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Issue 21 - 2003 : The Drive to Win
To begin with, the sheer numbers are staggering. From the tremendous sum it costs to design and maintain a car to the victors' spoils, Formula One (F1) will never be viewed as a low-profile activity. In Europe, the frenzy surrounding races is equaled only by the rock-star status of the drivers. Although the excitement hasn't reached quite the same peak in the U.S., the Grand Prix run last year in Indianapolis could soon achieve that goal.
There are only seventeen opportunities each year to witness the phenomenon of Grand Prix races, which are run in locales as exotic as Malaysia and as familiar as Western Europe. Although the very first motor vehicle race track was built in 1907, it wasn't until after World War II that the first official World Championship Grand Prix was held.
The term "Formula One" actually describes a set of technical regulations determined by a governing body called the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA is responsible for dictating and enforcing the rules and regulations of the sport - from tip to tires, and everything in between.
Today's rules stipulate that each car must weigh a minimum total of 1323 lbs (600 kg), including the driver, and that the engine cannot exceed a cylinder capacity of three liters. Teams are always striving to stay within milligrams
of the minimum weight without breaking the rules - any additional ballast on the car can slow it down and maybe even cost the driver a race. There are also countless rules concerning chassis strength, fuel tanks, cockpit dimensions and more. FIA's stringent regulations exist for the safety of the racers. The cars hurtle around the track at death-defying speeds, and some measure of control must be exerted in order to maintain a balance between technological advancement and outright risk.
If it weren't for the oversight of the FIA, "One can speculate on what Formula 1 cars would have become," notes author Peter Wright in his book, Formula 1 Technology. "1500 PS turbo- or turbine engines; fan-assisted, skirted ground effect, variable geometry aerodynamics; active suspension; and full control of the individual tire slip ratios to provide artificial stability and control... The performance of the car would be beyond the capability of a human driver, with much more than 6g cornering and braking possible and to speeds exceeding 279 mph on existing circuits."
Safety
Although it borders on crass to say that accidents provide some of the entertainment in Grand Prix races, it would not be far from the truth. However, two fatal accidents within the same weekend in 1994 spurred the FIA to even greater measures of safety for the drivers.
FIA President Max Mosley recalled the early days of racing, when drivers lived "from weekend to weekend... It was a horrible feeling when you used to see smoke going up...you realized that, by applying a modicum of technology, you could avoid most of these things. It seemed to me completely immoral not to do it."
There are several ways to make a race safer, including modifications to the car, the track and most importantly, the driver's equipment.
The driver rides in a "survival cell" (that includes the fuel tank), which must be strong enough to withstand violent impacts. He wears a helmet, fireproof clothing and protective gloves. A device called HANS (Head and Neck Support) is designed to reduce both head deceleration and g-loading on the neck. The HANS effectively transfers the forces of deceleration directly to the shoulder harness, avoiding loads on the neck entirely.
The car's structure is designed to absorb a percentage of any impact and distribute it safely around the driver - hence the survival cell, which is buffered by structures that absorb energy from a crash.
Aside from making the cars and equipment safer, designers can secure the track as well. Hermann Tilke is a pre-eminent architect who specializes in Formula 1 race courses. At the drawing board, Tilke knows that there are two factors he must consider above all: overtaking (one car passing another during the race) and safety.
Safety considerations involve careful calculations of the cars' speeds at certain points on the track. The results help determine when and where along the course certain precautions will be built in. Since overtaking is also
a dangerous endeavor, Tilke has to create "safe" areas where overtaking can occur, and manage the pieces of track where the danger is greater.
"First, it is important to look at the surroundings of the site... Next you look at the site itself," remarked Tilke recently to Euro Business magazine. "We have to look at the characteristics of the track, whether it's short, long, very fast or a little slower... Designs are constantly revised and improved - it's a painful process."
One method of safely slowing a car headed for the wall is through the use of gravel arrestor beds. The gravel drains the momentum from a car by dissipating its energy through friction. One of the more powerful examples of the effectiveness of gravel occurred in 1999, when Mika Hakkinen's McLaren left the track at over 200 mph due to a failed tire. Although he hit the barrier head-on, his speed was so low by the time he traveled through the gravel that the front of the car suffered hardly any damage at all.
Barriers set up around the track are designed based on the estimated angle and speed at which a car may impact them. Tire barriers, for example, work best in absorbing perpendicular impact, while steel rails and posts bend to absorb the energy.
Aerodynamics
In aviation's heyday (the 1950s and '60s), new ideas were churned out and even brought into production on a very short timeline. These days, however, many designers spend most of their time in front of a computer screen, mocking up state-of-the-art airplanes that may never fly beyond the drawing board. A dwindling supply of money and a more conservative approach have increased the lag time from original design to execution.
