In the round-up: Mercedes have confirmed their forthcoming hypercar will feature a genuine F1 power unit.
Links
Your daily digest of F1 news, views, features and more from hundreds of sites across the web:
Data from Mercedes' F1-engined hypercar gives Toto Wolff goosebumps (ESPN)
"It's awesome that we have finally put an F1 engine, a real F1 engine, in a real road car - this is not F1-like technology."
Hamilton: Button will be missed (Crash)
"I remember sitting at home watching him in his first grand prix, I was still in high school hoping one day that would be me and it's kind of crazy now that we are both here."
Haas 'encouraged' as it heads to first home GP (F1i)
"Getting into Q3 again with two cars will be difficult we know, everyone knows how difficult that is at this time."
Winning on fumes: A year in the life of Alexander Rossi (ESPN)
"They called and said that Rio had come with quite a good package and situation and for the long-term future of the team that was the direction they needed to go."
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
not a bad idea. to give the cars more of a personal look. what do you think?? 📸 by @timholmesdesign pic.twitter.com/7UFUupsdy7
— Nico Rosberg (@nico_rosberg) October 15, 2016
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
An interesting perspective on Lewis Hamilton’s recent media troubles:
I’ve never been a ‘proper journalist’ or anything, but I interviewed Hamilton last year… was very surprised, because it was like talking to a friendly bloke in a pub. Gave great responses, no ‘stock answers’ that you’d expect from an F1 driver and ran way over the time slot because he was rambling a bit, then apologised for the PR guy asking us to hurry up and finish.
Struck me as a guy who was entirely happy and comfortable doing the media and sponsor-work side of the job, and more confident in actually answering questions himself and giving insights into his own thoughts and views, rather than giving the ‘team speak’ response to everything.
But I guess he might have been a different person if I’d said ‘Hi, I’m from a British tabloid, and I’m going to massively over blow anything you say that might be a bit controversial or negative…’
Neil (@Neilosjames)
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On this day in F1
Sebastian Vettel claimed his tenth victory of the 2011 season five years ago today at the Korea International Circuit:
bezza695 (@bezza695)
16th October 2016, 0:17
does this all but confirm that the current Mercedes PU is pushing above 1000HP in qualifying trim?
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
16th October 2016, 0:39
@bezza695 As I understand Mercedes are hitting A little over 1000bhp in full qualifying trim & somewhere around 930bhp in race trim with an option to push 950bhp for limited periods where necessary.
kpcart
16th October 2016, 3:29
And when did you make up these numbers?
John H (@john-h)
16th October 2016, 8:21
kpcart, I thought you’d been here long enough to know that gt-racer doesn’t usually make this stuff up. Would be interested to know though!
XF1Fcontr
16th October 2016, 9:37
kpcart, read the COTD and you might understand why some questions get a proper answer and others don’t.
Akshat
16th October 2016, 11:10
+1
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
16th October 2016, 11:14
1000 is also a round number. In road car there are no fuel flow regulations. Considering overal fuel efficiency, exhaust might meet emisions standards easily.
mystic one (@mysticus)
16th October 2016, 22:01
I would tell those numbers by just looking at their rear tyre pressures… it is quite obvious!
grat
17th October 2016, 14:08
You mean the Pirelli defined minimum tire pressures?
dragoll (@dragoll)
16th October 2016, 0:25
That is an awesomely scary thought… It’s awesome in the fact that a road car will have the championship winning F1 engine in the back of it, that every kid will dream of owning. It’s scary, when you think of the types of people that will be buying this car, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of these get thrown into the scenery or into barriers on track days.
I also now think that this makes F1 more road relevant than it has been in a long, long time ;)
Fikri Harish (@)
16th October 2016, 1:29
You don’t need to worry about car-ignorant billionaires messing up a Mercedes hypercar.
Google up Mustang drivers and you’ll see that the common folks can be ten times as scary.
beneboy (@beneboy)
16th October 2016, 1:43
@dragoll
lt’s not going to be an F1 engine though, is it ?
Based on, derived from, or inspired by, but not an actual F1 engine.
You can’t just turn on an F1 engine, or operate it without a significant support team, and the modifications you’d have to make to to an F1 engine to allow you to use it in a road car, even a hypercar, would make it very different from an actual F1 engine.
