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Last in Beauty Contests May Be First on Tracks

nytimes.com

42 pointsmhb24 comments

The point about Formula One no longer developing technology for other cars is inaccurate. Recent major rule changes (like the introduction of KERS and the ban on in-race refueling) have been specifically intended to force the teams to focus on developing technologies for making more efficient vehicles. Cool design, though.

Formula 1 has never driven production automobiles. Practically every first used in f1 isn't or came from outside the automotive industry. I suppose this car is quite disruptive as it too follows no rules nor regulations.

as I understand it, the point isn't that they drive cars that approximate production automobiles. But rather that the technology the teams develop to come up with competitive advantages (lightweight-yet-strong materials, power from limited displacement volume, aerodynamic improvements, etc.) will be useful to production cars. The point that others are making is that the F1 rules are now so stringent that teams are not rewarded for coming up with these types of massive improvements and are limited to tiny tweaks.

But those tiny tweaks are not tiny at all. Realize that there are very smart teams of engineers. If one team manages to get a bit ahead, it means that they are putting huge resources on the small tweak. Add up a couple of small tweaks and you end up with a new technology altogether. Formula 1 is about engineering. Ferrari is one of the leading teams in terms of getting new technology introduced to the real world. When production Ferrari cars started to have paddles behind the wheels, and people wanted them in other luxury cars, what do you think happened? Nowdays, even my daughters Power Wheels has paddles. But realize that those paddles were engineered into reality because engineers wanted to save space, time, and weight. Little tweaks that combined into a new way to shift gears.

tyw is correct: My meaning was that the teams are the first to refine technology that later finds use in production automobiles. To illustrate my point, KERS has now found use the new McLaren F1 (supercar) - I expect it will continue to have repercussions as high-performance rechargable batteries become more prominent in automotive engineering.

Title should be corrected to 'ALMS/LeMans racecar' - not 'Indy 500'...

The following video goes over some of the more interesting technical bits from one of the engineers (6m38s in): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_INdbXMqsw&t=6m38s

Thanks

Looks like whatever the title was, an overzealous mod changed it to match the article title, which has no meaning out of context. I thought this would be about some biological study when I clicked on it.

Pedantry über alles.

I saw it race at Atlanta recently. I was very surprised in the cars outright speed. Only a couple tenths off of the fastest P2 car! The two things I noticed about the car was how unstable it looked at turn in. The car rotates a lot compared to other prototypes. Quite scary on the high speed stuff. Also, the tin top drivers complained about not being able to see the car in their mirrors (very small frontal area). In fact a Gt car turned into him whilst being overtaken going under the bridge and the crash was scary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW7qaG9K2_c

It's an odd situation, I can kind of understand where the Porsche driver was coming from, it's ridiculously hard to see the car in mirrors, but he came off such an asshat from the incident he caused it spoilt his point slightly.

It does look like it shouldn't corner though, yet at LeMans it seemed to power through them pretty smoothly.

There was a guy who designed/built racecars by the name of Colin Chapman founder of Lotus Cars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Chapman) One of the ethos he had was "add lightness". Every additional piece of weight is more kg's to stop, to turn, to accelerate. It's no surprise this thing is fast as hell. The first thing I thought of when I saw the Delta Wing - Colin would be proud.

It will likely be banned. It will likely have polarising opinions about it. However one thing is for sure, it will prompt people to think different which is what the motorsport industry will need. Grass roots different approaches to make things more efficent. I applaud it.

Personally I went for a drive of the modern day replica of one of Colins original designs - a Lotus Super 7(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Seven). In a 2L Honda engined version of one in New Zealand (called a Fraser), absolutely staggering performance (around 400hp per metric tonne). Got out all wobbly at the knees. The last time I'd seen that level of performance was in 500-600hp TT V6 engines in big Japanese sports cars, and that is a lot of fuel and rubber up in smoke. Really does make you think, what is necessary in a vehicle? All the climate controls, sound deadening, sound system, power windows... the whole lot is more to move.

Very analgous to systems design, every additional feature, piece of code is more movement within a system. Interesting architectural lessons.

I don't see why it would be banned. F1 is all about pushing technology to the limit. In fact, the DeltaWing did not qualify for the 24 hours of lemans but it was provisionally invited to compete due to it's radical design.

F1 is more about advertising than about pushing technology to the limit.

It would be trivial for all tesms to build much faster F1 cars. Lots of technological innovations got banned because they made racing too dull or too fast. Examples are turbo engines with engines at are equal in size to non-turbo engines, the 'use a vacuum pump to suck the car to the ground in corners' trick, the 'electronic gear switching' trick, variable angle wings, and KERS (allowed, but drivers cannot use it as often as they want)

To say that advertising revenue is the dominant force driving the regulation of F1 innovation is simply untrue. When it comes to limiting the speed of the cars, driver and spectator safety is the primary concern. If you talk to the engineers and drivers they are in F1 for only one reason - to be faster than everybody else. The fact that regulations exist is a part of racing. Doesn't stop cars from going faster every year. F1 is the most technologically innovative sport in existence today.

Tht drivers and engineers are in it to be faster says nothing about the sport; they aren't the ones paying the bill. Looking at the bills, I notice that many new regulations are cost-cutting measures (limiting testing time, limiting the number of engines used in a season) that are, AFAICT, solely aimed at leveling the playing field, so that races become more attractive, giving more teams a chance to compete, rather than to take part.

We also have (http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/06/sport/motorsport/motorspor...) Ferrari complaining

""If Formula 1 is not any more an extreme technology competition, where the technology can be transferred to the road car, maybe we can see Formula 1 without Ferrari,"

The author keeps referring to the incident in practice before the Petit Lemans as if it was the Porsche driver's fault for the incident. Its quite apparent that the Delta Wing's line is way off on the pass if he expects the Porsche to be able to make turn 12. When you see in the video that Porsche turns in he would barely be able to have made turn 12, the Delta Wing left him no room and it looks like the Delta Wing driver was aiming for the motorcycle course not the car course which sweeps right from under the tunnel.

The accident was just a racing incident IMO. The Delta was taking the normal line a prototype would take to get around a slower GT car. The GT oversteered at the exit of the right hander (you can watch his front tires as he tries to save it) and collected the Delta. What I found to be crappy was the GT driver flipping off the Delta driver after the collision. He also never went over to talk to Gunnar afterwards (Once of those unwritten rules in racing).

http://www.joe.ie/uploads/story/29499/porsche.jpg

The author keeps calling it ugly, but to me it looks f-in sweet!

What totally crap photos that don't show the dimensions/structure well at all. And only two of them.

There's a slideshow.

So less drag and less weight, but also less front-end downforce and contact area.

My amateur understanding is that this is essentially a compromise between road car and dragster, optimized for straights and low-speed cornering.

It makes plenty of downforce. Prototypes these days make a great chunk of downforce from the underbody. I watched it go through turn 1 (130mph+ at turn in) at Atlanta, the car was very fast. Now I am bummed I did not break out the radar detector to compare speeds.

EDIT: See the video posted by stevenrace above. It's a sort of controlled road test with some good engineering moments. In sum, there are a lot of subtle factors that make the car surprisingly stable and maneuverable - for more obvious reasons, it just doesn't behave exactly as we'd intuitively expect.

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