Ferrari Service and Repair Bay Area - How to make an F1 car - Part 3 - Angelo Zucchi Motorsports Sonoma

How to make an F1 car - Part 3

 

So far in our series about how a Formula 1 car goes from conception to race track, we have covered the basic concept and the building of the fundamental mechanical parts. This time, we'll look at performance.

In any given season, a team will know how its current car works. Or at least it should do.

Lap time is largely determined by cornering speed - the faster a car can go around corners, the faster it will be over the lap. And its cornering speed is determined by the aerodynamic behaviour of the car when it is mid-corner.

So the team will know the aerodynamic characteristics of the car with steering lock. And what they know about the current year's car and how it behaves on the track will dictate the philosophy for the next one.

You always want more downforce and less drag - that never changes. This is what F1 teams are referring to if you hear them talking about "L over D". They mean lift - or negative lift, ie downforce - compared to drag. You want your L/D figure to be as high as possible.

But you can't just take that at the expense of everything else. The car must function within that, too.

The driveability of the car is very important, and there is often a compromise between total downforce and driveability, because a higher total downforce figure can make the car more sensitive to attitude changes, and that makes it much more difficult to drive.

How the car performs transiently - as it pitches, rolls and yaws during braking, cornering and acceleration - is very important to the overall package.

So it's a constant compromise between giving the car more performance and ensuring that the driveability remains good.

The car's aerodynamic performance is heavily influenced by the way the centre of pressure - the virtual point on the car where the aerodynamic forces react, and which thus determines car behaviour - moves during braking and cornering.

It will shift backwards and forwards a bit as the driver puts more steering lock on the car. Say it moves forwards 1% with every five degrees of steering angle but the car is still lacking a bit of front-end grip; you might decide it would be better if it moved forward 1.5%. So that would be the objective the designer is working with.

It would be the same with all aspects of the car - if the way the airflow in the diffuser separates depending on ride-height has always been a little bit of a problem, for example, then you will try to make it better, and so on.

All the characteristics a team wants to improve will be written on to a specification sheet to give the aerodynamicists the parameters with which the technical director wants to move the car forward.

The spec sheet will cover everything on the car - from aerodynamic performance to the strength of the suspension and other parts. That is the basis from which the car will be designed.

Take for instance the incident Sebastian Vettel had on the first lap of the Brazilian Grand Prix. He collided with another car and yet was able to continue and clinch the world championship.

All the impacts on that suspension in that accident will have been measured by Red Bull. It would be very easy to have a suspension system that can cope with the performance of the car but that would have failed in that impact, in which case Vettel wouldn't have won the world championship.

So Red Bull have built suspension that can cope with loads beyond those in normal working conditions, and that ultimately has won them the world title.

Likewise, the incident when Nico Hulkenberg's Force India crashed into Lewis Hamilton's McLaren when the German was trying to take the lead was a pretty big impact. It broke the McLaren but not the Force India.

The wind tunnel at Ferrari's Maranello base

So McLaren might want to look at that and say, 'Yes, OK, it was an accident, but the bloke in the other car - from a team half the size of ours - carried on.'

So you have to look at that and get the compromises right, because adding strength to any component adds weight and that loses performance. It's a question of the right balance.

The people who put the spec sheet together will already have a vision of what the car is going to be like when it appears.

But achieving those goals is never easy, and if it is easy then the spec sheet was not demanding enough.

Tunnel vision

The car's aerodynamics will define the ultimate performance of the car, and when they are designing a new car, teams work to targets set on the basis of how the previous car performed.

As the season progresses, certain complaints by the drivers will come up over and over again. It might be that the front tyre does not bite enough on initial turn-in, or that there is too much understeer once there is steering lock on the car, or the rear's snappy.

The designers will be trying to establish why that could happen and what the solution might be to fix it.

Take last year's Ferrari - the rear of the car was nervous during braking at the end of a long straight because the airflow was not re-attaching to the diffuser quickly enough. They will probably be putting more emphasis into the ride-height at which the diffuser airflow re-attaches for their new car.

So teams are trying to increase the performance of the car by improving the L/D but at the same time improving those handling characteristics that restricted its performance.

