The reason there are so many English Engineers in F1 is due to the fact that the UK Aircraft industry fell flat on its face so the Aero people had to find another avenue to pursue there training.... Motorsports. The universities then responded by creating motorsport related programs. The US really has nothing in terms of traning other than Formula SAE that is directed towards Mechanical Engineering students. Most universities engineering dept's dont even field a team since it cost to much.
The problem is that Ferrari is so behind the 8 ball right now it only makes sense to get a true V-8 car onto the track and get the thing figured out. For Ferrari the season is over raise the white flag and regroup. JMHO
I don't disagree, I'm just saying that development work takes time. The new car will be ready when it is done.
I think FSAE is a fantastic program that integrates more than just mechanical engineers. This year there were over 100 Universities from the US participating. You often see business majors, civil engineers, and electrical engineers involved in teams. The approximate budget of average teams is around $20k to $25k. However, travel costs to the competition significantly add to that budget. The idea is to create a formula race car that can be mass produced and marketed to the weekend racer. The important part to remember is that many of the student participants get recruited by companies here in the US for their experience in a team environment. If I am not mistaken, FSAE has been also adopted by a UK based engineers association as a seperate event to be based for European schools too. Anyway, my main point is that the infratructure for American engineers in F1 exists. But when 60% of the teams are based in the UK, they recruit locally. F1 teams based in the UK look for employees who they do not need to sponsor and who are UK citizens. The cost of hiring a student from the US or elsewhere is simply too high. So to say that the English dominate F1 because they bring fresh ideas is wrong. Due to the histopry of F1 a majority of the teams are based in the UK. They hire British engineers locally because they are available at a lower cost than shipping someone for the US. I bet you if you take anyone from the Cornell FSAE team to work for an "English" F1 team they would also bring Fresh and New ideas. The only reason why English are dominant in F1 is because English teams only hire locally. Just wait till the political mess within F1 clears up and a few American F1 teams start popping up on the map. Ford nearly moved the Jaguar operation to the US and rebranded the entire operation. But I think the amount of politics in F1 dettered them from doing that. The American teams will also hire locally from US colleges. Then I guess you can say that Americans are also bringing Fresh and New ideas to F1.
Funny you mention this. I know two people who went to Cornell and were both part of the FSAE team during different years and they both ended up working for the Jag F1 team. We all know how that ended... Greg A
Yes, that ended up as Red Bull Racing. Still based in England. Still hiring primarily English engineers.
I was recently at the Toyota F1 factory near Cologne in Germany and we were shown 1 cylinder test motors that they hammer on the dynos before they implement them in multi cylinder engines. They had v8s on the dynos while i was there, and have recently run v8 cars in testing too. Vibration is the key problem everyone is talking about. From what ive seen of nascar i expect to see the first american team hammering sheet metal body work back into place and the pit crew putting tape onto the front of the car rather than increasing the front wing at the first pitstop in every race pez
Give it a rest the only post secondary schools that offer a true motorsports program of any kind are in North Carolina. The information delivered to the students is NASCAR based. In fact i am an instructor and one of our sister schools is the "NASCAR Technical Institute" while it does train you in race car prep, Welding, Engine building + testing. The core focus is to work on passenger cars in a local car dealership. Lets see NASCAR is recruting in England so they can get engineers that can bring in some "Fresh thinking". IRL and CART the engineering staff is dominated by English engineers. A couple of Nascar teams have opened up development centers in England. Penske and a few other IRL/CART teams have opened centers in England. If you take a look at US racing series that does not have English influence on them. NASCAR, WOO, USAC Sprints, Midgets, SilverCrown, NHRA Teams that tried to build there own open wheel cars for IRL or Champ Car in the US. Trusports, Swift, Gurney All American Racers, Falcon, Riley + Scott .All of them failed and no longer build open wheel racers for any major series. In the US there are only a handful of "Rolling Road" wind tunnels. The Swift tunnel was reported to be the most advanced at the time it was built even by F1 standards. in fact Jag F1 used the tunnel in 2001 for testing of there 2002 car. What happened it was a disaster for Jag since the calibration for the tunnel was incorrect and all of the test data was worthless. The US is far benind the times when it comes to motorsport engineering.
Bingo! If you notice, all of the Ferrari V10s that end up for sale as display pieces are missing the key components that are used to dampen the vibration...
With the V-10's the Bank angle along with crank pin spacing could create a vibration free engine in a V-10. The real key element in a V-10 is the torsional damper for the camshafts. Because of the length of camshafts and the speed that the engine revs the camshafts will twist with out them. Because of the ultra close tolerences Any twisting of the cam timing will result in a destroyed engine. With a V-8 the optimum would be a 90 degree bank angle with a 90 degree crankpin spacing for no vibration. The biggest problem is this design causes a very heavy and weak crank for F1 applications. Also the V-10's are running a big bang configuration where 2 cylinders on the same row of the V fire close to each other This helps to put less stress on the tires and drivetrain. Of all of the F1 engine builders on the grid Honda, Toyota, and Cosworth have the most relevent V-8 Data from the engines that they have built for IRL and CART. For those teams the learning curve will be the least.
