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F1's problem is that it is a technological marvel that is simultaneously obsolete. Like the XB-71 Valkyrie project of the US AirForce, the technology powering m

F1's problem is that it is a technological marvel that is simultaneously obsolete. Like the XB-71 Valkyrie project of the US AirForce, the technology powering modern F1 hybrid power trains is just outstandingly brilliant. However, just like the XB-71 was made obsolete by the advent of ICBMs, the hybrid power train's future for road cars has been overtaken by the advent of Tesla and battery electric vehicles. The metaphorical comparison with XB-70 ends when performance is concerned. F1 hybrids are still far superior to pure battery electric vehicles. So F1 is essentially stuck in the upper-left corner of the price-performance envelope. They are too good to move to pure electric, but their tech is obsolete for road cars. In a few years battery electric vehicles will get to the performance levels of current F1 hybrids, but by that time the mantle of the pinnacle of auto-racing will have been taken by FormulaE. Not a good place for F1 to be. In effect Tesla killed F1.

mhh__ 6y ago
Tesla killing F1 is a conclusion too far. The success of electric vehicles makes the calculus less good, but it's just another term in the equation for a company doing business in F1. Honda are still in other ICE motorsports. I think it's worth pointing out that Honda staying this long was a surprise in itself because, to be blunt, they were absolutely awful in their first years and no better than their rivals now. Also, the issue for a battery powered racing series isn't really efficiency at the moment but actually just being able to actually do the race distance at an acceptable speed. If they could make Formula E cars go fast enough they'd have already switched, or at least put pen to paper.
- gonzo41 6y ago
  Shouldn't F1 cars be about finding the peak of a X engineering problem. For electiric's it's not as much about speed but battery. Maybe having hyper-miler distance races that aren't speed oriented is the sort of pivot F1 should be doing? I know it's not sexy like a fast car moving nimbly among the pack but if car companies can get their tech focused on getting the most distance from a battery then there's the cross over development that can flow to the mainstream. But I know, watching a slow race is a big ask.
  - sasaf5 6y ago
    > watching a slow race is a big ask. Above non-ridiculously low speed wouldn't the relative speed among cars be more important for entertainment?
    - behringer 6y ago
      The cars are so fast and powerful that they have these boost rules that the drivers can use up like nitro in a video game. If F1 went all electric, slowed down a little, and got rid of this boost stuff I think it would be far more entertaining and easier to follow the action, like it used to be.
      - Hallucinaut 6y ago
        The only reason overtaking currently happens is because of ERS (this "boost stuff") as well as the relatively large benefit from the Drag Reduction System in high speed sections, so I have to disagree. It would be even more boring than it's already become with Mercedes domination.
    - robryan 6y ago
      Maybe they could get away with slightly slower. They already have a bit of a problem where the aerodynamics have gotten so good that a lot of the tracks have corners that are just taken flat out now. Lap records are still being broken with the lower powered hybrid engines.
    - ll931110 6y ago
      Sure, but current Formula E cars are around F3 speed, which is two steps below F1 cars. Formula E even had to avoid racing on the full Monaco layout to avoid headlines comparing (and ridiculing them) for being slow.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Some fuel efficiency race exists even by honda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Eco-marathon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Eco-marathon https://global.honda/about/sustainability/environment/face/case83.html https://global.honda/about/sustainability/environment/face/c...
- aleksandrm 6y ago
  If you mean their first years of a hybrid engine era, then yes, they were pretty awful. But their early years in the 80s as an engine supplier were very very succesful.
- ra 6y ago
  I've been watching F1 since the 70's and I still love every minute of it today. Honda pulling out is completely understandable, and I think F1 should sit up and listen. The dynamic simply won't work with three engine manufacturer teams and the rest being customer teams - especially when Red Bull is a customer team. It might be radical, but I'd prefer to see F1 return to a simpler naturally aspirated V10 ICE only power unit, perhaps with a completely separate (and simplified) system for brake energy harvesting and short-term energy deployment (exiting corners). We have formula-e let's make F1 more accessible to niche manufacturers.
  - btian 6y ago
    No niche manufacturer will be able to make a competitive V10 PU. If F1 is serious about reducing costs, they have to at least standardize PU, like they did to ECU.
    - hvidgaard 6y ago
      Engines is the least of concerns. Mercedes win, not because they also produce the engine, but because they pour nearly half a billion euros into the car, with engines being a vanishingly small amount of that. They have a car with superior aerodynamics and mechanical grip. Making the engine standardized will not change that.
      - btian 6y ago
        Ferrari and Red Bull also spend half a billion euros a year. But neither has a shot at the championship because of their engine situation.
      - oarsinsync 6y ago
        > Mercedes win, not because they also produce the engine, but because they pour nearly half a billion euros into the car It takes more than just throwing money at the problem to win. Otherwise, Red Bull (paying for two teams in full) and Ferrari would be doing a lot better right now.
nomad543 6y ago
