An engineer replies to Stefan Johansson's blueprint for reshaping F1 Part I

02/05/2019
FEATURE BY MAX NOBLE

Dear reader, Mr Stefan Johansson has provided what I will call a thought-provoking 'Straw-man' for our consideration.

In the engineering world a straw-man is offered to give a complete start point for discussion and refinement as one knows it is not going to be the final product, but a step in the right direction, and enables people to grapple with the entire problem, rather than what can appear to be 10,000 unrelated parts. My thanks to Mr Johansson for a well-considered article.

...and now, firmly in the interests of defending engineers everywhere, and providing a polite repost to keep the discussion going, I'll offer some gentle pokes to this straw-man and see what remains standing, and what floats as chaff to the floor, to be swept politely into the Pitpass broom cupboard, where they can join a few "Super Bowl Experience" moments that have been gathering dust for some time now.

In his introduction Mr Johansson states: The younger generation doesn't seem to care, F1 and motorsport in general is struggling to catch their attention.

This addresses our first issue. With the motor car over 100 years old, with self-driving cars probable within the decade, and with many under-30 folk using Uber, with a twist of public transport, we are indeed struggling to catch their attention. Many folk no longer care. The esteemed Mike Lawrence wrote some time back how Motorcycle Speedway was immense in Britain just after the Second World War. And yet a seemingly monster of sport simply faded away. Is it that Formula One as a main stream sport is fading away, and as I suggested sometime back in Goodbye Horseless Carriage, are we gracelessly sliding into being a minority sport for the monied few to race, and the caring few to watch?

Next Mr Johansson split is argument for improvements into four main categories; Economics, Competition, Entertainment and Relevance. I will address each in turn, but with reducing detail, as there is some overlap between categories. So come! Let us shake the Johansson straw-man and see what straw-man 2.0 arrives trim and chipper on the Pitpass desk.

Economics

Mr Johansson places the blame for soaring costs on the endless development wars between teams, and quite simply we agree. Yet endlessly seeking improvement is part of the human condition, especially among sports-folk. Can you imagine an Olympics where each track team arrived and pronounced, "Well, given how amazing Usain Bolt was, we've dialled training back 10%, eaten far more pizza and not got stressed. Let's call him the best, and our goal is to be within 15% of his time, give or take."

I do not think we'd be too impressed. The endless and relentless seeking of perfection appears to be genetically coded within us. So we have to allow continued improvements, just at a more affordable level.

Mr Johansson then singles out the aero-race and the engine-race combined with the FIA decision to make things last race-after-race as prime suspects in pushing costs too high, and then sprinkles a generous topping of manufacturer demanded pointless "road relevance" on top to ice the cake.

As Miss Physics would politely point out unless one wishes to race in a vacuum one has to deal with aerodynamics, unless one elects for an aquatic fun-feast in which case she will cheerfully point you to the similarly constructed laws of hydrodynamics to keep you busy. Daniel Bernoulli is to blame for releasing his book "Hydrodynamica" to a curious public in 1738. What later became known as the Bernoulli Principle states that as speed of a fluid increases there is a simultaneous decrease in pressure, or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy.

Skip forward 281 years, add dynamic lift, drag, aerofoils, and mix with a generous helping of Newton's Laws of motion... and hello Boeing 747, Starlifter, unstable Ford Sierra's, and modern Formula One cars. A classic example of not listening to Miss Physics is the Ford Tickford Capri of the early 1980's. This turbocharged, monster of plastic, metal and (optional) leather trim reached 60 mph in around 6.7 seconds, before rocketing on to an impressive for the day 137 mph. A shame the front of the car generated lift, not down force, and the steering went light as the tyres lifted once a touch north of 100 mph. A handful to drive requiring nerves of steel and a highly reactive driving style? Indeed. Great fun? Well, rather depends on how long one wanted to have this style of fun.

Many engineers, technicians, general science nerds and geeks are fans of Formula One and understand the concepts involved, and grasp what each team is trying to do as they fiddle with turning vanes, end-plates, front wings, rear diffusers and all the rest. No, the average curious fan or modestly maths-capable engineer could not design any of them, but we can understand the issues being addressed, and get excited by new developments, and hence, the development race.

Standardising aero is not the answer. Limiting maximum aero is not the answer, because with the aid of their super-computers all the teams would flat-line at the maximum within a season or two. Framing rules that allow for creative solutions, is half the answer, and providing a budget floor (more on that in a moment) rather than a cost cap (impossible to correctly police, refer to the wobbling Tower of Turtles, and A Crisis Carol Coda for our most recent discussions of this topic).

