18,400 RPM, 900HP 3L Mercedes V-10...NA! | Formula One Secrets [TECH TALK]

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The sound alone made F1 worth watching back then

👍︎︎ 31 👤︎︎ u/spongebob_meth 📅︎︎ Jul 30 2019 🗫︎ replies

Great video.

It brought back many good memories of attending the first 4-5 USGP's at IMS.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/imped4now 📅︎︎ Jul 30 2019 🗫︎ replies

At one point I was thinking: "wait, did he just say...?" A moment later Andre "can we just go back a bit, you mentioned hydraulics operate the throttle..."

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/MisterSquidInc 📅︎︎ Jul 31 2019 🗫︎ replies
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- There's an amazing amount of technology that has trickled down over the years from Formula 1 and we see this technology being applied to our every day road cars. Unfortunately it's not that often that we get the opportunity to get up close and personal with a genuine F1 car and find out some of the secrets that made these cars so fast. Of course as the cars age and they fall away from being current, we can get some insight. So we're here with Tim White from Garage 59 and beside me here is a 2000 model McLaren MP4/15 powered by a Mercedes engine. This particular car was the car that David Coulthard used to win Monaco in that particular season, and we're going to find out a little bit about what makes this car tick. So Tim, for a start, let's go into the engine. We've seen some massive variations in the engine configuration with F1 over the seasons, this was powered by a Mercedes engine, can you give us the specifications in terms of cylinder count and capacity? - Yeah certainly so this was a V10, three litre engine, in it's day it would've been making something around about 900 horsepower. It would've been running about 18400, something like that, top RPM used. - Now I just want to come back to 900 horsepower from a three litre natually aspirated engine, these sort of numbers, we normally associated with forced induction and this is really one of the tricks where it comes to naturally aspirated engines. What we really want to do in order to make a lot of horsepower is we need to make torque at very very high RPM and of course to make torque we need air flow, and this is where that RPM limit you just mentioned, 18400. And we saw the RPM limit over the seasons of F1 creep up and creep up. The problem with very high RPM ranges is the valve spring technology. So can you tell us how this was dealt with in this Mercedes engine? - Yeah certainly so on this particular engine as has been common in Formula 1 for many years now, it's a pneumatic controlled system. This engine in particular was quite special in that it had a system which was variable to base on RPM mapping. - You're talking about the pressure there was variable versus RPM? - Correct yes so it enabled us to run a low pressure, at relatively low RPM. When I say relatively low I mean sort of 9000, 10000 RPM, something like that. - That's very low yeah. - Yeah indeed. And then we could, basically this meant that we could run a much lighter weight valve gear so we didn't have to protect against some of the forces that you'd see traditionally with a fairly heavy spring that could go to the sort of levels that we would have to go to. And then as the RPM rose we would increase the spring pressure effectively by increasing the pneumatic pressure. And then as the RPM came down we would bleed that pressure off. What enabled us to do this was the fact that we had an onboard compressor. So the architecture of the system was an onboard compressor, a reservoir bottle, which is what the system drew on basically. And then a fill injector and a return or dump injector. We call it a dump injector because it didn't actually return it to the circuit, it dumped it to the, basically to the crank case. - So by controlling those two solenoids or valves, or injectors as you've just called them, you're controlling the compressed air flow into the valve train in the cylinder head and then out to maintain that pressure target? - Yeah that's exactly how it ran. We also used that circuit to regulate the bottle pressure as well by putting an offset on the demand of those injectors. So if you were asking for some amount of pressure, you'd look at the bottle pressure as well. If you had to bleed some of that down, you'd open the injector more which would force you to over pressure and then the dump injector would realise that it's over pressure and it would get rid of that pressure. That would cause a high usage of the air and that's what would bring the bottle pressure down. - Alright you've just brought in a huge amount of information, I want to dive back in and unpack a little bit of that. And I think probably the best place to start is why do we need to use pneumatic valve springs, what is wrong with a conventional steel wound spring, where are the limits for that in an F1 engine? - Yeah so I think obviously, an F1 engine's going to 18400, 19000 and even 20000 in later times. Obviously controlling the spring mass, or the mass of the valve train with a spring, there's a lot of weight involved. These have got no moving weight really