Under body aero -- Check Wings, Spoilers, Winglets,-- Check High performance Hybrids -- Check Carbon Fiber body panels -- Check Single Nut Wheels -- Check (barely) F1 transmissions -- Big Check So, yeah, it eventually gets there.
The FIA has prevented technologies already existing on some street cars; CVT, active suspension, four-wheel driven four-wheel steering, to name a few ...
The biggest form of technology transfer is people. The bulk of engineers trained in or exposed to an OEM's or major supplier's (tyres, fuel/oil, electronics, etc) motorsport programmes go on to those companies' road vehicle-related operations. They bring technical insights, design/development tools, rapid problem solving methods, and enhanced teamwork from their racing experience to bear on road vehicles. This has been the core "improving the breed" benefit since the heyday of turbo era in the early 1980s.
Technology has been transfered from F1 to street cars...and also the otherway. F1 brought us turbos, street cars brought F1 hybrids, F1 gave us very sophisticated automated and automatic transmissions, street car technology inspired F1 cars to become safer. Electronics has improved engine management in street and racing cars...sometimes increasing durability and efficiency but sometimes leading to greater fragility. As for carbon fiber...it hasn't made street cars or race cars any better, just more expensive.
Carbon fiber discs are great if you're going to track the car. That's it. If you're buying a car with CCB discs and just driving it around town(pavement princess), then steel discs will do just fine whether slotted or cross drilled or both. CCB discs are really expensive not to mention the 6 pot or 8 pot powder coated color keyed calipers.
In fact, it's probably BMW who sold the first street turbo car: the BMW 2002 Turbo. I owned the first one imported in UK, and it was an animal to drive, mostly because of the turbo lag, plus it was left hand drive. Several car magazines borrowed it for roadtests.
Very cool, 2002 Turbo was circa 1974 following by the Porsche 930 Turbo in MY 1975. GM offered turbo engines in the early 1960s with the Oldsmobile Jetfire and Corvair Spyder/Corsa though not highly successful.
Also true, but my memory has the Renault F1 cars as leading the way. That rapidly was carried over into the R5. Soon, everyone was looking at it.
In F1 that is correct. In sportscar racing Porsche 935s started crushing the opposition in 1976; Renault didn't win a race in F1 until 1979.
I was just referring to the impact of the concept...Renault (IMO) popularized the turbo with its introduction in 1977.
Given the choice of 600 HP car at 2600 pounds or 800 HP car at 3400 pounds, I would choose the lighter.
For me, one of the best F1 era was the 1.5 liter formula between 1961 and 1965: Up to 200hp, and 450kg minimum weight. The cars were small and nimble. During these 5 years, Ferrari won 2 championships (P.Hill and Surtees), so did Lotus with Clark. But apparently people wanted more power, and sportscars were faster than F1 !! As soon as they brought the 3-liter engines in 1966, the cars needed aero to control them. That opened a pandora box, IMO.
