So i just got home from uni at 9:20pm. But it was pretty worth it today, i had an awesome lecture.
Basically it is from a man called Geoff Goddard (google him - ex Cosworth, TWR, Renault, etc), about component design. But we got sidetracked. He showed us this slide of the
original design drawings (cool to see in itself!) he made for Schumacher's '94 Cossie engine, and it sparked a massive discussion of the various things he's worked on over the years... couple of interesting little things i heard about that i thought i'd share here.
- Cossie turbo engine for F1 was designed, 120deg V6 that produced a maximum of 2013 horsepower. 2013! This was in the 80's! Obviously it couldn't ever have been raced at such high levels cause it would have melted. But this was in the day where they had grenade quali engines that lasted one flying lap only before cooking.
- The last Renault V10 (2005) could run up to a massive 25,000 rpm! They generally ran it at 19,5/6... hence the massive reliability compared to the Mercedes engines. It was well within it's capacity basically. Remember how McLaren were so much faster than Renault in the second half of 2005, then Renault suddenly won at China? Apparently they just decided to run the engines up to 22k rpm just for the hell of it, and it gave them the edge.
- This engine was essentially so good they used certain specs (port dimensions and such) as the basis for the current V8 engine regulations...
- Apparently, the new engine regs are an utter joke in terms of potential power and efficiency. Once again politics have won over common sense it seems to me, based on what i heard (from the horses' mouth) today. The new turbo regs require very unsophisticated turbos, unnecessarily. With better systems 1000hp could easily be generated... in a 750cc engine. A top quality turbo system would give approx 60% thermal efficiency, compare that to what our road cars have and what (i think he said) the new turbo regs will give, only 30-35%. Pretty much half.
Pretty cool huh?

This is stuff you just won't ever get from autosport and whatever...