In F1, the rules of the game change constantly. Not only are new technologies being discovered and tested on a weekly basis, but they find their way onto the track almost as quickly. For an innovative aerodynamicist, it can be a heady experience.
Although there are several parameters that affect performance, including power, weight and tire grip, aerodynamics are the most integral factor in F1 car design.
Frank Williams, owner of the WilliamsF1 team, draws a correlation between aircraft and F1 cars: "The rules of aerodynamics you use to keep aircraft up in the air are the same ones we use to dig into the ground."
That "digging" is done through the generation of a tremendous amount of downforce. It is so strong, in fact, that an F1 car could theoretically be driven on an upside down track at 100 mph and not lose its grip.
Aerodynamic principles (and wind- tunnel testing in particular) were not truly applied to F1 car design until the early 1960s. Up until that point, the focus was on reducing drag and increasing speed, with little recognition of the importance of downforce. When using wind tunnels to experiment with drag reduction, designers found that they were generating enough lift to upset the balance of the car.
Chevrolet's research and development team worked with Chapparal on the Can-Am cars - the first to be designed with downforce figuring centrally. They began by experimenting with body shape, then with wings and finally with fan-induced suction. The F1 design community took immediate notice of Chapparal's success, and the generation of downforce became a fundamental goal of car design.
Downforce
An airplane wing is shaped so that as air flows over its curved top portion it accelerates, causing a drop in pressure. The lower pressure (in contrast to the higher pressure below the wing) causes the wing to lift. A racing car wing is "upside down," so in this case the reaction and pressure are reversed, creating all-important downforce (negative lift) and pushing the car down onto the track. A by-product of lift and downforce is drag. The ability to leverage a large amount of downforce while minimizing drag presents some unique challenges.
An F1 car operates in the wake generated by the front wing, which is responsible for about 25 percent of the car's downforce. However, when one car runs closely in front of another, it creates turbulent airflow, disrupting the efficiency of drafting.
About 33 percent of the car's downforce comes from the rear wing assembly. Although the rear wing is responsible for gluing the rear tires to the track, it is also a huge drag producer, so it must be carefully adjusted depending on the track being raced. The straightaways (with relatively few tight turns) at Monza, Italy, require the cars to run at top speed. As a result, the rear wing
angle is kept very shallow in order to reduce drag. At Monaco, where the track is rife with twists and turns, downforce is essential, so the wing angle is sharper. Wing assemblies used to be adjustable by the driver during the race, but the FIA made that practice illegal. The ability for drivers to actively control wing angle from within the car increased their cornering speeds and, along with it, the potential for fatal accidents. Now, wings are adjusted only during pit stops.
The key to an aerodynamically efficient car is the diffuser, which generates a remarkable 40 percent of the car's total downforce. The diffuser occupies the
undercarriage of the car behind the rear axle line. It is comprised of a complicated set of tunnels that channel airflow to maximize its suction effect, thereby pulling the car down onto the track.
Most of the top teams operate their own wind tunnels, testing their models much the same way aerodynamicists do in the aviation community. Some of the aerodynamics departments today are as large as entire racing teams were decades ago. The science of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which is used extensively in the aerospace and marine industries, is also applied to F1 cars to calculate airflow over the vehicle's surfaces.
Even with all of the technology at the disposal of F1 team designers, it's still a complex process. "An F1 car's wings are comparable to an aircraft on final approach with all its flaps down," explains Patrick Head of the WilliamsF1 team. "And all the pieces on an F1 car - wings, sidepods, tires, etc. - are massively interactive." This means that airflow over the car's many surfaces presents a unique challenge when seeking accurate test results.
Money Makes the World Go 'Round
Paul Stoddard, an F1 team principal, was recently quoted as saying: "Formula One is not a business that really has budgets, although the word is often bandied around." Indeed. If you added the budgets of the eleven teams together, you would come up with a tidy sum of just over $2 billion. Sponsorships from almost two hundred corporations brings in slightly under $2 billion as well.
Several sponsors either own outright or have majority stakes in the teams they support. However, each team has its own policy when it comes to sponsorship levels. Renault, for example, not only owns its team, but is its second-ranked sponsor, having spent $170 million for the 2002 season. Toyota also owns and sponsors its team, arriving just shy of Renault's whopping budget with $140 million of its own.
One of the more interesting dilemmas in Grand Prix sponsorship is how to maximize the actual space on the car for advertising. The FIA's newest technical regulations call for narrower cars and smaller rear wings. That's a full third less space on which to post logos and brand names, making the existing space even more valuable - and expensive. Another issue facing teams is the intense pressure to succeed. Essentially, win or risk losing sponsors. As sports journalist Kevin Eason wrote in The London Times, "A bad race prompts a quick reaction from the men with the chequebooks [sic] in every garage in the pitlane."