Tesla didn't kill anything, electric battery technology is old and simple, any car maker can quickly switch to battery. In fact, battery vehicles are orders of magnitude easier to build than ICE vehicles. You talk as if Tesla had invented something extraordinaire. Stop drinking the kool aid.
- xigency 6y ago
  Your comment reminds me of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? Most automakers were capable of making electric vehicles decades ago.
  - nomad543 6y ago
    Your comment reminds me of the members of the Peoples Temple hehe.
- sumanthvepa 6y ago
  It's not Tesla's technological prowess that is killing F1. It's their marketing dominance that's reason for their effect on F1. They have dominated mindshare to the extent that governments are fully invested in building the infrastructure for electric vehicles, even in developing countries where hybrid tech would be a better idea.
- dang 6y ago
  Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? It just degrades discussion and also discredits the true information that you may have to add. Edit: you did it at least three times in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683823 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683862) are also not cool. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site more to heart? Your contributions and your knowledge are welcome, but everyone posting here needs also to take care of the shared environment (which is all too fragile).
  - 6y ago
serf 6y ago
F1 technology is a lot more than just power-trains, I wish people would understand that better. Fuel chemistry, aerodynamics, functional simulation, driver ergonomics, safety dynamics, tire chemistry, metallurgy, analytics, data recording, composites, suspension, real-time telemetry and communication, digital systems management.. the list goes on forever. If the device/technique/procedure wasn't invented by F1, it was made better by it, and tons of it have trickled down to consumer products in the past 70+ years.
- CWuestefeld 6y ago
  Anybody in tech, and especially information technology, should be able to find something fascinating in F1. Winning an F1 race requires a huge amount of data processing, both for the operation of the race car itself, as well as for the simulations of race strategy in realtime. The teams bring enormous amounts of equipment to each race. Obviously a lot of that equipment is wrenches, screwdrivers, and related machinery. But every team is bringing essentially a portable datacenter to each race: The car has around 300 sensors and the SECU monitors over 4,000 parameters. During the course of a typical race the car will transmit around 3 GB of telemetry data as well as around 4 GB of logging, however this is just the seed for computation. When processed and combined with other sources such as audio and video analysis it can mean a team leaves a typical race weekend with over a terabyte of valuable data — data that is drawn on again and again before and during future events and seasons. -- https://www.eetimes.com/the-importance-of-electronics-in-formula-1/ https://www.eetimes.com/the-importance-of-electronics-in-for...
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    Any good books on F1 technology, data processing or otherwise?
    - dharmab 6y ago
      A lot of it is proprietary and kept secret from other teams. Diagnostic monitors and even the back of the steering wheel are censored in official media. Chain Bear F1 is a YouTube channel that produces good summaries from public information.
dokem 6y ago
Aren’t there rules imposed in F1 to keep the technology relevant to industry? Why can’t F1 evolve towards electric with new rules?
- ish 6y ago
  Formula E has a 25 year-long exclusive license for single seaters on electric. That doesn't rule out the possibility of a merger happening at some point in the future. [https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/18/formula-1-formula-e-merger-a-long-term-possibility-says-agag/ https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/18/formula-1-formula-e-merg...]
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    I don’t really understand this. Who is licensing rules for car races?
    - snuxoll 6y ago
      The FIA, seeing as they are the main sanctioning body for Motorsport worldwide outside of America-centric series like NASCAR and Indycar.
      - zizee 6y ago
        What are the implications of that exactly?
        wastedhours 6y ago
        Unless F1 and FE merge, F1 cannot become fully electric until the end of the exclusivity period. It's a gamble by F1 that the world (and more specifically, the teams and manufacturers involved) won't be ready for a full-electric pinnacle series by 2039 (i.e. speed and name recognition parity). All F1 teams have signed the Concorde Agreement until 2025 - which means they're "committed" in one sense or another. I don't think FE will be in a position to attract Mercedes and Renault fully by 2025 (the two mass-market manufacturers who'll be most heavily influenced by the move to fully electric, with toes already in the waters in FE). The late 2020s will be a lot of political posturing, and should FE look to be attracting F1 backmarkers with promises of cheaper overheads, more future-relevant tech and decent audiences in addition to manufacturers, 2030-2039 will be interesting as heck.
GhostVII 6y ago
I think there problem is that it's just boring to watch because they are so fast - it is extremely hard to pass without hacks like DRS, which makes F1 races really boring to watch. And I'm sure most fans would much rather switch back to the v10 engines even though they are more "obsolete", a conventional powertrain doesn't make them any more boring to watch (it actually makes them more exciting imo). And if battery technology is ever good enough to last a full F1 race without adding tonnes of extra weight, I'm sure they will switch over to electric. Powertrain isn't the main focus of F1, teams are quite limited in what they can do there.
- alexb7c4 6y ago
