F-1 V-8 engine placement

[Evan]

I was reading through an edition of Race Engine, and came upon an article about Toyota's 2006 V-8 engine.

One interesting point that was brought up was that because the engine is approx. 120mm shorter, the chassis folks have an interesting situation here; if the wheelbase stays the same, and the engine is still fully stressed (both of which this article seems to imply), they now have some freedom in controlling their weight distribution.

The options would be to split the difference and keep the center of the engine in the same longitudinal location, or move it forward or rearward. This could have a meaningful effect on the inertia of the chassis, especially when looking at what would be ideal for the front and rear with respect to roll center heights. As they use movable ballast in the bottom of the chassis to acheive their desired weight distribution, it would simply be a matter of altering the inertias, as I see it. I was just wondering if anyone else had any speculation on directions the teams may go with this... Move the engine forward and add more rear ballast from the front to more balance the inertias, or perhaps something else?

I'm likely not using the correct language to describe the idea, as I am currently trying to wean myself off of Carrol Smiths 'mass centroid axis' and 'front and rear cg height' way of thinking about these things as outlined in Tune to Win.

Any insights/ideas, Denny, Kevin and everyone?

-Evan Martin
Ryerson FSAE

[Evan]

I was reading through an edition of Race Engine, and came upon an article about Toyota's 2006 V-8 engine.

One interesting point that was brought up was that because the engine is approx. 120mm shorter, the chassis folks have an interesting situation here; if the wheelbase stays the same, and the engine is still fully stressed (both of which this article seems to imply), they now have some freedom in controlling their weight distribution.

The options would be to split the difference and keep the center of the engine in the same longitudinal location, or move it forward or rearward. This could have a meaningful effect on the inertia of the chassis, especially when looking at what would be ideal for the front and rear with respect to roll center heights. As they use movable ballast in the bottom of the chassis to acheive their desired weight distribution, it would simply be a matter of altering the inertias, as I see it. I was just wondering if anyone else had any speculation on directions the teams may go with this... Move the engine forward and add more rear ballast from the front to more balance the inertias, or perhaps something else?

I'm likely not using the correct language to describe the idea, as I am currently trying to wean myself off of Carrol Smiths 'mass centroid axis' and 'front and rear cg height' way of thinking about these things as outlined in Tune to Win.

Any insights/ideas, Denny, Kevin and everyone?

-Evan Martin
Ryerson FSAE

[syoung]

Hehe, I've been reading that section of Tune To Win today!

On a very simplistic level, I'd throw in that they've now got a little more freedom to play with fuel tank size and geometry - the latter for lower CoM. Fuel tank size is obviously important already, but a couple of teams have recently put in some quite long stints at Grands Prix, notably both Renaults at Monaco (shame about the tyres). With the tyre regs due to remain, and qualifying back to 2004 rules (one lap, on race fuel), together with lower fuel consumption from two fewer cylinders (was that a naive statement?), it's probable they've at least looked at the possibility of designing a 300km fuel tank for one or two tracks.

[drivetrainUW-Platt]

the engine is attached to the transmission, aka transaxle, if they want to move the engine up there wheelbase will change too......

[buddy]

I'm not up on the F1 rules, but with 120mm of room to move and a clever transmission arrangement, I'd go for active mass property manipulation. (the weight jacker engine)

buddy

[Eddie Martin]

The proposed 2008 rules look like a step in the right direction.

http://www.formula1.com/news/3175.html

[syoung]

I was just about to post and say the exact opposite!

The major changes:
- Stock ECU and software (removal of driver aids), stock wiring loom and stock sensors and actuators
- Stock brakes (discs, pad, calipers)
- Stock gearbox (mechanically operated by the driver), stock differential, foot-operated mechanical clutch
- Removal of 90% of current downforce, including all flick-up/winglet type devices and bargeboards, with no drag reduction
- Wider car, slick tyres
- Minimum chassis centre-of-mass height!
- Restrictions on materials used in construction
- On-board starter
- No spare car; 30,000km testing limit
- Tyre warmers banned!

