
F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained - alexkus
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/25158104
======
pbo
I wrote firmware (~20kLocs) for a power (electrical) supply that's part of one
such power train.

This kind of development is very demanding, because you can't afford to leave
any bugs in your program but at the same time you're always shipping late
because of tight schedules and often blurry specifications.

On top of that hardware and software development cycles are concurrent, so no
target hardware available when you're writing your code.

In these conditions the only way I found to have something that works is to
keep it very simple:

    
    
        1. Simple algorithms
        2. Simple data structures
        3. Few abstractions
        4. No dynamic memory allocations
    

Also, no compiler optimizations.

~~~
T-zex
Wow! Have you developed the software for the ECU?

~~~
pbo
Actually I distribute power from the battery to other subsystems, so it's
rather far from the ECU.

------
fduran
I just want to mention the great safety advances in car (and race) security in
the last 20 years; since 1994 and the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna there
has been no driver fatalities in F1 racing.

edit "Following Senna's death in 1994, no driver had died from injuries
sustained in a World Championship-related accident until María de Villota died
in 2013 from complications of injuries she sustained in a testing accident the
previous year"

~~~
TillE
It is quite remarkable. For example, the Kubica crash in 2007 looked
absolutely horrific, but he walked away with only minor injuries.

[http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=685_1181547684](http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=685_1181547684)

~~~
mtr
I was in the stands in the hairpin when I saw Kubica go flying by. Seeing his
head bobbing from side to side made me think that he was dead. I managed to
capture some pics of the crash and wrote a blog post about it, and other
racing accidents.

[http://blog.octanenation.com/kubica-accident-pictures-an-
aut...](http://blog.octanenation.com/kubica-accident-pictures-an-automotive-
thanksgiving/)

------
cabbeer
"Bernie Ecclestone has done a magnificent job with Formula One and he needs
these last-minute showdowns. But we, the keen viewers, need to be assured that
it is still motorsport with young men going wheel-to-wheel in a life or death
struggle for glory. And not panto." -Jeremy Clarkson

------
sheri
The video mentions that the aerodynamics of the car generates so much down-
force that it could ride upside-down on the ceiling. Wow.

~~~
vanderZwan
While certainly impressive, that's been true of F1 cars for decades.

~~~
logicallee
As you say "decades" I did a cursory search for a video (assuming perhaps at
some point during that time someone thought to make one.) I found this
interesting video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcPsSI4O2S0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcPsSI4O2S0)

but would certainly like to see an F1 care drive literally upside-down (normal
to horizontal) if you have anything like that. I just searched for a second on
YouTube.

~~~
Tegran
The whole "driving upside down" thing is mostly theoretical because although
the aerodynamics might allow it, none of the rest of the car is designed to
work upside down without some modifications:

[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1752888-can-a-
formula-1-c...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1752888-can-a-
formula-1-car-drive-upside-down)

------
Spearchucker
I stopped watching F1 about 10 years ago, and these new changes just reaffirm
that decision. It's no longer about best car + best driver. It's about mixing
it up, making it random, to maximise viewer numbers. Not the kind of racing I
go for.

~~~
001sky
I agree. The silly cost and stil 840 hp @ 1x,000 rpm is just a bunch of window
dressing for the Lefties. The entire enterprise of F1 will never be "green",
once you take into account the production of the cars, the crash
repleacements, fuel used in training and lower Fxx series, and...the fact that
these clowns fly all of this junk around the WORLD to drive. They are doing to
f1 what they did to the America's cup. Basically turning a sport into a
spectacle to which no 'normal' sportsman can really relate.

~~~
gambiting
Have you considered,that technologies developed for F1 by lets
say....Mercedes, can later be used in their regular cars and therefore improve
efficiency of not just a single F1 car,but millions of cars on the road?

With the promotion of turbochargers in F1, a stupid amount of research is
going to go into them - and they are used in pretty much every diesel car on
the road now, so if the technology can be improved further, then it's all for
the best.

I've read the article and I don't think it mentions making F1 greener - it's
not what it's about.

~~~
thedrbrian
The £300 million that the f1 teams have wasted on these engines is a drop in
the bucket compared to what all the manufacturers spend on their road cars.
And none of the tech comes out of f1 , only in.

~~~
oijaf888
Nothing has ever been developed in F1 that has made it into road cars? What
about active suspension, sequential gear boxes, etc?

------
sanoli
There are so many rules dictating the design of an F1 chassis/engine that I
wonder how much faster a "anything goes" car would go.

~~~
Swizec
This video is an interesting comparison of just how fast F1 cars are:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0)

IIRC some of those GT cars that look like snails compared to F1 cars are
"anything goes".

