12 ms·

Mercedes Is Owning This Formula 1 Season

150 points by x43b 13y ago

edoloughlin 13y ago
Interesting article. Depressing to see the word 'boffins' still in use.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I wasn't aware there was anything wrong with that word. Is it derogatory?
  - alphakappa 13y ago
    From the description on Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to be a pejorative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin
  - nutjob123 13y ago
    It has a slightly negative connotation.
    - simonwalton 13y ago
      Indeed. Especially so for children. In British schools in the 80's/90's at least, it was commonly used if you enjoyed class a little too much.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      In my experience it's actually rarely used negatively (ymmv of course) - I only really hear it when the context is "these people (the boffins) do something about which I don't understand", so it's almost self-deprecating to call them boffins. On the otherhand it's also not particularly positive, either. As an example: Stephen Fry uses it, and he is a.) a geek and b.) not the kind of person to insult people for that kind of thing - when he uses it he always just means that they're people doing something complicated that he doesn't know about.
      - enneff 13y ago
        Stephen Fry is incredibly condescending almost constantly, so I wouldn't cite him in defense of the word.
  - FatalLogic 13y ago
    It's generally used by non-scientists to refer to scientists. People don't tend to use it to refer to themselves (though a few might, in a humorously self-deprecating fashion). It might have a dismissive or mocking connotation, depending on the intention of the person using it. I guess in the worst case, its use could be described as 'othering' https://google.com/search?q=define%3A+othering https://google.com/search?q=define%3A+othering
    - atmosx 13y ago
      English is not my mother tongue. When I reached the word boffins I stopped and opened the OSX dictionary which gave the right perspective... Because I instantly related boffins with buffoons which has a totally different meaning and didn't make any sense to call F1 engineers buffoons ?! It's okay if it comes from Archimedes, Francis Bacon and another 10-15 fellas I guess because it's kind of relative... But if I were an F1 engineer, I would had a hard time accepting such a degradative term from anyone else! ps. Funny how fast all these vivid thoughts crossed my mind in less the 2 seconds.
      - KC8ZKF 13y ago
        Hey, the same thing happens with native English speakers. I just heard a radio spot where someone was reprimanded for using the term "pussyfoot" at a meeting. That's nothing, though, compared to this: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_02_02_newyorktimes.html http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_02_02_newy...
    - nbevans 13y ago
      Don't be silly. Other than perhaps in a school playground where _any_ word said repeatedly enough can be considered abusive, boffin is not word that anyone can take offence from really.
      - FatalLogic 13y ago
        Many scientists do take offence. http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/26/boffins-backlash-scientists-dont-like-being-called-that http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/2...
Theodores 13y ago
The Mercedes F1 team appears to be one team that makes cars with engines that they also supply to other teams. However it is not quite like that. The engines part of the business has been going for a long time with McLaren since the mid 90's and before that they were 'Ilmor'. Then, five years or so, Mercedes bought what was the Honda/Braun constructor team. Both the engine business and the car constructor part of the empire are in the UK albeit geographically separate. It would be unsporting for Mercedes to supply their on-track rivals with lesser engines, particularly since they pay top money for them. So the official PR story for this is that the separate constructor part of the business came up with this innovation all on their own for packaging reasons, i.e. a more aerodynamic car.
- gsnedders 13y ago
  They cannot within the rules of the sport supply power trains of different designs to the different teams — all Mercedes power trains are identical.
  - mwg66 13y ago
    Indeed but McLaren and Williams manufacturer their own gearbox.
- lelandriordan 13y ago
  There is no foul play going on, Mercedes planned this from the start. They knew that coming back into the sport they had no chance to catch the dominant Red Bull cars so for the last 5 years the team has been solely focused on developing a car for this season's rule changes. Mercedes intentionally made the decision to have a worse team the last few years to put more money toward R&D for this season. This sacrifice culminated in them having a better designed car than any other team this year with their innovative turbo/compressor placement: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12472/9243875/revealed-how-mercedes-packaging-of-their-turbo-engine-has-given-them-the-edge http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12472/9243875/revealed-how... Your engine point is moot, because it is up to the team to implement the supplied engine and there are huge monetary differences between teams. A team buying supplied engines is always at a disadvantage in terms of time and design because they didn't design the engines. They have to adapt their car to the engine, while the manufacturer team can develop both in concert. Its similar to Android vs. the iPhone, Apple's products use similar parts but the experience was better because its OS and hardware were developed together, instead of hooked together at the end like Android phones. Also, F1 is not fair in terms of money. Manufacturing teams, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes etc, have R&D budgets multiple times the size of the smaller teams. Even though, Force India buys Merc engines, they have a fraction of the budget to figure out how to optimize it, and terrible drivers in comparison.
ntkachov 13y ago
