Is Formula 1 About To Get Really Slow?

the world's fastest cars in Motorsport are getting slower that's the concern among many Formula 1 teams as an allnew rule set goes into effect for 2026 but will Formula 1 cars actually be slower well this is a really really really complicated question something you'd want to use Advanced simulations and realistic models to properly understand so let's try to solve it with some Expo markers and whiteboard we'll start by comparing the respective generations and looking at what advantages each has and we'll dive into five specific rules that I haven't seen much discussion about which I believe are absolutely critical to how these cars will perform so there are very real advantages to both the new car as well as the old car and so here you can see on the left the new car here on the right we have the old car and the new car is going to be a little bit smaller and as a result it actually has a lower minimum weight saving about 30 kg now here's the first critical rule that is without Fuel and so in reality at the start of the race they're targeting about 30 kg less fuel as well according to formula 1.com which means at the beginning of the race they could be down about 60 kg which is a significant Advantage according to Formula 1 logic every 10 kg is worth about 3/10 of a second around the lap and so if you're taking out 60 at the beginning of the race that means about a 2 second per lap Advantage simply by removing 60 kg of Mass from the vehicle the new car is also going to have way less drag they say drag is reduced by 55% which should mean it is significantly quicker in a straight line we will get into that and also the FIA says it will have significantly more power now I think they're actually pretty close realistically in power both of them being about 1,000 horsepower but the FIA is saying the old car having about 560 KW from the combustion engine 120 KW from the electric motor versus the new car 400 KW from the combustion engine so a bit less and then 350 KW from the electric motor so about triple in electric power giving you a total of 750 versus 680 so technically based on the FI rule set they're saying it will have more power now looking at the 2024 car or the current old generation we are going to have more energy on board so that is a huge Advantage the more energy you have the start of the race uh the more power you can use throughout it right so 100 kg of E10 ethanol 10% about 90% gasoline versus the new car they are targeting about 70 kg of a sustainable fuel so it's going to be slightly less energy dense and you have less fuel Mass overall the old cars also have significantly more downforce so the new ones are going to be reduced by 30% so that means the old cars should be way quicker around corners and finally with the old cars you have more combustion power that is power that is always available because you're pulling that energy directly from the fuel tank you're not reliant on regenerative braking in order to put that energy into a battery and then use it on the track so the only energy you're starting the race with is the energy in that fuel tank also they're getting rid of the electric motor which is connected to the turbocharger for the new car so that means the previous cars were able to harvest as much energy as they wanted from that electric motor on that Turbo charger and put it either directly into moving energy to push that car forward with the electric motor or they could put it in the battery pack and store it to use it with that electric motor at a later point so this meant better efficiency with these engines which you're getting rid of that for the new car so another challenge okay so we have a difference in how much energy is required we have a difference in aerodynamics and we have a difference in power so let's talk about each one of these subjects starting with energy okay so to move an object from one location to another requires a certain amount of energy now to move that same object from one location to another very quickly requires more energy so the more energy you have the more power you can use throughout the race so it doesn't matter if you have a million horsepower if you only have a half gallon fuel tank you're probably not going to win a 60 lap race again more energy means you have more power over the duration of the race okay now because these vehicles have electric motors in them they can take take the energy from slowing the vehicle down and put that energy into the battery pack so not only do we need to look at how much fuel do these vehicles start with and thus how much energy do they start with but we need to look at how much energy do they use over the entire race and so starting with the 2026 vehicle they're going to have about 70 to 80 kg of fuel which will have an energy density of about 38 to 41 megga per kilog of fuel so let's say we have 70 kg of fuel multiply that by the high end 41 M that gives us 2,870 M of starting energy that we have to use versus the 2024 cars we've got 100 to about 110 kg of fuel with an energy density slightly higher 42.2 that's E10 and so that gives us 4,225 Meg to start the race with or about 50% more a significant Advantage all right so now we need to look at the electric side of things all right so throughout how much total energy can we recover and then deploy for the new rules that number is 8.5 Mega per lap and for the old rules that number is four Mega per lap now if you're wondering what the heck is a mega well a jewel is a watt second so if you do the conversion 4 megga is about 1 kilowatt hour 8.5 Meg is about 2 kwatt hours so putting that into easier to understand terms and then if you have let's say 66 laps like at a representative track such as Spain well if you have 8 1/2 megga per lap multiply that by 66 you get 561 megga versus the old car would only have 264 total possible megga of energy that it could recover and deploy throughout that race so if we take the energy you have in the fuel and then assume we have about a 50% combustion efficiency and then take the energy we have in the battery and assume a 100% efficiency how much total energy do we have for the tire race well something like 1,996 Meg for the new car versus something like 2,377 megga for the old car in other words the old car has about 20% more useful energy throughout the duration of that race so while the new car may have a higher Peak power allegedly it has less total energy to use throughout that race which means it has a lower average power throughout the race so this leads us to the next two key rules that I wanted to discuss both of which looking at this 8.5 Megs per lap energy recovery requirement okay so first let's just talk about the 8.5 Mega part of this rule so we are told that we have gone from 120 kW to 350 KW for the Electric System tripling our power right but the energy we have to deploy has only gone from 4 to 8 and 1/2 in other words about double so we have three times the power but only twice the energy so we don't really have three times the power because our average power is lower another way of expressing this let's say you want to deploy 120 KW like the old car has how much time can you do that for if you only have 4 megga of energy well that means you get that bonus 120 Kow of power for about 33 seconds now how much power can you deliver if you were to have a .5 Meg instead of 4 Meg for 33 seconds well that number ends up being 2 55 KW so while you have a higher Peak power if you're to use it for the same duration