It is in this compromise that the bigger teams do better than the smaller teams when they are designing the car in the wind tunnels and on computational fluid dynamics programmes (CFD) - they have more manpower to try to get those solutions sorted out.

However, putting together the correct concept is like arriving at a roundabout not knowing which exit to take.

The big teams can go down all the avenues and by doing that they will find the right solution and reach their destination. A small team is forced to pick one. If they pick the right one, they can still do the job. But if they choose the wrong one, it could cost them heavily.

What the engineers are doing when they design a car is trying out as many combinations as possible for a given part of the car to try to get the best result.

A simple component such as the turning vanes we see under the front of the chassis will have had around 50 variations before they gets signed off for production. Teams also have to take into account how that part is going to affect the behaviour of the airflow over the rest of the car.

To simulate all the different designs in CFD with the car at all the different ride heights and steering angles and understand them is very difficult. To do it in a wind tunnel is also a huge task but at least it is in a much more realistic environment.

The way the wind tunnel models are set up now you can do it in one run.

The model will go through a ride-height sequence, as well as a roll and yaw and steering sequence. That's how sophisticated the new 50% or 60% wind tunnels the teams are using have become.

The wind tunnel is just a tool used to help create a coherent aerodynamic package. It is important to keep working within the procedures that allow you to understand the components tested.

In the high intensity of battle it's very easy to just focus on the L/D figures and forget about steering lock and roll and yaw and so on because it will take less time. But if you do that, you are going to end up biting yourself in the butt pretty quickly.

 

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20847790

by Gary Anderson
BBC F1 Technical Analyst

 

 

Ferrari Service San Rafael - How to make an F1 car - Part 2 - Angelo Zucchi Motorsports 707-334-3700

In the first of our three-part series on how a Formula 1 car comes to life, we looked at the initial conceptual design stage. This time, we look at building the basic structure of the car.

Once a team has laid out the design of the fundamental mechanical parts of the car, two things need to happen - one, the design office need to devise the most aerodynamically advantageous bodywork for it; and the car needs to be built.

We'll look at aerodynamic design in the next part of this series; for now, let's concentrate on how the car is built.

The chassis - or monocoque - has several crucial functions. It is the survival cell for the driver in the event of an accident; it is what the engine, suspension and bodywork is mounted on; it houses the fuel tank and other hardware for the car.

Monocoques are immensely complicated things. Things like the suspension mounts, nose fixings, engine mounts and so on take a tremendous amount of time to get right.

The chassis is basically an outer carbon-fibre skin forming the surface detail on top of aluminium honeycomb - which will vary between six and 15mm in thickness - and then a second carbon skin inside that.

Where there are suspension or engine loads, the honeycomb will be replaced with a solid machined insert. That is then all bonded together in an autoclave - a hot, high-pressure oven.

It also has to pass a series of crash tests before it is allowed to race. So a tremendous amount of effort goes into it from a stress analysis point of view, for the sake of safety, and for functionality. And the two can sometimes compromise each other a little, because you want the lightest weight for the highest torsional stiffness value of the chassis.

It's difficult to give a figure for the weight of a chassis, as they are built differently. Some teams have the roll-over bar as part of the structure; others bond it on afterwards, for example. But a ballpark figure would be about 50kg, which is incredibly light for what it does.

By the start of the year, a team needs to have three chassis ready. One for the crash tests, which take quite a lot of time, one for building up a car and a third underway.

You don't want to be short because you never know when you're going to have a problem - last year, for example, Lotus had to curtail their testing when it became apparent that the front suspension mounts were moving in the chassis.

Testing time

The crash tests - or impact tests to give them their proper title - are an important part of ensuring F1 is as safe as it has become.

There are three main tests that destroy things: nose impact; roll-over bar; and side-impact. There are quite a lot more tests - around 10 in total - but they are non-destructive squeeze tests, where you're allowed a maximum deflection for a certain load, to ensure the chassis is strong enough to withstand it. Each chassis has to pass all the tests.

In the nose-impact test, the car is fired into a concrete wall at a certain speed. There is a maximum permitted G-force level in terms of deceleration and the damage to the crushable structure must stop before it gets to the survival cell. You could use two or three noses getting that done.