  Any suggestions of racing series more interesting than F1? I tried to watch Blancpain, Super GT, IMSA, Le Mans - all of them seem to have almost non-existent level of overtaking (even worse than in F1 imho)
  - suryabeep 6y ago
    Try MotoGP, it's got plenty of overtaking.
    - sgt 6y ago
      Second this. Not sure why people watch F1. MotoGP is infinitely better and in fact, it seems to just get better each passing year! The secret is that it's "90% rider" and "10% machine".
      - randlet 6y ago
        I really think "it's 90% rider and 10% machine" is a big exaggeration in MotoGP. Even Marquez is not going to win a race on a current generation Aprilia, and I'm not sure there is anyone other than Marquez who can win races on the current Honda. edit: regardless, Dorna has done a great job making MotoGP competitive and MotoGP has to be at or very near the top of the list for the best racing on the planet.
      - 6y ago
dmix 6y ago
Considering this is both a sport and one of the most heavily rule driven sports currently in existence, I’m really not sure the value you’re putting into the loopback consumer product cycle is really that high. There’s far more to the sport than a grand R&D experiment (the value of just being “in it” within the grapevine of other top end machines, the marketing, the fun and prestige. Prestige is massive in F1). Especially considering how slow and incremental the new tech addition rules are added to the vehicles and how much the rules neuter the cars on purpose. This is probably just down to the team/human capital not being super interested in investing the time and energy to play in the top league. Honda still has a very large presence in the Indy series which arguably offers plenty of the more consumer oriented R&D bits in the short term. Additionally the non committal F1E stuff makes the consumer R&D argument less persuasive.
doe88 6y ago
What's not well known is that actually are hybrids technologies used in F1, e.g. MGU-H and MGU-K components.
Hypx 6y ago
Note that an FE car can't run a full F1 race, and the "ICBM" doesn't exist in the context of motorsports. Both racing series are much more likely to stay where they are given the circumstances. The most extreme outcome would be F1 switching to zero emissions in some way.
eVoLInTHRo 6y ago
In your mind, how many years is a few years? I watch Formula E, but it's hard to imagine it becoming the pinnacle of motorsport anytime soon. Formula E's definitely made progress: e.g. they no longer have to run two separate cars just to finish the race, and they are decently quick. But they're still pretty far away in other aspects: 45 minute race, on temporary circuits purposefully designed with many tight turns to allow for braking regen. Battery technology has to improve quite a bit if you want to see electric cars turning laps at Spa at standard race distances.
- DC-3 6y ago
  Formula E has also made the conscious decision not to pursue open chassis and aero regulations - good for keeping the costs down, but it makes it harder to take it seriously as a potential future 'pinnacle' series.
  - wastedhours 6y ago
    That being said, the attraction to manufacturers coming into FE is large and it'll only take a few more generations before I'm sure there'll be differentiation in some parts. I'm bullish on FE, especially when they can run on "proper" circuits at a consistently decent pace (that being said, smaller city-centre tracks might very well be the future of the sport in any case).
snyp 6y ago
Honda has left F1 5 times in the past. This is nothing new. They just seem to have different reasons every time!
- PedroBatista 6y ago
  This time they were overconfident and believed too much in their “God given” superiority. In the end their type of arrogance didn’t play well with F1 arrogance.
nradov 6y ago
Henry Ford "killed" horses as transportation but horse racing is still a big business.
neor 6y ago
I tend to agree with you. The current V6 Turbo engines with advanced Energy Recovery Systems were introduced with two major ideas in mind; 1. It would make Formula 1 engines relevant for road cars. 2. It would attract new manufacturers to the sport. 1. Failed miserably; there is 0 road relevance for F1 engines. 2. Failed miserably; only Honda entered the sport and they are pulling the plug now. Juicy detail; they extended their IndyCar contract and IndyCar is switching to V6 Turbo Hybrid engines in a few years.... So the "carbon free tech" reason they gave to pull out of F1 isn't entirely true. What F1 should do is one of two things; 1. Find a way to become road relevant again. I'd say the only way to do this is to skip Electric as Formula E is doing this already and go for hydrogen fuel. 2. Screw road relevance, and focus on entertainment. This means abandoning the insanely complex/expensive engines and go for simple, powerful, and most of all cheap engines.
- what_ever 6y ago
  > 1. Failed miserably; there is 0 road relevance for F1 engines. 2. Failed miserably; only Honda entered the sport and they are pulling the plug now. Juicy detail; they extended their IndyCar contract and IndyCar is switching to V6 Turbo Hybrid engines in a few years.... So the "carbon free tech" reason they gave to pull out of F1 isn't entirely true. Could be because Honda already has a V6 Turbo Hybrid but don't want to invest more money and resources to develop the next iteration of F1 engine?
  - PedroBatista 6y ago
    Also yes. Their strategy to re-enter F1 was the classic playbook, start with an engine At the beginning of a new rules era, get some top customers to gather info and then create a works team eventually. Well, that didn’t play out the way they hoped so either they commit to F1 spending billions ( I wouldn’t ) or get out.
- koffiezet 6y ago