However, here is a truly anything goes car (that has broken the speed barrier
on land): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKQ-
xj5C2m8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKQ-xj5C2m8)

So yeah, an anything goes car will go _much_ faster than an F1 car. But it's
going to suck at cornering. We currently don't have anything that can hold
such high average speeds as an F1 car can. Not even in any very lightly
regulated sport.

For interestingness' sake, modern WRC cars reach speeds of 220kph over gravel.

Top speeds of F1 cars are around 360kph (the Bugatti Veyron can do 430kph),
but F1 cares more about cornering speed than top speed.

From Wikipedia:

> The large downforce allows an F1 car to corner at amazing speeds. As an
> example of the extreme cornering speeds; the Blanchimont and Eau Rouge
> corners at Spa-Francorchamps are taken flat-out at above 300 km/h (190 mph),
> whereas the race-spec touring cars can only do so at 150–160 km/h (note that
> lateral force increases with the square of the speed). A newer and perhaps
> even more extreme example is the Turn 8 at the Istanbul Park circuit, a 190°
> relatively tight 4-apex corner, in which the cars maintain speeds between
> 265 and 285 km/h (165 and 177 mph) (in 2006) and experience between 4.5 g
> and 5.5 g for 7 seconds—the longest sustained hard cornering in Formula 1.

~~~
sanoli
What I meant was what if an F1 team of designers didn't have to be constrained
by any rules and could build their dream F1 car. For example, there was one
car a couple of decades ago (I think early 80's maybe?) that used a sort of
vaccum effect to keep the car sucked to the ground. It improved cornering
speeds greatly, but the device was banned.

I googled some and found this:
[http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=598933&hw...](http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&t=598933&hw=++ultimate++F1&nmt=Perfect%20F1%20car)

Couldn't find a link to the original article though. Pretty interesting.

~~~
jsvaughan
You might be referring to the Gordon Murray designed Brabham BT46 "Fan car":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham_BT46)

~~~
sanoli
That's the one I was thinking about, thanks!

From the Wikipedia article: "The BT46B generated an immense level of downforce
by means of a fan, claimed to be for increased cooling, but which also
extracted air from beneath the car. The car only raced once in this
configuration in the Formula One World Championship—when Niki Lauda won the
1978 Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp. To the dismay of its designer Gordon
Murray, the concept was voluntarily withdrawn from racing again by Bernie
Ecclestone."

------
Fuzzwah
This guy's video explaining the new F1 2014 regulations is very good:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8lyBFmkAKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8lyBFmkAKw)

Actually all his F1 videos are excellent.

------
bliti
The interesting bit here is the development of the turbochargers. This is an
area that has been slow to change over the years, due to the small amount of
turbocharged vehicles available new[1]. Most turbos are used in heavy
machinery (garbage trucks, big rigs, etc.), a slowly changing industry. They
do not face the same regulations as regular autos.

Seems they are doing away with the wastegate and replacing it with an electric
motor. Using the energy of the engine exhaust to generate electricity. This
energy is normally lost or wasted on a typical turbocharged or naturally
aspirated engine. The interesting part is that wastegates are simple flow
valves that control how much exhaust gasses go through the turbo's turbine.
Doing away with the wastegate means that they will be limiting the amount of
airflow that goes into the engine in some other way. I doubt that they are
using all of the boost that the turbo creates, because it would be a risky
proposition to do so. Changes in ambient temperature would greatly impact the
fuel delivery system. Not to mention it would increase the possibility of the
fuel pre-igniting inside the combustion chamber.

There have been developments in the turbocharger industry, most have been in
the way of better materials and turbine/compressor blade designs. I know that
Garret (a manufacturer of turbos) has developed a turbocharger with a built-in
electric motor. The motor is used to eliminate lag by spinning the
turbocharger to a pre-defined RPM. Turbo lag is simply the period of time that
it takes a turbocharger to spin up to the speed and start producing boost
(back pressure inside the engine). By having an electric motor spin the turbo
to a given setting, turbo lag is eliminated, and fuel economy is improved. How
may fuel economy be improved? In many vehicles, turbo lag is fought against
through the fuel maps (the amount of fuel deliver at a given RPM point). In
cases, more fuel is fed to the engine to increase the expansion of the exhaust
gases. An exhaust gas that has more unburned fuel in itself will burn most of
that excess in the high temperature area between the engine block and the
turbocharger. This expansion greatly increases the turbo speed. Though this
comes at a cost of higher exhaust emissions, and lower fuel economy.

There have been developments into a new type of turbocharging system. Where
the turbo unit is driven by by a hydraulic pump, rather than the engine
exhaust. In this system, the turbo speed would rise by increasing the pump
speed. For some reason this never reached production. But it could have
revolutionized the industry. In a way, having an electric motor in place of
the wastegate might turn out to provide the same benefits this system would
have provided to passenger autos. Being able to re-capture energy lost in the
exhaust system would be a win in terms of efficency.

[1] In the USA market. There are plenty of turbocharged diesel autos in the
rest of the world. They are not common in the USA, though.

