If they ignore the RRA, they'll be fine.
Technical 2014 Technical Regulations
- Thread starter Brogan
- Start date
Then they'll be fine. Me, cynical? Never. 
rufus_mcdufus
Champion Elect
To be fair he didn't single out his own team specifically but one of the top F1 teams. I wouldn't be surprised if more than one team cocks it up. F1 could do with a shake-up.
Well, 2009 serves as a reminder to all the big teams that major regulation changes should not be taken lightly. They reg changes in 2009 gave Red Bull the chance to get ahead, especially after Honda's woes, and the other teams have been playing catch up ever since.
First picture of Renault V6:
Looks quite different to the Mercedes but I don't know what I'm talking about.
Just like the rest of us then.
It's a Flymo. I'll have one of them to do my lawn.
I can just hear the neighbours now...
...oops sorry, no I can't.
I can just hear the neighbours now...
...oops sorry, no I can't.
I'm really hoping that the we see the cars return to not running air boxes above the drivers head. They are not required on Turbo cars so should give designers a whole new area to look at the transit of air onto the main beam of the rear wing. I fully expect to see more novel uses of the roll bar and a lot of development work in that area.
Then again I could be wrong.
Then again I could be wrong.
Interesting to read today that apparently the teams don't want any additional testing for the 2014 season, despite the massive changes.
So it will just be the three pre-season tests as usual.
http://www.auto123.com/en/racing-ne...extra-testing-for-v6-rules-debut?artid=153639
So it will just be the three pre-season tests as usual.
http://www.auto123.com/en/racing-ne...extra-testing-for-v6-rules-debut?artid=153639
Blog Zbod
Podium Finisher
I hope you'll not take this personally if I say I think your Pollyanna is showing. F1 crept past the point of no return, IMHO, when the current V-8 engine formula was enforced. If not before. Not to mention the single tyre supplier, who subsequently has been empowered to mandate car weight distribution.
The rules have become so confining that the teams have no choice apart building near as makes no difference the identical car the FIA want rather than the one their engineers desire. The biggest difference among the current lot of engines is the logo on the valve cover.
The results of the teams' attempts to utilise exhaust gas energy is a classic example. Every time one of them finds a clever way to employ it, the FIA (after two or three clumsy attempts) manage to ban whatever they innovate.
Exhaust gasses contain energy. Always have, probably always will. Adrian Newey first brought the blown diffuser to F1 in 1989 with the Leyton House March CG891, but racers were using exhaust gas energy to their advantage long before AN was a gleam in his father's eye.
So what's the point banning it? Why not let the designers take advantage? If it's out of cost consciousness, how do you balance prohibiting that against mandating something as costly as CURSE?? Or the new V-6 turbo engine formula with über-CURSE??? The way the FIA follow after F1's innovators trying to stamp out their creations strikes me of a house cat gone mental, endlessly chasing its tail. Even if it should catch it, what exactly has it accomplished? Apart, of course, from discouraging innovation in general and artificially diverting the sport from its natural evolutionary path.
Until the FIA prove Sir Isaac wrong, exhaust energy will continue to influence car dynamics. Might as well try to repeal the law of gravity.
In 2014, spec weight increases 18 kilos, max fuel load decreases 50 kilos, and petrol engine peak output is predicted to drop roughly 200 bhp (although I think 150-175 will be closer to the truth). Allowable 2014 CURSE output doubles to 120kW, ~160 bhp. If all they can manage to wring out of the 1.6L V6T is 550 BHP, the 2014 cars will be down by about 11% (bhp/kg) at the start of the race compared to 2013, and by about 16% (bhp/kg) at the finish (presuming cars are minimum spec weight, driver is 70 kilos, max allowable fuel weight at the start, zero fuel at the finish, 750/550 bhp for petrol engines and 80/160 bhp for CURSE). Even with the 650 dinosaur powers I am guesstimating on tap for the V-6T, 2014 will be up by a scant 1% (bhp/kg) at the start and down by 5% at the finish. Add to that a heavier car (=shorter tyre life), the lowered noses, and the FIA's inquisition against the evils of Bernoulli and Coandă, and I think you'll see lap times falling off noticeably everywhere.
