How Formula One Works

Technology and Formula 1 go hand in hand. Today Formula 1 is not only a competition, but also a test ground for testing new technologies. Here, car manufacturers run in the latest engineering solutions, which can then find their application in commercial vehicles.

How Formula One Works

Hybrids: The Struggle For Efficiency:

A revolutionary change from last season was the return to the F1 turbocharged engines. Replaced the 2.4-liter atmospheric V8 engine with 750 liters. with. came a modest, seemingly 1.6-liter V6 six-cylinder turbo engine with a capacity of about 600 liters. The rotational speed of the crankshaft which is up to 15000 rpm.

The kinetic energy recovery system, which came to motor racing back in 2009, transformed essentially fireballs into real hybrids, was also transformed. The system called ERS has risen to a new level of productivity, opening up new opportunities for teams. Now it allows not only to generate kinetic energy when braking, but also the thermal energy of exhaust gases from the engine turbocharger. The resulting energy is converted into electricity and vice versa, thanks to which the car receives an additional 160 liters. with. for 33 seconds on each lap.

For comparison, last year's system accumulated only 80 additional horsepower, and the use of ERS was only 6.76 seconds per lap.

This year, for the first time in the history of Formula 1, the FIA ​​International Automobile Federation has limited fuel consumption, now each car can use no more than 100 kg per race. For comparison, in the previous year, the race cars burned an average of 160 kg of fuel during the race.

Supercomputers In Formula 1:

The role of computers in the royal races is difficult to overestimate - without a laptop today it is impossible to even start a car. And impressive supercomputers allow team engineers to design the design of the car. Portable servers deployed in mobile data centers, high-impact laptops, gigabytes of data transmitted over satellite Internet to another continent after being collected from hundreds of car sensors. All this is the modern world of Formula 1 racing.

Creating a race car begins with the design, and to go from the first sketches to start the engine, the team takes about nine months of work.

How Formula One Works

For example, the engineers of the British team Catherham used a Dell supercomputer cluster leased for a period from the management of the University of Cambridge to design their car. It consists of 186 Dell servers, each of which has eight Intel Xeon processors. Three large servers are at the head of the computing power. They are responsible for visualizing all the calculations that the cluster produces. The cluster is responsible for modeling the influence of certain elements of the car on its aerodynamics. As the engineers of the team say, ten years ago it was only possible to dream of such.

A model of a new part had to be made manually, then dozens of tests were carried out in a wind tunnel. It is fair to say that tests in the wind tunnel have not gone away, but today engineers use it only at the final stage to test a full-fledged car model in the collection.

In seventeen hours of operation, the supercomputer cluster performs about 10 billion calculations using millions of units of input data. To maintain a Caterham cluster in the event of a power outage, 60 batteries are used, which can hold it for up to 12 minutes at maximum load. After all, the supercomputer cluster is operated 24x7 almost all year round. The exception is two weeks in August, when all teams are forbidden to work on the cars according to the rules of "Formula 1". By the way, it is precisely these days that the main diagnosis of iron is made.

Calculations do not end after designing a car. During the race, each team has a mobile rack, which carries on board 20 virtual servers for the work of 60 team members. It is through such a mobile rack that the processing of all telemetry during the race is organized, which allows engineers to adjust the strategy and adjust the car in real time.

In addition, after each arrival in the case of the Catherham team, it is necessary to receive, process and send about 20 GB of data via satellite Internet to the central office of the team in London. But the races are held almost year-round around the world.

Logistics In Formula 1:

The efforts of the Formula 1 logisticians are difficult to overestimate - after each race weekend it is necessary not only to transport 22 cars without any damage to the place of the future Grand Prix, spare parts for them and tons of equipment, but also to do it as quickly as possible. Moreover, it is necessary to organize relocation, transportation and housing for the participating teams, each of which may have up to 100 hotel rooms.

How Formula One Works

To cope with this amount of work, the international automobile association uses the services of the German logistics company DHL, which is currently the official partner of the race. Each team participating in the World Cup, overcomes between races and test sessions an average of about 160,000 km per season.

In the intervals between the European stages, the main part of the equipment, spare parts and the race cars themselves are loaded into trucks and set off on a “journey” along the autobahns of Europe. At the same time, tires and fuel are delivered to the place of the next race by Formula 1 technical partners.

As for the rest of the races of the season, then without air transportation is just not enough. The participating teams developed special cargo containers for their equipment, so that everything fit as compactly as possible, and the time required to pack the equipment took a minimum of time.