  > and go for hydrogen fuel There are almost fewer cars running on hydrogen on the road right now than there are F1 cars on the grid (only half joking), and while many mainstream manufacturers have made prototypes and concept cars even before they did anything pure electric, pretty much all of them have real full-electric products in their lineup, or at leat in the pipeline. There are some hydrogen pilot projects, sure, but I can't go to a dealer right now and order one. So going for hydrogen would be a really bad move, also because its energy density is inferior. The current ICE units in F1 are already at the upper-limit of possible efficiency, so replacing it with a fuel with a lower energy-density will be a step back in performance, with little or no future path to real improvements they don't have right now. I'm an F1 fan, but I see that it is on a dead-end, one-way street. It'll take a while to reach the end, and as long as there's not a superior technology which can beat it on it's own grounds, it's not going away. The "only" thing standing in the way of electric race-cars beating them is energy storage, which I expect to be improved at a break-neck speed in the coming years. FE has the advantage that this is the exact same problem affecting road-cars, which is why you see quite a few mainstream brands being attracted to it right now. But the energy density of oil-based fuels will be hard to beat, it will take a while before an FE car can beat an F1 car in every situation. But I'm excited for when this happens, since right now, FE fails to capture my interest for multiple reasons. There is no track-overview, all look pretty much the same to me, there are no iconic locations. Next year they'll finally be using the full Monaco circuit, which is a good start, and currently one of the very few viable F1 tracks for FE, but they have a long way to go.
imtringued 6y ago
The largest problem is that it's incredibly easy to build a car faster than any human can reasonably control. This has lead to so many accidents and rule changes that F1 racing is a wholly artificial sport in terms of engineering.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  It would be really interesting to see a version of F1 with self-driving AI, to see if that would allow them to exceed the design limits imposed by human drivers.
jjav 6y ago
The F1 crisis today is that F1 used to be three things rolled into one. 1. The sport. Fans, parties, passion, excitement for race results. 2. Advertising showcase of engineering prowess for companies selling cars or car-related parts. 3. A testing ground for future production car technology, send your best engineers to learn under the pressure of F1. With commoditized electric cars taking over the road car market, this no longer works because the interests have diverged. By trying to continue to do all three, F1 is just imploding. Personally I wish F1 would focus on #1 and let Formula E be the proving ground for street car tech.
the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
> In a few years battery electric vehicles will get to the performance levels of current F1 hybrids, but by that time the mantle of the pinnacle of auto-racing will have been taken by FormulaE I strongly doubt that Formula E will be a drop-in replacement for Formula 1. It's a completely different (and unfortunately so far very boring) replacement for Formula 1. If anything my guess is that once they figured out the battery problem so they can go on bigger courses, they will introduce electric vehicles in the Formula 1 and start phasing out Formula E.
- PedroBatista 6y ago
  These days the only thing more boring than formula 1 is formula e. It’s the political correct one, we all know what everyone is thinking but nobody tell :)
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Right now maybe, but in 30 years I'm sure electric vehicles are going to be more interesting than ICE ones.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  > If anything my guess is that once they figured out the battery problem so they can go on bigger courses, they will introduce electric vehicles in the Formula 1 and start phasing out Formula E. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Formula E has an exclusive contract with the FIA to be the only series that uses fully electric vehicles until 2039. Formula 1 could only switch to electric vehicles with permission from Formula E, or through some kind of merger. If anything it seems more likely that Formula 1 is the one that gets phased out.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
F1 is entertainment, a show. The key is to make it exciting and interesting to watch. I think whether the engines are ICE, hybrid, or electric is not key. More technology can actually make it more boring and the number of restrictions has increased through the years because of that.
bborud 6y ago
There is a paradox in that when F1 started becoming explicitly geared towards using more "clean technologies" F1 essentially stopped having any relevance to street cars. Or the environment.
redwall_hp 6y ago
Not really. Electric vehicles are absolute junk for racing still, hence the underwhelming nature of Formula E. Battery based vehicles are insanely heavy and lack the ability to corner. That's not going to change anytime soon. You're not likely to see an electric WRC car either. Real racing isn't going fast in a straight line. It's decided in the turns.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  > The metaphorical comparison with XB-70 ends when performance is concerned. F1 hybrids are still far superior to pure battery electric vehicles. So F1 is essentially stuck in the upper-left corner of the price-performance envelope. They are too good to move to pure electric, but their tech is obsolete for road cars.
mansoor_ 6y ago
Unless someone managed to increase the energy density of battery tech by two orders of magnitude, I don't see pure EV reaching hybrid powertrain performance on most metrics (with obvious exceptions i.e. responsiveness).
hajile 6y ago
They need more energy than even the new tesla batteries can provide. If they needed anything, it's a change from pistons to turbines running a generator. This is also an area where those millions could actually translate into use in normal vehicles.

