What If F1 ENGINES Had No Rules?

so I've been thinking

what

would happen if F1

engines

had no

rules

, how powerful they would really be. I'm talking about there are no

rules

about configuration, so you could have an inline 4, a V12 or even a w24, why not? And there are no rules about capacity. Is it better to go with a 2L that is small and light or a huge 10L that is powerful and heavy and would you bother using a hybrid system? Yes, an electric motor adds a lot of torque, but batteries are still quite heavy and cumbersome, and that's all around, you still need to brake, turn and accelerate on a circuit, so if the goal is to make a car of F1 circulate around the circuit as fast as possible,

what

would the designers do really well?

I spoke to the leader of Red Ball's powertrain performance design team to find out. what happens, but there must be some rules, otherwise we could end up with a rocket tied to the rear wing, so let's say our engine without rules must be able to fit in a space of 100 x 60 x 60 cm, which is 39 x 24 x 24, which by the way, is a huge volume and much larger than current F1

engines

, for example an old V10 from the 2000s would measure approximately 62 cm long, 56 cm wide and 42 cm deep. high and of course we can't go too big, the new Aden of this The world will already be complaining that the engine is getting in the way of its beautiful aerodynamics beyond the size and the fact that it cannot be a rocket in terms of rules.

I don't think there's much more we need to cover. It can have a turbo, it can be any configuration, it can be any capacity that can fit in our space and it can use a hybrid system. Oh, and you can use any interesting material that currently exists. F1 has seen some crazy engines in the past, so let's first look back. To see what crazy designs the engineers have come up with and hopefully get some inspiration, just take a look at this 1968 Lotus first. It's a bit oddly shaped for a C-stroke. It's like a wedge, but look closer, particularly at the rear. the car and you'll see it's even stranger, late 60's cars usually have exhaust coming out of the back like this beautiful Ferrari, but this Lotus doesn't have any and instead has a big exhaust or something coming out of the top. behind the driver and that's because under the body there is a Pratt and Whitney turbine engine that compresses the incoming air, combines it with fuel, ignites it and uses the high-pressure gases to spin a turbine that drives the box of the car's gears and then the wheels.

It's basically a jet. engine adapted for a race car and this thing is crazy, what the hell were the designers thinking? Well, they were thinking they were onto something. The car and engine competed in six F1 races but only finished once, so it would be easy to dismiss it as A Stupid Experiment, but this type of propulsion did have some success. This is the STP Paxton turbo car and it is what inspired the Lotus. I mean, he almost won the 1967 Indie 500 where he led the race for 171 laps, however he had a mechanical failure with only 9 laps to go, he came very close to winning with a gas turbine engine, okay , turbine engines seem like a decent option, but let's go back to a combustion engine with this flat 12 design, just get this, that's not the kind of noise you want.

Listen when testing a new engine, it sounds like a wrench. However, it started up, but it still didn't sound very good. We just did a video on why v10s have been scientifically proven to make us happy and this sound was definitely not included. the Subaru 1235 from the 1980s and look how complicated it is. Subaru was trying to become an F1 engine manufacturer and teamed up with Motori Maneri to create this 3 and 1/2 L flat 12 and as well as being grossly underpowered it also required cooling. from the top of the side pods instead of the typical air box in the roll hoop, meaning that the colon car the engine was in had to have these strange air ducts that ruined the aerodynamics of the car , the pack was incredibly slow and in one run it was 17 seconds. out of pole position, meaning they were cut in the pre-qualifying stage, which was a thing in the 80s when there were too many cars for the grid, anyway the colony team dropped the engine after of only eight RACs and Subaru never tried. back, so flat 12s might be out of the picture, but to be fair, Subaru engines aren't known for their reliability, but how about a W2?

Look at this one, the Life W2. It has a naturally aspirated 12-cylinder engine, so there are three banks of four cylinders. Just look. With the W shape and the unusual exhaust setup, we now of course have W setups on cars like the Bugatti Veyron and although they work well on a modern road car, they didn't work in F1 in 1990, the engine produced just 400 horsepower when the same V capacity configurations reached 700 and also had reliability problems. The chassis was also pretty terrible to start with, it didn't pass the fia crash test and the car never qualified for an F1 race because it was always too slow, so I know these examples aren't.

