Most liked posts in thread: F1 - 2012

I love this article from Jalopnik:

When Rosbergs Win, Fun Chaos Ensues (Jalopnik.com)

 

France agrees to pay Bernie to let F1 race on Bernie's own circuit (he owns the Paul Ricard circuit). No Spa race next year.

Ecclestone confirms F1’s return to France (GPUpdate.net)

 

I'm thinking the driving position in these two is a bit different than the current version. I'll take the one on the left.



Rosberg to drive Fangio’s Mercedes on Saturday (GPUpdate.net)

 

FIA Institute testing forward roll hoops to increase driver protection (Autosport.com)

[ame=http://vimeo.com/40140808]FIA Institute Roll-Hoop Test on Vimeo[/ame]

 

They're testing again -- mid-season test at Mugello -- here are a few rigs I've not seen before.

 

Ha! Nice try but that's the #2, Webba's car. Here's what Vettel was driving today.

 

This is a great documentary showing "old" school (mid-80s) tech and development. If you like the details you'll probably love this stuff. It's long at nearly an hour and 45 but, again if you like to see how it was done, it's worth the time.

It's basically all about Cosworth and Ford starting from scratch to get into the turbo game. Watch engine design, some of the actual engine building process and fact-finding through dis-assembly after failure, going back to the drawing board to switch from I4 to V6, early (primitive?) mapping electronics and painstaking troubleshooting, dyno work, etc, all the way through getting it in the car, testing and so on. All the sorts of little (and big) things that can go wrong when you build a race engine and car from scratch.

Then finally on to racing and they even get into how they used to alter the cars with extra boost and fuel just for the "irrelevant" qualifying. Lots of solutions crude by today's standards; wait until you see the solution for a brake caliper rubbing on the inside of the wheel (at about 45:25 in part 2).

It seems a bit out of place in the 2012 thread so I thought about starting a new one but figured only those interested in F1 would look at it anyway.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbB1qwhKaaE]Turbo F1 engines - How they started, part 1 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfVAGOaGEc]Turbo F1 engines - How they started, part 2 - YouTube[/ame]

 

A very young Ross Brawn unmistakeable though.

 

For the tech geeks, a few more new (to me) test rigs:





















http://photos.gpupdate.net/large/197967.jpg