It just sounds like the sort of PR guff Ferrari and others have been using to sell cars for decades.
@HoHum (@hohum)
16th October 2016, 2:07
@beneboy, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the actual F1 ICE but detuned for reliability and mated to a larger electric motor and battery pack (Tesla like) for that headline HP figure and massive torque.
kpcart
16th October 2016, 3:31
Basically what Ferrari did with the f50 nearly 3 decades ago, they put a modified f1 engine in it.
Tony Mansell
17th October 2016, 11:23
F40 surely
matt90
17th October 2016, 20:17
No Tony, what makes you say that?
lockup (@)
16th October 2016, 20:57
The ICE will be the one thing that is different, surely. It’ll need longer piston skirts, a taller block, wider bearings and big and little ends, more clearances…
What they will retain presumably is the combination of Hot and Kinetic MGU’s. Perhaps the shaft in the vee to fully make the connection with F1.
@HoHum (@hohum)
16th October 2016, 23:36
@lockup,@beneboy, Why a taller block ? the other things may be advisable but if engine management keeps revs and charge/combustion pressures down they may well be dimensionally suitable for a high maintenance road going supercar, I would be most worried about the valve stem diameter but already they are expected to last for 6,500 troublefree Km. at the top end of the rev. range. Keep in mind M-B already have a 4 cylinder hot-hatch on sale with close to 400 hp. if they limit the ICE to, say, 500 hp and use more hybrid-electric propulsion like the race engines do for top speed and acceleration, fairly minor adjustments to tolerances and lubrication could greatly extend engine life.
lockup (@)
17th October 2016, 9:38
@hohum F1 pistons are super short aren’t they, with no piston rings. Road car ones will have to have more clearance and therefore rings, afaik, and longer skirts to resist the rotational forces from the little end bearing. Also there’s the length of the conrods which I could imagine might need to be longer to reduce the angle they work through.
MikeeCZ
16th October 2016, 6:51
In extreme racing like F1 every part of the car is looked at as consumable with quite short lifespan. You just cannot apply this to road cars, that would pop the running costs into planes area. There is a reason noone has done it, not in a literal way, and i doubt noone will ever do it. So i would speculate it will be the actual block, but all the moving parts will be slightly beefed up for their lifespan. In F1 if an engine lasts 30 more laps than it should ve, it is looked at “It could ve been lighter”.. a way of thiking you just cant apply to road cars
anon
16th October 2016, 8:04
MikeeCZ, some manufacturers have released fairly mainstream cars which had fairly short engine lifespans – Mitsubishi released a version of the Lancer (the Series VIII FQ-400) which I believe required a major overhaul of the engine every 6,000 miles.
MikeeCZ
16th October 2016, 11:12
bwoah :)
mystic one (@mysticus)
16th October 2016, 22:09
they can possibly pull a bugatti, and get the car serviced every 5000 miles, at £50K/service maybe more…
Alex W
16th October 2016, 22:30
You know what the FQ stood for….
Lancer033 (@lancer033)
17th October 2016, 0:20
I recall reading the the McLaren F1 needed a new clutch every 3,000 miles for something like $30K. We’re not talking commuter cars that need to be ready to go and do 15,000 miles a year in traffic. I’m sure most owners will be doing good to remember to tell someone on their staff to start their car. No matter how awesome it is, most will just be collector cars that sit in a garage and collect wax.
matt90
17th October 2016, 20:44
I wouldn’t call the most extreme Mitsubishi Evo fairly maintstream though!
BasCB (@bascb)
16th October 2016, 13:27
When you look at how long these current F1 engines last, I don’t think we should discount this being an actual F1 engine, with just some tuning done (and likely some parts exchanged) to make it work for a road car and not need service every 300 km! @beneboy.
And if it is expensive – all the better for exclusivity!
beneboy (@beneboy)
16th October 2016, 17:11
@bascb
The engine block may be the same (although even that would probably have a different configuration of alloys to make it last longer, plus a few tweaks to the design) but what goes inside that certainly won’t be F1 grade parts. Even billionaires wouldn’t want to have to wait while their personal pit crew warmed and lubricated the engine with an umbilical system, then fired it up with their lap tops and a starter, and it’s unlike Mercedes are going to have a dedicated team of data analysts on standby to monitor all of the systems every time someone takes one out for a drive. They may have a set up similar to that used by Bugatti for the Veyron, but not anything like the back up team you need to run a proper racing engine.