It's not going too well, but I love how the engineers are trying different things and maybe they were just ahead of their time and no rules engine could learn from their mistakes, so it's time for Ferrari to introduce some innovation. This is the Ferrari V6 comprex, it was an experimental engine. Developed and tested in 1981, the engine had a V6 configuration and used a unique form of forced induction known as a complex mechanical monoch charger. That's a lot of words and to be honest it's quite complicated, but the idea was to get rid of the Turbo. lag which is a nightmare for drivers, you press the accelerator pedal when you want to accelerate but not much happens and only after a while the power comes and usually suddenly this causes the wheels of the car to spin and It makes it difficult for the driver to drive at the limit, however, the mono-charged mechanical air intake at the speed of sound meant that the driver did not have to deal with traditional turbo lag and power was not drawn directly from the engine as with a supercharger.

It was the best of both worlds, however as with many of these innovations it was too fragile and also affected the aerodynamics and cooling, so it was removed from this car and Ferrari used a twin turbo instead, okay now. Enough with the story, how are you? We're going to get as much horsepower out of our engine as possible without any rules. There are five areas that we are going to cover. What configuration do we choose? Do we want to use a turbo or even a supercharger? and are we going to use some kind of battery? and hybrid engine system, what kind of exotic materials will be the best and what kind of RPM and horsepower we can really expect.

Well, F1 engineers have really played with engine configurations over the years, from V-twins in the 1950s to 16 cylinders. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, these 16-cylinder monsters were built by brm British Racing Motors, a racing team that competed in F1 from the 1950s to the 1970s and a team that won the World Championship in 1962 with Graham Hill. and they really pushed things forward. With the engine design they also produced a V16 in the early 50's with the brm type 15 and then a 3L h16 engine in the mid 60's, an engine we have talked about several times on this channel, these engines were wild and I they love it. the fact that the rules were completely open and that the engineers explored those DEA routes to get a car around a track as fast as possible, but what is best for our engine without rules and if we have the space, why do I choose a v24, obviously there are With plenty of configuration options, we could go for a single cylinder, an inline av or any of the more unusual options, a w, an H or even a u, so let's first rule out an engine from a single cylinder with a single piston, it will have less power strokes and it would not be balanced and since it is a single piston to have any type of displacement, it would have to be huge, which in turn means that it would be very heavy and a large and heavy piston moving up and down means a lot of reciprocating mass, so it would have to run at low RPM or risk exploding, however it would be simple with a few parts removed, but we need more power, baby, I got more power, Baby, I'm more powerful, baby, so what's up with an online?

A typical choice here would be an inline four or six, a Mercedes even raced an inline eight in the mid 1950s which won the World Championship in 1954 and inline 55s are great as they are still very simple and remember that we need reliability and the most powerful engine in Formula 1 was, in fact, an inline a 1982 BMW 1.5 L Turbo and just look at it. I love that color combination, but it also had 1350 horsepower, which must have been crazy in a 1980s F1 car, but the real problem with larger inline engines is the packaging, if at all. want.

To add more power with more cylinders, you will need a lot of space and if you go for eight cylinders in a row, that's a lot of space and also the engines tend to be quite tall, so Mr. Newbie wouldn't be happy with us. The crankshaft would also have to be quite long and the longer it is the more likely it is to bend so we want more cylinders to save some weight on the pistons but we need to save some space so let's take the pistons and place them horizontally moving. far from each other, what a good idea, flat engines basically have a squashed V configuration with an angle of 180°, which means that in terms of the space they take up, they are quite good, not too long thanks to the cylinders in both sides and not too tall thanks to the horizontal design, however they are quite wide so good for a lower center of gravity but bad for Arrow as there is less room for the newbie to do what he wants with the back of the car.

Just look at this 1977 Rabon bt45 which had a flat 12 and you'll see what I mean, the engine cover is super low but flat motors aren't perfect either and we can do better so how about a much earlier w setup to enter Bat's favorite setting? About today's sponsor, shiny.org, if you want to learn more about some of the topics covered in this video, including mathematical data analysis programming and artificial intelligence lessons, you should check out shiny shiny which has thousands upon thousands of lessons interactive in which you learn by doing and this. The learning method is six times more effective than simply watching videos of lectures that are predicting with probability.

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After all, the Bugatti Veyrons and Chiron use them and are capable of reaching 270 and 300 mph respectively. Well, this is one block away from a Bugatti w16. As you can see, it is basically a V configuration, but the length of the block has been reduced, which means that the cylinders must be side by side forming two wider banks, but it is worth noting that the Bugatti W configuration is a different version of the W we have. I saw with the Life's W2 from before, as you can see here, the Bugatti engine only has two banks, but the Life W2 has three, which in my opinion at least is a true W configuration and, again, complexity aside, packaging is a problem with the w.