I'm loving the direction F1 is going. Sure, for the hardcore fans, the noise just isn't the same, and the cars aren't going as fast anymore, but I love that they are trying to force the manufacturers to improve their lower spec engines. Maybe the next rule change we'll have CVT as a requirement instead of a gear box.
- johnwyles 13y ago
  Also keep in mind that Formula E debuts this year; it will be the sport we all eventually follow (not sure how I feel about the passing cars sounding more like aircraft than cars): http://www.fiaformulae.com/ http://www.fiaformulae.com/
  - sbierwagen 13y ago
    Who cares about the sound? I'm tired of seeing blog comments on Jalopnik complaining about it. Of the many dumb excuses car nuts use to whine about electric cars, "they sound different!" is by far the worst.
    - gsnedders 13y ago
      At the end of the day sound is an inherent inefficiency. The aim is to maximise the kinetic energy output of the motor — any sound or heat energy produced is waste that could've better been produced as kinetic energy.
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Not always. Did you know that in top fuel cars, the "waste" energy of the exhaust works like jet thrusters, providing up to 1000lbs of traction-boosting downforce?
        ars 13y ago
        The exhaust might do that, but the sound certainly doesn't. Any sound is wasted energy. And in any case there are better ways to harness energy if you want create downforce.
frik 13y ago
This article is already dated. Today's race was one of the most thrilling races of all time. "Hamilton defeats Rosberg after epic duel": http://www.formula1.com/default.html http://www.formula1.com/default.html F1 2014 is more exciting than season 2013 where Red Bull was superior (and '12 & '11) - that was boring.
- stevenwei 13y ago
  Aw, a spoiler warning would have been appreciated there.
  - enko 13y ago
    The article title might have given it away ...
    - stevenwei 13y ago
      Mercedes has been dominant the past two races as well so it's not necessarily a spoiler to say they have been owning the season. On the other hand today's race ended a few hours ago and I didn't expect to run into race results on HN of all places. Oh well.
      - d0vs 13y ago
        Don't worry about the results, watch that awesome race!
      - corin_ 13y ago
        To be fair to him, a thread all about which team is dominating F1 is the kind of place on HN that I would expect to see races discussed. Not sure that shouldve taken you by surprise! Anyway, sounds like the race was good enough for you to enjoy anyway.
_s 13y ago
For those interested - it's not just the engine; you'll find plenty of teams/drivers also struggling with the new brake-by-wire as outlined here: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/2014-f1-explained-what-is-brake-by-wire/ http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/2014-f1-explaine... It's among a myriad of new tech introduced this year, and Mercedes just happen to have the most complete package available.
gahahaha 13y ago
Why would it be bad to put hot air into the engine? For blast furnaces you want to preheat the air going in so that it does not cool down the furnace. Is it just about cooling the engine down, or is it something else?
- curveship 13y ago
  cool air = more dense = more oxygen to burn
- matthavener 13y ago
  Cold air is denser. Denser air contains more oxygen for combustion, and won't get as hot after compression. In 4-stroke engines, this means more power.
- Gracana 13y ago
  The engine and turbo compress and heat the air charge immensely. Others have mentioned air density, but while dense air is nice, the increased temperature is the important part when it comes to high performance turbo applications. Everyone knows that overheating an engine is bad, but what actually happens when you push things too far? If your combustion chamber grows too hot, you can suffer from pre-ignition, where your fuel-air mixture ignites sooner than it should. This results in wasted power and increased temps as the engine has to compress the now-expanding combustion charge. What often follows pre-ignition (provided nothing has melted or blown up yet) is detonation. In normal combustion, you have a flame front that expands smoothly from the ignition spark and causes a smooth increase in pressure. It occurs quickly, but it's not an explosion. Detonation is the opposite. Pockets of fuel-air mixture in any part of the combustion chamber ignite explosively, sending out sharp shockwaves that are too fast to be absorbed by the rotating mass of the engine. If the detonations are too powerful or too frequent, they can cause catastrophic damage. There's plenty more that can be explained on the subject and I'm sure somebody can find something to correct, but that's the gist of it. The engine is already hot enough, higher intake temps make things worse, go too far and you get abnormal combustion which results in spontaneous disassembly.
- sbierwagen 13y ago
  All three of the replies to your comment are true, but they don't cover everything. Car engines are heat engines, they extract mechanical work from differences in temperature. Heat engine efficiency is n = 1 - sqrt(Tcold/Thot) If Tcold, the cold end, isn't cold enough, then you lose efficiency, and thus horsepower. A badly overheating engine loses a lot of power. If you can cool the compressed air back down to ambient, then your engine produces more power.
exDM69 13y ago
What is interesting is that Mercedes came up with the split turbocharger only in the first race - in preseason winter testing, they were running a more traditional turbo charger. Now that we've seen the split turbocharger with the turbine at the back, the compressor at the front and the motor-generator unit in between on top of the engine block it seems all too obvious. But coming up with this is ingenious, and making it work on such short notice is quite a feat of engineering. I can't wait to have this in my road car, 40% fuel saving with only a little drop in performance.
- encoderer 13y ago
  Didn't the article say they were working on this for 2 years?
  - exDM69 13y ago
