I disagree. F1 is infinitely more marketable for road car technology. What sounds better? F1 style gearbox? Or touring car style gearbox? You're right that touring car tech is perhaps a little more relevant than f1 tech though.
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I disagree. F1 is infinitely more marketable for road car technology. What sounds better? F1 style gearbox? Or touring car style gearbox? You're right that touring car tech is perhaps a little more relevant than f1 tech though.
Maybe I should have added words like '...in a more focused/targeted way than has previously been the case', or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Doesn't hurt for the FIA boss, given his nominal responsibilities regarding the motor industry, to spell it out, does it? And I actually think that F1 is already in danger of appearing rather vulgar to many non-enthusiasts, so maybe the major manufacturers aren't acting quickly enough. Still, the same can be said for those in charge of F1.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Turbo chargers were not F1/race technology transferred to road car, rather the other way around.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
In fact, it's more true to say that turbochargers had nothing to do with cars at all when they were first developed. But you are right that turbo cars had existed before Renault entered F1.Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
True, but isn't that because F1 is seen as being unattainable and unique to Joe Public. Sticking a turbo badge to your Fiat Panda in the 80's was an image thing, not a technology thing :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Making F1 less unattainable and less unique, as Max appears to want, may get the worst of all worlds. Less attractive to manufacturers as participants, so less application to road cars, so less interest from Joe Public...
Yep, it was first boats and trains! Than the first "car" with turbo charger was a truck.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
Aircraft too. The idea that F1 brought us turbo's is funny :p
Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
But wouldn't it be right to say that turbos reached a wider audience, and use, once they had been seen in F1, particularly in relation to road car use?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Possibly, but they have still been something of a niche development, except perhaps when mated to a diesel engine. I would have thought that F1 ought to be able to do a bit better than that and bring about more fundamental developments if Max's hope is to become reality. Personally, I have my doubts about this, but I'm no engineer or scientist.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
I don't think so.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
IMO the use of turbos on Porsche's race car in the 70's had a bigger influence.
And still they are widely used only on diesel road cars, for good reason though.
Both of the cars in our household are turbocharged and one is a petrol but i suspect we're not typical. I think petrol turbo's will start to catch on in the mainstream though due to the movement towards smaller cars and the fact that you can get the same power with very similar and sometimes better economy from a smaller turbo engine than a bigger n/a engine.
I'm late to this discussion.
If you are not familiar with General Motors products (I wouldn't blame you) :p :
The Pontiac Grand Prix (or Grand Am)
Came out with a paddle shifter on the steering wheel around 2003.
Sort of a gimmick considering the car is really a sedan.
But clearly an F1 mimic/inspired
I thought aircraft first used superchargers?Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Tazio. Wait till you see DDCT boxes become commonplace. Them you'll see that a paddle shift system doesn't need to be just a gimic.
Well, as an F1 fan in the late 70's/early 80's I do remember seeing the rise of the turbo in F1, and then the appearance of turbo road cars. Particularly memorable ones for me were the Saab 900 and Renault 5.Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
I've always thought that increased regularity with which I used to see a turbo badge on a road car was not entirely unconnected with the use of turbos in F1, and the popularity of F1.
Schmenke there are many aircraft which used turbo's in WW2. Probably less than were using superchargers but still :)
I think the point about Turbo's is that they were used in a variety of guises pre F1 but were really only seen as a high performance race function for cars after their spectacular appearence in F1.
F1 develops some technology that filters down but like most race series, also adopts and enhances technology that then becomes commonplace.
Without a doubt! :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Perhaps you have a point. I'm too young to remember the turbo era let alone it's impact upon the image of the turbo so i can't say for sure but do you not think the Quattro coming in and dominating the WRC with it's turbocharged engine and 4wd would have had a greater impact on people given how popular rallying was back then.
Don't forget, though, that quite a few well-known turbo cars of that era will have been developed for touring car racing/rallying homologation purposes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Knock-on
Very good point Ben :up:
I guess my point about turbos, when it comes to road car application, is that they were as much about marketing as they were about technology which brings me back to my point that, for the manufacturers, F1 is primarily a marketing tool. Sure, there may be other benefits, but the bottom line is they see F1 as a means to enhance their brand. If that wasn't the case they wouldn't be involved.
But if they were about marketing and F1 them where were the expensive turbocharged cars made by all those manufacturer? Sure there was the renno 5 and a few others but by and large the manufacturers involved didn't build a lot of cars with turbo's. It was all about the show and that's kind of what i've been talking about with regards to standard engines.
Quite agree but I think the big impact was F1. However, I don't think F1 has quite the pull today it had in previous years as the sport gradually erodes in popularity.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
Predictably I disagree :p I think at least compared to the WRC, F1 is stronger in terms of marketability than ever. I think rallying was a better way of selling cars and demonstrating new technology back in the 70's and 80's
Italy used turbos Pre WW2 to drain Lake Nimi uphill to salvage a couple enormous ships that were toys of Caligula :eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Am I confusing turbines with turbos I can't find the link But I've seen photo's of massive turbines that actually used a tunnel dug by Roman slaves to a lake upstream facilitating the constant water level of Nimi and Caligula's ships!
