As you have said on a number of occasions, Frank, the homogenisation of the lower racing Formulas with single make chassis etc is coming home to roost. Young engineers now have nowhere to cut their teeth in designing a whole car. Just Adrian and Rory now on the grid, who have designed a car from top to bottom; they are also the only two left from the original ground effect era. Funnily enough, their cars seem to be the fastest…
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Frank,
That is pretty shocking to hear, but not surprising when many aerodynamicists develop the car based on increasing downforce and struggle to accept that there are times around a lap when you want less downforce.
To put it very simply:
You only want more downforce if it enables you to increase your acceleration. Otherwise you want to reduce drag to increase acceleration.
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I would not give them the lack of experience as an excuse. I have none of Frank’s practical design experience, but I know very well what makes a car fast and why, because simulation technology (both developing and using) enables you to work this out.
The vehicle performance department, which is weak at most teams, have the tools to show them which corners they want to increase downforce on and when, and when to reduce drag.
They should be leading the team in its development of vehicle performance, or why call the department that?
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Only watched the race last night - and that on a laptop - still not too sure what to make of it. The fact it’s basically a car-park in the 'burbs probably has a lot to do with it.
Max looking increasingly unassailable - suspect RB’s development arc is going to be on-the-money this season, others, less-so… Hope I’m wrong (I usually am…) and Ferrari can keep it competitive.
Hamilton is playing right into the hands of the Hammy-haters with his whinging and exceptionalism. That needs to stop.
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The race was pretty dull until Gasly/Norris’s unfortunate coming together.
We actually found the W Series racing more entertaining.
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One your ex’s, Frank?
I know John but I had left Williams by the time he joined.
John is my cousin
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Interesting! Vettel’s on QT tonight
I won’t be watching it because the mere sight of Braveman makes me rather irate, and also we don’t get the Beeb in.dk.
I trust you’ll all fill me in. You, and twitter
What was ground breaking about the F2002 gearbox?
I do not remember anything special about it, but I was working at Honda F1 at the time (and had very little to do with gearboxes) and so may well have missed out on hearing about something special that they did.
I do hope you’re not expecting Suella Brace an to answer that!
She an barely answer the door
Designing and building a carbon gearbox was very difficult in the 2000s.
Arrows and Prost tried but in the end only managed hybrid solutions.
As far as I am aware, the first full (various hybrid solutions had thermal expansion problems but were run at times by some teams) carbon gearbox was the one used on the 2004 Honda F1.
By 2007 only Honda and McLaren were running carbon boxes, according to the following article:
https://www.formula1-dictionary.net/gearbox.html
The real advantages of carbon boxes were that they could be lighter than metal boxes and different shapes could be made more easily for aero requirements or suspension supports.
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iirc John was linked to the seamless shift mechanism and maybe wrongly rumoured to have a twin clutch solution.
Maybe also involved in the McLaren torque vectoring diff which got banned.
Not sure about those but all, IMO, a bigger deal than a carbon fibre gear case.
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Yes indeed.
I would have been surprised if any team ran a dual clutch shift mechanism due to the additional weight.
There have been various incarnations of the seamless shift (one shaft with even gears and one with odd gears and a clever barrel mechanism to shift extremely quickly), with Honda (the Brackley based team) running this technology in 2007 and onwards.
I was involved in checking whether there was enough justification to do the project, and like many thought that there wasn’t (the lapsims showed little gain of around 0.02 secs) but fortunately Honda went ahead and did a great job with the seamless shift mechanism.
I had not checked all my input data to the lapsim thoroughly enough, namely the power on to power on time with the current gearbox in 2006 and assumed numbers from the past were valid. What had happened since I last checked (2004 most likely) was that the shift time had been extended to make it easier to shift at more points around the lap.
When I reassessed with current verified data the gain was up to 0.2 secs / lap, when you include the ability to shift wherever you want to shift due to smaller engine torque disturbance.
Lesson learnt!
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Sebastian Vettel on QT, now…
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He came across very well I thought.
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Well, he was up against Suella Braverman.
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He was a bit lost on various issues, which I get as they have no relevance to him. The other fuckwits on it… Tory comedian? The Actual tory responses were worse than the comedians. Shes a fuckwit
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Every week I watch, hoping for a shining light. By the end of the program I’m franticly searching for the sniper rifle i don’t own
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Gave it up when Bruce got the gig