A Distinguished Lecture.

Do you think aerodynamics are not that important at a slow track like Monaco?
Even at 70 km/h (43 mph), an F1 car can corner 8% faster with aero than without.

Next time you hear an announcer telling you how teams are trying to eliminate drag from their car, consider that if you simulate a car with zero drag. the lap time gained would be only two seconds but an F1 car without downforce will be 21 seconds a lap slower at the Circuit de Catalunya than one with downforce and drag .... 21 seconds!
No wonder Red Bulls often had the slowest in top speed but the fastest lap time: being fast in the corners is much more of a factor to lap time than being fast on the straight on many circuits.

Willem Toet is a Dutch-Australian aerodynamicist with a past in Benetton and Ferrari in the Schumacher era and later BAR and BMW Sauber.

It's not often we get insight from engineers and insiders and Mr Toet is particularly generous with it.  His LinkedIn page is a bit of a treasure trove of technical insight which, like this lecture are a must for any racing fan who wants to go beyond the basic understanding of Formula 1.


Find the time to listen to this lecture he gave at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.    It focuses on past F1 seasons but there are concepts that apply to the coming championship and the effect rule changes might have.

I guarantee it will help you discuss the sport in a more informed way.



Bonus points, Mr Toet hillclimbs a formula car (with great aero presumably!).

Oh great, fake Brembos now....

If you read Axis regularly, chances are you don't need us to tell you a $1500 set of new Brembos is fishy.  What's worrying here is that these Chinese counterfeits are so convincing,  that an unscrupulous  reseller or tuning shop might be tempted to pass it off as the real thing for the real price.

The story was dug up by AppleNews Hong Kong and reported by ZeroToHundred where you can read more about it.

I remember once  a mechanic at the Nürburgring, when I asked if he would kindly put some pads that were more than just a backing plates in my rental car,  say

"Brakes? who needs brakes, they only slow you down".

That was funny at the time, not sure it would be so much when your fake big brake kit fails bombing at 140 into turn 1 at the Glen or at 10 at Road Atlanta.

And lest you think it's just Brembo, mr Chen also trades in AP.  Stop Tech and Performance Friction can't be far behind so, Caveat Emptor and buy from a reputable dealer.

Who brakes best in Formula 1, Brembo tells

Tiny holes, about a thousand, on brake disks Brembo produces for Ferrari

Autosprint magazine is such a fantastic resource, it's been around since 1961 and always has precious insights and an alternative points of view.  On our must read list along with Autosport and Racecar Engineering.

I this week's issue there is a fascinating interview with Mauro Piccoli, chief of Brembo's racing department which we'll translate for you.


Autosprint: Brakes these days give so few problems that they can almost be taken for granted, true or false?

Mauro Piccoli: They are so reliable because of the amount of work done in simulation in order to arrive at the track with components that behave as predicted. In recent years, friction materials have changed a lot. We now have types of carbon which reduce wear tremendously, even in extreme conditions (In Singapore disks only wore an average of 1 mm for the whole race). Component design has changed a lot also because it's dictated not just by performance requirements but by aerodynamic requirement.

AS: Can you expand on that?

MP: Work on air flow started with the famous "wheel covers" which were banned. Later, work was done to try and re-create the same effect without them. The other important aspect is how to manage brake temperature as a way to get tires to temperature as fast as possible.

Toro Rosso have tested a new front suspension with the caliper in different position. A vertical position allows a better weight/rigidity ratio while a bottom mount lowers the CG but also increases the vibration on the rotor. (illustration Piola/Autosprint)

AS: How does your interaction with the teams work?

MP: We have s "idea sets" to work on during the season. There is the aspect of weight vs rigidity and there are aspects involving fluid dynamics studies which Brembo can conduct in its facilities. We integrate with the team's techs to make sure all that is built around our disks and calipers allows them to work in the best possible way.

AS: Today we are seeing much work done on cooling vane holes

MP: It's an aspect that has taken hold since last year and is becoming more and more extreme. It requires on the one side a very deep knowledge of composite materials making it quite tricky. On the other, it's dictated by fluid dynamics, it's not enough to just dill holes in the rotors to have efficiency. We have an advanced test bed which allows us to simulate changing airflow as a function of speed, as if we were testing on a real car because for aerodynamic reasons teams want to reduce the size of cooling ducts as much as possible.

Kamui Kobayashi locking up

AS: How different are braking styles in F1 today?

MP: A lot depends on tires. When there were different manufacturers one had to adapt style as a function of that tire's characteristics. Now with a single manufacturer there is effectively only one way to optimize braking. There are however those who are more or less aggressive.

AS: Some examples?

MP: Hamilton has his own style, he needs to "feel" front wheel lockup. On the contrary, Button very much tries for control and modulation. He might reach the same pressure peak but also manages the bakes more in the release phase.

AS: And at Ferrari?

MP: Alonso stomps on the pedal harder and generates more pressure on the system, we are talking of a pedal pressure in the 130-140kg range (+/-285-310lbs). It's similar to figures for Lewis or Jenson but Fernando is less aggressive. He likes to use a large diameter pump with a very short pedal. Pedal travel is in the order of 30-40mm, three and a half times that of the pump. Felipe prefers to manage lower pressures but as far as corner entry, there are no great differences.