on the valve train, retainers are very small, very light, lightweight seals, low drag, low friction. Obviously one of the problems with one of these engines is when you're running at that kind of speed, the frictional levels go through the roof. So anything you can do to reduce the friction, the motoring forces, is a gain and an easy win really. - Now with an engine that runs to 18400 RPM producing 900 horsepower, it's reasonable to say that that's going to be a relatively peaky rev range and of course with a seven speed, essentially semi automatic transmission, the driver for the most part can use a relatively narrow rev range. But the interesting part was you mentioned off camera earlier that that's actually not always the case so can you talk to us about the rev range that the car does use on some of the circuits. - Yeah certainly so this type of engine, when you're running at a circuit, like Monaco is a good typical example of a very dynamic circuit, in the hairpins there you would be running down to about 3800 RPM in first gear, obviously not full throttle. But nevertheless it's got to drive down there. And then through the tunnel and pulling full throttle through the gears, you'll be running full RPM so 18400, so 14000, 15000 RPM rev range. So you've got to, it's drivability is the biggest issue. The other place was where it gets difficult is somewhere like the old Hockenheim track where you have very high speed. For the race we would use typically first gear just for starting and not on track, it would be used, so we'd have six usable gears on track. But they've got to stretch up to something around 360, 365 kilometres an hour. And the slowest corner, yeah it's pretty slow. So you finish up with a bigger rev drop through the gears than you would ideally like and this can compromise you on the kind of mid, not the very slowest corners but kind of the second, third gear, typically third gear where you would be lower in RPM but second gear would make the car unstable through the corner. - Now with a relatively peaky naturally aspirated engine we tend to see, if we run the engine on a dyno we get a relatively peaky torque curve, and that can be problematic if you need to use 14000, 15000 of that rev range. So can you talk to us about some of the tricks that were employed in this era to try and fill in that torque curve and get rid of some of those troughs. - Yeah certainly so typically this engine would have a couple of troughs below peak torque. And the second one probably difficult, you would find you would, it would encounter more than the lowest one. So this would happen at around about 13000 RPM, there was quite a big trough there. To help fill that in, we would have an active trumpet. This has got a really good effect of filling that hole in. - So you're talking there about variable length inlet trumpets, so sort of a tuning effect for that inlet trumpet versus the RPM? - Yeah indeed so it was exactly that, versus RPM trumpet map which we actually used to just use in one direction. Although, when you're sitting on the dyno, you could get ultimately bigger numbers out of it by having a trumpet map that went short, long, short, long, short again for high speed. Drivers didn't like this. Although you couldn't actually see the torque difference on the dyno, it looked like a smooth torque delivery. When you gave that to the driver, they felt something that we can't see on the dyno. Whether it's a noise or genuinely it does do it is difficult to say. So what we would tend to do is compromise it slightly and just go from long to short. - Now even with doing that, you're talking about an engine that can change between 3800 RPM and 18400 RPM, I'm guessing just about a split second. How are you achieving such fast and accurate control of those trumpet lengths? - We have a 200 bar hydraulic circuit. This feeds a lot of the systems on the car but if we just take the trumpets, trumpets and throttle 'cause they're very similar. This was controlled with a moog valve. It's a high speed kind of electromechanical valve that can deal with a very small current and they are extremely fast acting. So with 200 bar behind it, it moves pretty fast. - You've just mentioned that system, that hydraulic system is used for multiple aspects of the car, you've got obviously the trumpet length we've just talked about. You also touched on there the throttle. So essentially these days we see drive by wire throttle electronic control, generally quite common in road cars as well as professional motorsport. You're using hydraulics, can you just mention the differences there where the hydraulics are superior to electric drive by wire? - So there's a couple of things really. Probably the prime thing on the car, like a formula one car here is everything comes down to weight. A lot of the things are on there because of weight. So we have to have a hydraulic supply on the car. And given that we have to have the hydraulic supply on the car, we use it for everything. I think in the day when this was active then the electronic or electric motors controlling things like throttles and such were not really at the level where they are today. Today I think it's fair that you could take a slightly different