Hybrid power trains. Mr Johansson's suggestion later in his article for an energy equivalence rule is sound, and one that with care could be applied. It also aligns with previous discussions on Pitpass about just such an approach. The prescriptive rules of the FIA have forced us into a situation where one, and only one, hybrid approach is valid. As I've previously noted 'Road Relevance' only exists as a concept to allow the rabid racers within the huge manufacturers to justify to the Board why spending zillions on racing (other than brand recognition) is justifiable and desirable. Then making these engines last for so many races, only pushes the cost higher! I have previously lamented that the otherwise razor-sharp mind of Max Mosley appears to have left the room when he pushed for this approach on the ground of cost saving! A disposable 700 bhp engine that only needs cover one race distance before a rebuild is always going to be cheaper to build than one that must last three, five, or more races. Go back in time to the turbo era and qualifying engines, practice engines, and then race engines for a race weekend, and the total season cost for engines was still far, far less than today!

Apply an energy equivalence rule, and limit teams to two engines per weekend per car before penalties apply. Hello innovation.

Next Mr Johansson points an accusing finger at forcing teams to build their own stuff rather than buying off the shelf. As an engineer that loves this side of the sport I am not keen on standardisation. As with the aerodynamic counter-argument above, I love following how teams tackle the various issues of building 'The Package'. Later in his article Mr Johansson calls for nearly everything apart from the custom-fitted driver's seat to be off the shelf.

Not a surprise really. There is an old saying that runs along the lines of "Never ask a Fishmonger if you should have fish or sausages for dinner". The point being the Fishmonger will always recommend the fish. Being a former Formula One driver, Mr Johansson is highly biased towards the driver's side of the equation, which is fine (not withstanding that he was also really rather good at it). Much of his revision of the sport could be summed-up as; "Get the dang engineers out the way, give us over-powered fast cars, and let us gladiators race!" From this perspective standardised parts across the entire engine and chassis are of no relevance to our red-mist gladiator who is only too keen to drive at eleven-tenth's around Monza's Parabolica – once returned to its original profile.

Why not create an Amish Formula One where we simply freeze the rules as per 1979? Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the French GP on 1st July that year at Dijon. It marked the first win for a turbo-powered car. A car, that if one follows many of Mr Johansson's recommendations one would come rather close to recreating. It's also the very same race in which Gilles Villeneuve (Ferrari) and Rene Arnoux (Renault) battled mightily for second. In one of the comments about Mr Johansson's article a reader noted they had the good fortune to know Gilles, and that 40 years ago he was making the same complaints as raised in Mr Johansson's article, and offered rather similar solutions! From the driver's perspective it will ever be thus. "Give us all wild beasts to tame, too much power, too little grip, insane corners, and then get the pesky nerds out the way and let us race!"

While some standard parts might well be of benefit, too many will simply make Formula One a one make series, and over time it will be even less relevant to the road-going beasts we can observe (McLaren Senna anyone...?) that could in the years ahead actually lap any given circuit faster than the frozen Formula One cars. Certainly, the drivers will be having a ball racing wheel to wheel, but the fans will be even more disengaged.

Force too many standardised parts into Formula One and we would need to revise the "Constructor's Championship" to either a "Kit Assembler's Championship", or possibly a "Pit Crew Championship". Again from a driver's perspective this would fall into the "No loss to me" category. From a team's perspective it would fall into the "Why bother?" Category, which is why Mercedes and Ferrari oppose too much standardisation. They need to be able to differentiate themselves via excellent engineering. It is not useful for Toto to stand-up and say, "This year Mercedes fitted Lewis' seat perfectly and then we all stood back. It's all him. Nothing to do with us. He could have won in any car on the gird this year, and we are really lucky I could persuade the board to pay Lewis' salary, because whoever has him in this one make series will win."

Having addressed aero concerns, Mr Johansson recommends standard brakes and a standard monocoque. As reasoned above, I believe this is a bridge too far for the teams, and for those of us with a modest grasp of the concepts it would kill a significant area of interest. Anyone who has had the pleasure of a "Track Day" in a road car, and/or the delight of sampling ceramic brakes will know brakes have an immense impact on how the car can be thrown into corners. Modern Formula One brakes are so complex due to previous arguments caused by that naughty Mr Bernoulli. They need to dissipate heat, not kill air flow, not flood the car with heat soak, not become unstable after two hard stops...

Standardised monocoque is "Hello one make series". So I'm simply going to say thank-you, but no.

Standardised electronics have been partly implemented, but with considerable ability to "parameterise" within the ECU and hence control one's unique power source. I actually think the FIA has this about right as it is (yes dear reader, really!). So a gold star to the FIA for actually being on top of this one. No need for further effort here.

