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The 2020 F1 Season

I’d love this to be the end of these awful powerplants. I know they’re technologically impressive, and the cars are very fast and economical, but nobody can afford to join the circus with their own one. It’s horrific. And look at the WEC, Toyota and one or two independents. The F1 and WEC cars are damned heavy too. In fact F1 cars are approaching the weight of small road cars. How silly is that?

I know, I know, it won’t happen. And that’s a real shame.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
I’d love this to be the end of these awful powerplants. I know they’re technologically impressive, and the cars are very fast and economical, but nobody can afford to join the circus with their own one. It’s horrific. And look at the WEC, Toyota and one or two independents. The F1 and WEC cars are damned heavy too. In fact F1 cars are approaching the weight of small road cars. How silly is that?

I know, I know, it won’t happen. And that’s a real shame.
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I posted a few pages back about the 80's cars and what I enjoyed was how nimble they seemed, twitching around and you could really see them being driven. Not trying to say what was a better measure of top drivers but they were certainly more fun to watch. Bring back the short wide 500kg cars and keep the power over 1000bhp, maybe with a 3.0l 20,000rpm v10 ;-)
 
Yep.

The teams need to save money anyway, even without this crisis. And six speed manual gearboxes!

Gerhard Berger drifting through corners, in the dry. Bring that back.

And, the old Hangar Straight into Stowe, from 1987. Bring that back. And the old Graham Hill bend at Brands, bring that back so people can overtake again.

I bet Hammy etc would love it all.
 
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Tony Lockhart said:
Yep.

The teams need to save money anyway, even without this crisis. And six speed manual gearboxes!

Gerhard Berger drifting through corners, in the dry. Bring that back.

And, the old Hangar Straight into Stowe, from 1987. Bring that back. And the old Graham Hill bend are Brands, bring that back so people can overtake again.

I bet Hammy etc would it all.
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I have been a fan of the new engines in terms of the technology they represent but they have been a disaster in terms of value for money. They are so ridiculously expensive they mean no one can really afford them without a large benefactor to stand the cost.

Not sure I agree with the manual gearbox, we have classic racing for that, F1 still needs to be a tech "top of the tree". How much power and reliability can they get from a pure NA engine? How high can they get one to rev?
 
Maybe the next set of regs, or perhaps even a new formula, should include an aspect of reverse engineering/improvement. Like each team is given an Aerial Atom, two rolls of carbon fibre and some duct tape and told to strip it down and turn it into an F1 car. I honestly think the cars would be fantastic!
 
cutting42 said:
How much power and reliability can they get from a pure NA engine? How high can they get one to rev?
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I think in practice at Donington in ‘93 Derek Warwick fluffed a gear change and the engine buzzed itself to 22,000rpm, and he drove it back to the pits. So... modern tech and no limits, maybe 25,000? 1,200bhp? More? That was with the 3.5 engines in ‘93.
 
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cutting42 said:
, F1 still needs to be a tech "top of the tree".
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But it is now a technological dead end isn't it ?

They used to say that F1 was where tomorrows tech came from for the cars that we would drive,

Petrol and diesel engines are coming to an end so you boys have seen the best of motor racing.

I am old enough to remember the Lotus 25 racing....I still miss those cars !

( I know my time has gone because I will never watch electric car racing....it's just not the same )
 
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peter bj said:
funding is going to be down for all the F1 teams with no races and sponsors likely to pull out so some teams likely to fold
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Yes it is going to be very tough for the small teams. The bigger teams / OEMs will be finding this difficult as they look at ways to reduce costs or even pull out. Downsizing will need to happen at the big teams to some extent (Covid-19 affecting the budget cap size for the OEMs that want to stay in F1).
 
Joe said:
But to is now a technological dead end isn't it ?

They used to say that F1 was where tomorrows tech came from for the cars that we would drive,

Petrol and diesel engines are coming to an end so you boys have seen the best of motor racing.

I am old enough to remember the Lotus 25 racing....I still miss those cars !

( I know my time has gone because I will never watch electric car racing....it's just not the same )
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Looking at it as a Motorsport to drive innovation that has relevance in the modern car world, then yes I tend to agree with your comment. However, realistically its relevance has been minimal for quite a while. It is still relevant in terms of material science and probably simulator development alongside a few other areas, Ian or Frank (if he is still on pfm) can probably shed more light on that.