    Yes, the article did say that and I found it a bit odd. While they probably have been working on the power unit for two years, the split turbocharger was first seen at the first race. Of course, my knowledge is based on media reports, it is possible that none of the media have seen it in Jerez and Bahrain tests but it was first reported by Craig Scarborough during the Australian GP weekend.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      I don't follow F1, but surely with anything that's going to give a team a big competitive advantage, a.) there always has to be a line between "haven't used" and "have now used" and b.) to delay other teams efforts to copy, the later that point comes the better.
    - beamso 13y ago
      The split turbocharger was most likely identified by interested journalists at the first race. The power train was homologated for the season at the end of February, so the design was finalised prior to the third pre-season test. It's most likely that the turbo was in this form a while ago.
- 13y ago
ukdm 13y ago
Today's race was the first time we got to see just how fast the Mercedes is on low fuel with new tires. This innovation is worth 2 seconds per lap, which is massive in this sport. The championship is theirs to lose this year. Teams don't make up such a time gap over a season, and Mercedes won't stop developing.
vermontdevil 13y ago
And now Ecclestone is hinting at mid-season changes that FIA should pursue to wink protect the other teams. I say tough. They will catch up eventually. But there should be no drastic changes that hurt all the work Mercedes put in.
atmosx 13y ago
> But those teams–McLaren, Williams, and Force India–haven’t been testing these new V6s as long as the official factory team. Finally Hamilton's choice to leave McLarren paid dues. I remember him saying last year that "I have the change to run for a team that builds the car piece by piece, from the engine to the tiniest screw, the only other team that can do this is Ferrari". But although the car was fast last year, it was not consistent, too many breaks. This year seems to be the good one. Also I have to say that I admire Hamilton for not applying any first-second driver policy on Rosberg. After the all he is without doubt the star-driver for Mercedes. I wish him good luck, he deserves another championship, after all the fist one he got was kind of obscured by the McLaren scandal[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_cont...
cc439 13y ago
The cool part of this innovation is that it can directly benefit consumers. Trick engineering in F1 usually just tricks the regulations or the kinds of physics that only apply to racing prototypes. An example of tricking the regulations would be the double-deck and blown diffusers that were just clever interpretations of the rulebook. Tricking physics is a bit more interesting, a good example would be McLaren's F-Duct which used fancy fluid dynamics to turn a driver's leg into an on/off switch for drag on the rear wing. They basically ran a duct from the front of the car all the way to the wing, with a hole cut into it by the driver's leg. Cover the hole and pressure sucked air through to the wing, smoothing it's profile and reducing drag. Very cool, except I don't know many family sedans that need over 1 ton of downforce at 150mph. The timing of this innovation in turbocharging couldn't be better. Every manufacturer is trying to gain efficiency with small, turbocharged engines. Small displacement engines are efficient but consumers don't want to trade half their horsepower for 5-10mpg. So companies like Ford and VW are slapping turbos onto these engines and cranking boost levels through the roof. The Fiesta ST runs 21 lbs of boost off the showroom floor. That kind of boost means a lot of heat (the same issue Mercedes' F1 engineers were faced with) so engineers are using every trick in the book to keep temperatures in control (direct injection, temporary overboost, expensive aluminum intercoolers). What Mercedes' has done isn't so much about the innovative layout, it's that they've made it work without turbo lag. Bring whatever technology they've developed to combat the weight of the turbine shaft to the road and you've made it possible to operate on lower octane fuel while making more power from even smaller displacements. This is what I like to see from motorsport.
- xd 13y ago
  I'd love to know how they are running the shaft from the turbine to the compressor .. these things spin at something like 100,000RPM if I'm not mistaken. Normally this would be handled by a few bearings with direct oil intake at high pressure with the bearings being only a few centimeters apart if that .. but to span an entire engine is some special kind of precision engineering. edit: special because any imbalance in the shaft would rip the bearings apart.
  - cc439 13y ago
cl8ton 13y ago
I have been a fan of F1 since the days of Nigel Mansell and I have got to say I am no fan of the new direction of Formula 1 present day. To me Formula 1 represents the pinnacle of engine/chassis engineering uninhibited by any green standard of the day. For once just let the creative minds of auto engineering have their day at the track and let the best team win. There is nothing more sexy to a car guy than hearing a V10 scream down the straights at Fuji Speedway at 21k RPM and nothing more exciting than seeing a V10 engine detonate at 21k RPM. I certainly miss the days of Schumacher and Alonso battling in the final days of the V10 engine. Mercedes may be currently winning it by the years of preplanning for this day, but the race is already over by using today’s standard. EDIT: In case you never heard a V10 engine http://youtu.be/MGEqlNU30Tg http://youtu.be/MGEqlNU30Tg
contingencies 13y ago
Did anyone else cringe at the grammar of the title? It's the McDonaldsization ("I'm x-ing object!") slash subcontinental present continuous affectation.
emmelaich 13y ago
How much does anyone know about the details of this engine? I'd like to think some of the immense amount of research and development that went into the Bishop Rotary Valve for Mercedes F1 has not gone to waste. http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/PDF/AutoTechBRV.pdf That innovation was killed by article 5.1.5 of FIA: "Only reciprocating poppet valves are permitted" Seems a bit arbitrary. Though I have heard it the BRV was killed by the limit of certain metals seen as poisonous -- also dubious considering the danger is in the manufacture, not racing.

