FA+
Shop
a stupid idea until the Americans nick it
17 years ago
General
.
Jokes and life related aside for once now. This is mostly an engineering rant.
It's good to know there's still some amazing British engineering genius. For once, I'm not talking about the science university graduates, or seven-year-olds with IQ scores into double hundreds. I'm talking about myself. I've had an idea so brilliant, and yet so simple, I'm stunned why it hasn't been thought of before.
Formula One cars. They're fast. Really very fast. They make even the fastest road cars look like crawlers, when compared on a track. There are three key elements to this speed. Aside from the tyres, drivers, materials, and so on, the three main things the cars need to be fast are; acceleration, braking, and downforce. These mean the cars can go, stop, and turn. But in the current F1 cars, these forces are actually working against each other. Downforce creates drag, which reduces acceleration. Braking decreases downforce, which reduces grip in cornering. Usually you brake before a corner, so you get lots of grip on the fast straight, then lose it just as soon as you need it.
So how can these two problems be solved? How can we get acceleration, braking, and downforce working together? Easy. We've seen the technology on planes for years. It's the very same piece of British engineering the Americans took, more than fifty years ago, to get Chuck Yeager through the sound barrier. A moving wing. You may already know, a F1 car has a large wing on the nose, and on the tail. These are fixed. They're at a set angle, set up before the race depending on conditions and the track itself. But if these wings were adjustable, driver-controlled, they could be flattened on acceleration, to reduce the drag. Then, angled high into a corner, which would increase drag and slow the car down, to improve braking, and add more downforce for the corner. Acceleration would be quicker, braking could be done later, and corners could be done faster. Every aspect of the car is greatly improved.
We'll probably see this technology in a few years now,
no doubt first thought of by a brilliant American engineer called Randy.
.
Jokes and life related aside for once now. This is mostly an engineering rant.
It's good to know there's still some amazing British engineering genius. For once, I'm not talking about the science university graduates, or seven-year-olds with IQ scores into double hundreds. I'm talking about myself. I've had an idea so brilliant, and yet so simple, I'm stunned why it hasn't been thought of before.
Formula One cars. They're fast. Really very fast. They make even the fastest road cars look like crawlers, when compared on a track. There are three key elements to this speed. Aside from the tyres, drivers, materials, and so on, the three main things the cars need to be fast are; acceleration, braking, and downforce. These mean the cars can go, stop, and turn. But in the current F1 cars, these forces are actually working against each other. Downforce creates drag, which reduces acceleration. Braking decreases downforce, which reduces grip in cornering. Usually you brake before a corner, so you get lots of grip on the fast straight, then lose it just as soon as you need it.
So how can these two problems be solved? How can we get acceleration, braking, and downforce working together? Easy. We've seen the technology on planes for years. It's the very same piece of British engineering the Americans took, more than fifty years ago, to get Chuck Yeager through the sound barrier. A moving wing. You may already know, a F1 car has a large wing on the nose, and on the tail. These are fixed. They're at a set angle, set up before the race depending on conditions and the track itself. But if these wings were adjustable, driver-controlled, they could be flattened on acceleration, to reduce the drag. Then, angled high into a corner, which would increase drag and slow the car down, to improve braking, and add more downforce for the corner. Acceleration would be quicker, braking could be done later, and corners could be done faster. Every aspect of the car is greatly improved.
We'll probably see this technology in a few years now,
no doubt first thought of by a brilliant American engineer called Randy.
.
But, it seems like the FIA might stifle it. It's always unclear what they will and will not allow it seems, like when McLaren came up with dual-brake pedals for independent wheel control.
Or the Tyrell P34, with six wheels.
It'll never have much impact on the development of normal cars,
as hardly any F1 technology ever makes it onto road cars.
Rally is where it's at for that.
I still want my rocket car though...
I remember someone ran a actual fan to create a vacuum under a race car and it works great. Of course it quickly got banned from completion. The rule book more stuffed with what not to do than what is allowed it seems.
Electronic control are heavily regulated too. Things like active suspension, computer assisted shifting and traction control are rare in racing. I guess I can see their point in not taking the driver out of the equation but I feel they go too far at times. NASCAR still uses carburetors even though fuel injection took over everywhere else. Sometimes the racers are so antiquated that it makes me shake my head.
I myself have an idea to help with downforce at high speed. I notice some rims out there looking almost like fan blades. I'm thinking why not make them functional. Not only pump air out from under a car (thus creating a vacuum to keep the car sucked to the road), but to help cool the brakes.
Oh BTW, some clever car car builder found a way to skirt around the fixed wing rule. Since the wings flex due to the air pressure, he used a wind tunnel to ""tune" the amount of flex to make it automatically adjust in time with the speed. Someone got wind of it (no pun intended ) and got it banned. I thought it was very brilliant work around to a dumb rule of using the natural flexibility as an advantage instead of a disadvantage. I love those kinds of things. I have tons of ideas like that but that's for another time.
Having it flex in high air speeds is just fantastic. It wouldn't quite fit with my idea, since my idea is to have the wing angle high as soon as the brakes are applied, to aid braking. You're right about everything getting banned though, it's a shame, but I suppose from the other perspective, we don't just want computers driving the cars, with every corner on the limit, because that's not really racing as it was in the old days; it could be seen to just be slightly larger Scalextric, but more expensive.
Perhaps you can answer a question I've never thought of before, but has just crossed my mind now. What's faster around a NASCAR oval; a NASCAR car, or a Formula One car? Say from a standing start, and then from a rolling start.
Kudos to Fara though.
It's like proving mathematical theorems to yourself before they're covered in class.
I remember reading a long time ago that both NASCAR and F1 cars are similar aerodynamically. Even though the F1 cars are smaller and sleeker, their open tires makes a lot of drag so they both turns out to be close. However, F1 vehicles are lighter and are faster by something like 20mph (could be different now). Plus in NASCAR, they use a restrictor plate under the carb that limits top speed.
Off the line, I say NASCAR is quicker but not by much. I seen F1 cars pushed out of the pits. I imagine they have taller gears as well as smaller high revving engines so not much torque on the low end compaired to the larger displacement ones in NASCAR, which provides a broader torque curve.