I don't know what the future is really, might be best if they stop trying to be relevant and just concentrate on providing entertainment but at high tech levels. I want a small light car with minimal wings and strong ground effect and a high revving V10 3 litre. A snappy edgy almost impossible to drive car but with modern reliability.

Imagine the 1988 car, 500kg but with the ground effect of the late 70's Lotus/Brabham/Ligier and the incredible sounding 2000 V10 Mercedes 900bhp engine. Think I need to sit in a darkened room for a bit.
 
The F1 teams have led the way with simulator development. The road car OEMs have been much slower to follow and are benefiting from how we have pushed forward the development of high fidelity simulators.

And yes low mass is what a racing car should have at its core....
 
Joe said:
They used to say that F1 was where tomorrows tech came from for the cars that we would drive
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Did they really? I don't think they did. One can certainly point at developments that were accelerated by their use in racing (disc brakes, borrowed by Jaguar from aircraft practice in its desire to win at Le Mans). However, it is simply that mankind has always raced its forms of transport. And in doing so, those means were made specifically with that purpose in mind, to the exclusion of any road use. Racing cars and road cars are of necessity two entirely different animals, and never the twain shall meet. Think of all the developments in F1 that never came to road cars - side skirts, wings (except in specialised/decorative cases). And think how 4WD, now relatively common in road cars, never really worked in F1 or sports racers. And only very small road cars use 13" rims! The introduction of turbocharging to road cars had nothing to do with F1, more to do with meeting ever stricter emissions and fuel consumption regulations.

I am old enough to remember the Lotus 25 racing....I still miss those cars !
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I'm also old enough to remember the Lotus 25 (worse, the Lotus 18!). And I also miss the simple beauty of those cars - personal favourite:

c5a2a5261b07266a9bbca6609796acce.jpg
 
Vettel is in Autosport agreeing with us lot about the silly weight of the current (see what I did there?) F1 cars. He says that while the cars are very quick through fast and medium turns, in slow corners that 750kg can be felt. He wants them back to 600kg ish, without taking away any of the safety. Well I’m guessing the only way to achieve that is to ditch the Duracells.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/148948/vettel-current-high-downforce-cars-too-heavy
 
Here is a pic from the 1974 test drive. The girl standing in the small pic, Marianne Sterner did the test drive. The owner to the left, Sten Hillgard, used it in club racing!

tv-1974-21-porsche-917.jpg
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Vettel is in Autosport agreeing with us lot about the silly weight of the current (see what I did there?) F1 cars. He says that while the cars are very quick through fast and medium turns, in slow corners that 750kg can be felt. He wants them back to 600kg ish, without taking away any of the safety. Well I’m guessing the only way to achieve that is to ditch the Duracells.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/148948/vettel-current-high-downforce-cars-too-heavy
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Internally we have been saying this for years.

The minimum mass has crept up from 500 kg in the eighties to around 730 kg. Much of this is for safety reasons, but a big step change happened in 2014 for the new hybrid powerplants and the energy storage (or Duracells as Tony has called them!).
 
Moto GP seems to have a more flexible attitude to what constructors can do..... different numbers of cylinders and a subsequently different cc size . They may have brought in control tyres and fuel allowance but it still seems a freer regime ...could be wrong ( often am ) .
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Vettel is in Autosport agreeing with us lot about the silly weight of the current (see what I did there?) F1 cars. He says that while the cars are very quick through fast and medium turns, in slow corners that 750kg can be felt. He wants them back to 600kg ish, without taking away any of the safety. Well I’m guessing the only way to achieve that is to ditch the Duracells.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/148948/vettel-current-high-downforce-cars-too-heavy
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As I said in a previous post, it's a mistake to equate road and racing cars, and the use of hybrid power plants, while technologically interesting, does not do a thing to make F1 any more relevant to road cars, so why bother? There once was a moan about non-hybrid F1 cars' fuel consumption, but this is not relevant. I can't remember the exact figure, but it was something like the fuel consumption of one 747 London - Tokyo return flight (setting aside the differences between petrol and aviation fuel) would fuel the entire F1 grid for a year, including practice sessions.
 
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