150 points by x43b 13y ago

edoloughlin 13y ago

Interesting article. Depressing to see the word 'boffins' still in use.

mikeash 13y ago
I wasn't aware there was anything wrong with that word. Is it derogatory?
- alphakappa 13y ago
  From the description on Wikipedia, it doesn't seem to be a pejorative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin
- nutjob123 13y ago
  It has a slightly negative connotation.
  - simonwalton 13y ago
    Indeed. Especially so for children. In British schools in the 80's/90's at least, it was commonly used if you enjoyed class a little too much.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    In my experience it's actually rarely used negatively (ymmv of course) - I only really hear it when the context is "these people (the boffins) do something about which I don't understand", so it's almost self-deprecating to call them boffins. On the otherhand it's also not particularly positive, either. As an example: Stephen Fry uses it, and he is a.) a geek and b.) not the kind of person to insult people for that kind of thing - when he uses it he always just means that they're people doing something complicated that he doesn't know about.
    - enneff 13y ago
      Stephen Fry is incredibly condescending almost constantly, so I wouldn't cite him in defense of the word.
- FatalLogic 13y ago
  It's generally used by non-scientists to refer to scientists. People don't tend to use it to refer to themselves (though a few might, in a humorously self-deprecating fashion). It might have a dismissive or mocking connotation, depending on the intention of the person using it. I guess in the worst case, its use could be described as 'othering' https://google.com/search?q=define%3A+othering https://google.com/search?q=define%3A+othering
  - atmosx 13y ago
    English is not my mother tongue. When I reached the word boffins I stopped and opened the OSX dictionary which gave the right perspective... Because I instantly related boffins with buffoons which has a totally different meaning and didn't make any sense to call F1 engineers buffoons ?! It's okay if it comes from Archimedes, Francis Bacon and another 10-15 fellas I guess because it's kind of relative... But if I were an F1 engineer, I would had a hard time accepting such a degradative term from anyone else! ps. Funny how fast all these vivid thoughts crossed my mind in less the 2 seconds.
    - KC8ZKF 13y ago
      Hey, the same thing happens with native English speakers. I just heard a radio spot where someone was reprimanded for using the term "pussyfoot" at a meeting. That's nothing, though, compared to this: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_02_02_newyorktimes.html http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_02_02_newy...
  - nbevans 13y ago
    Don't be silly. Other than perhaps in a school playground where _any_ word said repeatedly enough can be considered abusive, boffin is not word that anyone can take offence from really.
    - FatalLogic 13y ago
      Many scientists do take offence. http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/26/boffins-backlash-scientists-dont-like-being-called-that http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/jul/2...