mhh__ 6y ago

Tesla killing F1 is a conclusion too far. The success of electric vehicles makes the calculus less good, but it's just another term in the equation for a company doing business in F1. Honda are still in other ICE motorsports. I think it's worth pointing out that Honda staying this long was a surprise in itself because, to be blunt, they were absolutely awful in their first years and no better than their rivals now. Also, the issue for a battery powered racing series isn't really efficiency at the moment but actually just being able to actually do the race distance at an acceptable speed. If they could make Formula E cars go fast enough they'd have already switched, or at least put pen to paper.

gonzo41 6y ago
Shouldn't F1 cars be about finding the peak of a X engineering problem. For electiric's it's not as much about speed but battery. Maybe having hyper-miler distance races that aren't speed oriented is the sort of pivot F1 should be doing? I know it's not sexy like a fast car moving nimbly among the pack but if car companies can get their tech focused on getting the most distance from a battery then there's the cross over development that can flow to the mainstream. But I know, watching a slow race is a big ask.
- sasaf5 6y ago
  > watching a slow race is a big ask. Above non-ridiculously low speed wouldn't the relative speed among cars be more important for entertainment?
  - behringer 6y ago
    The cars are so fast and powerful that they have these boost rules that the drivers can use up like nitro in a video game. If F1 went all electric, slowed down a little, and got rid of this boost stuff I think it would be far more entertaining and easier to follow the action, like it used to be.
    - Hallucinaut 6y ago
      The only reason overtaking currently happens is because of ERS (this "boost stuff") as well as the relatively large benefit from the Drag Reduction System in high speed sections, so I have to disagree. It would be even more boring than it's already become with Mercedes domination.
  - robryan 6y ago
    Maybe they could get away with slightly slower. They already have a bit of a problem where the aerodynamics have gotten so good that a lot of the tracks have corners that are just taken flat out now. Lap records are still being broken with the lower powered hybrid engines.
  - ll931110 6y ago
    Sure, but current Formula E cars are around F3 speed, which is two steps below F1 cars. Formula E even had to avoid racing on the full Monaco layout to avoid headlines comparing (and ridiculing them) for being slow.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Some fuel efficiency race exists even by honda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Eco-marathon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Eco-marathon https://global.honda/about/sustainability/environment/face/case83.html https://global.honda/about/sustainability/environment/face/c...
aleksandrm 6y ago
If you mean their first years of a hybrid engine era, then yes, they were pretty awful. But their early years in the 80s as an engine supplier were very very succesful.
ra 6y ago
I've been watching F1 since the 70's and I still love every minute of it today. Honda pulling out is completely understandable, and I think F1 should sit up and listen. The dynamic simply won't work with three engine manufacturer teams and the rest being customer teams - especially when Red Bull is a customer team. It might be radical, but I'd prefer to see F1 return to a simpler naturally aspirated V10 ICE only power unit, perhaps with a completely separate (and simplified) system for brake energy harvesting and short-term energy deployment (exiting corners). We have formula-e let's make F1 more accessible to niche manufacturers.
- btian 6y ago
  No niche manufacturer will be able to make a competitive V10 PU. If F1 is serious about reducing costs, they have to at least standardize PU, like they did to ECU.
  - hvidgaard 6y ago
    Engines is the least of concerns. Mercedes win, not because they also produce the engine, but because they pour nearly half a billion euros into the car, with engines being a vanishingly small amount of that. They have a car with superior aerodynamics and mechanical grip. Making the engine standardized will not change that.
    - btian 6y ago
      Ferrari and Red Bull also spend half a billion euros a year. But neither has a shot at the championship because of their engine situation.
    - oarsinsync 6y ago
      > Mercedes win, not because they also produce the engine, but because they pour nearly half a billion euros into the car It takes more than just throwing money at the problem to win. Otherwise, Red Bull (paying for two teams in full) and Ferrari would be doing a lot better right now.

nomad543 6y ago

Tesla didn't kill anything, electric battery technology is old and simple, any car maker can quickly switch to battery. In fact, battery vehicles are orders of magnitude easier to build than ICE vehicles. You talk as if Tesla had invented something extraordinaire. Stop drinking the kool aid.