There's more engineering than this in Formula Renault! I can't see the major manufacturers wanting to put their name to a home-build kit car for which all the parts are already specified. Speaking of home build, smaller teams will be able to buy part or all of bigger teams' cars.

I'm surprised they've not specified that one team must run in John Player Special (http://www.ch.qub.ac.uk/staff/lane/fig-1.jpg) colours! The 1970s may have been fun and full of overtaking, but writing the rules to produce a Formula 1 car circa 1979 is not the way forward. Actually, with a particular eye on on-board starters and banned tyre warmers, perhaps the FIA has been looking elsewhere for inspiration? Should we expect a $25,000 limit on the cost of a Formula One car any time soon?

[D J Yates]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Eddie Martin:
The proposed 2008 rules look like a step in the right direction.

http://www.formula1.com/news/3175.html </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

What!?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by syoung:
I was just about to post and say the exact opposite! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

What he said.

F1 is supposed to be the pinical of motorsport. That is teams of the best designers and engineers in the world developing the fastest cars in the world and having the best drivers in the world push them to the absolute limit (and beyond, Kimi EuroGP). I appreicate that if the sport is going to survive, the costs need to be reduced and the profile raised. But as far as i can see, the FIA are not helping.

The beauty of F1 is of course the cars, but also the flexibility in the rules. Recently there have been several different concepts: Renaults with awesome start line traction, Williams with the double keel front wing, etc. Take away the flexibilty and impose standards and all you'll do is make things more boring. And just wait until the first FIA standard component failure and the resulting political aftermath.

Take control away from the car and give it back to the driver, fair enough. It's not as if maintaing super human concentration and reactions for 2 hours at 3+ Gs in 30 degrees C temps in full race suits isn't hard enough already.

I'd like to see more dependancy on mechanical grip. However, the teams all have their own wind tunnels now and they're going to use them. They'll end up investing even more resources to regain as much of the lost down force as possible, just like this year. Wider cars will hurt aero and help mechanical grip, but surely the fact that they're wider means less room for overtaking which negates any overtaking-helping aero changes. Anyhow, if the public want wheel to wheel overtaking shouldn't they be watching F3, or a single make formula series. Perhaps instead of changing F1 into something else, they should just promote the other series.

If the teams are forbidden to invest in one technology (brakes, engine, gearbox), they'll find somewhere else to spend money and find performance gains. F1 pioneers many technologies that later make it into everyday road cars, so at least let them develop areas which are actually useful to the rest of the motor industry outside of F1.

Cutting testing will cut costs for now, but i'd bet that by 2008 somebody will be moaning about the costs of super computers and softwear development. Hours of computer processing will replace miles of testing, with only a few miles a year to validate the softwear.

There's only one way to cut costs in F1 (or anything for that matter), cap the budget. Otherwise, the teams will spend whatever they have. If they want to help F1 they should stop all the political bull, stop making changes to spite the top team/s and just let the guys get on with developing cars, racing each other and provide a better F1 entertainment service to the public.

[Evan]

Mike:

Why do you think the wheelbase would necessarily need to change? They could easily lengthen the gearcase (with a minimal addition in weight compared to the engine) to get the wheelbase back. Another option would be to reconfigure the rear suspension, although this would unwantingly alter the weight distribution. They aren't necessarily using the gearcase and suspension designs from this year!

-Evan Martin
Ryerson FSAE

[Denny Trimble]

DJ and Simon,
You make good arguments, and I feel sorry for those poor engineers who will lose their jobs (and for those of us who have / had dreams of working in F1).

But, I think it's a little silly that so much money is being sunk into this entertainment industry.

I also welcome the idea of seeing cars with a little less power, a lot less downforce, and a lot less electronics. It should be much more entertaining. Perhaps less amazing on the technical side, but much better on the excitement of watching starts without launch control, heated passing attempts without traction control, etc. I think it will make the drivers really shine.