Theodores 13y ago

The Mercedes F1 team appears to be one team that makes cars with engines that they also supply to other teams. However it is not quite like that. The engines part of the business has been going for a long time with McLaren since the mid 90's and before that they were 'Ilmor'. Then, five years or so, Mercedes bought what was the Honda/Braun constructor team. Both the engine business and the car constructor part of the empire are in the UK albeit geographically separate. It would be unsporting for Mercedes to supply their on-track rivals with lesser engines, particularly since they pay top money for them. So the official PR story for this is that the separate constructor part of the business came up with this innovation all on their own for packaging reasons, i.e. a more aerodynamic car.

gsnedders 13y ago
They cannot within the rules of the sport supply power trains of different designs to the different teams — all Mercedes power trains are identical.
- mwg66 13y ago
  Indeed but McLaren and Williams manufacturer their own gearbox.
lelandriordan 13y ago
There is no foul play going on, Mercedes planned this from the start. They knew that coming back into the sport they had no chance to catch the dominant Red Bull cars so for the last 5 years the team has been solely focused on developing a car for this season's rule changes. Mercedes intentionally made the decision to have a worse team the last few years to put more money toward R&D for this season. This sacrifice culminated in them having a better designed car than any other team this year with their innovative turbo/compressor placement: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12472/9243875/revealed-how-mercedes-packaging-of-their-turbo-engine-has-given-them-the-edge http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12472/9243875/revealed-how... Your engine point is moot, because it is up to the team to implement the supplied engine and there are huge monetary differences between teams. A team buying supplied engines is always at a disadvantage in terms of time and design because they didn't design the engines. They have to adapt their car to the engine, while the manufacturer team can develop both in concert. Its similar to Android vs. the iPhone, Apple's products use similar parts but the experience was better because its OS and hardware were developed together, instead of hooked together at the end like Android phones. Also, F1 is not fair in terms of money. Manufacturing teams, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes etc, have R&D budgets multiple times the size of the smaller teams. Even though, Force India buys Merc engines, they have a fraction of the budget to figure out how to optimize it, and terrible drivers in comparison.

ntkachov 13y ago

I'm loving the direction F1 is going. Sure, for the hardcore fans, the noise just isn't the same, and the cars aren't going as fast anymore, but I love that they are trying to force the manufacturers to improve their lower spec engines. Maybe the next rule change we'll have CVT as a requirement instead of a gear box.

johnwyles 13y ago
Also keep in mind that Formula E debuts this year; it will be the sport we all eventually follow (not sure how I feel about the passing cars sounding more like aircraft than cars): http://www.fiaformulae.com/ http://www.fiaformulae.com/
- sbierwagen 13y ago
  Who cares about the sound? I'm tired of seeing blog comments on Jalopnik complaining about it. Of the many dumb excuses car nuts use to whine about electric cars, "they sound different!" is by far the worst.
  - gsnedders 13y ago
    At the end of the day sound is an inherent inefficiency. The aim is to maximise the kinetic energy output of the motor — any sound or heat energy produced is waste that could've better been produced as kinetic energy.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Not always. Did you know that in top fuel cars, the "waste" energy of the exhaust works like jet thrusters, providing up to 1000lbs of traction-boosting downforce?
      - ars 13y ago
        The exhaust might do that, but the sound certainly doesn't. Any sound is wasted energy. And in any case there are better ways to harness energy if you want create downforce.

frik 13y ago

This article is already dated. Today's race was one of the most thrilling races of all time. "Hamilton defeats Rosberg after epic duel": http://www.formula1.com/default.html http://www.formula1.com/default.html F1 2014 is more exciting than season 2013 where Red Bull was superior (and '12 & '11) - that was boring.

stevenwei 13y ago
Aw, a spoiler warning would have been appreciated there.
- enko 13y ago
  The article title might have given it away ...
  - stevenwei 13y ago
    Mercedes has been dominant the past two races as well so it's not necessarily a spoiler to say they have been owning the season. On the other hand today's race ended a few hours ago and I didn't expect to run into race results on HN of all places. Oh well.
    - d0vs 13y ago
      Don't worry about the results, watch that awesome race!
    - corin_ 13y ago
      To be fair to him, a thread all about which team is dominating F1 is the kind of place on HN that I would expect to see races discussed. Not sure that shouldve taken you by surprise! Anyway, sounds like the race was good enough for you to enjoy anyway.