Three banks and the entire exhaust take up too much space, which would damage the aerodynamic design of the car. Now there are a couple of other feasible configurations - U VR, opposite rotary radial, horizontal, K and It has been the most common setup in F1 and other motorsports over the decades and there are good reasons for this. Take a look at this. The V configuration is With a great balance of length, width and height, you can fit a good amount of cylinders into the space and keep the weight reasonably low and, for F1 in particular, there is a good amount of space around the bottom. of the engine, which means that the rear of the car can lower, which is good for the aerodynamics and our colleague Adrian Adri in F1 we ​​have seen all the types of configuration V V2 V4 V6 that we have at the moment V8 V10 V12 and V V16 someoneyou just need to try a v14 and we have a complete set, but how many cylinders is better if we have no rules?

Well, the first thing we need to know is that we are not limited in displacement, we can put a lot of fuel into our engine, so if you want to use them all. of that fuel but I only have a V2 V4 or V6 to play with the pistons will have to be massive, that means the engine will be bigger but the most important thing is the reciprocating mass, the weight of the piston that moves back and forth It will be huge and with all the extra mass the engine parts are more likely to break so we will have an engine that is unreliable or one that needs to run at very low RPM to keep the reciprocating mass down and the parts where they should. be there to maintain them.

The piston weight is low and to maintain the same number of liters we need more pistons, more pistons with the same displacement means lighter pistons and an engine that can accelerate more and the good news is that we are talking about v10, v12 or v6, however, according to the engine expert. that we talked about with a v112 seems to be the best balance. This is Micah McMahan, who previously worked on Red Bull powertrains and loves v12s. Good man with the V12, you have plenty of room for a big boar for the given power. To have it, you don't have to turn obsessive RPMs, nothing crazy, honestly, it would be a relatively underpowered engine, a meter long, with the V12, you're still talking like you probably have 102 104 mm. boore, I mean it's a big piston and not spinning at crazy RPM's is important because for the reasons above to keep the reciprocating mass low and the engine from blowing up, but it's not just about the pistons, if an engine has cam valves in traditional heads, can also become a problem.

The valves manage air and fuel into and exhaust gases out of the combustion chamber. The intake valves open to allow precise mixing of air and fuel in the cylinder while the exhaust valves open to remove the resulting gases after combustion, but before the valves open, the camshaft rotates and Its lobe hits the valve before it is spring-closed, but at higher RPMs, the camshaft spins faster and the valve takes a harder hit, which increases the pressure on the valve. inertia and therefore if the valve is not strong enough to overcome the inertia there will be a delay in closing the valve and if the closing of the valve is incomplete or delayed that is not good and we call it floating of valve, it means that some of the power is lost and in the worst case it means that the valve is still open when the piston reaches the top of its stroke where it hits the valve and causes serious damage and to make the engines of F1 to accelerate more, this needed to be fixed, so in the late 80s Reno introduced the first pneumatic valve engine in F1, however, it was not until the 1990s that the other F1 teams began to adopt the same technology.

Just take a look at this diagram from the Motorsports Story YouTube channel and you'll see how pneumatic valves work is actually pretty simple. In a traditional spring, the camshaft presses the valve against the pressurized nitrogen chamber, which acts like a spring; However, the difference is that unlike a normal spring, which provides no additional resistance when compressed more forcefully, the resistance of air springs increases as the valve is struck. Harder, this means it offers better control over the valves and this pneumatic system is key to F1 engines reaching 20,000 RPM, allowing them to open and close the valves incredibly quickly without breaking them into pieces most of the time. .

Anyway, so what happens? turbos or maybe even on a supercharger, well it's safe to say our engine expert likes turbos. I like turbos. I mean, superchargers are cool, they make cool squeals, but for the weight, packaging, and power you get from them, the power you get from a turbo you're just not going to find in a supercharger and naturally aspirated for The new Arrow package and everything that comes with it will be much smaller and lighter to run a turbocharged car, the first turbocharged engine in Formula 1 dates. We go back to 1977 and it was Renault again who pioneered the development of the RS01, a 1 and 1/2 L V6.