[Shazzman]

Formula 1 has always been about the battle between with FIA to make the cars slower and the engineers to go even quicker. For alot of F1 fans around the world the technical side of the sport is as much of a turn on as the racing itself! But the reality is that we'd represent a minority of the entire global F1 audience. At the end of the day it all comes down to statistics. Simple to understand is never a bad thing.

[Eddie Martin]

When a company as big as Ford have around 400 people (Jaguar and Cosworth) with a $100 + million budget and the best they can do is pick up a few points here and there when other teams fail, then they pull out because of the huge cost needed to be at the front ($500 million) you know things are really bad and change needs to be made. Yes, they were in a pretty poor state most of jaguar's lifespan but for the last two years they went well just didn't have the budget to poor into huge amount of aero development.

F1 cars are more closely related to planes than cars these days. They make what ever compromise and break whatever engineering principle is needed to get more effective downforce. The cars are all so similar these days and the rules are so restrictive that new technologies that could help road cars are not allowed anyway. Is gaining 0.5% efficiency in a bargeboard going to help the NVH in a Honda Civic??? Shaking it up a lot will actually give the engineers some freedom to try new things and go in different areas, instead of just finding small bits of performance in tiny areas of the same package. Giving them 3 years to prepare will also keep costs down. The fia were pretty silly to change the rules at the last miunte.

Increasing mechanical grip and getting rid of aero will lengthen the braking areas and make it easier to overtake, where at the moment it is impossible unless you have a superior car. Braking from 300 km/h to 90 km/h in 90 metres gives no opportunity to dive down the inside. Look at moto gp the braking distances are longer and there is an opportunity to overtake. When they were at Mugello people were always diving down the inside into turn 1 and passing or out braking themselves and running a bit wide. Increasing the widths by 200 mm or so will make minimal difference to overtaking as the circuits they run on are pretty big. Adding starter motors is good so people can restart if they spin and adding clutches puts pressure back on the driver. There will be mistakes made and gear changes missed, this will add to whole spectacle.

F1 is more about entertainment than engineering these days. They are just very fast billboards for companies to flog their products. I like the technology that goes into the cars but the companies that put the money in just want exposure, they don't care about the technology and I think the neither do most of the fans that watch. Do you think all the extra people that watched the Indy 500 because of Danica Patrick (spelling) were really interested in whether she was driving a Dallara or Panoz?

I think the whole idea is that the best teams and drivers will be at the front, its just that you wont have to spend the gdp of a small country to be there. There will always be money in the sport it's just that you should be able to at the front because you have the best people and organisation rather than the size of your wallet. Pretty much like how fsae is. If you can't build a front running car with $50 million and 125 people something is wrong. They aren't solving world hunger and poverty just getting a car to go fast around a track. Do you honestly think capping the budgets would work? I'm sure they would have lots of creative accountants. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Kind of like the cost report in fsae. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

[syoung]

Jaguar did badly because of the bad structure of the team, which was massively over-managed by Ford. Just look at how many team principals, sporting directors and technical directors they got through in their few years in F1. But this year's Red Bull is largely a Jaguar design, and it seems to be doing pretty well (especially with the new Cosworth development this weekend - the Cosworth has been underpowered for years now).

Likewise, Toyota proved that it's possible to have the biggest budget in F1 in 2003 (or second-biggest, depending who you believe) and still finish around 14th-16th. Flavio Briatore estimates Renault's budget this year to be only 6th or 7th biggest on the grid. On the other hand, it's true that Sauber traditionally started strongly and then ran out of money for development, slipping back down the grid (this was true until last year), whereas Williams did, and still does, start badly and then throw money at the windtunnel to come out with a great car around midseason.