The hybrid system will also be massively different from what’s inside an F1 car.
So it’ll be an F1 engine in the same way that the Ford DFV was, as in based on F1 designs and technology, but with a load of non-F1 parts so that it actually works like a production engine, and conforms to all of the standards a production car has to in order for it to be sold in Europe and the USA, but it won’t be an F1 engine.
Cost may not be a factor for potential owners, but usability will, and it’s that need to be usable that will require different parts and standards to be used.
I’d make the comparison between a road going superbike and a race version. The guys in BSB and WSB may be using engines that started life as a production engine, but once it’s been in the engine shop to be modified to racing standard, it’s no longer the same engine, and performs very differently from the original.
They may be the same configuration, and share some parts, but they’re very different.
Martin Nash
16th October 2016, 4:00
I can see it now. -18 degrees on a winter morning. Connect the hot water pipes, run boiling water through the engine for 30 minutes before it’s warm enough to turn the key, tyre warmers on for 1 hour before driving down to the garage and filling the 100 litre plastic bag….
moblet (@moblet)
16th October 2016, 4:06
It won’t be an exact F1 engine for the reasons @beneboy described. For example, an F1 engine’s tolerances are such that it is effectively seized at ambient temperature and needs to be preheated before it can be started. The article uses language like “entirely based on the current F1 engine” which I take to mean in architecture and technology, e.g. it’ll presumably be the first roadgoing vehicle to use the split turbo they invented and which has given them an edge in F1.
Tristan
16th October 2016, 4:13
Cant wait to see this Merc-AMG besides the AM-RB. The flavour of modern day F1 or a screaming V12 in your hypercar? Makes for a difficult albeit hypothetical decision.
2018?
Uzair Syed (@ultimateuzair)
16th October 2016, 0:32
F1 needs more exciting liveries. Most liveries in this decade have been rubbish. The only exciting liveries in this decade have been the 2010 Renault livery, the 2013 Caterham livery, the 2013 Ferrari livery, the 2016 Red Bull livery and the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes livery.
Strontium (@strontium)
16th October 2016, 0:45
Pretty much agree with that. The problem is they’re all the same. They’ve got a single colour (usually a grey of some sort) some with additional colour on the bit above the cockpit, or the side pods or nose, then sponsors plastered on, sometimes not even nicely. And those that do feature anything else generally make a mess of it.
There’s no inspirational or imaginive work involved. Few teams play around with colours and effects enough (Manor has a fantastic logo on the side of their car. Would love to see more like that), or patterns. There are no classic livery designs, no ultra-modern liveries, just average things. The 2011 HRT is generally believed to be horrendous, and while this is true, it was at least an attempt at something different, which was at least interesting to look at.
Tristan
16th October 2016, 18:40
I’ve always found the Red Bull doing interesting things. The Torro Rosso less so but still. Williams deserves a huge special mention here as their livery is just amazing. The Martini pinstripe lines, spreading out to fully cover the engine panel with an exquisite curve. Followed up by that brilliant rexona tick, smugly approving of itself. Mercedes is also a bit under-rated I think. Easy to say they’ve just made it silver with a bit of an off green but there’s more to it than that.
Renault pulled it out this year, as did Manor and Sauber really… Just saying I wouldn’t complain to see these go around again really especially compared to the last few years where I would have leaned more towards agreeing. And don’t get me started on nico wanting his name in xxlarge on the side of his car >.<
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
16th October 2016, 0:48
@ultimateuzair Mainly down to the sponsors & marketing.
In the past you had more companies involved & the one’s willing to pay the big bucks (Tobacco & for a brief time 10-15 years back telecommunications companies) tended to have brands that used brighter colors & flashier advertising as they were competing in highly competitive markets.