Toyota (Lexus) and BMW also run V-8s in the Grand AM series. Maybe it will help or already has helped them get some sort of baseline as to where to start. However, I believe those V-8s are production based so I'm not sure how much.
from the discussions i had at toyota it seems as though they are in essence just lopping off 2 cylinders from the 10 and sorting out any problems that they are getting. pez
While production based engines can be converted to race engines there are a lot of differences between them and an F1 engine. So it is not really any help at all.
There is a lot more to it that just chopping off a row of cylinders of the engine. A V-10 requires a 72 degree crankpin spacing while a V-8 requires 90 degrees. Also the thermal dynamics of a V8 is different even though it is still roughly based off of the 300cc cylinder of a 3L V-10 because of the spacing of the crankpin they will have to change bore and stroke size to optimize it for maximum performance.
they were obviously generalising and saying that the v8s next year are going to be more like this years v10s than any other v8s that are out there. impressive to watch them working on the exhausts for the things too, so intricate, works of art. pez
We should not get to tangled up in to crankpin angles/spacing ... while some angles are ideal (for balance) you do NOT have to run these angles. Remember most current v10 engines are not 72 degrees (I believe) and more like 90 to get the CofG lower. These are relatively short term race engines and compromises are made for overall performance gains. Remember also Renault made a really wide V10 a few seasons ago ... Also regarding bore size ... the FIA effectively set that by defining the bore centres (read up on the Toyota v8 and you will see that they had to wait for the FIA to set this before doing any serious work). Now this really pisses me off because by setting the bore centres they effectively are setting the maximum bore and thus restricting technology advances. If they must set the number of cylinders, which also pisses me off, let everything else be free for God's sake (other than obviously CC size). Pete
I have never heard this before. I know CART or the IRL Honda engines fire 2 cylinders at once but I cannot see any gain in F1 in doing this. It does NOT stress the drivetrain less as the bang will be larger and more violent ... look at the problems Ducati have had with their v4 big bang engine. The reason they may do this (and why motor cycles do this) is because it gives longer time periods for the driven tyres to regain grip ... but with F1 having downforce (unlike bikes) and focusing completely on power NOT torque I cannot see a gain. It would surely mean the gearbox components would have to be larger and stronger (?). Do you have any extra information regarding this? Pete
The only reason the US isn't in F1 or anything else for that matter is because they REALLY DON'T CARE! If the US did care it would dominate the sport. You think the Italians at Ferrari have money? The US has got some money! Just think if Bill Gates had a passion for F1.
Take a look at Peter Wright's Book "Ferrari F1" If you take a look at the engine section you can see that ferrari was Big banging all the way back into 2000. what makes a big bang motor less stressful is the fact that The Torque levels stay in amore manageable level since it takes the drive train out of torsion even though the engine is spinning 19,000 the rear wheels are spinning at around 2500 in top gear. By taking everything out of torsion it allows the tire to relax and reduce wear where as even fireing causes the tire to be constantly loaded creating more wear.
Okay so it's the same reason as Ducati, etc. ... to allow the tyre to have a 'break' or atleast regain some composure. Thanks ... and learnt something Pete
Does anyone here know the firing order of an F1 V10? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1 It's probably like 1-6-3-8-5-10-2-7-4-9, unless they use some insane offsets.
Ferrari 049 engine Front of engine Left ----- Right 10 ---------- 1 9 ---------- 2 8 ---------- 3 7 ---------- 4 6 ---------- 5 Firing order 1 - 10 - 5 - 6 - 2 - 9 - 3 - 8 - 4 - 7
Didn't the two throttle banks on the 049 open at different rates, to lessen the load of 25,000 rpm/sec. acceleration?
Rob, Now you have lost me ... a few posts back we were talking about Ferrari engines being big bang engines. That means that 2 cylinders fire at the same time (or in the Ducati v4's case within a few degrees) ... thus the firing order you have shown implies that 10 fires say 72 degrees after 1 ... which is a long way away from being a 'big bang' engine. Honda with their CART or IRL engine due to the flat plain crank ran it like a 4 cylinder and thus 2 cylinders were firing at once ... a true big bang engine. Ofcourse they did not have too, thus I am not saying a flat plain crank mandates this .... Ofcourse with these even engines you always have 2 cylinders at TDC at the same time ... I do not think that can happen with v10's or 5 cylinder engines. Thinking more about this ... does Ferrari refer to this firing order as big bang because we have the power strokes localised at one place on the crank at any one time?, ie. 1 and 10 fires, then another crank throw gets hammered . I guess that helps the crank in torsion loading ... ?? Pete