The most dramatic change for 2014 will be that race results will turn on the performance of a team's CURSE. Under the new rules, CURSE will represent 10% more of the car's total accelerative potential than for 2013. And that's if my 650 bhp prediction is correct. It's a whopping 13% if I'm wrong. So 2014 will be a l-o-o-o-o-n-g season for any team without a stone reliable CURSE capable of producing everything the TR allow, every lap.
If your ECU will permit no more than 100 kg per hour fuel mass flow, you are not likely to get two hours endurance from your 100 kilogram petrol tank if you're constantly giving it the wellie. You only need be at full throttle (and above the 10,500 RPM sliding scale for fuel flow) for half each lap before that outcome falls into question. And to the best of my knowledge, Monaco is the only circuit presently in use where drivers routinely spend less than 50% of each lap at full throttle (but Monaco hardly counts as it's also the only race exempt the 305 km minimum length rule). At some circuits, full throttle is applied for nearer to 70% of each lap. So the Monaco GP aside, everyone on the grid habitually will be limiting dinosaur power so as to comply with the one litre rule, then expending CURSE power to try to arrive first at the finish.
The irony of 2014's 100 kg max race fuel load is that the more powerful your petrol engine is, the more powerful and reliable your CURSE had better be. If CURSE falters, you'll have to dial back the petrol engine, too, else you again risk running afoul of the one litre rule.
The reason boost pressure is not regulated is it already indirectly is limited by regulations governing engine displacement, max RPM and fuel mass flow rate, and the stoichiometry of petrol. A 1600cc 4-stroke engine @15,000 RPM turns over 12,000 litres of air per minute (figuring 100% efficiency, which is wishful thinking). At STP, dry air weighs ~1.4 grams/Litre. So 12,000 litres come to 16.8 kilos of normally aspirated air per minute.
The perfect air-to-fuel ratio is 14.7-to-1. And max fuel mass flow for 2014 is limited to 100 kg/hour, or 1.67 kg/minute. Each kilo of petrol needs 14.7 kilos of air, so 1.67 kilos need 24.6 kilos of air. Since the atmo engine only can draw in 16.8 kilos each minute, it needs about a further 0.5 atmospheres of pressure applied to intake air to combust the full measure of 100 kg per hour at the optimal ratio. Throw in a fudge factor to account for real world inefficiencies and I'd guess the V-6T's max boost pressure should be in the neighborhood of 1.6-1.7 bar (absolute).
I've read speculation some engine builders might opt for a lower-revving engine, nearer 12,000 RPMs, which would reduce atmo air exchange in proportion, in which case boost pressure could rise to 1.9-2.0 bar before creating a too lean mixture, compression ignition and shattered piston domes. So I doubt you'll see giant turbos as in days of yore blowing 4 bar boost.
This latest draft of the TR no longer includes a requirement that the driver be able to restart the car from anywhere on the circuit, without external assistance, which I count a good thing (TR 5.18 in the immediately previous). Apart the fact it added to the expense but did absolutely NOTHING to enhance the competition, it also indirectly would have prevented a driver ever fully exhausting his CURSE batteries, because then he'd have nothing left to energise the starter motor (unless they also added a separate battery and charging system specifically for restarts). I don't know why they deleted it but someone was asleep at the switch ever to include it.
I think they also were asleep at the switch requiring the silly electric pit stop. But they have a year yet to figure that one out.
I agree with most of what you say, and I even understand some of it! I think they've missed a big opportunity to create a more flexible set of regulations and it frustrates me massively that they're aiming to make the cars no more than five seconds slower per lap rather than trying to make them faster!
The FIA are stuck between a rock and a hard place though. They have to try to maintain F1 as the pinnacle of motorsport, keep costs down, keep fans interested, make it attractive to manufacturers and sponsors etc. etc. etc. Finding a compromise that works can't be easy.
The Artist.....
Champion Elect
sushifiesta - you missed one; they also need to keep it safe!