Since Tobacco sponsorship was banned no other sector has really come in to fill the void, It was expected the telecommunications & internet brands would take there place but they never did. The companies that have come in as primary sponsors over the past 10 years or so have been smaller & have had more basic advertising & branding colors/logo’s which is why car liveries have got a bit stale.
JeffreyJ
16th October 2016, 10:19
The car manufactures innitially filled the tabacco void.
The problem was/is that they weren’t just sponsors but bought entire teams. The entire excistence of a team now became a function of marketing needs ie if your not winning – pull the plug, if you have been winning but hit the point of deminishing return – pull the plug, if your corporate goals change for what ever reason – pull the plug.
Apart from Ferrari the car manufactures are not run like the independent teams and if they leave at will the sport suffers. Imho they should just be suppliers. Maybe a bit like in Indy car where you have Honda or Chevrolet providing the engine and stock aero packages but individual teams like Pensky and Chip Ganassi, who have the sport at hart, competiting to get the most out of the packages. It garantees the preservation of the sport and could be a great way to cut cost as well I think.
Tristan
16th October 2016, 18:19
Separating the teams from trackside and the manufacturing and supply management is a guaranteed way to ensure a robust and healthy continuance of competition. I don’t think it could happen in F1 simply because the loss of manufacturer teams is a huge change for the “DNA.”
Not only just for the huge fan bases for certain manufacturers and locations but also even for the manufacturers themselves. If they’re not controlling the team and giving their car(s) their best shot to win, there would be more value surely in doing so.
I think the steps that F1 are taking of allowing more components to be supplied by other teams is enough for now and give something to look forward to how the B-team dynamics continue as opposed to just if F1 were to become a stock/package optioned series.
As for the liveries, eh, this year isn’t too bad, only McLaren and HAAS really need to be thrown back. I don’t think blaming everything there on a lack of sponsors is right either. The teams themselves have brands that they want to protect or portray. I reckon it’s a certainty at this point that some teams could have more colours of they wanted to.
beneboy (@beneboy)
16th October 2016, 1:49
When you consider how much fan art is available on line these days, and lots of it being of a professional standard, I’m surprised none of the teams run livery design competitions. Some of the designs I’ve seen are amazing, and so much better than the mostly drab designs being used by teams at the moment.
matt90
17th October 2016, 20:52
I think Force India’s had just evolved into something vibrant and interesting enough before they splashed black all over it one year and then made it a tidy but dull/corporate affair the next. There was often too much white, but I liked the 2013 version. More green would have been nice, but having green and orange on the same car was good for the grids colour quota!
Fletch (@fletchuk)
16th October 2016, 1:19
Not that I’d ever buy a Merc, but I sure hope those are Rosberg spec engines and not 2nd-hand Hamilton ones ;)
Martin Nash
16th October 2016, 4:04
+1
Akshat
16th October 2016, 11:16
+1
Mp4-23
16th October 2016, 15:48
+ 1
Wil-Liam (@wil-liam)
16th October 2016, 1:44
I don’t believe Toto one bit, Rivals like Red Bull and Ferrari can buy the car just to rip off the engine and make a better version to beat them in F1
BasCB (@bascb)
16th October 2016, 13:32
I don’t think that will be true at all @wil-liam. They can base it off last year’s spec, by the time it comes out (in a year or 2) there wouldn’t be many new things to learn there.
And the handful of cars they will be building would certainly be sold to a small list of invitees only (much like how you can’t just go out and buy a top line Ferrari car), so it would not be that easy for a competitor to get their hands on them even if they wanted to.
moblet (@moblet)
16th October 2016, 4:16
If Lewis misses Jenson too much surely he can just paste Jenson’s head onto a contemporary car during press conferences.
AceAce
16th October 2016, 6:13
So Merc putting lawnmower engines their cars now, aha.
https://youtu.be/5SoZiTxdQyw
That is an F1 engine.
Disgruntled, mad, unmoving, delerious tremors. I’ve falling out of love. No Toyota, BMW or Jaguar or a Honda factory team. Now we have diabetic inducing drink companies; one in English the other in Italian and engines so quite fans haven’t even been made aware that the race has started as they stand and buy hotdogs, hence the empty grandstands. All this save the planet madness from Mercedes is mind boggling.