~~~
gambiting
" due to the small amount of turbocharged vehicles available new"??? Pretty
much 99% of diesel cars available now in Europe have turbochargers, I don't
remember when was the last time I saw a car without one. And most newly
announced cars for 2014(for example - new Nissan Qashqai) got rid of their
naturally aspirated petrol engines in favour of smaller but turbocharged
petrol engines.

Maybe in the US the situation is different,but in EU the non-turbocharged
engines are a dying breed,and have been for at least a decade now.

~~~
sk5t
Forced induction is now _much_ more common in the US than it was five or ten
years ago, even on gasoline engines. Most new BMWs in the US are turbocharged,
Ford is EcoBoosting the venerable F-150, and GM has an interesting mix of
turbo- and supercharged engines.

~~~
bliti
Ford and GM have been selling supercharged vehicles since the 80's. GM doing
it in their standard family sedan lines across their many brands.
Supercharging is a bit easier to manage and pull off in terms of emissions and
packaging. The power gains are not as great (when comparing an Eaton
supercharger (what they used commonly) to a turbocharger of relevant size (I
think a T3 turbo in .42 trim would compare). They are very reliable, and do
not need the same service intervals as turbos. Due to how the engine oil is
simply not "cooked" inside a hot turbine when the engine is shut off.

One interesting point is that none of the American manufacturers has paid much
attention to centrifugal superchargers. The only centrifugal supercharger
equipped auto I remember working on was the VW Corrado G60.

~~~
sk5t
Agreed that the domestics have been doing FI for a while, although many of the
earlier turbos (like the Omni GLH, Spirit R/T, Thunderbird SC, Turbo Trans-Am,
DSMs, Regal T-Type/GN) were fairly niche-oriented cars. Successors like the
supercharged Buick 3800 in the Grand Prix GXP and Bonneville SSEI brought it a
little more into the mainstream, but these were still marketed as a
performance bump rather than taking the modern everyday economy and
reliability angle.

I never heard nice things about the reliability of the Corrado's G-lader...
not that the 12V VR6 is a marvel of easy maintenance either, but people seem
to prefer them.

------
msantos
Several F1 teams are hiring C/C++ engineers currently. Mostly looking for C
brainers with experience in embedded systems and C/C++ Matlab programmers.

~~~
walshemj
Interesting I am in the process of doing a cheeky spec job application to my
nearest f1 team - will probably hand deliver it to the factory - maybe its
time to dust of my old FORTAN skills.

I suspect engineers with expertize in cooling electronics will be in demand as
if the kers/battery conks out it will destroy a cars race now.

------
colin_jack
As with F1 races, the article seemed interesting at the start but quickly
bores the heck out of you.

~~~
maxerickson
Is this one better?

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-
speed/the-...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/vintage-speed/the-
spring-that-revolutionized-nascar-6643778)

Not F1, but very much a case of wiggling through the rules.

------
T-zex
I really hope this will reduce the number of times commentators have to say a
word "tires". Couldn't care less about saving tires. Its like a footballer
saving a ball, or boxer his gloves. The same applies to the engine.

~~~
raverbashing
Well, the thing is, it costs time to replace tires

So you have to balance tire wear with the time gained by pushing it to the
limit

They also have an increased engine life this year, I think each team must go
through 5 engines during the season, as opposed to 8 engines

And you can bet they're designed to last as much as needed but not much more.

~~~
T-zex
Absolutely. Tire management is important, but it should not be essential.
Reckless breaking with wheels locked should have its consequences. I'd rather
see wheel to wheel action than listen to the comments about how this guy in a
second place will have to save his tires and give up positions to score a few
points.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I'd rather see wheel to wheel action than listen to the comments about how
this guy in a second place will have to save his tires and give up positions
to score a few points."

The only reason he is in 2nd place is because he didn't save his tyres - and
the reason he has to now lose places is because the guys behind did. In the
end it usually works out the way it should be and we get some fighting on the
last few laps. Even 5 years ago the last 15-20 laps were a procession to the
line. I think introducing a bit of excitement towards the end is much better.