Initially these engines were not very reliable but they offered a huge power advantage when running and in our case there are some There are solid reasons why we like turbos first, of course, they increase the power. I don't need to tell you how they work, but basically, the more air that is forced into the engine, it means that more fuel can be added, so the explosion is bigger and if we're looking at the entirety of the car over a racing distance. Turbocharged engines are also more fuel efficient, meaning fuel tanks may be smaller and the car may be lighter, but exactly how much extra power would a turbocharged engine produce compared to a regular one? aspirated engine it's a rough rule of thumb with of course differences and efficiencies and little things about putting in a turbocharger for every atmosphere you add in terms of boost, you know, you get that full displacement, that means, for example, if we had a displacement of 2 L. and we added an additional atmosphere of boost so that with 14.7 PSI effectively the same air entered the engine as a 4 liter engine and with more air entering you can add more fuel and again get a bigger explosion, okay? but how much more power?

Does it really work well? If we go back to the end of the era in F1 when both normally aspirated and turbocharged cars were allowed, with 1985 being the last year of turbos with unlimited boost, you'll notice a big difference that year when teams were allowed. a 1.5L engine with a turbo or a 3L engine without the championship winning car was the McLaren label which had a 1.5L V6 that produced around 850 horsepower in racing configuration and a massive 960 horsepower in the classification and the best classified without turbo. The car was the tyrl Ford and actually that worth Ford engine was only used for half the season, anyway the dfy was a 3 liter V8 that only made about 520 horsepower and , although it did not suffer from turbo lag, the force induction engines made more.

We were prepared for it once they were in a straight line, so yes, we are going to have a turbo, but what about hybrids? What happens with electrical energy? Is it worth carrying the extra weight of a battery to get the extra power and instant torque we get in F1? I have seen mguh and mguk, they are hard to understand acronyms, but they basically absorb energy that would otherwise be lost, mainly as heat, this is the mg and although it will be banned from 2026, we would still like to use it in our no. automobile rules, the mguh means engine generating unit.

The heat is connected directly to the turbocharger shaft and has two functions, it can generate power and deploy power, the mg takes the heat energy from the car's exhaust gases that feeds the turbo and otherwise it would just float. into the air and converts it into electrical energy, it is stored in the car's battery ready to use and then when it is finally ready to be used, it acts like an engine, spins the turbocharger and uses that energy to give the turbocharger a quick boost . It spins the turbocharger faster than it would on exhaust gases alone and Micah likes this technology.

This is where you can still leave a little hybrid in the system. If you're going to have turbos you could have a really big turbo but it's going to have a lot of lag so IMO I'd still want to keep a mg on it and what about the mguk the motor generator unit? Das kinetic, this is basically how a Formula E car is so efficient, this is the part that captures the kinetic energy when the driver brakes, then STS the energy and then in an F1 car, adds the power to the crankshaft when the driver accelerates, but the microphone doesn't think we need it and in my case it probably would.

I would probably remove the hybrid because you wouldn't need it for actual drive power because you would have all the displacement you want. Basically we will have more than enough power from the internal combustion engine so we better save the weight of a larger battery remember adding lightness is key and speaking of adding lightness is there any crazy material we can use that is currently banned in F1? You know, I would look at Reintroducing Metal Composite Matrix MMC Pistons as they used to be known in World Formula 1 before they were banned, really strong. High thermal properties, really good, these materials were used in F1 since 2004, but are now mostly banned in an MMC.

You have a metal such as aluminum or titanium that forms the base of the material, but instead of being pure metal, it is reinforced with partial particles or fibers of another material, often ceramics such as silicon carbide or boron carbide. These ceramic particles are incredibly strong and hard, meaning they can reinforce metal and make it much harder and more resistant to wear and heat. and that means MMC parts can be stronger, stiffer, lighter, and can handle heat better, all of which is incredibly important if we're trying to get our engine to rev as high as possible, how much faster would this be? engine?

How much more power? Could I have done it? I'm sorry to say that with all of these things it's incredibly difficult to know without a proper calculation. Mikey didn't want to put a real figure on it, but basically said it would have more power than any F1 car. with its current grip it would be able to handle the thing is that it really wouldn't be that difficult to make an engine with 2, 3 or 4,000 horsepower, but what's the point if you can't put that power on the track and the driver will just use it? wheel turns from curve to curve in each gear.

I spoke to an F1 aerodynamicist about what he would design if F1 had no rules. You can see that here, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.