xigency 6y ago
Your comment reminds me of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? Most automakers were capable of making electric vehicles decades ago.
- nomad543 6y ago
  Your comment reminds me of the members of the Peoples Temple hehe.
sumanthvepa 6y ago
It's not Tesla's technological prowess that is killing F1. It's their marketing dominance that's reason for their effect on F1. They have dominated mindshare to the extent that governments are fully invested in building the infrastructure for electric vehicles, even in developing countries where hybrid tech would be a better idea.
dang 6y ago
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? It just degrades discussion and also discredits the true information that you may have to add. Edit: you did it at least three times in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683823 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24683862) are also not cool. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of this site more to heart? Your contributions and your knowledge are welcome, but everyone posting here needs also to take care of the shared environment (which is all too fragile).
- 6y ago

serf 6y ago

F1 technology is a lot more than just power-trains, I wish people would understand that better. Fuel chemistry, aerodynamics, functional simulation, driver ergonomics, safety dynamics, tire chemistry, metallurgy, analytics, data recording, composites, suspension, real-time telemetry and communication, digital systems management.. the list goes on forever. If the device/technique/procedure wasn't invented by F1, it was made better by it, and tons of it have trickled down to consumer products in the past 70+ years.

CWuestefeld 6y ago
Anybody in tech, and especially information technology, should be able to find something fascinating in F1. Winning an F1 race requires a huge amount of data processing, both for the operation of the race car itself, as well as for the simulations of race strategy in realtime. The teams bring enormous amounts of equipment to each race. Obviously a lot of that equipment is wrenches, screwdrivers, and related machinery. But every team is bringing essentially a portable datacenter to each race: The car has around 300 sensors and the SECU monitors over 4,000 parameters. During the course of a typical race the car will transmit around 3 GB of telemetry data as well as around 4 GB of logging, however this is just the seed for computation. When processed and combined with other sources such as audio and video analysis it can mean a team leaves a typical race weekend with over a terabyte of valuable data — data that is drawn on again and again before and during future events and seasons. -- https://www.eetimes.com/the-importance-of-electronics-in-formula-1/ https://www.eetimes.com/the-importance-of-electronics-in-for...
- jimbokun 6y ago
  Any good books on F1 technology, data processing or otherwise?
  - dharmab 6y ago
    A lot of it is proprietary and kept secret from other teams. Diagnostic monitors and even the back of the steering wheel are censored in official media. Chain Bear F1 is a YouTube channel that produces good summaries from public information.

dokem 6y ago

Aren’t there rules imposed in F1 to keep the technology relevant to industry? Why can’t F1 evolve towards electric with new rules?

ish 6y ago
Formula E has a 25 year-long exclusive license for single seaters on electric. That doesn't rule out the possibility of a merger happening at some point in the future. [https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/18/formula-1-formula-e-merger-a-long-term-possibility-says-agag/ https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/18/formula-1-formula-e-merg...]
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  I don’t really understand this. Who is licensing rules for car races?
  - snuxoll 6y ago
    The FIA, seeing as they are the main sanctioning body for Motorsport worldwide outside of America-centric series like NASCAR and Indycar.
    - zizee 6y ago
      What are the implications of that exactly?
      - wastedhours 6y ago
        Unless F1 and FE merge, F1 cannot become fully electric until the end of the exclusivity period. It's a gamble by F1 that the world (and more specifically, the teams and manufacturers involved) won't be ready for a full-electric pinnacle series by 2039 (i.e. speed and name recognition parity). All F1 teams have signed the Concorde Agreement until 2025 - which means they're "committed" in one sense or another. I don't think FE will be in a position to attract Mercedes and Renault fully by 2025 (the two mass-market manufacturers who'll be most heavily influenced by the move to fully electric, with toes already in the waters in FE). The late 2020s will be a lot of political posturing, and should FE look to be attracting F1 backmarkers with promises of cheaper overheads, more future-relevant tech and decent audiences in addition to manufacturers, 2030-2039 will be interesting as heck.

GhostVII 6y ago

I think there problem is that it's just boring to watch because they are so fast - it is extremely hard to pass without hacks like DRS, which makes F1 races really boring to watch. And I'm sure most fans would much rather switch back to the v10 engines even though they are more "obsolete", a conventional powertrain doesn't make them any more boring to watch (it actually makes them more exciting imo). And if battery technology is ever good enough to last a full F1 race without adding tonnes of extra weight, I'm sure they will switch over to electric. Powertrain isn't the main focus of F1, teams are quite limited in what they can do there.