_s 13y ago

For those interested - it's not just the engine; you'll find plenty of teams/drivers also struggling with the new brake-by-wire as outlined here: http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/2014-f1-explained-what-is-brake-by-wire/ http://www.racecar-engineering.com/articles/2014-f1-explaine... It's among a myriad of new tech introduced this year, and Mercedes just happen to have the most complete package available.

gahahaha 13y ago

Why would it be bad to put hot air into the engine? For blast furnaces you want to preheat the air going in so that it does not cool down the furnace. Is it just about cooling the engine down, or is it something else?

curveship 13y ago
cool air = more dense = more oxygen to burn
matthavener 13y ago
Cold air is denser. Denser air contains more oxygen for combustion, and won't get as hot after compression. In 4-stroke engines, this means more power.
Gracana 13y ago
The engine and turbo compress and heat the air charge immensely. Others have mentioned air density, but while dense air is nice, the increased temperature is the important part when it comes to high performance turbo applications. Everyone knows that overheating an engine is bad, but what actually happens when you push things too far? If your combustion chamber grows too hot, you can suffer from pre-ignition, where your fuel-air mixture ignites sooner than it should. This results in wasted power and increased temps as the engine has to compress the now-expanding combustion charge. What often follows pre-ignition (provided nothing has melted or blown up yet) is detonation. In normal combustion, you have a flame front that expands smoothly from the ignition spark and causes a smooth increase in pressure. It occurs quickly, but it's not an explosion. Detonation is the opposite. Pockets of fuel-air mixture in any part of the combustion chamber ignite explosively, sending out sharp shockwaves that are too fast to be absorbed by the rotating mass of the engine. If the detonations are too powerful or too frequent, they can cause catastrophic damage. There's plenty more that can be explained on the subject and I'm sure somebody can find something to correct, but that's the gist of it. The engine is already hot enough, higher intake temps make things worse, go too far and you get abnormal combustion which results in spontaneous disassembly.
sbierwagen 13y ago
All three of the replies to your comment are true, but they don't cover everything. Car engines are heat engines, they extract mechanical work from differences in temperature. Heat engine efficiency is n = 1 - sqrt(Tcold/Thot) If Tcold, the cold end, isn't cold enough, then you lose efficiency, and thus horsepower. A badly overheating engine loses a lot of power. If you can cool the compressed air back down to ambient, then your engine produces more power.

exDM69 13y ago

What is interesting is that Mercedes came up with the split turbocharger only in the first race - in preseason winter testing, they were running a more traditional turbo charger. Now that we've seen the split turbocharger with the turbine at the back, the compressor at the front and the motor-generator unit in between on top of the engine block it seems all too obvious. But coming up with this is ingenious, and making it work on such short notice is quite a feat of engineering. I can't wait to have this in my road car, 40% fuel saving with only a little drop in performance.

encoderer 13y ago
Didn't the article say they were working on this for 2 years?
- exDM69 13y ago
  Yes, the article did say that and I found it a bit odd. While they probably have been working on the power unit for two years, the split turbocharger was first seen at the first race. Of course, my knowledge is based on media reports, it is possible that none of the media have seen it in Jerez and Bahrain tests but it was first reported by Craig Scarborough during the Australian GP weekend.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    I don't follow F1, but surely with anything that's going to give a team a big competitive advantage, a.) there always has to be a line between "haven't used" and "have now used" and b.) to delay other teams efforts to copy, the later that point comes the better.
  - beamso 13y ago
    The split turbocharger was most likely identified by interested journalists at the first race. The power train was homologated for the season at the end of February, so the design was finalised prior to the third pre-season test. It's most likely that the turbo was in this form a while ago.
13y ago

ukdm 13y ago

Today's race was the first time we got to see just how fast the Mercedes is on low fuel with new tires. This innovation is worth 2 seconds per lap, which is massive in this sport. The championship is theirs to lose this year. Teams don't make up such a time gap over a season, and Mercedes won't stop developing.