approach to it. In fact I know some other cars which do take a different approach. But given that you don't want to carry anything along that you don't have to carry along, nothing gets taken for a ride on a Formula 1 car. - Alright just carrying on that theme with the hydraulics there, we haven't really talked about the transmission other than to say it's a seven speed semi automatic. So essentially paddle shift, not really too unusual compared to what we see in a lot of road cars and GT3 race cars for example. Can you tell us how that shift works with the hydraulic system? - Yeah it really is nothing too special. There's a switch that commands the shift, everything has to be commanded by the driver in this period. - So this was a legal requirement of that period? - Yeah correct, correct. - So this was very much a time when there was no driver aids. So everything had to be an input from the driver. So on this car we have a paddle shift which essentially is a switch, nothing special. And it's this switch that gives the command to the ECU which then activates the shift sequence. - So essentially we're just talking about a conventional dog engagement seven speed gear box, albeit this one is hydraulically actuated? - Yeah absolutely, nothing special at all really. This era wouldn't have been running a seamless shift. It would be what you would consider a conventional sequential gearbox. So everything had to be requested by the driver, so no automatic shifting and everything had to be a single input. So you could only do one gear at a time, you couldn't stack them in this era. That did change subsequently but in this era, it was a one switch position move equals one shift. - Bit of a simpler time. - Yeah bit of a simpler time. - Now again we're just talking about the transmission, we've mentioned the hydraulics there and this is another area that hydraulics is used is the clutch control. So conventionally we do use hydraulics for the clutch but a much lower pressure. And normally it's actuated with a pedal that the driver uses his foot to control. In this instance it's controlled via paddles behind the steering wheel. So can you tell us why the steering wheel paddles are used instead of a foot pedal? - So the steering wheel, so the clutch on a Formula 1 car is really only used for pulling away. Once you're moving, the clutch isn't used anymore. So with two paddles and on the hands, it enables you to do a very nice launch by using the two paddles. I think this has become common practice for many Formulas now where you have the option to run an electric or hydraulic position control, or some kind of position control of the clutch. So typically what the driver would do was he would move one of the paddles to the bite point and he knows it would be around about 50% of the travel. There'd probably be a mapped flat area in there so if he misses it, he can miss it by a little bit and still be in the right window. The other paddle he would pull to full travel, so that's with the clutch disengaged, enabling to select first gear. As soon as the lights would go out, he would drop the, we'll call it the higher paddle, but the one that is pulled all the way, which meant that then the control system would be looking for the highest clutch input which would be the one which would be sitting on the bite point. So what this means is he's very quickly at the bite point and driving the car straight away, he's not trying to find it somewhere around 50%, or 70% of the travel or something like that. - Alright look Tim it's been amazing to get so much insight into what makes this car go, just that insight that really for most of us mere mortals no one really gets to find out those sort of details. And I think probably a key factor that I overlooked is that in a prior lifetime, you actually worked as the engine engineer for David Coulthard over a period of about 10 years around this era. So for those watching, this is why Tim knows so much about this particular car. But thanks for the chat Tim and enjoy the rest of your weekend. - Thanks very much, thanks for the chat. - If you liked that video, make sure you give it a thumbs up and if you're not already a subscriber, make sure you're subscribed. We release a new video every week. And if you like free stuff, we've got a great deal for you. Click the link in the description to claim your free spot to our next live lesson.
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Channel: High Performance Academy
Views: 83,512
Rating: 4.9263291 out of 5
Keywords: tuning, efi, ECU, learn how to tune, EFI tuning, race car, racing, dyno, dyno tuning, circuit racing, hill climb, engine calibration, reflash tuning, obd2, obdII, wideband, sensor, how, why, when, what, tuner, lambda, afr, cars, auto, automobile, high performance academy, formula 1, formula one, f1, goodwood, fos, festival of speed, tim white, garage 59, david couthard, 2000 season, variable trumpets, pneumatic valves, hand clutch, valve train, mercedes, mclaren, mercedes-mclaren, MP4/15, secrets
Id: LIzm1OMVcF4
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Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)
Published: Mon Jul 29 2019
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