- For lots of production
cars as horsepower increases, so does the size of the wheels. But if we look at an F1 car,
it doesn't fit that trend. They make close to a thousand horsepower, but used 13 inch wheels. The Formula One, they're not
the only one using tiny wheels. Oh no, NASCAR, IndyCar, they both use relatively small
wheels at just 15 inches. But when it comes to wheels,
bigger isn't always better. So why in 2022 is F1
ditching their small boys for some dups. Well,
today we're gonna look at why the most high performance
race cars in the world have itty bitty wheels
and why Formula One, are making their cars slower
by sizing those wheels up. Let's go. (upbeat music) A big thank you to our
friends at Shells, Pennzoil for sponsoring today's video. Did you know that Pennzoil
is the first motor oil made from natural gas, not crude? Look at this. The base oil
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of my babies on the track or just cruising around the streets, I want the best overall protection, which is why I use Pennzoil Platinum. If you're looking to
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Pennzoil Platinum Motor Oil, made from natural gas. Click the link in the description below, and now let's get back to some B2B. You know, it's a good day
at B2B, when we got beakers in the mix. Hello, we're
science-y around here. Ohh! (laughs) As we've established a big
change coming to Formula One in 2022, are the larger
wheels. No big deal, right? Wrong! James Allison, the Technical Director of the Mercedes F1 Team
says, those larger wheels will make the cars, two
seconds slower per lap. That's roughly what you expect from a car that lost 125 horsepower. That's huge. He then said that if you
like those bigger wheels, it's because you're a 13 year old boy or fan of Fast and Furious films. Yes, I am both of those.
Then he calls your mama, (loud bickering bass) That guy, the FIA who respects your mother for being a strong independent woman says, larger wheels are gonna
lead to better racing. So who should we believe,
Allison or the FIA? Car enthusiasts tend to
associate larger wheels with increased performance. Is that because we're
all 13 year old fan boys or fans of the Fast and Furious franchise? Well, no, there really is a correlation between a car's performance
and wheel size partially, that's because in a
road car or a race car, weight is the enemy of speed. Put your car on a diet
and performance increases, add mass and performance decreases. Even a one inch increase in wheel size can add a significant
amount of mass to a car. On average 17 inch wheels,
they weigh about 9.4 kilograms, it's 20.7 pounds. 18 inch wheels, they weigh about 10.7 kilograms. That's 1.3 kgs, more weight per wheel, or about as much as an adult Prairie dog. Now you put four of those on a car and that's an increase in
total mass of 5.2 kilograms or an Allen Swamp Monkey. Now based on power to weight
ratio that additional mass in a Formula One car is equivalent
to losing 5.7 horsepower. F1 is a tight competition
and losing five horsepower is the difference between
winning a race and losing a race. But F1 wheels, aren't
increasing by one inch, they're increasing by five
inches, from 13 inches to 18 inches. F1 wheel weights
are a closely guarded secret. So we can only estimate what
difference that size change will make to the total weight of the cars. I was able to find the weight
of one 13 inch F1 wheel from the 2001 season. And sure enough, it was just four kilograms. An 18 inch wheel made from
the same material using the same construction, would
weigh nearly twice that, 7.9 kilograms for a total
increase in the car's mass of 15.7 kgs. That change
in power to weight ratio is equivalent to losing 17 horsepower, but 17 horsepower shouldn't produce a two second per lap deficit
like Allison suggests. There's rumored to be a
formula for calculating how horsepower loss will affect lap time. Every horsepower lost increases lap time by roughly 0.016 seconds.