The nose has quite a lot of aerodynamic influence and you have to commit to that component fairly early. You have to get a version ready for the crash test but at that point in time you might not have optimised your front-wing aerodynamic package.

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. You have to do it for the crash test but you might have to change it later on - and do another crash test, because each new design needs to pass.

The roll-over bar test is incredibly spectacular to watch. It would frighten anyone. The force put on the roll-over bar is approximately 12.5 tonnes.

Some of the structure will deform, but if it deforms more than it is allowed to - which is 50mm, or there are any marks more than 100mm away from where you're applying the force - then you fail.

It's a tough test but then so it should be - it's about protecting the driver's head.

The side-impact test is there to ensure the car protects the driver if he hits anything side on, and teams pass it by attaching four tubes that stick out from the chassis. To protect the driver further, particularly in the case of being hit by the nose of another car, a panel is bonded on to the side of the chassis, sort of like a blast panel.

That was introduced after the IndyCar accident in which Alex Zanardilost his legs in 2001. I was working in IndyCar at the time and we came up with that panel for additional side-impact protection. F1 adopted it shortly afterwards.

These crash tests apply to the fundamental parts of the car and that is what was going on at the teams leading into the Christmas period and then January.

That's the thing about F1. There is no Christmas. There is no winter off. People obviously have to have holidays, but work goes on year-round.

Take Red Bull as an example. That's a 600-strong team and about 150 or so of them are directly involved in the design of the car.

They're probably the biggest team but the percentages of the total workforce involved in the design and engineering of the car are the same up and down the grid.

And those people work flat-out all the time. You're always trying to make the car better.

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20847718

By Gary Anderson

BBC F1 technical analyst

Ferrari Service San Francisco - How to make an F1 car, Part 1: the conceptual design stage - Angelo Zucchi Motorsports 707-334-3700

How to make an F1 car, Part 1: the conceptual design stage

When the Formula 1 season ends, the wider public probably believes the teams can have a few weeks' well-earned rest. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Since long before the final race of last year in Brazil, all the teams have been hard at work on the car they will be campaigning with in 2013. That work, already deeply concentrated, takes on a new level of intensity once one season has been dealt with.

In the weeks leading up to the first pre-season test, we will be giving you an insight into the long, complex and intricate process that leads to a new Formula 1 car hitting the track in Spain in early February.

First of all, we will examine the first steps in the design of a new car. And it might surprise you to know that the work on the cars you will see for the first time in the next month or so started as soon as their predecessors hit the track at the same time last year.

Ironing out the weaknesses

When a team starts testing with a new car, they are trying to identify the weaknesses you can't fix by introducing a 'B' version later in the season - the big weaknesses.

You have to identify what can be tweaked and made better during the season, but at the same time bigger things you cannot change but will want to be different on the next car.

 

 

An engineer might realise that if the gearbox was a bit smaller at the bottom, he could design a better diffuser and improve the rear aerodynamics.

He might realise that if the 'keel' area - the chassis under the driver's legs - was further forwards, or back, or higher or narrower, that also could improve the aerodynamics.

So the notepad you see the likes of Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey wandering around with at the tests, that's what it's full of - problems.

That process is the very start of the initial packaging of the car that will race the following season.

The minute a new car sits on the ground the first time, you immediately have a 'do it now' list, for updates for the current car, and the start of a 'do it next year' list.

Both of those will get added to as time goes on. And by the beginning of July the 'next year' list wants to be put together on a specification sheet that outlines the objectives of the new car.

It's about getting the concept right at that early stage - the detailed aerodynamic performance work comes later.

The concept work is very important, because it is what takes time to sort out - so it needs to be right when you start to put the new car together in January.

The sort of areas of the car we're talking about are fundamental suspension design, fuel-tank size, gearbox size and design, Kers size and positioning and so on.

The aerodynamic package, the suspension geometry, the packaging of dampers and so on will all come out of that major packaging concept.

Once you've made these calls, you put a certain percentage of your team of people onto the new car, at around the beginning of July, to start to scheme it all up.

They can then hand a package to the aerodynamicists so they can start to optimise the bodywork around it.