alexb7c4 6y ago
Any suggestions of racing series more interesting than F1? I tried to watch Blancpain, Super GT, IMSA, Le Mans - all of them seem to have almost non-existent level of overtaking (even worse than in F1 imho)
- suryabeep 6y ago
  Try MotoGP, it's got plenty of overtaking.
  - sgt 6y ago
    Second this. Not sure why people watch F1. MotoGP is infinitely better and in fact, it seems to just get better each passing year! The secret is that it's "90% rider" and "10% machine".
    - randlet 6y ago
      I really think "it's 90% rider and 10% machine" is a big exaggeration in MotoGP. Even Marquez is not going to win a race on a current generation Aprilia, and I'm not sure there is anyone other than Marquez who can win races on the current Honda. edit: regardless, Dorna has done a great job making MotoGP competitive and MotoGP has to be at or very near the top of the list for the best racing on the planet.
    - 6y ago

dmix 6y ago

Considering this is both a sport and one of the most heavily rule driven sports currently in existence, I’m really not sure the value you’re putting into the loopback consumer product cycle is really that high. There’s far more to the sport than a grand R&D experiment (the value of just being “in it” within the grapevine of other top end machines, the marketing, the fun and prestige. Prestige is massive in F1). Especially considering how slow and incremental the new tech addition rules are added to the vehicles and how much the rules neuter the cars on purpose. This is probably just down to the team/human capital not being super interested in investing the time and energy to play in the top league. Honda still has a very large presence in the Indy series which arguably offers plenty of the more consumer oriented R&D bits in the short term. Additionally the non committal F1E stuff makes the consumer R&D argument less persuasive.

doe88 6y ago

What's not well known is that actually are hybrids technologies used in F1, e.g. MGU-H and MGU-K components.

Hypx 6y ago

Note that an FE car can't run a full F1 race, and the "ICBM" doesn't exist in the context of motorsports. Both racing series are much more likely to stay where they are given the circumstances. The most extreme outcome would be F1 switching to zero emissions in some way.

eVoLInTHRo 6y ago

In your mind, how many years is a few years? I watch Formula E, but it's hard to imagine it becoming the pinnacle of motorsport anytime soon. Formula E's definitely made progress: e.g. they no longer have to run two separate cars just to finish the race, and they are decently quick. But they're still pretty far away in other aspects: 45 minute race, on temporary circuits purposefully designed with many tight turns to allow for braking regen. Battery technology has to improve quite a bit if you want to see electric cars turning laps at Spa at standard race distances.

DC-3 6y ago
Formula E has also made the conscious decision not to pursue open chassis and aero regulations - good for keeping the costs down, but it makes it harder to take it seriously as a potential future 'pinnacle' series.
- wastedhours 6y ago
  That being said, the attraction to manufacturers coming into FE is large and it'll only take a few more generations before I'm sure there'll be differentiation in some parts. I'm bullish on FE, especially when they can run on "proper" circuits at a consistently decent pace (that being said, smaller city-centre tracks might very well be the future of the sport in any case).

snyp 6y ago

Honda has left F1 5 times in the past. This is nothing new. They just seem to have different reasons every time!

PedroBatista 6y ago
This time they were overconfident and believed too much in their “God given” superiority. In the end their type of arrogance didn’t play well with F1 arrogance.

nradov 6y ago

Henry Ford "killed" horses as transportation but horse racing is still a big business.

neor 6y ago

I tend to agree with you. The current V6 Turbo engines with advanced Energy Recovery Systems were introduced with two major ideas in mind; 1. It would make Formula 1 engines relevant for road cars. 2. It would attract new manufacturers to the sport. 1. Failed miserably; there is 0 road relevance for F1 engines. 2. Failed miserably; only Honda entered the sport and they are pulling the plug now. Juicy detail; they extended their IndyCar contract and IndyCar is switching to V6 Turbo Hybrid engines in a few years.... So the "carbon free tech" reason they gave to pull out of F1 isn't entirely true. What F1 should do is one of two things; 1. Find a way to become road relevant again. I'd say the only way to do this is to skip Electric as Formula E is doing this already and go for hydrogen fuel. 2. Screw road relevance, and focus on entertainment. This means abandoning the insanely complex/expensive engines and go for simple, powerful, and most of all cheap engines.

