David Galton-Fenzi finishes explaining what makes F1 so
damn good.
#2. Innovation
I’ve already banged on about the earth
shattering performance that these prototype racing machines are
capable of, but where do you think that all comes from? I’ll tell
you where!
Big, fat, ultra intelligent, uber geeky,
rainman-esque, nerd organs! aka - Brains.
Formula One teams employ some of the brightest
engineers currently walking the Earth and these ingenious
poindexters are employed for one reason and one reason only - make
the car faster.
They’ve a very strict set of rules and regulations to work
with that are framed specifically to cut out loopholes or any region
of uncertainty about what is allowed and what is not. But because the
engineers are just too damn smart for their own good, they keep
finding these grey areas anyway, and exploiting the bejesus out of
them.
What big
fan? Oh THAT? yeah thats for...uh...cooling
In 1982 the normally aspirated Cosworth powered
cars were struggling against the mighty turbocharged Renaults, so
they came up with a cunning plan. Formula One cars all need to be a
certain minimum weight see, but this weight limit at the time
included all the coolant and lubrication required to run the race, so
what the Cosworth teams did was strap whopping great water tanks to
their cars which they claimed were required for brake cooling. The
race would begin, the tanks would suddenly empty themselves and the
cars, now being 50 kg’s lighter than the minimum allowed weight,
would fly. The one race this was attempted, Cosworth cars belonging
to Williams and Brabham finished 1st and 2nd respectively, both ahead
of the disgruntled 3rd place Renault turbo. Though technically the
winning cars were legal they were disqualified after a French
protest, which I assume involved throwing cheese in Cosworths
direction and many discussions about surrender.
They appealed their disqualification, but just
to show how much they thought the Cosworth teams had taken the piss,
Ferrari turned up at the next race with a car that had two rear
wings. Individually they were the required dimensions as stipulated
in the regulations, but the rules foolishly had no limit on the
number of rear wings that cars could run with. After finishing 3rd it
was, of course, also disqualified on the grounds that it went against
the spirit of the rules.
Nothing
to see here! Move along!
I'ts a bit different these days, as McLarens
Paddy Lowe has recently stated regarding the spirit of the rules;
“It’s a
term often used but the rule book is just text that has a meaning,
and you decide what that meaning is and you work to them.”
If I may paraphrase here, what he is really
saying is, “We’re actively looking for loopholes and when we find
them, and we WILL find them, we’re going to rip them in half with
our giant brain penises!” and he wasn’t kidding, hence the
dubious interpretation that resulted in double diffusers in 2009. The
FIA (them that set the rules) had tried to outlaw the rear of the car
being used so powerfully with the aim being to improve overtaking
opportunities for following cars, but several teams, Brawn (as
Honda), Williams and Toyota all found a totally ingenious way around
it and rather than the FIA banning it on the grounds that it was
‘against the spirit of the rules', they condoned it, then made
changes to the regulations for the following season to close the
loophole, which was the same thing as saying ‘Fair play, we’ll
let you use it for a whole season before we take it away because you
were so damn clever to think of it in the first place’ before
politely giving the teams involved a little golf clap. The same thing
happened with McLarens’ F-Duct the following year and will probably
happen with Mercedes’ DRS-duct this year.
The FIA keep amending their rulebook, surely
thinking to themselves each time ‘This time its watertight’. But
sure enough each year, one of those eggheaded boffins comes up with
something so mind bogglingly ingenious the FIA rulebook goes down
faster than your Mum on the blow-job deck of the Titanic.
“I’ve
had better”
#1. The Sound
Formula One cars sound amazing! Listening to
them on tv just does not do them any justice. Their noise is like a
drug and once you’ve heard them in the flesh, your whole life is
just passing time until you can hear them again. They’re so loud,
you don’t so much as hear them as they scream past, you feel them.
Oh the
humanity
The loudest car of 2011 was the
Mercedes MGP-W02,
which was measured at 127.8 decibels. For reference, hearing damage
starts with noise as low as 90 decibels and if you were to sit on the
front row of a Metallica concert you’d be subjected to around 115
decibels. Now the difference of an single F1 car to a loud rock
concert is 12.8 decibels and if you’re looking at that thinking,
‘thats not really a lot’, then you clearly don’t know how the
decibel scale works.
You see, noise is not measured on a normal
linear scale, where a sound that measures 120 decibels is twice as
loud as a noise of 60 decibels. It’s measured by a base 10
logarithmic scale where a noise that is 60 decibels is 10 times as
loud as one that is 50 decibels and 100 times louder than one that
measured 40 decibels. So in the example above, 120 decibels is
a million times
louder than 60 decibels! So try and tell me that a difference of 12.8
decibels is not a lot now!
A single Formula One engine is so deafening it’s
painful. The gear changes alone thump through your chest cavity and
vibrate your ribs, and if you’re ever fortunate enough to be
present at the start of a Grand Prix when there are 24 of them at
maximum revs, well, then you know true bliss.
Unimaginable
auditory carnage!
So there you have it. I love everything about
this sport, in fact I love it so much I’m going to marry it! Dont
watch it for the crashes! Don’t watch it for the babes! Watch it
for the reasons I’ve listed above and if you’ve never been to a
race before go book a trip now! Well? What the hell are you waiting
for? Go!
Just don’t forget to pack your ear plugs.
Brilliant article. I might direct some of my F1-sceptic friends to this page in the future and see if you can succeed where I have previously failed in my attempts to convert them!
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