For 2013, this is not such a big deal - the regulations are staying pretty stable so it's about fine detail changes. But even then there can be big decisions to make.

An example would be the fundamental suspension layout. Last year, Ferrari uniquely used pull-rod front suspension for aerodynamic reasons.

I suspect two or three other teams will try that this year. But you can't do that during a season. It is a packaging issue, because it means moving the dampers and torsion bars to the bottom of the chassis from the top - so it has to be put down on the initial layout of the car.

Another would be whether to follow Williams in producing an ultra-small gearbox.

A team will look at these things and try to work out whether there are big advantages to be had or not.

Aerodynamics win races

Where it gets complicated is that these fundamental mechanical parts of the car go hand-in-hand with the aerodynamic detailing.

For example, you will be looking at your diffuser and how it joins up with the gearbox. This is a very critical area for aerodynamic performance - as you can see on last year's Red Bull with the ducts feeding airflow through from the side pod area into the central section of the diffuser.

So the aerodynamicists will be coming to the guys laying out the overall car saying: "We can do this and make the car function better than what we have now but mechanically, can it be packaged?"

It's the aerodynamic side that gives you lap time. The mechanical side, generally, only lets you down. It loses races; the aerodynamic package is what wins races.

The two have to complement each other, but the packaging of components such as the gearbox design, suspension, keel, and so on are fundamental to producing better aerodynamics and allow more room for development. But you have to start the gearbox, chassis etc first because they are the items with the longest lead-time.

Even for the best teams, you're talking 12 weeks from pressing the button on a chassis build to having a completed chassis.

The first test is in early February, you want to be building the car up during January. So you have to be starting to build your chassis and gearbox in the middle of September.

So you're working forwards and backwards at the same time - backwards from the first test and forwards from the initial proposals for the car.

Once a team has built a new chassis, the team have to do all the crash tests before they can go testing.

To ease that process, they will set up a parallel programme - the first chassis will go and get its impact tests done, and the second will start to be assembled.

Equally, you can't go to the first test with only one gearbox, you have to have two or three in case there are problems.

That's why these things need to be built first. They are the spine of the car. If you don't get them done on time, you have a problem.

Equally, the way you design them can have an important effect later in the season.

We saw that in 2009, when the double-diffuser dominated performance. Only three teams designed that into their cars from the beginning. Of the rest, who needed to add it later once it was declared legal, some teams' gearbox packages worked well with a double diffuser and some did not.

Ferrari were one of those teams whose gearbox would never have allowed them to optimise a double diffuser.

They considered building an entirely new gearbox but decided it was not worth building one because by the time it was ready too much of the season would have gone and they would have lost too much ground in the championship to recover. So their season was effectively written off by April or May.

That's how important it can be to get the basic design right from the start

 

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20844843

By Gary Anderson

BBC F1 technical analyst

Ferrari Service Bay Area - This Drag Race Between A Ferrari F50 And A F1 Car Has A Surprising Result - Angelo Zucchi Motorsports 707-334-3700

 

This Drag Race between a Ferrari F50 and a F1 Car has a Suprising Result

 Welcome to Sunday Matinee where we highlight classic car reviews or other longer videos I find on YouTube. Kick back and enjoy this blast from the past.

Conventional wisdom is that the Ferrari F50 is nowhere near as great or as loved as its predecessor, the F40. That's kind of a shame, if you ask me. The F50 isn't as good looking as the F40, and it does without that car's two turbochargers, but it's extremely special in its own right. Keep in mind that since only about 350 F50s were ever made, it's even more rare than the F40.

It was also fast as hell and a lot of fun to drive. I don't know that from personal experience, unfortunately, but Jeremy Clarkson's account in this 1995 episode of Top Gear is good enough for me. 

And there's a surprising twist at the end -- Clarkson feels confident enough in the F50's abilities to pit it against a Formula One car in a drag race. Guess what? The F50 gets its ass kicked. But that's not the surprise. The surprise is that it was fairly close with the F1 car up to about 160 mph. Not bad. Maybe the F50 deserves more respect than it gets. 

Source: http://jalopnik.com/this-drag-race-between-a-ferrari-f50-and-an-f1-car-has-243045665

By Patrick George