AceAce
16th October 2016, 6:17
Biggest piece of nerve since Benedict Arnold applied for veteran benefits and Fernando Alonso starting at rear end of the grid on low fuel in Singapore.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 6:35
That Ferrari V12 sounds great; but I always enjoyed the variation of sounds from different engines; like you would have cars with V12’s, V10s and V8s; and in the 1980’s there were all the V6s, the Alfa Romeo V8 and the best sounding one of them all- the BMW I4. Just listening to the wastegate opening and the turbo spooling up was a great sound in itself.
https://youtu.be/9t4yfHfTfDs
mfreire
16th October 2016, 6:42
And also- I personally am glad that Toyota and Jaguar are not in F1 anymore and that Honda is only an engine supplier and it is a shame that BMW are not even supplying engines anymore. Toyota and Jaguar never really belonged in F1 and both companies kept making fools of themselves wasting all that money on programs that neither company was going to benefit from in a PR or R&D sense. Toyota seem to be far more suited to the WEC, IMO.
anon
16th October 2016, 8:12
And yet Ferrari had been trying to ditch that V12 engine for the best part of about 4 years because it had become obsolete by then. Racing is a brutally unsentimental business and, to Ferrari, that engine was becoming a millstone around their necks – nobody is going to keep using an engine that is a failure just because you think it sounds nice.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 15:44
This is true. Although the Ferrari V12 at the time was the most powerful engine in F1, it was as a result the thirstiest. The V10 offered the best compromise between power and fuel consumption.
anon
16th October 2016, 20:51
mfreire, it suffered from a lot of problems with fuel consumption due to high internal friction, although there were worse engines out there (Eddie Jordan reckoned that the Yamaha V12 he used around that time had the highest fuel consumption in the field, in part because Yamaha had to run a very rich fuel-air mixture to prevent premature detonation within the combustion chamber).
However, you’re probably wrong about Ferrari having the most powerful engine at the time too, in part because that increased internal friction started to hinder their development. Honda’s V12’s from that era actually had a slight power advantage over Ferrari, in part because Honda used a more advanced ignition system that meant that increased the efficiency of their engine, keeping the fuel consumption below that of Ferrari’s engines whilst having a slightly higher peak power output. Renault then overtook Ferrari in terms of peak power after a few years as well, so they were probably only second best at most.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 22:27
The Ferrari V12 engines from ’89 to ”93 were definitely not the most powerful during that specific time- they weren’t even that good an engine. The Honda V10 was actually a more efficient engine than the Renault V10 and more so the Ferrari V12. You probably know more about the specifics than I do but there had been a number of claims that by ’94 the Ferrari V12 had improved so much that it was the most powerful engine (even more so than the Renault V10) but not particularly good on fuel consumption in comparison to the Renault.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 22:30
And also- the V10 McLaren-Honda used during ’89 and ’90 was a more efficient engine than the V12 they used in ’91 and ’92- even though the V12 was really quite light for a 3.5L engine.
Patrick (@paeschli)
16th October 2016, 8:32
That ‘diabetic inducing drink’ is responsible for 5 amazing drivers on the grid today.
JeffreyJ
16th October 2016, 15:16
True, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is an increadibly bad drink for your health.
But yeah, if you think about it basically all companies sell stuff that are bad for you, the people involved manufacturing them and or the environment. That’s not an F1 problem. That’s a society problem.
Craig Woollard (@craig-o)
16th October 2016, 9:54
That’s all well and good, but not all of us are living in the early 1990s.
What is the difference between an energy drinks company being on the grid and a clothes company being on the grid? What does this have to with Mercedes’ road car sector.
Yes we had more manufacturers ten years ago but there are very good reasons why they are no longer here and have ventured into Formula E or LMP1, and it absolutely is not because of what you call ‘lawnmower engines’.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 6:26
This is the reason any major manufacturer gets into motor racing- to test and play around with technology that they can put on their road cars. Ferrari and McLaren do not count as those companies started out in life as racing teams (and neither one of those
companies are major manufacturers anyway). I think it’s great Merc and AMG are building a new hybrid hypercar to compete with the likes of Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren on the road- that PU might have been the main reason why Merc got back into F1 as a full-fledged constructor- they had to have total control over that technology; even if that meant funding the design and development of a car to properly test it…
Baron
16th October 2016, 11:33
“This is the reason any major manufacturer gets into motor racing”
No it isn’t. The reason is making money. If Mercedes felt they didn’t have a chance at winning the championship back in 2009/2010 they wouldn’t have joined in the first place.