If that formula is correct, 17 horsepower should
only add about a quarter of a second per lap,
not a full two seconds. The reason for Allison's
pessimism is because wheels and tires, aren't just linear
mass, their rotational mass. Usually when we talk about weight or mass, we're talking about linear mass. That's just a measure
of how difficult it is to set an object in motion
or bring it to a stop in a straight line. Greater mass requires
more force to get moving. For car, adding linear
mass is the equivalent to taking away horsepower
because it alters the power to weight ratio. If you wanna learn more
about power to weight ratios, why don't you go click
this feeder right here. Now rotational mass on the other hand, is how difficult it is to
get an object like a wheel to rotate. Rotational
mass is different because it just doesn't depend on
the weight of the object, but where that weight is
positioned relative to its center or axis of rotation. The
further from that axis, the weight is positioned, the harder it is to make that object increase or decrease its rate of rotation. A car's engine has to make
all the parts attached to the drive line rotate. That includes things like
the flywheel and the clutch, the gears in the gearbox, the drive shaft, the axles and brake disc, and the wheels. All that rotating mass is one
reason why crank horsepower in wheel horsepower, differ. That difference is the
cars drivetrain power loss, and the heavier all those items are, the more power is lost
making them spin up to speed, which means less power
available to accelerate the mass of the rest of the car forward. Increasing or decreasing
the weight of something like a drive shaft,
will have minimal effect on drivetrain loss,
because most of the mass of the drive shaft is close
to the axis of rotation. But wheels are different. Most of their mass is in
the rim as far as possible from the axis of rotation. Increasing wheel size adds extra weight, almost all of which is
further away from the center of the wheel creating
an even greater increase in the rotational mass. The more rotational mass you have, the more power you need
to overcome that mass and the less power you get
to apply to forward movement of your race car. So is larger wheels increased
linear and rotational mass enough for a two second
deficit in a Formula One? Not quiet. There's actually one more
problem that Allison has in mind and that's because new
wheels means, new tires. You know what they say about a race car with big wheels, right? Freaking big tires. (bell dinging) And the new F1 tires
are bigger just in ways that will slow the cars. They're also smaller in other ways that will also slow the
cars. Let me explain. Current F1 tires have a
diameter of 670 millimeters in a 13 inch wheel. That means the tire sidewall
is about 170 millimeters. That's a whole lot of sidewall, but that just means more
cushion for the push-in because that tall sidewall is
part of the car suspension. It absorbs impacts and
vibrations from the road surface to help control the
movement and the balance of the car's weight and
to maintain its grip. That absorption mostly
happens through deformation of the sidewall and the taller sidewall is the more it can deform. Because the tires are the
first point of contact with the road surface, any
shocks or vibrations they absorb don't have to be managed by
the rest of the suspension. If the tires they can
do a lot of that work, the springs and dampers can
be made lighter, simpler, cheaper, and more compact. Tires are such an integral
part of F1 suspension that teams invented the J Damper to stabilize tire oscillations for even better tire
suspension performance. We made the most difficult
to understand B2B ever on the J Damper. If you really wanna nerd
out click, click right here. But before you go click that, click that like and subscribe button. It really helps us out. Thank you. The new formula one
tires for 2022 are bigger than the current ones. The sizes haven't been finalized yet, but they will be wider and
they'll have a total diameter of 725 millimeters versus the current, which is 670 millimeters. And just like having larger wheels, larger tires means an
increased in tire weight and it moves that weight
further from the center of the wheel, increasing
rotational mass as well. That slows the car down
for all the same reasons that bigger wheels slow the car down. But because of those bigger wheels, the new tires have a smaller
sidewall, just 135 millimeters. That means the cars
will need new suspension with larger springs and
dampers because they now have to manage more of the
shocks and vibrations the cars encounter. The larger shocks and
suspension components needed to make up for that loss, accounts for yet another weight increase that's
going to slow the cars down. So the reason why Formula
One, NASCAR and IndyCar all use relatively small wheels
is because they're light, they're easy to get spinning
and they can fit tires with large sidewalls,
which are an important part of the suspension. Like it or not, this dude Allison is right. Changing to larger wheels is
going to slow the cars down that makes the change a bit of a mystery. And Formula One is once again, not alone. NASCAR, they're switching
to 18 inch wheels in 2022 and IndyCars expected to change in 2023. Each series claims that
one reason to go big is so the wheels will
be more like those found on performance road cars. So if they know the cars
are going to be slower, and if we can throw away their
reasoning for using wheels that much more resemble production cars, why make the switch? The old taller tire sidewalls that do so much suspension
work actually creates some problems. Squishy tires, they're imprecise, and the teams can't adjust
that part of the suspension for the specific track or the conditions, the way they can tune springs and dampers. A shorter sidewall means
