F1 Car-Beyond engineering

Have you ever noticed the size of F1 car engine ?You may not believe that engine of F1 car is smaller than some of family cars.

F1 car has just one purpose in its life " To go as fast as possible around a circuit for roughly 200 MPH ". In just handful of seconds an F1 car accelerates to kind of speed just as an aircraft take-off speed. In fact they are so fast that engineers had worked a lot in design to stop them. They have to keep the most important thing in mind that is " Power to weight" ratio.

" Power to Weight " ratio is the measurement of performance of an engine. It is measurement of output of engine as well as engine as a whole in an assembly. It is also used to compare the engines with respect to its weight.

The complicated aerodynamics and design are so masterly to keep it pinned to the ground that it can drive the Monte Carlo tunnel upside down, Theoretically. Every part in F1 car excels its performance and speed. You might wonder the F1 car has monstrous  engine that speeds up to more than 200 miles an hour but the real fact is that the engine is smaller than some family cars that is just 2.4 litres engine. But how can a smaller engine run that fast ?

Let us have a look at some supercar's engine

1) Bugatti Veyron

It has 8.o litre quad-turbocharged W16 cylinder engine

2) Lamborghini Aventador

It has 6.5 litre V12 engine.

The list can go on but let me restrict to above two of them.

3) Now lets see F1 car engine

F1 cars had run with 3.0 litre naturally aspirated engines with all teams settling on V10 and sometimes V8 layout developing 980 to 1000 hp(730 to 750 kw) and the cars reaching top speeds of        375 km/hr (233 mph). So what makes it different than this super-cars is 'Precision'. 

Yes,just 2.4 litre engine but so powerful that it accelerates from     0-160 km/hr (100 mph) in less than 5 seconds. Even the basic design of the engine is just similar to your car engine like the piston moving up and down. But 'your car engine will literally explode' if it runs even half a revolution that F1 engine does. A F1 car has a whooping 18000 revolutions per minute with 800 HP while a normal car can have nearly 3200-6000 revolutions per minute with 200HP ( based on engine configuration). The immense pressure and heat generated inside F1 engine cannot be tolerated by normal car engine.

Now what precision makes an F1 car fly like an airplane. The precision is made in Tolerance. The gap between the piston and the bore is very small than that of normal engine. These smaller gap does not allow gases to escape through it and develops immense pressure inside cylinder. This make F1 engine so expensive i.e just reduce the gap or technically called WINDAGE GAP and you get that immense power with same engine specification. So, you might think that why in normal cars even in supercars this concept is not used. The foremost thing is cost. Well for normal car, Companies don't go with that much tolerance. We also know that cost increases by reducing tolerance. If they try tight tolerance then the cost would drastically increase because of strict dimensions,precise machining etc. But what about super-cars? They should not worry about cost. Well there is price to pay with that power for F1 engines which restricts its application to only F1 cars and no other cars,not even super-cars.

Windage  Gap

F1 engine are so finely tuned and the fit between the piston and cylinder are so tight that you can't even start the engine when cold without destroying it. So, how do they start the engine before race?

The piston and cylinder fit are so tight that if you start when engine is cold then pistons get worn out and reduces the engine efficiency. Hence they have to plug-in oil and water heaters to reach the operating temperature. They have to make sure the engine reaches the operating temperatures and maintain it till race began.

Warming up the engine before race

As the speed is the matter in F1 race, the F1 car cannot have big, heavy engines as it will increase the weight which will eventually reduce the speed. Also they have to follow the strict rules about the engine specification. So now comes the question "How to increase the speed with the same engine" ?

All the F1 cars engine have to be developed under strict regulations hence they cannot go beyond regulations. The only important thing that stands between 'win and loose' is AERODYNAMICS. The time gap between two racers is just about milliseconds and that is judged by how effectively a company uses the principle of aerodynamics. In simple words,F1 aerodynamicists have two primary concerns:
1) The creation of downforce,to help push the car's tyres onto the track and improve cornering forces.
2) Minimization of drag. a product of air resistance which acts to slow down car.

Air flows at different speeds over the two sides of the wing and this creates a difference in pressures, a physical rule known as Bernoulli's principle. As the pressure tries to balance, the wing  tries to move in the direction of low pressure. Planes use their wings to create lift,race cars use theirs to create negative lift, better known as downforce. A modern F1 car is capable of developing a downforce of 3.5g lateral cornering force. Every single surface of modern Formula one car,from the shape of suspension links to that of driver's helmet has its own aerodynamic consideration. This is because air where separates from body creates turbulence which in turn creates drag and slows car down.

Now considering safety how fuel tank must be designed in order to keep driver safe. There's always a chance of accident which may lead to fatal death of driver and also cannot ignore safety of spectators. What if something hot and pointed metal piece struck the fuel tank?

There's a very clever solution to this problem. Use of Kevlar along with rubber. Kevlar is 5-10 stronger than steel yet very thin. Both are very flexible enough yet too strong.

Hence lot of engineering in designing and precise manufacturing had made this monster to fly like an aircraft with whooping speed of nearly 200MPH.

F1 facts :

• At high speeds, if a Formula One driver lifts off the pedal, the car decelerates faster than if you slammed on the brakes in a normal road car.
• During full braking, the cars can go from 200mph to 60mph in under three seconds. While this happens, the brake disks can reach 1200 degrees Celsius. Occasionally they can be seen through the wheels glowing orange-hot.
• In 2004, Formula One cars were capable of revolving to 19,000 RPM or higher - three times higher than a regular road car.
• Current Formula One engines only have 2.4 litres of displacement, comparable to a family hatchback. However, the best can make close to 1000 horsepower with the hybrid boost, making them about eight times more powerful than the hatchback.
• During a race, each tyre loses around half a kilo-gram in weight due to wear. Two to four sets of tyres are used in a race.
• The gearbox in an F1 car will shift gear several thousand times during a race, sometimes several times within a second. Shifting is instantaneous; there is no interruption of power.
• When a driver corners, they may feel a force of up to eight times their bodyweight. If their neck muscles weren’t trained, they could pass out.
• F1 steering wheels have dozens of buttons and switches controlling various aspects of the car. Drivers change these settings very often to fine-tune the car for each corner. There is even a button that dispenses drink directly into the driver’s mouth - this is needed because the high temperatures cause them to lose several kilos in sweat during a race.
• Driving slowly in an F1 car is near-impossible. At low speed, the tyres and brakes are cold, providing little grip. Downforce is near non-existent, meaning it is actually easier to corner at 60mph than at 20mph. Engines are also designed for high speed - if the temperature drops too low, the pistons seize inside the cylinders! 

• The best F1 pit crews can change the car's tires in much less than 3 seconds. In the time it took you to read that, the driver parked, the car was jacked up, nearly two dozen guys changed all four tires, and the car was off and running again. 

• A Formula 1 car’s cockpit is so tight that it requires the driver to remove the steering wheel in order to get in or out of it. Before racing, the driver has to demonstrate that he can get out of the car in 5 seconds by only removing the seat belt and the steering wheel, which is to be installed back within another 5 seconds. This is how an F1 steering wheel looks like:

• There hasn’t been a number 13 Formula 1 car since 1976 due to wide belief that the number is bad luck. The only two times in F1 history that No. 13 was assigned to a driver was in qualifiers way back in 1963 and 1976. The two drivers were Moises Solana (who died while racing) and Divina Galica (one of only five women to compete in the sport)