“to test and play around with technology that they can put on their road cars.”
Hyper car, not a road car. The day a 1.6 V6T with ERS makes it into a Mercedes A Class is the same day Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton get married and both run for presidency in Guatemala. There’s absolutely nothing relating to these F1 power units that we will ever see in a normal road car.
As a matter of fact Mercedes have already stated they want their car fleet to be 100% electric by 2025.
This is marketing talk. Nothing more.
John Cousins (@drone)
16th October 2016, 12:13
Mgu-h, mgu-k, HCCI, torque management and power storage and deployment software are all technologies that are being perfected in F1 and likely to find their way into passenger cars.
Baron
16th October 2016, 12:59
Except companies like Tesla are already miles ahead of everything any F1 team is doing in terms of electric propulsion.
And the mgu-h feeds off the heat of the turbo. How’s that work in an all electrical car?
F1 isn’t trendsetting, it’s following trends. Hybrids were the new thing in the early 0’s. Now it’s all electric and in 5 years time it’s hydrogen fuel cells. I expect F1 will lagg further behind by that time.
John Cousins (@drone)
16th October 2016, 15:22
Who said anything about all electric? You are dreaming if you think hydrogen fuel cells will be mainstream even in the next 10 years. Hydrogen infrastructure is the massive hurdle there. All electric is useless in many countries (like Australia) where great distances need to be covered. Sure have one as your city car but not practical for anything other than the short commute to work. Hybrids will be here for a long time yet. Why have the inconvenience of charging when cars consuming less than 3 litres per 100km are a reality. Think about that for a second… 3 litres per 100km. Turbocharged hybrid direct injected cars can use MGU-H instead of a wastegate, further improving efficiency. I’m sure even Elon Musks top engineers would learn a few things from F1 teams.
anon
16th October 2016, 15:32
Baron, is Tesla really that far ahead in terms of the actual powertrain of their cars? Most of Tesla’s vehicles use existing off the shelf components – for example, the batteries that Tesla currently uses are manufactured by Panasonic and are, according to Musk himself, just modified laptop batteries (and they’re not even the latest generation of battery cell technology that Panasonic uses in their devices either).
Ex F1 fan
16th October 2016, 19:19
Non Tesla people always say that but you listen to Tesla’s actual words and they tell you they aren’t doing anything ground breaking, just better integration. Same excuse they use for why Tesla isn’t in FormulaE, except Tesla couldn’t come close to a FE budget, they can’t turn a profit yet nevermind run a racing program.
Miss communication
16th October 2016, 23:21
@Ex F1 fan Tesla doesn’t turn a profit because they’re tooling up.
And I’d say they aren’t in FormulaE because its a standardised series, they don’t need the distraction & apparently they have enough good press to get by as it is
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-12/tesla-dominates-u-s-luxury-sedan-sales
Rhys L
18th October 2016, 5:09
@drone Saying all-electric is useless in Australia is quite misleading. The majority of people I know could easily get away with an electric car day-to-day. Including myself.
When it comes to long trips, there are options: a) run a second non-electric car (many families have two cars anyway); or b) borrow or hire a non-electric car.
I personally like to go off-roading, and I really can’t imagine pulling up to a Tesla Supercharger halfway up the Birdsville Track. So for that style of travel, an electric car doesn’t make sense. However, for the other 340-odd days of the year, an all-electric car would be fantastic.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 14:53
You are quite wrong. Making money might be another goal but do you honestly think that a major established manufacturer like Mercedes, Renault or Honda care about winning in even the highest level of international motor racing? Those companies are in the business of selling road cars, first and foremost. Racing is just a very good way for them to test and play around with technology and secondarily do PR work if they are successful on the PR track. They are different from all the specialist teams (Red Bull, Williams, McLaren), whose sole purpose is to win (in RB’s case, they also want to effectively market their brand).