AS: Everyone left foot brakes, does that cause you any issues?

MP: In the beginning there were overlaps between brake and accelerator which caused some excess of torque. We worked on various aspects which have minimized any issues.

AS: But then you have KERS which as it charges acts as an additional brake on the rear axle, has it complicated your life?

MP: In 2009, the first year, it did and we had to redesign our systems. However, having access to materials which are consistent and stable in their behavior have allowed for not having to continually fiddle with the bias adjuster. For 2014 when KERS will be twice as powerful...we'll see!

(Via Autosprint, interview by Alberto Antonini)
You can subscribe to Autosprint for your iPad HERE

Some new aero bits in the Spa paddock.

A couple of new development bits seen at Spa, but obviously not tested much because of the horrible weather.

Mclaren follows Sauber

Mclaren tested a new turning vanes inspired by the Sauber C31. Also note the twin flaps next to the cockpit.

Mercedes follows Renault

Mercedes showed a version of the Renault "Super DRS" with a twist,  the airflow is released against the bottom the main rear wing profile making it stall at high speed.


Ferrari thinks maybe simpler is better.

Ferrari showed a low drag front wing without all the complicated profiles and blowings used in Germany and Hungary, they did not turn out to work as well as expected and so were ditched.

(Giorgio Piola /OmniCorse.it)

Is that a Helmholtz resonator on your header or are you just happy to see me?

I read some fantastical theories about the function of those funny protuberances growing out of the Red Bull headers in Valencia and Silverstone. The most fantastical is that it is a pressure storage which on the off throttle then dumps gasses into the diffuser, a sort of "analog" hot blown diffuser.

Well, it does not take a genius to imagine the volume of gasses needed to crate that effect does not jibe with what that pipe could possibly contain.

The answer may be have to do with aerodynamics but in a roundabout way. With engines "frozen" in Formula One, one of the battle lines between manufactures are headers whose design in up to the individual teams. Design of the headers is dictated by packaging and can have a significant impact on engine output.

Red Bull designed some very small tight headers to fit in their new very compact rear end but this resulted in a significant power loss.
Renault made some suggestions and Red Bull came back with this solution which using the Helmholtz effect allows the exhaust to maintain the correct resonance for the intake and exhaust pressure waves to be in sync and thus allow more air into the combustion chamber. That involves the Kedenacy effect.

Remember for your next dinner party, 2012 is the year of the effects, Coanda, Helmholtz and Kedenacy, who said Formula One is not educational!

Sauber X-Ray

For the last two years the Sauber F1 Team mechanics have been using their downtime to slice a Formula One racing car lengthwise down the middle with the precision of true craftsmen. Chief Designer Matt Morris quite literally gets underneath the skin of the F1 car, pointing out where and how the individual components are located within the chassis. Everything is packed in pretty tightly. Sergio Pérez is also on hand to demonstrate the driver's seating position.

Rain tires

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The repeated postponing of the Nascar Daytona 500 due to weather this week, along with a good bit of public ribbing gloating from every other race series on the planet, has people thinking about rain and tires. The NASA clip above, aside from making you question how anyone survived 1960's automobile technology, tells you physics have not changed but tire technology has come a long long way since.

New rubber compounds and computer designed tread patterns have made it possible to design road car tires which are quite safe to drive in the rain at speeds 1960's NASA scientists might not have believed possible.

At high speed, the name of the game is water elimination and a modern road car tire will expell about 13 liters /3.5 gallons of water per second.
The ultimate expression of wet weather tire of the moment, the Pirelli Cinturato Formula 1 will expel about 60 liters /16 gallons of water per second at 300km/h. To put it another way, on a minute and a half lap, say at a high speed track like Silverstone, a single Formula One car traveling at an average speed of 200 km/h will pump something in the order of 14,000 liters / 3700 gallons of water per lap. Mind boggling.

But even that is not always enough. Water, like in the 1960's still cannot be compressed, and when the water gets deeper than the tread blocks, like in Montreal in 2011, you just have to park it.

That's rare, the more typical occurrence is that track conditions change during a race, making spectators happy and tire engineers and strategist earn their keep.

Martin Brundle explains what Axis readers probably already know...



Not just F1 of course, every racing series (except for NASCAR) races in the rain with reasonable safety, including at Daytona...



We all benefit from trickle down and today's top brands can produce tires that are quite amazing. Last year, at the One Lap of America we scored a .825G side load on the wet skidpad using off the shelf road car rubber, not an exciting video but a figure that would have certainly impressed those 1960's NASA engineers!

Brakes.

Key in Valencia will be brakes. Like in Montreal, but perhaps even more so as there are very fast sections into very slow corners. This is where all the passing will be done.

Practice should be quite interesting!



From "Inside Grand Prix"



In case you were wondering, 100 Bar= 1450 lb/sq in.

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The Formula 1 Gearbox.

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