When the Italians salvaged them 1927-32 they pumped the water back up through this tunnel
"Between 1927 and 1932, under the orders of the Italian dictator Mussolini, they had been pulled out of the temporarily drained lake."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_ships
Turbos were used on high and very performance cars before being used in F1.
That is unless we think that the Porsche 934 and 935 were not world beaters and were not dominating the high end sport car championships back in the 70's.
And sure they were more road car related than any F1 car ever built.
To be fair there were only a handful of manufacturers involved at the time I'm thinking of. Renault, BMW & Honda were the F1 turbo pioneers with others following later, but I take your point. The manufacturers did not all rush out to build turbos.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I don't think that's in dispute ioan. Turbos were not an F1 "invention", but their use in F1 did give them a prominence that the likes of sportscars could not provide.Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
That might be the case. I don't really know if it was LeMans and endurance racing or F1 that were more prominent back than.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
I see your point, but even so there were very few turbo road cars, and I really doubt that Saab, for example, went down the turbo route for reasons that had anything to do with F1.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Seeing the success of Diesel power in Le Mans/WTCC - will we ever see the day when there is a Diesel F1 engine? And if not, why not? Shouldn't Motorsport, and F1 in particular, be seen to be doing something apart from having green painted tyres?
Absolutely, for F1 is the biggest global brand in motorsport. But how will the technical regulations be relaxed to allow radical changes in engine type, changes in configuration, etc? The loopholes that allowed six-wheeled cars, fan cars, four-wheel-drive and so on have all been closed up. Will some have to be re-opened?Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyRAC
I can understand the banning on six-wheelers, fan cars, but not 4WD. Anyway, surely if there's a will, there's a way - as the saying goes. Having seen a report in EVO magazine, the petrol v diesel road car split is much closer now. It would be interesting to see a F1 Diesel car, though you might not hear it.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
It matters not what sort of "cap" you put on F1 because the legal departments are smart enough to find legal work arounds for them.
In the cases of the manufacturers, they could very easily consolidate the accounts back into the main body of research and development and then have the work performed on the cars "donated" to the teams as not-for-profit-organisations. You may be able to impose a costs cap on a team, but when those costs no longer "exist" then it scarcely matters.
If you then went on a "full diclosure" basis, then it would not be terribly difficult to shuffle costs back into the rest of the organisation and although it might technically possible to conduct an audit, what would happen for someone like Renault where the associated costs might appear anywhere within the PSA group. A team that was only buying customer equipment might be simple to dicern costs in, but then again a group like Honda could just as easily declare "Friday Club" basis.
I think they should be. The rules should set parameters within which the teams can produce their own solutions, rather than there being a rule for almost every eventuality. The rules have become so restrictive that there is no room for innovation.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
On another, related. note it seems that the FIA & FOTA had a "very positive and constructive" meeting yesterday over the future development of F1. It's amazing what can be achieved by unprecedented unity among the teams and dialogue between them and the FIA.
What is your obsession with innovation? :crazy: Innovation doesn't make for better racing and more spectacle :mark: I think it's the James Allen type people who are to blame for this view by constantly going on about how F1 is the pinnacle and so on. It was never innovation that made F1 good to watch. In fact in the last few years innovation with regards to aero and other things has made it worse to watch. Give the cars wide tires, take away the wings and you'll see good racing. Is that innovation? Completely the opposite, it's going back to basics. Sometimes innovation makes for interesting solutions like the air storage tank on the Ford Escort Cosworth but more often than not you get stuff like big wings which makes the cars worse to watch or traction control which also makes F1 worse to watch. Manufacturers will always try to innovate to the point where the cars are fairly easy to drive in terms of a race car and all the driver needs to do is point and shoot. I oversimplify of course but manufacturers don't want good spectacular racing. They want to win and if that means making a series boring to watch then they'll do it.
I wouldn't call it obsession Daniel. Just an enjoyment of the kind of variety - engines, designs - we used to see on an F1 grid. Perhaps that in itself didn't make for better racing, but I think it improved the spectacle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Innovation then was a "big idea" - the Tyrrell P34, the Brabham 'fan car', the ground effect Lotus, even the twin chassis Lotus - not evolution of an idea, which is what I think we've seen with the development of aero over the years.
I agree. But I don't think you're talking about innovation but merely a variety of formulae. Thing is if one is inherently better all of the teams will use it hence you're back to square one. That's what always happens in motorsport there days.
You're right that teams have always 'copied' the good ideas - just look at the number of Lotus 79 clones during the 1979 season - but I think over time the problem has been that increasingly restrictive regulation has strangled innovation and therefore variety.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
I'll admit to looking back with rose-tinted glasses, but as an example Lotus were real innovators. Colin Chapman made numerous leaps forward in design ideas that were often improved on by others, the Lotus 79 being just one example.
That simply cannot happen today because the sport has been regulated to the nth degree, and there is little or no sign that is about to change. Therefore it is likely that the status quo will remain, whatever changes are proposed.
I agree, but then F1 runs the risk of becoming boring if someone comes up with a stunning innovation and blitzes every race as a result. It could also bring costs up again, which is surely the opposite of what should be happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1