For many years, the tobacco industry was one of the largest sponsors of F1 race cars. In 2006, however, a voluntary tobacco advertising ban imposed by the FIA may effectively slow the flood of money from that industry.
Spectacular budgets and international advertising politics aside, F1 is a real business seeking to generate profits. What is so interesting isn't really the amount of money being spent, but where and how it's being spent. Anyone with a passion for F1 will tell you that the state-of-the-art engineering and design of the cars, which is refined each year, is well worth the cost.
The Best of the Best
In order to begin to understand the delicate interplay between car and driver, you only have to look at the best F1 racer on the circuit: Michael Schumacher (his brother Ralf races on the WilliamsF1 team). He is undisputedly the most successful man racing today, and the reason for that has to do with his inimitable knowledge of the limits of his car.
Gathering and maintaining speed in and out of corners can result in valuable seconds gained or lost. Drivers master either a fast-in/slow-out - approaching corners at full throttle and then managing the tremendous speed with a slower exit - or a slow-in/fast-out, which is essentially the opposite technique. Schumacher, however, has enough of a feel for his vehicle that he can take high-speed corners fast-in/fast-out. Ross Brawn, Schumacher's technical director, says, "[Schumacher] gets the car 100 percent on the edge as soon as he begins braking, and keeps it there... he gets the car into the corner already on the limit. It's the most critical thing a driver can do."
Schumacher currently holds the record for the highest number of fast laps. His seemingly extra-sensory perception for the weight and balance of his car makes him the fastest in wet conditions, and even in vehicles that weren't as advanced as the Ferrari he races today.
Race car drivers, and F1 pilots in particular, occupy a quasi-legendary position in the world of sports. Although they are sometimes unfairly painted as egocentric and image-driven, the high-style, high-tech glamour they bring to the crowds is indisputable. For the brilliant teams of scientists and engineers working daily on developing ever-faster, smarter and safer cars, the drivers are the best judges when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. And for those of us in the stands, it's as close as we'll get to watching fighter jets roar past at close range.
Frank Williams
The WilliamsF1 team was born twenty-five years ago when Frank Williams paired up with engineer Patrick Head. Over the past couple of years, Williams and Head have enjoyed particular success with their BMW-powered cars. Drivers Juan-Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher have made decent showings at recent Grand Prix races, and they are considered one of the strongest teams in the sport.
Williams' passion for motor sports is matched only by his admiration and respect for the technology involved in racing. To that end, he is also the proud owner of a Falcon 900B - in fact, he's been a loyal Falcon owner for more than a decade. Williams took time out recently to share some of his experiences with Falconer.
Falconer: After all the years you've been involved in motor racing, do you still have the same passion as when you started?
Frank Williams: Very much so. Definitely. As a matter of fact, I'll probably remain in the sport until someone comes in and carries me out. In all sincerity, there are younger and better people entering the sport all the time, and I think they'll add an interesting new dimension to it.
Falconer: Where do you find the drive to stay at the top level of one of the world's most competitive sports?
Frank Williams: For many people, including myself, the work and the racing are the same passion. It's very exciting in Formula 1: non-stop business, drive and ambition. I feel like I've got the best job in the world. So it's more a matter of me keeping pace with my own enthusiasm for the sport.
Falconer: Of all the drivers with whom you've been associated, could you single out any favorites?
Frank Williams: We've had seven world champion drivers with us in the last twenty years. Each one was very different from the others - both on and off the track. I would name the most dedicated, but truly they each had their heart and soul in the sport. They were all remarkable men.
Falconer: Of the innovations made in F1 over the years, which one do you believe was the most costly to implement?
Frank Williams: FIA has imposed ever-demanding safety issues on us on an annual basis - in composite structure, engine and the like - so the costs are always there. But it isn't money spent unwillingly, because it's all about safety. The loss of a driver is far more expensive, emotionally as well as financially, than any modifications we make to our cars.
Falconer: Are there any innovations that have since been banned from F1 that you would like to see back in the sport?
Frank Williams: Electronically controlled hydraulic suspension provided cars with immense speed around the corners, but the FIA felt the cars were becoming dangerously fast. If a driver were to lose control at that high speed, his car would become a projectile.
Falconer: What do you foresee is the future of F1 racing? Do you feel that the cars have reached their peak or is there still more fine-tuning to be done?
Frank Williams: At the end of the day, we're a TV show, like many shows. F1 will always have a strong following of devoted fans. As for the technological future of the sport - it will always be open for new inspiration. When we moved to Grove [Williams' state-of-the-art headquarters in England], I brought on a group of young engineers without a lot of fixed notions about the sport. They provided us with a fresh approach, a fresh look, and that's something we'll have to draw on for many more years of racing.
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