Overtaking in MotoGP isn't a function of longer braking distances so much as the width of the bikes. In a car, you have to go way offline and really compromise your corner to get alongside another driver; on a bike, you can be next to another guy and both of you still be pretty much on the racing line!

Somewhere like Melbourne is comfortably narrow enough that overtaking already needs cars to go a long way offline to overtake. And the reasoning behind introducing grooved tyres in 1998 was that it would produce bigger slip angles and longer braking zones; as it turned out, there was less overtaking and less visible sliding than before. As for starters, all the cars currently have anti-stall software, which works nearly all the time; cars only fail to restart from a simple spin if they're stuck in the gravel (and gravel traps are being phased out).

Capping budgets probably wouldn't work, but I agree with David that the teams will just throw similar money at different areas, or even the same areas - a small improvement in aero will be worth even more if there's not much aero performance to start with! Capped budgets would at least bring teams within +/-$50m of each other (hard to hide that kind of money!) as opposed to the $400m disparity between Ferrari and Minardi - but then how would you set a limit that the former would accept and the latter could reach?

At the end of the day, my biggest issue with these new regulations is that it takes away a lot of the engineering, the diversity and the speed. Aero restrictions on flick-ups etc. will come through more stringent dimensional specifications, so the cars will look even more similar than they do now (certainly after the first year or two). No scope to improve the brakes, anything in the driveline or the control of the engine. The whole lack of freedom is encapsulated by the requirement for a minimum chassis CofG - if you set a fundamental like that, what's the point in a car manufacturer owning its own team when somebody in a shed in Faenza can build the same car and make them look stupid on the track?

People don't care about the technology per se, but they would care if the new generation of F1 cars was slower than IRL, A1GP, ALMS, GP2(!) or other series - and so would the drivers.

[Eddie Martin]

Jaguar was badly managed but like i said they got themselves under control in the last two years and the hard work they put in has obviously helped red bull. We will never know how Jaguar would have gone this year but i guess it would be extremely similar to red bull.

A lot of the things are management and people related. Look at Toyota big budget no results. They get a couple of key people in, namely Mike Gascoyne, to change the direction and focus a bit and they are up the front, 95% the same people as when they were at the back of the grid so people/management are still the key. Renault are a good example of a smaller budget, reportedly $250 million compared to Ferrari with $450 million, but they still have a major auto manufacturer behind them and there budget is still very very big.

Overtaking is a complex subject. If you rely on mechanical rather than aero grip the cars can run close to each other easier, and without destroying their tyres. When they went narrow/grooved they just pushed the balance in aero's favour which made it harder to follow other cars. The rules should make it so that going off line isn't a penalty and you can dive down the inside in bigger braking zones. The fact that there is a tyre war is interesting but it means that one line on the circuit is clean and sticky and everywhere else is dirty and slippery, that's not good for overtaking.

Basically what i'm trying to say is you shouldn't have to have huge budgets to win but just the best people/team and the rules should be written so that you can throw as much money and time at something as you want but it is still not going to make much you faster than the guy spending a lot less, like with the new V8 engine rules with standard crankshaft heights etc. BTCC was an awesome series in the early 90's but it priced itself out of existence because the rules weren't tight enough.

I know F1 should be the pinnacle of engineering and development but it really lost it's relevance a while a go. Look at Sportscars and you can see teams trying CI instead of SI engines, teams trying alternative fuels, things that can actually influence road cars. If you look at WRC you can see that it effects the cars we drive on the road, F1 changes the marketing campaigns of the cars we drive on the road. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

The point of a car manufacture owning a team is to get publicity like it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. It's entertainment. Most people think the touring cars they watch on Sunday have some relevance to the road cars they drive. I had a really good look at a V8 supercar one day and the only thing I could find that was straight from the road car was the dash pad (I maybe wrong on that). They may have no relevance to road cars but a touring car winning on Sunday does increase sales on Monday, that's marketing not engineering. It's not the best situation I'd prefer it to be more engineering based but that's the way it is, unfortunately.