how many holes could be drilled into a brake disc:

https://www.brembo.com/en/company/news/20-years-f1-brake-dis...

Maybe taking telemetry data and rider feedback to calculate ideal suspension settings, engine mappings, etc. In other words, putting the best possible car on the particular track.

NDA

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