~~~
T-zex
Its a matter of taste I suppose. I did not enjoy this season. Maybe I'm too
spoiled by MotoGP.

~~~
raverbashing
Well, what can I say, I agree, I think it's getting boring and too many
artificial limitations.

But it's better than the Schumacher era, with absolutely no challenge to him.

------
pacofvf
I read sometime ago about how supposedly the KERS was used as Traction Control
System by Red Bull, so this new "ERS", which is not even activated by the
driver, seems more suited to be modified to act as a TCS.

~~~
Fuzzwah
The "traction control" part of the KERS system wasn't controlled by the
driver. The best guess is that a system monitored wheel slip by the
oscillation of the rear suspension. The extra power was fed into the recovery
system rather than being wasted as wheel slip.

I think all teams will be doing this in 2014.

------
deletes
But do they have to limit fuel. Does the advantage of the turbo outweigh more
pitstops?

I'm afraid races might get boring when drivers will have to conserve their
fuel or just lose the race.

~~~
collyw
Cars going round in circles? I already find that fairly boring.

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
That's NASCAR, not F1.

In F1 you see real cars, doing real curves, not the thing NASCAR does like
having a car that only could turn one way.

In F1 you see cars going through the streets of Monaco or Valencia, or German
circuits that you could race yourself with your own car. BTW I do it.

~~~
protomyth
NASCAR has road tracks so stop the stupid and tell the truth.

I like NASCAR because F1 feels too teched up and NASCAR doesn't even give the
driver a fuel gauge or speedometer. Plus all that weight and those small
breaks. And just to stop another stereotype, I hate wrecks and cautions and I
haven't met anyone who does.

NASCAR is also the most fan friendly sport with a huge amount of fan
interaction with the drivers and cars. NASCAR fans can even go on the actual
track in training vehicles.

~~~
oijaf888
Not very many NASCAR tracks are road tracks, looks like 5 out of 29. I don't
believe NASCAR has ever (or at least in the past decade or so) raced an actual
street course though. E.g. similar to the Monaco GP, Montreal GP or for ALMS,
Baltimore GP.

Isn't the lack of fuel gauges more due to them being inaccurate if you are at
a 30 degree slant and back to level? I believe they use fuel pressure gauges
to indicate if they are running out of fuel.

~~~
protomyth
Well, NASCAR only has 4 dates at 2 tracks with restrictor plates, but a lot is
made of them. Cup has two course: Watkins Glen and Sonoma which each get 1
race. I do wish they would move one to the chase.

I cannot remember Cup racing a street course, but the Nationwide did in Canada
and the Trucks raced on dirt[1] this year, so they might be a Cup date in the
future. Nationwide ran a road course in Mexico City, so that might be a
possibility for Cup.

They just don't let drivers have much info or else they'd let the drivers have
a speedometer. Heck, they've banned cellphones in the car since that could be
used to get performance information.

1) a Cup race on dirt is a scary thought, pitting would be odd

------
geoka9
I wonder what'll happen to F1 when the consumer car industry shifts to
driverless cars. Will F1 "catch up" and the teams get rid of the drivers? Will
it still be considered a sport?

------
CraigJPerry
How do they handle network latency back to simulation / data processing
environments when travelling?

~~~
exDM69
Latency does not matter because the driver must do all the work controlling
the car and the engine.

They use data links (at some point they used direct radio links, don't know
what happens these days) back and forth from the car to the pit wall and all
the way back to the factory. There's around 20-50 engineers working every time
the cars are out on track.

But the telemetry is all one way, it's not allowed to control the car from the
pit wall. There are computer programs and engineers analyzing the telemetry
all the time but all they can do is give instructions to the driver.

You can regularly see/hear this happen in races. There may be a slight
collision between cars and e.g. the front wing gets damaged a little. The
driver will radio the pit wall and ask whether they have damage or not. The
engineers behind the pits and in the factory will analyze the data from the
suspension travel vs. pitot tube telemetry and conclude whether there's damage
to the wings and whether that damage is grave enough to warrant changing the
front wing at the pits (~10 seconds stationary).

Here's an amazing video from McLaren mission control in their factory in Great
Britain while the cars are out on track in Korea on the other side of world.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhl7csZJHw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhl7csZJHw)

------
alexeisadeski3
Can't racing just be about fun loud cars? Leave the environmentalist somewhere
else?

~~~
sp332
F1 has always been intended to move tech into production cars. It was never
just about fun loud cars. It's definitely true that a few dozen cars running
laps for a day isn't going to have much effect on the climate, the point is to
improve millions of cars in the future.