more variety and team choices about suspension setup. Another reason for the new
wheels is major changes to aerodynamics coming for 2022. These are partially
intended to increase safety by reducing speed. Decreasing the load created
by downforce reduces stress on the tires and this
is supposed to prevent the sort of blowouts that have plagued the British Grand Prix, and also took out Lance
Stroll and race leader, Max for stopping at Baku,
a couple of weeks ago. Less aerodynamic load means
less sidewall is necessary to support that load and
less sidewall, means tires can be run at lower pressure
and they will flex less both of which should reduce
the incidents of blowout. But the big reason for aerodynamic changes is to reduce dirty air. That's the low pressure
area and turbulence behind an F1 car created by all
its aerodynamic parts. That low pressure area
is how F1 car slipstream or get a tow on straight sections. The following car has
40 to 50% less downforce than what the front car has,
which reduces drag increasing their speed. Now, while that's
great in a straight line, dirty air, and that lack of
downforce creates a problem in corners where less
downforce means less grip, and less grip means lower speeds. Dirty air makes it
incredibly difficult to pass because the follower can't
keep up with the car in front through a corner. Aerodynamic changes are being introduced to smooth the surface of the
cars to clean up that air. And it turns out, a lot
of dirty air is created by the wheels and tires. F1 tires with tall sidewalls
deflect during racing, they literally changed
shape and oscillate. That ever changing
shape creates turbulence as the tire passes through the air. A lower profile tire deflects less, creating less turbulence. To help further reduce all
of that dirty air in 2022, there'll be winglets that sit above the tires called cleaning blades that slow the turbulent air coming off the tires and reduce the low
pressure area behind them. Like a spoiler on the trunk of your car. That's exactly why every dude
who has a civic hatchback has a spoiler, they're
just trying to clean up all their dirty air, man. Next time you see a civic
with a frigging big spoiler, just give them a high five. Big thanks for cleaning up the dirty air, they'll know exactly what
you're talking about. Scream it loud, loudly, and aggressively. As loud and aggressive as you can. - Hey, sweet (beep) spoiler dude! Then they'll love you (chuckles). The spinning wheels also create turbulence because of their irregular surface shape. So to prevent this, F1 will
be introducing smooth covers that seal the outside
surface of the wheels. The ones that they were seen in testing all the way back in 2019,
they looked a little goofy. They painted to look like fake wheels. Those are what they are, but supposedly, these
will have integrated LEDs to display information
to fans like tire wear or pressure, or if we're lucky,
a GIF of my face doing this. (loud alarm buzzing) (heavy metal music) Changing wheel size might
seem like a minor thing, but it has so many knockdown effects that we don't have enough
time to talk about them in one single episode, we're
gonna need more episodes. It increases unsprung mass. That's the part of the
car that's not supported by the suspension. And this has significant
impacts on handling. Bigger wheels means the interior volume of the tires is smaller,
which changes the pressure there'll be running. And that changes the way
they heat up and cool down. That change in the thermal
properties of the tires means, Pirelli, they got to come up with new rubber compounds that
work under those conditions. And they won't be able to relax after that because their exclusive F1
contract is up for 2023. So things can get all crazy after them. And there's yet another major
rule change coming in 2024, no more tire warmers. That means Pirelli or whoever
is making the tires has to produce a race tire
compound that sticks from 10 degrees C, all the
way up to 150 degrees C and that's never been done before. As if that wasn't enough, new
engines are coming for 2025. F1, they never freaking stop
and neither do we, baby. So we are gonna be doing a lot of B2B's on all those F1 changes. There's something that you wanna see, leave a comment down below. We'll try to see if we
can do a episode on it. Thank you guys so much for
watching this episode of B2B. Follow us here on Instagram
at Donut @donutmedia, follow me on Instagram @JeremiahBurton. Until next week, bye for now.
That’s quite a well informed video from them, nice.
Wait a minute, since when tires are going to be wider? Last I checked rear tires are supposed to keep the actual width, while front tires are going to be 270mm wide instead of 305. Did they change the rules?
Nolan and Jeremiah are great hosts. James takes a little getting used to, be he's got the spirit.
Wouldn't the larger tires change the footprint also? Wouldn't the biggest slowing effect be the increase in drag/friction from the tire?
I think the one thing he left out here is brake performance. They may not be increasing the size of the brakes, but just having more room in the wheel will give teams more options for brake cooling which in theory will make brake performance less sensitive to dirty air also.
I’ve been watching F1 about 25 years now and nothing yet has brought me round to the new tyres. I know I’ll come around eventually just like in the past but I’m struggling with this one. It’s been 13” rims forever and this is just screaming “not F1” at me at the moment. Even F2/3 aren’t helping to ease it in.
still the current wheels look faster and better
I understand why perelli changed the wheels, but in my opinion they've gone a touch too big. they look more like run flats with little to no side wall. I think it would be better if the wheels were an inch or half inch smaller. that way they would look more like standard road tires.
This video was excellent