I think McLaren are going to have a tough time finding a replacement for Alonso. Look at the current driver market; we have R. Schumacher, Fisichella and Kovalainen looking for new teams. Of those, the only one I'd pick is Kovalainen and he, as you rightly pointed out, might not want to partner Hamilton.
The other obvious problem with the Hamilton/Kovalainen pairing is a complete lack of experience.
Apparently the lighting has been very carefully designed to avoid any sort of reflections/glare disturbing the drivers (including puddles on the track). Again, according to F1 Racing.
Seems like a total waste of time to me. The track is going to be lit by thousands of lamps and will, essentially, look like daylight. An article in this month's F1 Racing said that the power consumption would be 3 MW.
I can't exactly see how this fits with Moseley's 'green' agenda for F1. Not that I agree with that in the first place
I can't exactly see how this fits with Moseley's 'green' agenda for F1. Not that I agree with that in the first place
I'm not sure if it's intended as an 'anti-stall' system, but fuel injected cars will control their idle speed to a given setpoint. As you load the engine by feeding in the clutch the engine will have to put in more fuel to maintain idle speed. It's possible that if you dump the clutch too aggressively that the engine would move to a higher idle speed to avoid a stall.
That system declutches the engine if it thinks it's about to stall. I'd hope we have something similar in LFS, though things go wrong too fast it might not react in time to prevent a stall.
How does gearing affect power output?
Well, if 'n' is RPM (it commonly is) then that's true, although you'd have to be careful about units. If you had torque in Nm and RPM in...well...RPM, then the units of power would be Joules/minute rather than the more usual Joules/sec (i.e. Watts).
I thought the run-off couldn't be extended because of the river that runs along the outside of the first half of the lap?
Oh, and I much prefer the new Aqua Minerale to the old one...the chicane at the bottom was a little bit silly.
Apparently it was agreed in a technical meeting that the official FIA temperature would be used. I don't know if that holds regulatory value, however.
I asked this question at the time and nobody came up with anything.
F1 cars used to over-fuel massively (approx. lambda 0.5) during the turbo era because the evaporation of the fuel in the cylinder helped cool the pistons (look for black smoke behind a turbo-era F1 car). I don't imagine that they still do this, but they will certainly run slightly richer than stoichiometric in order to achieve peak power. Whether they go even richer to increase piston cooling or not, I don't know.
Typically, fuel injectors are calibrated to deliver a fixed mass of fuel, so making it more dense just means the injectors open for a shorter time...there's no advantage there.
Yes, but surely you'd want to model the surface temperature seperately from the bulk rotor temperature, just like LFS does currently with the tyres?
I would imagine that it's the rotor surface temperatures which determine braking performance, not the overall rotor temperature.
How much wear does a locked brake experience?
Tristan's quite correct in saying that 28 is too old to start in F1 these days. Bear in mind that Damon's first season was 15 years ago when F1 was a very different sport. Even by the standards of those days he was old!
That equation looks about right, but it makes no mention of the Young's Modulus of the material used to make the ARB. The (D^4-d^4) term is the second moment of area of a hollow circular bar (minus some coefficients which have probably been absorbed somewhere). To get flexural stiffness you must mupltiply this by the elasticity (Young's Modulus) of the material. Since it's not explicit in the formula the author must have assumed a value.
If you're using the same material then you don't have to worry, but there might be a small correction to be made if you're using a different metal.
Of course I would, I just wouldn't claim that I'd been hounded out of my home country because of the press. Lewis isn't being hounded by the press, he's playing them like a cheap fiddle.
He's got a book deal to write 'his story' and yesterday both The Sun and The Mirror had 'Hamilton: My Story' plastered on their front pages. Of course, it would look bad for Hamilton to say "I'm earning so much cash that I'm going to move out of the country to avoid the tax", so he plays the "I'm just an average Joe trying to live my life and I've been chased out by the media" card. After taking yet more cash by selling his story to the tabloids.
Don't put WD40 or petroleum jelly on your pedals if they're plastic! Use a silicone grease or any non-petroleum based lubricant.
What sort of values are you talking about for the sidewall stiffness of the tyres?
The overall stiffness of springs in series (sidewalls + suspension) can be calculated by analogy with resistors in parallel and using the 'product over sum' equation:
overall stiffness = (stiffness1 * stiffness2) / (stiffness1 + stiffness2)
One of the key features of this equation is that, if the two stiffness values differ by an order of magnitude or more, one of them can usually be ignored. For example:
s1 = 10, s2 = 1. Overall stiffness = (10*1)/(10+1) = 0.909..., which isn't all that different from s2, i.e. the effect of s1 can be ignored and the error is less than 10%.
If the tyre sidewall stiffnesses are significantly higher than the suspension stiffness then you might be able to ignore them in your setup.