vermontdevil 13y ago

And now Ecclestone is hinting at mid-season changes that FIA should pursue to wink protect the other teams. I say tough. They will catch up eventually. But there should be no drastic changes that hurt all the work Mercedes put in.

atmosx 13y ago

> But those teams–McLaren, Williams, and Force India–haven’t been testing these new V6s as long as the official factory team. Finally Hamilton's choice to leave McLarren paid dues. I remember him saying last year that "I have the change to run for a team that builds the car piece by piece, from the engine to the tiniest screw, the only other team that can do this is Ferrari". But although the car was fast last year, it was not consistent, too many breaks. This year seems to be the good one. Also I have to say that I admire Hamilton for not applying any first-second driver policy on Rosberg. After the all he is without doubt the star-driver for Mercedes. I wish him good luck, he deserves another championship, after all the fist one he got was kind of obscured by the McLaren scandal[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_cont...

cc439 13y ago

The cool part of this innovation is that it can directly benefit consumers. Trick engineering in F1 usually just tricks the regulations or the kinds of physics that only apply to racing prototypes. An example of tricking the regulations would be the double-deck and blown diffusers that were just clever interpretations of the rulebook. Tricking physics is a bit more interesting, a good example would be McLaren's F-Duct which used fancy fluid dynamics to turn a driver's leg into an on/off switch for drag on the rear wing. They basically ran a duct from the front of the car all the way to the wing, with a hole cut into it by the driver's leg. Cover the hole and pressure sucked air through to the wing, smoothing it's profile and reducing drag. Very cool, except I don't know many family sedans that need over 1 ton of downforce at 150mph. The timing of this innovation in turbocharging couldn't be better. Every manufacturer is trying to gain efficiency with small, turbocharged engines. Small displacement engines are efficient but consumers don't want to trade half their horsepower for 5-10mpg. So companies like Ford and VW are slapping turbos onto these engines and cranking boost levels through the roof. The Fiesta ST runs 21 lbs of boost off the showroom floor. That kind of boost means a lot of heat (the same issue Mercedes' F1 engineers were faced with) so engineers are using every trick in the book to keep temperatures in control (direct injection, temporary overboost, expensive aluminum intercoolers). What Mercedes' has done isn't so much about the innovative layout, it's that they've made it work without turbo lag. Bring whatever technology they've developed to combat the weight of the turbine shaft to the road and you've made it possible to operate on lower octane fuel while making more power from even smaller displacements. This is what I like to see from motorsport.

xd 13y ago
I'd love to know how they are running the shaft from the turbine to the compressor .. these things spin at something like 100,000RPM if I'm not mistaken. Normally this would be handled by a few bearings with direct oil intake at high pressure with the bearings being only a few centimeters apart if that .. but to span an entire engine is some special kind of precision engineering. edit: special because any imbalance in the shaft would rip the bearings apart.
- cc439 13y ago

cl8ton 13y ago

I have been a fan of F1 since the days of Nigel Mansell and I have got to say I am no fan of the new direction of Formula 1 present day. To me Formula 1 represents the pinnacle of engine/chassis engineering uninhibited by any green standard of the day. For once just let the creative minds of auto engineering have their day at the track and let the best team win. There is nothing more sexy to a car guy than hearing a V10 scream down the straights at Fuji Speedway at 21k RPM and nothing more exciting than seeing a V10 engine detonate at 21k RPM. I certainly miss the days of Schumacher and Alonso battling in the final days of the V10 engine. Mercedes may be currently winning it by the years of preplanning for this day, but the race is already over by using today’s standard. EDIT: In case you never heard a V10 engine http://youtu.be/MGEqlNU30Tg http://youtu.be/MGEqlNU30Tg

contingencies 13y ago

Did anyone else cringe at the grammar of the title? It's the McDonaldsization ("I'm x-ing object!") slash subcontinental present continuous affectation.

emmelaich 13y ago

How much does anyone know about the details of this engine? I'd like to think some of the immense amount of research and development that went into the Bishop Rotary Valve for Mercedes F1 has not gone to waste. http://home.people.net.au/~mrbdesign/PDF/AutoTechBRV.pdf That innovation was killed by article 5.1.5 of FIA: "Only reciprocating poppet valves are permitted" Seems a bit arbitrary. Though I have heard it the BRV was killed by the limit of certain metals seen as poisonous -- also dubious considering the danger is in the manufacture, not racing.