it's actually down about 100 Kow so yeah the peak Power number is higher but your average Power number is lower okay the second part of this rule that's really interesting is that this is energy that you can recover per lap okay now that was the same as previously right but previously we weren't very dependent on our electric power it was only making a smaller percentage of the total power now about half of our power Peak Power is coming from the Electric System and yet how much energy we have is dependent on how many laps we have so at a location like Spa where you only have 44 laps because it's a long track that means you're going to have less total energy versus a place like Monaco where you have 78 laps because it's a shorter track so your energy Advantage differs depending on where you're racing so if you're to do this same math we did previously well the advantage for the old car at a location like Spa is something like 27% more energy versus a location like Monaco where you have more laps only about 16% more energy regardless it's interesting that so much of your energy is dependent on how many laps you go even though it's making up half of your Peak power okay but just because a car has less energy doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be slower around a track it could be more efficient requiring less energy it could weigh less meaning it needs less energy to go around it or it could have less aerodynamic drag so let's talk aerodynamics so the new cars are going to have active aerodynamics and this is going to save a massive amount of energy because when they're going in a straight line they have something called X mode where they can open up the rear wing and the front Wing allow air to pass through more easily greatly reducing drag so they save a ton of energy in a straight line now they're saying that it's going to have drag reduced by 55% and downforce reduced by about 30% so that means lower rolling resistance and a higher top speed so what might our top speed be well look at the old car let's use some assumption say it has the same th000 horsepower as the new car and we will get an estimate of a top speed around 350 kmph now if we were to take that same car that same old car but but reduce its drag by 55% and reduce its downforce by 30% well we suddenly get a top speed of 450 km/ hour but that is not how fast the new cars will go why well we get to our next critical rule above 345 kmph the amount of electrical energy you have goes to zero zero so all you have is 400 Kow from the combustion engine once you reach 345 km/ hour which means your real top speed is going to be something like 365 kilm per hour so significantly slower so it is pretty crazy to say this is a more powerful car uh but only below 345 km/ hour because above that it only has 400 Kow which is a significant drop from today's cars so top speed will be down but to be fair it should accelerate quicker at those lower speeds now of course Formula 1 is not a drag race which means we need to talk about corners and what impact will it have that our down Force has been reduced by 30% that means we have way less pressure pushing down on our tires which means we have way less grip going around corners so we're just going to take a very simple example of a 1 km Circle what is the maximum speed that we can travel going around this circle well there's a simple equation for that and within that equation you can see it's downforce so the more down Force you have the faster you can go around that Circle so for the old car that number ends up being about 350 km per hour or its top speed where it makes its peak amount of downforce it's almost like I plan this out how long would it take to go around a 1 km Circle at 350 kmph 10.3 seconds versus the new car with 30% less down force that number is going to be about 310 kmph at about 11.6 6 seconds so if you take a median F1 track which is about 5.5 km per lap and you have a 1.3 second Advantage per lap that means we're going to be about 7 seconds per lap slower uh if the you know lap was exactly a circle but this tells you that downforce is critical and that the lap times are going to be slower as a result of downforce if that was the only variable that changed okay so finally let's talk about power because the fifth specific rule I'm interested in could have big consequences okay so the rule state the maximum stateof charge Delta for the battery cannot exceed 4 megga again about 1 kilowatt hour so what does that mean well it means you can never continuously power yourself or recover more energy than about 1 kilowatt hour otherwise you would exceed this state of charge Delta now that is the same number as the previous year so although we have three times the power we have the same energy Delta within our battery so where does this become problematic well take for example uh Max going on one of the longest Straits in the Formula 1 Calendar and I looked at his race and he did about 20 seconds at Full Throttle so if we have 350 Kow and we apply that for 20 seconds that means the total amount of energy we would need for that long straight if we were flooring it the whole time would be 7 Mega we don't have seven megga to use we do in total but we can only use four at a time so we're reduced that means you can only use it for the beginning of that acceleration then at the end Max slows down from 345 km hour down to 120 km/ hour in Just 4 seconds well the maximum regen rate we have for these batteries is 350 Kow so 350 KW at 4 seconds is just 1.4 megga so here you can see the problem very clearly we don't have enough energy to accelerate for the full straight and we don't recover enough of the energy there at the end because we're only breaking for a very short period of time so the total kinetic energy that Max's Car would have in going from 345 down to 120 would be about 3.1 megga but we only capture 1.4 of that because the rate at which we can capture it is only 350 KW so what are our two problems here well we run out of energy on the straight and we can't recover all of that energy on the straight and we're super dependent on that energy recovery for good lap times right because now so much of it is dependent on the electric motor so what is the solution well for a very brief burst as you're going around a corner and coming out of it you use that maximum power and try to get up to speed as quickly as possible that's the most efficient way to use that power then you don't want to break as fast as you possibly can if you're trying to recover as much energy as possible if you slow down how long it takes you to break you can get more energy into that battery pack so what you might see teams doing is backing off early on a long straight and slowing it down for a longer duration in order to recover more of that energy so that they can make sure they get to use their total 8.5 megga on that lap now this does open up the possibility for some different strategies and it's going to open up some passing opportunities so expect Ferrari to absolutely nail the strategy um that's for me like the most excited I feel like a kid in the candy store so as far as the question will the cars be slower initially it looks like it but rules can change and Engineers can engineer so I'm excited to see what happens if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 19,842

Keywords: formula 1, 2026 formula 1, fia, engineering explained, formula 1 engine, f1

Id: AwwCSkCEi-Y

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 12 2024