what_ever 6y ago
> 1. Failed miserably; there is 0 road relevance for F1 engines. 2. Failed miserably; only Honda entered the sport and they are pulling the plug now. Juicy detail; they extended their IndyCar contract and IndyCar is switching to V6 Turbo Hybrid engines in a few years.... So the "carbon free tech" reason they gave to pull out of F1 isn't entirely true. Could be because Honda already has a V6 Turbo Hybrid but don't want to invest more money and resources to develop the next iteration of F1 engine?
- PedroBatista 6y ago
  Also yes. Their strategy to re-enter F1 was the classic playbook, start with an engine At the beginning of a new rules era, get some top customers to gather info and then create a works team eventually. Well, that didn’t play out the way they hoped so either they commit to F1 spending billions ( I wouldn’t ) or get out.
koffiezet 6y ago
> and go for hydrogen fuel There are almost fewer cars running on hydrogen on the road right now than there are F1 cars on the grid (only half joking), and while many mainstream manufacturers have made prototypes and concept cars even before they did anything pure electric, pretty much all of them have real full-electric products in their lineup, or at leat in the pipeline. There are some hydrogen pilot projects, sure, but I can't go to a dealer right now and order one. So going for hydrogen would be a really bad move, also because its energy density is inferior. The current ICE units in F1 are already at the upper-limit of possible efficiency, so replacing it with a fuel with a lower energy-density will be a step back in performance, with little or no future path to real improvements they don't have right now. I'm an F1 fan, but I see that it is on a dead-end, one-way street. It'll take a while to reach the end, and as long as there's not a superior technology which can beat it on it's own grounds, it's not going away. The "only" thing standing in the way of electric race-cars beating them is energy storage, which I expect to be improved at a break-neck speed in the coming years. FE has the advantage that this is the exact same problem affecting road-cars, which is why you see quite a few mainstream brands being attracted to it right now. But the energy density of oil-based fuels will be hard to beat, it will take a while before an FE car can beat an F1 car in every situation. But I'm excited for when this happens, since right now, FE fails to capture my interest for multiple reasons. There is no track-overview, all look pretty much the same to me, there are no iconic locations. Next year they'll finally be using the full Monaco circuit, which is a good start, and currently one of the very few viable F1 tracks for FE, but they have a long way to go.

imtringued 6y ago

The largest problem is that it's incredibly easy to build a car faster than any human can reasonably control. This has lead to so many accidents and rule changes that F1 racing is a wholly artificial sport in terms of engineering.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
It would be really interesting to see a version of F1 with self-driving AI, to see if that would allow them to exceed the design limits imposed by human drivers.

jjav 6y ago

The F1 crisis today is that F1 used to be three things rolled into one. 1. The sport. Fans, parties, passion, excitement for race results. 2. Advertising showcase of engineering prowess for companies selling cars or car-related parts. 3. A testing ground for future production car technology, send your best engineers to learn under the pressure of F1. With commoditized electric cars taking over the road car market, this no longer works because the interests have diverged. By trying to continue to do all three, F1 is just imploding. Personally I wish F1 would focus on #1 and let Formula E be the proving ground for street car tech.

the_mitsuhiko 6y ago

> In a few years battery electric vehicles will get to the performance levels of current F1 hybrids, but by that time the mantle of the pinnacle of auto-racing will have been taken by FormulaE I strongly doubt that Formula E will be a drop-in replacement for Formula 1. It's a completely different (and unfortunately so far very boring) replacement for Formula 1. If anything my guess is that once they figured out the battery problem so they can go on bigger courses, they will introduce electric vehicles in the Formula 1 and start phasing out Formula E.

PedroBatista 6y ago
These days the only thing more boring than formula 1 is formula e. It’s the political correct one, we all know what everyone is thinking but nobody tell :)
- the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
  Right now maybe, but in 30 years I'm sure electric vehicles are going to be more interesting than ICE ones.
bart_spoon 6y ago
> If anything my guess is that once they figured out the battery problem so they can go on bigger courses, they will introduce electric vehicles in the Formula 1 and start phasing out Formula E. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Formula E has an exclusive contract with the FIA to be the only series that uses fully electric vehicles until 2039. Formula 1 could only switch to electric vehicles with permission from Formula E, or through some kind of merger. If anything it seems more likely that Formula 1 is the one that gets phased out.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

F1 is entertainment, a show. The key is to make it exciting and interesting to watch. I think whether the engines are ICE, hybrid, or electric is not key. More technology can actually make it more boring and the number of restrictions has increased through the years because of that.

bborud 6y ago

There is a paradox in that when F1 started becoming explicitly geared towards using more "clean technologies" F1 essentially stopped having any relevance to street cars. Or the environment.

redwall_hp 6y ago

Not really. Electric vehicles are absolute junk for racing still, hence the underwhelming nature of Formula E. Battery based vehicles are insanely heavy and lack the ability to corner. That's not going to change anytime soon. You're not likely to see an electric WRC car either. Real racing isn't going fast in a straight line. It's decided in the turns.

ashtonkem 6y ago
> The metaphorical comparison with XB-70 ends when performance is concerned. F1 hybrids are still far superior to pure battery electric vehicles. So F1 is essentially stuck in the upper-left corner of the price-performance envelope. They are too good to move to pure electric, but their tech is obsolete for road cars.

mansoor_ 6y ago

Unless someone managed to increase the energy density of battery tech by two orders of magnitude, I don't see pure EV reaching hybrid powertrain performance on most metrics (with obvious exceptions i.e. responsiveness).

hajile 6y ago

They need more energy than even the new tesla batteries can provide. If they needed anything, it's a change from pistons to turbines running a generator. This is also an area where those millions could actually translate into use in normal vehicles.