Similarly standardised gearboxes. The FIA stopped the ability to custom-rebuild for every circuit, a good thing, and then mandated the gearbox has to last many races, a bad thing. While not as ideal a solution as the ECU it is not a bad solution and we see few gearbox failures across the year. Yet it is an area where innovation, and repackaging of the rear end is in the hands of the team, rather than being a "One Make Series" solution of handing them out as standard units. Not quite a full gold star to the FIA, but the current situation works quite well.

Mr Johansson's next cost saving point is banning communications back to the factory during race weekends, and this is a very interesting point that touches, in my mind, on the much larger issue of simulators, and all manner of super-computing dark arts.

Each aspect of the formula one team operation is now a fine art-come-science, come gritted-teeth massive team effort, and individual hero moments that has been refined and focused each race weekend since that first World Championship weekend at Silverstone in 1950. The teams at that historic race weekend had been refining their skills since the first motor race from Paris to Bordeaux in 1895, the same year the first organised motor race took place in the United States from Chicago to Evanston on Thanksgiving Day.

The remarkable teams we witness performing on race weekends now are the result of 124 years of human endeavour to make them that fraction more efficient and effective than the others. Naturally progress has not been linear over all that time. The advent of affordable computing had a big impact on design and analysis, especially since the advent of highly detailed computational fluid dynamic modelling, and the current generation of highly refined simulators. Hence, returning to our suggested cost saving point, much live data is gathered during the opening days of a race weekend to be sent back to the factory for detailed review and analysis, and to ensure that simulated results are mapping correctly to the real world results.

Running at the track might be limited, but simulated runs with dozens of variations, can be run over and over back at the factory, with resultant set-up changes all waiting nicely for the garage crew when they arrive back at the track the next morning, to crack a fresh espresso and out-perform the hell out of the teams in the other garages... except they are all doing it.

So in short I can see where banning sending data back to the factory overnight (only allowing it after the race weekend finishes, say) could save time and effort for each team, but the bigger issue is the massive amount spent on simulators and huge computing facilities. Allowing more track time and banning the simulators would save far more, and see a return to more set-up and team errors as the margin for mistakes would become larger once the excessive certainty of endless modelling was removed.

So ban communications back to the factory? Yes indeed, and then remove the simulators and 70% of the computing power as well.

Indeed we've previously discussed on Pitpass the concepts around the FIA providing access to common (FIA maintained) facilities for wind tunnels, simulators, and computing power. In this manner each team has exactly the same tool sets, exactly the same amount of monitored time to use them, and it really will be down to brain power and some dark-art blind luck as to who generates the best solution, not budget. How about that Liberty...?

Mr Johansson then gives a ballpark for what he considers all these measures would save. Like my own efforts to bound some of the finance issues within Formula One, this is just an informed guess, and while Mr Johansson's figures cannot be verified, they are probably in about the right ball park in that we would shave tens of millions off the operating budgets if all the proposed measures were implemented.

And as Mr Johansson comments, and I've previously written about, at the end of the day this will mean many jobs simply vanishing from each team. I've previously given figures for the level of job loss we might see in Formula One if budgets were pulled down to around the $100 to $150 million level. It is simply a fact of capitalist business that industries, jobs, ways of life, come and go, ebbing and flowing along the lines of consumer desire, and government mandate. There would be a direct personal toll on many fine people currently working in Formula One, and this would need to be carefully considered and a gradual ramp down of budget limits, or a slow introduction, over say a decade, of the changes Mr Johansson recommends would need to be taken to ensure it was a manageable ramping down of staff levels, and not a wholesale pitching of thousands of people out onto the kerb one grim Monday morning.

Next Mr Johansson gives an interesting model for using "Dollars per point" as a basis for redistributing revenue. This is an excellent section of the straw-man and deserves to drive good discussion. In summary I would make only one small adjustment to the proposed model. In the existing model it is proposed each team receives a base $50 million for turning up, and then $200,000 per point scored, plus a $25 million bonus for winning the championship. I'd reduce the $50 million for turning-up to $25 million, and then use the remaining balance for a calculation based on "$225 million divided by total number of years all teams have existed" gives a dollar value per year for existing as a team. Then each team multiplies this value by how long they have continuously existed as the same team. Hence Ferrari do still get a "Historic bonus" but so does everyone else, and surviving long gives one a larger bonus. Force India turning into Racing Point would therefore be an issue for all to agree (as Haas have argued) that it is a new team with new owners... or not...

In part II, Max looks at competition, entertainment and relevance.

Max Noble

Learn more about Max and check out his previous features, here

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Published: 02/05/2019
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