I am not talking about those specific components and that PU itself, but components that will be derived from that PU technology.
mfreire
16th October 2016, 22:36
*play around with technology to put on their road cars
MazdaChris (@mazdachris)
17th October 2016, 13:23
I couldn’t think of a worse environment in which to “test and play around with technology” than F1. Everythig about the tech in F1 is mandated by the technical regs with virtually no avenues for technical innovation. The systems they run in the Mercedes are the same as those for Ferrari, Renault, and Honda. The differences between them are defined by minute areas of diminishing return, where the manufacturers are spending millions (maybe even more) to chase tiny marginal gains over their competitors. There are no innovations in F1 currently, nobody creating any kind of new technology. The batteries are no more powerful than they were. If you want to look at real development, look at WEC, look at Formula E, look at other series where manufacturers actually have the freedom to create technology.
F1 forces manufacturers down into a technological cul-de-sac chasing tiny margins which you never bother with in any other arena, with absolutely zero cross-applicability. Road car engine tech gains virtually nothing from F1 participation. It is purely a marketting exercise for all concerned.
Robbie (@robbie)
17th October 2016, 20:42
@mazdachris While I do completely get where you’re coming from, the other side of the coin of course is costs escalating when engineers and designers have more free rein, which only benefits the ‘have’ teams. Also, they did just introduce turbos and energy recovery systems and now will go back to wider cars and tires which they’ve had before but never with these PU’s, so it’s not like everything is at a standstill. I’m sure the teams’ engineers have some great ideas on the drawing board in spite of restricted development. And the tokens concept has been removed.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
16th October 2016, 17:42
But, could you imagine Merc A16T coupe? Omg now that would be hype.
Philip (@philipgb)
16th October 2016, 8:11
I’ve seen and read plenty of interviews that mirror the COTD experience of an interview with Hamilton. He comes across as genuinely enjoying talking about the sport, his life, and his passions but you do see a visible change in him when he’s being asked loaded questions where you can tell the journalist is just after a sound bite.
I’m put in mind of Adrian Tan’s 2008 Graduation Speech. Be hated. There are bad people in the world, and if you aren’t stirring up some angst from them you’re probably doing something wrong.
https://yarapavan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/dont-work-avoid-telling-truth-be-hated.html
do
17th October 2016, 8:51
thx for the link, good read
deadchicken (@deadchicken)
16th October 2016, 9:14
Real f1 engine? With real f1 engine fire and flames? :)
John Lancaster
16th October 2016, 11:17
IMHO the ‘genuine F1 engine in a road car’ is unadulterated hype, nothing more, nothing less.
If the remark attributed to Wolfe is correct, I’d bet even money that some ‘Journalistic License’ aka ‘Creative Editing’ has been applied.
On another point might I point out that Jaguar never entered F1, that was Ford, owners of Jaguar at the time.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
16th October 2016, 16:16
Unadulturated hype… Agree 100%.. For 1 year I hoped for Mercedes to stuff a road car with that engine…
And now they are doing it. Consider me hyped up properly.
Offcorse I would like a tiny version with 100hp and 1l/100km fuel consumption…. But that is just me.
It should be noted Mercedes F1 engine has a smaller co2 footprint than your regular tesla. Because most electricity is made from some kind of fosil fuel.
Mercedes just might make the cleanest car engine in the world, per powergenerated.
Rhys L
18th October 2016, 4:38
For now.
Throw some solar panels on your roof and that’ll reduce the footprint (if you’re able to charge whilst the sun is out). Once the cars are fully autonomous (5-10 years away) it could drop you at work in the morning, drive back home to charge on solar and then come pick you up at night (fully-charged without the need to top up overnight with dirty fossil-fuelled electricity).
Either way, I likely won’t be able to afford one in the next 5 years anyway; so meh.
Kenny
17th October 2016, 22:42
Considering that the “real” Mercedes F1 ICE get approx 5k miles before needing to be replaced, I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that the hypercar ICE will not be exactly the same at the F1 unit ;-).
Kenny
17th October 2016, 22:44
I think the concept livery that Nico posted looks pretty cool. IMO, having the driver’s name prominently displayed in the sides of the car would go a long way toward helping new fans follow the track action.