- 03 Sep 10, 21:16#213528If you regard the current crop of cars as attractive, IMHO, you're overdue an eye exam. They are something of an improvement over the previous V-10 generation -- the ones with barge boards and all the teeny little wings -- but they still are so homely you couldn't coax a puppy to play with one, even bribing it with a slab of raw meat.
In the olden days, ground effects were created with a lexan skirt that extended from the tub all the way to the ground. It was free to move on ground contact so it somewhat sealed off the undercarriage, and pushed air aside as the car moved, optimizing the pressure differential under the car. It was cheap, effective and very reliable, and I reckon it still would work on the new high nose cars.
Ground effects downforce is less disturbed by drafting than wing-generated downforce, which could mean more passing. Except that with all the TilkeDromes, there's only one race line through most corners, which means that anything that increases mechanical grip will tend to reduce competition.
I wonder if anyone in the FIA have done a cost effectiveness study to determine the break-even point for engine life. They seem to believe that having a single engine last the entire season (hell, why not five seasons?) would be ideal but I doubt that's an effective use of a fixed budget.
There has to be a point at which development costs of building an engine that has the required lifespan is more than the materials and assembly costs for building a new engine for every race. Especially for those teams who lease engines, their engine builder has to defray all their development costs and their manufacturing expenses and still make a profit while selling a fewer number of engines. What was a 20-engine lease has become an 8-engine lease and apparently will be whittled down to a five engine lease. And the lesser economy of scale will have to be passed to the end user. It will cost substantially more to engineer a four race engine than it did a two race engine, as well as more to manufacture it, so the lease price likely will be more for the five engine lease than it is for the current eight-engine lease.
It certainly won't cost any less, and that doesn't include the expense of KERS. Some cost savings!
When you have forced induction, you don't need RPMs (as much). They're presently under 4700 fps piston speed in engines designed for 5200 fps but further cutting that back to something in the 4400 fps range would go a long way toward doubling engine life.
In 1988, boost on the 1.5 litre F1 motors was limited to 37 psi/2.5 bar and they still managed 675-690 hp. But those were one-race engines and the teams got away with doctoring the petrol much more than they do today. Still, 20 years on, 650 hp from 1.6 litres shouldn't be a challenge.
The current TR require that the engine weigh 95 kilos and the car 620 kilos. A four cylinder turbo lump easily could weigh a quarter less than a V-8 so they could reduce the engine limit to 70 kilos and the car to 595, which would recover some of the acceleration lost to the HP reduction (except that the teams have shown a preference to use the 15 extra kilos allotted for KERS as balance ballast instead of KERS). If they'd lift the ban on variable length intake runners and variable valve timing, they could create much more torque than the current V-8s, so the turbo cars could accelerate even faster. Of course adjustable intakes and valve timing is outside the purpose of cost containment but the FIA show no consistency on that account anyway.
"I'll bet ya a hundred and five thousand dollars you go to sleep before I do."
--Dobbsie
