On the eve of the 2009 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, a look at how Formula One adapts to global change.
One criticism often aimed at the spindly, single-seat missiles of Formula One is their scant relationship to road cars. It’s true that such machines are designed to drive only on a billiard table-smooth surface, and are almost undrivable below 100km/h, but F1 cars have always reflected prevailing road-car technologies – and often pre-empted them.
Last December, on the eve of the motorsport world’s championship presentations gala in Monaco, the F1 bosses hunkered down with the sport’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA). On the agenda were measures to ensure F1’s survival and relevance in the new economic environment. Unanimous agreement among F1 teams occurs about as frequently as dead-heat race finishes, but the decision makers acted swiftly and decisively. It was barely 14 weeks before the season-opening ING Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
Chief among the changes this year is that a race engine, once a $500,000 disposable item, must now complete three consecutive races. For the 17-race season, teams will have just eight race engines per driver. This should be enhanced by the reintroduction of fully “slick” tyres. In hand with a near halving of aerodynamic downforce, drivers will be able to race more closely and overtake more often. Notable, too, is that this year will mark the end of mid-race refuelling and the made-for-television pit stop – at one stroke, significantly reducing the number of staff at each grand prix. Bans on independent racetrack testing and testing in full-scale wind tunnels will do likewise for the rest of the year (or, cynics say, will transfer the money to computer-simulated testing). The promising but technically prickly KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems – a kinetic energy-storing flywheel device) will not be compulsory this year. But KERS is very much in the frame for 2010, along with a new, “low-cost” ($3m a year), standardised transmission system.
Such component-sharing measures are already a part of the automotive industry and, indeed, typical among lesser racing formulae such as GP2, IndyCars and A1GP. But F1 is determined not only to survive, but to reassert its authority as motoring’s technology flagship.
From 2013, the FIA cautions, diesels, hybrids, everything could be considered as a potential F1 power plant. Critically, the new formula is being designed to a target of energy efficiency, not horsepower or engine capacity. “Rules [are] to be framed so as to ensure that research and development of such a power train would make a real contribution to energy-efficient road transport,” the FIA’s statement says.
None of this is as sudden as it seems. F1 has long been aware of its social and environmental responsibility, having been carbon-neutral every year from 1997, through the purchase of carbon-offset credits in Chiapas, Mexico.
Grand prix racing is more than 100 years old (though F1 and the world championship began in 1950). The French Grand Prix of 1906, held near Le Mans, attracted 32 cars from 12 manufacturers, among them Mercedes, Renault and Fiat. Internal combustion petrol engines ruled that first grand prix, but steam-powered or electric cars were not uncommon. In the same decade, the Stanley Steamer and the electric La Jamais Contente captured outright land speed records.
In 1900, Ferdinand Porsche designed the electric Lohner-Porsche racing car, with motors in the front wheels. This technology would reappear 80 years later in solar-powered racers. Lohner-Porsche’s 1901 Mixte road version added four-wheel-drive and petrol power, making it one of the world’s earliest petrol-electric hybrids.
The international prestige of grand prix accelerated automotive development so rapidly that, by the 1930s, racing authorities imposed a maximum weight of 750kg to restrict massively powerful cars. They hadn’t reckoned on the cocktail of genius and deviousness that powers F1 to this day. The fabled Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union “silver arrows” racing cars pushed the exploration of ultra-light metals. The 1936 Auto Union Type C (another Porsche design) featured a 16-cylinder, six-litre supercharged engine producing 390kW, with a top speed of about 400km/h. It weighed 734kg.
The inauguration of the Formula One world championship in 1950 introduced a formula of either 4.5-litre “atmospheric” or 1.5-litre “supercharged” engines. The development of super- and turbocharging – force feeding air and fuel into the engine – had been accelerated by the Royal Air Force’s need to compete with German fighters during WWII; the Spitfire’s Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was thus equipped.
The “rear-engined revolution” of the late-1950s exploited the improved physics of placing the engine and transmission behind the driver. Jack Brabham used such a car to win the 1959 and 1960 world championships. The British Cooper and Lotus cars featured lightweight, four-cylinder engines not far removed from those of garden-variety cars such as the Morris Minor, Austin A40 and Morris Mini-Minor. Meanwhile, advances in metallurgy, lubrication, suspension design and brakes – with “discs” first appearing on a racing Jaguar in 1953 – filtered quickly back to road cars.
Brabham would even better illustrate F1’s real-world relationship when, for a new three-litre formula in 1966, he approached spare parts maker Repco with a plan to modify an Oldsmobile sedan engine. The rest, as they say, is history. The three-litre formula would endure for 21 years, powering F1 through spectacular developments in aerodynamics, lightweight construction methods, advanced composite materials and radial tyres.
The 1980s became “the turbo era” of F1, though by the end of the decade race circuits could no longer safely contain them. Not by coincidence, however, turbocharging among road cars took hold during the same decade – and stayed. More recently, F1 was directly responsible for the development of electronic traction and stability controls; these, too, later banned from F1. Also in the quest to rein in speeds, aerodynamic wing sizes, tyre tread designs and engine capacity (now at 2.4 litres) have been continually tweaked.
It continues on the Albert Park grid on March 29, an unprecedented 5pm twilight race start bowing to European TV audiences. Last year, the Singapore Grand Prix was the first to be run at night. This year’s Australian Grand Prix, meanwhile, is more like F1’s biggest-ever wake-up call.
2009 Formula 1 ING Australian Grand Prix, March 26-29. website
See Melbourne City Guide
Source: Qantas The Australian Way March 2009