Fenderman
Rooters Reporter
In his excellent post Blog Zbod has intuitively detailed exactly what is (to me personally) wrong with F1 now and for the foreseeable future. The tightly woven prescription that is the technical regulations effectively neutralises any scope for major engineering and technical innovation. The variety of engine solutions and car design are now so distant a memory that anyone younger than 30 not interested in history can be forgiven for not knowing it ever existed. Obviously the moment the sport was designated as Formula One the rot was bound to set in. Any formula that is continually refined is destined to get narrower over time and the inevitable slide toward a paradox. Apart from the 2014 engine configuration being changed to a Turbo V6 there's actually not a lot new about it and since there are no other configurations permitted there will not be any significant variety.
We now have a situation where the technology of F1 has meant that the driver is, what, 5% of the package? Yet, the relative parity of the cars as prescribed by the formula, means that the driver represents 95% of the reason for following the sport. Naturally that is acceptable, in the sense that most people watching F1 (as consumers of the F1 product) are not necessarily as interested in the technology as many of us F1 and motorsport addicts who populate motorsport forums. However, I have noticed my own addiction to F1 wane significantly as the technology has become less exciting and interesting.Indeed, 2012 was the first season in two decades in which I did not routinely record the races and felt no qualms about missing a round or two.
Ted Kravitz's notebook exposes or illustrates the issue as he has to delve so deeply to find a new curve on a winglet and then try to make his discovery sound exciting. There was a time the season opener was populated with a grid full of teams whose cars all looked significantly different, had different configurations of engines and chassis, and where three or four of them would make your eyes pop out because of the revolutionary approaches to making things on four wheels go faster and handle better than the next bloke's. Ted would have needed somewhat more than a notebook in those days. Now it's a tweak here and a tweak there but for chrissake don't F'up the aero and if we're lucky Ted won't notice this year!
Finally, I know that with the benefit of hindsight I should have posted this in the Rant thread but I should just thank the Le Mans series and ALMS where there still remains some level of variety in the context of the competition. Yes I shall continue to follow F1 because it's still awesome to see guys battling wheel to wheel in open wheelers at 200mph around some great circuits. But for technological interest these days it's endurance racing for me.
We now have a situation where the technology of F1 has meant that the driver is, what, 5% of the package? Yet, the relative parity of the cars as prescribed by the formula, means that the driver represents 95% of the reason for following the sport. Naturally that is acceptable, in the sense that most people watching F1 (as consumers of the F1 product) are not necessarily as interested in the technology as many of us F1 and motorsport addicts who populate motorsport forums. However, I have noticed my own addiction to F1 wane significantly as the technology has become less exciting and interesting.Indeed, 2012 was the first season in two decades in which I did not routinely record the races and felt no qualms about missing a round or two.
Ted Kravitz's notebook exposes or illustrates the issue as he has to delve so deeply to find a new curve on a winglet and then try to make his discovery sound exciting. There was a time the season opener was populated with a grid full of teams whose cars all looked significantly different, had different configurations of engines and chassis, and where three or four of them would make your eyes pop out because of the revolutionary approaches to making things on four wheels go faster and handle better than the next bloke's. Ted would have needed somewhat more than a notebook in those days. Now it's a tweak here and a tweak there but for chrissake don't F'up the aero and if we're lucky Ted won't notice this year!
Finally, I know that with the benefit of hindsight I should have posted this in the Rant thread but I should just thank the Le Mans series and ALMS where there still remains some level of variety in the context of the competition. Yes I shall continue to follow F1 because it's still awesome to see guys battling wheel to wheel in open wheelers at 200mph around some great circuits. But for technological interest these days it's endurance racing for me.
I don't know if this is for real (I haven't seen it anywhere else such as on Autosport or BBC websites yet, and I know a few people here don't have much time for Pitpass, but they've not often been wildly wrong in their reporting of things like this):
http://www.pitpass.com/48763-Ecclestone-2014-engines-may-be-fitted-with-sound-enhancers
If it is true, is this yet more evidence of the fact that Mr E should do the decent thing and retire?
http://www.pitpass.com/48763-Ecclestone-2014-engines-may-be-fitted-with-sound-enhancers
If it is true, is this yet more evidence of the fact that Mr E should do the decent thing and retire?
A sound enhancer for Bernie would be good - maybe gaffer tape for the mouth...