I should point out that I speak as an engineer, not a racing driver
The overall stiffness of springs in series (sidewalls + suspension) can be calculated by analogy with resistors in parallel and using the 'product over sum' equation:
overall stiffness = (stiffness1 * stiffness2) / (stiffness1 + stiffness2)
One of the key features of this equation is that, if the two stiffness values differ by an order of magnitude or more, one of them can usually be ignored. For example:
s1 = 10, s2 = 1. Overall stiffness = (10*1)/(10+1) = 0.909..., which isn't all that different from s2, i.e. the effect of s1 can be ignored and the error is less than 10%.
If the tyre sidewall stiffnesses are significantly higher than the suspension stiffness then you might be able to ignore them in your setup.
I should point out that I speak as an engineer, not a racing driver
It was pit or run out of fuel...it wasn't anyone's 'fault'.
Hamilton's move to overtake Barrichello was awful. Relying on the other driver to get out of your way and not cause an accident is a very bad way to go motor racing. I don't care what Hamilton's credentials are, it was a ludicrous move...he was very fortunate that Barrichello saw him coming.
I had thought about that, but the only reason the temperature rises from T1 to T2 is cylinder compression (isentropic compression in that chart), so any drop in T1 should be matched by a drop in T2 and T3, T4, etc... Well, not quite matched, but the ratio of T2/T1 and T3/T4 should be the same. The difference T3-T2 is given by the fuel burning and, unless you've got more air in the cylinder, this will not change.
I think that's right...it's been a while since I've looked at T-s diagrams
Actually, the area inside the curve on a T-s diagram doesn't give you the work output anyway...you're thinking of a p-V diagram The work output from the T-s diagram is effectively equal to cp(T3-T4) - cp(T2-T1) (technically it's (h3-h4) - (h2-h1) on an h-s chart, but for an ideal gas h = cpT).The only thing I can come up with is that the cooler fuel drops the combustion chamber temperature slightly and therefore allows a higher mass of air into the cylinder during the intake stroke.
Last edited by StewartFisher, .
Yeah, but injectors are typically calibrated to deliver a certain mass of fuel rather than a volume.
You've got things backwards here, it's the amount of air going in which controls the fuel, not the other way round. If the engine detected overfuelling it would back off on the fuel injection. That said, I doubt there's any sort of closed-loop fuelling control on an F1 engine. From what I hear, they run crazy rich.
I work with engines all day long
Eddie Jordan said it too...Can anybody provide any physical reason why colder fuel would give you higher performance?
The reason your car performs better in cold weather or lower altitude is because the air is more dense, so you get more in the cylinder and can therefore burn more fuel (assuming you're using a petrol engine running a stoichiometric air/fuel ratio).
I cannot work out why colder fuel would give you 5-10 bhp more performance (as has been claimed). Any suggestions?
Come off it! Hamilton is classified above Alonso because he has more second place finishes. Alonso was my favourite going into this season, but there's no denying the fact that he's been beaten by Hamilton.
I've spent a fair bit of time on rFactor recently (mainly on the W196 and GP79 v2.0 mods) and I do feel that LFS lacks some immersion when I return to it.
I think it's almost all to do with the sounds. Driving in rFactor you hear the creaks and squeaks of the chassis and suspension as you hit bumps, whereas in LFS you hear the engine and the tyres and...well...that's it!
The FF in rF seems irreparably broken when it comes to bumps. Even with RealFeel enabled my wheel shakes around all over the place in response to bumps
However, I'm confident that this will eventually be fixed in LFS
I think it's almost all to do with the sounds. Driving in rFactor you hear the creaks and squeaks of the chassis and suspension as you hit bumps, whereas in LFS you hear the engine and the tyres and...well...that's it!
The FF in rF seems irreparably broken when it comes to bumps. Even with RealFeel enabled my wheel shakes around all over the place in response to bumps
However, I'm confident that this will eventually be fixed in LFS
McLaren's appeal is a joke. It seems clear now that the FIA have absolutely no way of policing article 6.5.5 so to punish BMW or Williams would be impossible.
In any case, the FIA have pushed themselves into a corner with their ridiculous judgements that if you break the rules but don't gain advantage then you don't deserve punishment. Even if the temperatures of the fuel reported were true, there's no way that would have given them 'significant advantage', therefore the FIA shouldn't punish them, according to their absurd precedents.
I was hoping that Ron Dennis would take it like a man and move on, but apparently not. Having said that, I shouldn't discount the possibility that the appeal was demanded by Mercedes or the sponsors.
In any case, the FIA have pushed themselves into a corner with their ridiculous judgements that if you break the rules but don't gain advantage then you don't deserve punishment. Even if the temperatures of the fuel reported were true, there's no way that would have given them 'significant advantage', therefore the FIA shouldn't punish them, according to their absurd precedents.
I was hoping that Ron Dennis would take it like a man and move on, but apparently not. Having said that, I shouldn't discount the possibility that the appeal was demanded by Mercedes or the sponsors.
Just like they did with Hamilton, Sato and Button on Friday, then?
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG