Weight and Ballast 2014

[Blackout]

How much do a 2013 or a 2014 weight (without ballast, fuel and driver) ? that's the question...

According to Kiril Varbanov's blog; a bare-stripped F1 car weights about 535 kilograms (Scarbs thinks ''it's just over 520''- no driver, no fuel, no fluids. I assumed it is a 2011-2013 car and I tried to figure out how much a 2014 car would weight, based on these numbers
http://f1framework.blogspot.com/search? ... -results=5

-V8: 95kg (rules)
-Kers: about 30kg (Mercedes)
-ancillary parts: 20kg (Renault)

-Power Unit: 145kg min (rules)
-Battery: 35kg* (Renault)
-ancillary parts: 20kg (Renault)

**rules state that the part which stores energy within the ES must weight between 20 and 25kg and this part is excluded from the 145kg minimum...

The result is: a 2014 car (with a 2013 gear-box) should weight about 590 kilos... but 2014 gear-boxes should be heavier for several reasons IMO, so let's say 600kg : P
Just a guesstimation...

Any thoughts/additional infos/corrections ?

[Blackout]

Needless to say, I dont understand why/how some f1 cars (see Andy green's interview about the FI) could be overweight?
Maybe the new Gearboxes are very havy (2x torque, 8 gears instead of 7, 5 races instead of 4 etc)? or the V6...

[Blanchimont]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... egulations
http://www.f1technical.net/articles/20

Interesting to read and see how the weight limit changed through the decades.
For exmaple, in 2004 with the V10 there was a limit of 600kg. Minus the driver, fluids and the engine there's not much left.

[wesley123]

Thanks for the link towards this thread.

I must say, it is rather confusing to read that the Force India would be overweight. Teams have been hitting the 600kg in 2000 already, and in that time you can expect the unballasted weight to become lower and lower. While there was an 40kg KERS system added that would still keep the weight under or around the minimum.

So I am really interested to what was added that would make the cars around 100kg's heavier.

[michl420]

It would be interesting to know how much the different parts of a Formula 1 car weigh. I often read that in 2000 still 100 kg ballast was in the car, now 690 kg are difficult to reach. For me it is difficult to understand. Is there really so much because of the increased crash tests?

[marcush.]

you got a mandatory powertrain weight with a mandatory Position of Cof G for the Powerunit. those xxxkg represent a considerable Portion of the total weight you cannot make any gains on -for the total weight of the car .Add to this a plethora of mandatory Chassis items which are Crash test related plus the whole engine and car electronics spec parts ,
and you soon have not much left to really make gains on in Terms of weight reduction .
Don´t Forget the materials restrictions introduced not Long ago .You are not allowed to use Be,MMCs,Nano materials, the pressure of the cooling System is restricted ,the cooling Systems is not allowed to use physical phnemenons like vaporization the list is endless making it harder and harder to make big steps -so it´s more a process of chipping away on optimisation.
with the new regs ,,everyone is back to zero with optimisation (apart from the best practises you could carry over) .It seems more than logic all cars end up weighing nearly the same as the Teams use the same Tools to do their work.

[vtr]

It would be interesting to know how much the different parts of a Formula 1 car weigh. I often read that in 2000 still 100 kg ballast was in the car, now 690 kg are difficult to reach. For me it is difficult to understand. Is there really so much because of the increased crash tests?

It is also surprising how much the cars have grown through the last few years. The Ferrari F2000, for example is supposed to be 4397mm long, and other cars of the period have numbers such as 4540 (FW22-2000, FW23-2001), 4550 (MP4-13-1998), 4445(F2001).
I'd say all of this year's cars should be longer than 5000mm (and the Marussia over 5300mm if we believe their 3.7m wheelbase number). That's a big increase as well.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Weight & Ballast for 2014 was discussed in this months edition of F1 Racing Mag by Pat Symonds.





via F1 Racing Magazine

[michl420]

It would be interesting to know how much the different parts of a Formula 1 car weigh. I often read that in 2000 still 100 kg ballast was in the car, now 690 kg are difficult to reach. For me it is difficult to understand. Is there really so much because of the increased crash tests?

It is also surprising how much the cars have grown through the last few years. The Ferrari F2000, for example is supposed to be 4397mm long, and other cars of the period have numbers such as 4540 (FW22-2000, FW23-2001), 4550 (MP4-13-1998), 4445(F2001).
I'd say all of this year's cars should be longer than 5000mm (and the Marussia over 5300mm if we believe their 3.7m wheelbase number). That's a big increase as well.

Rear downforce is everything these days. So they do everything to become more air between the rear wheels.

[Blackout]

They even used depleted Uranium

[hollus]

What's wrong with depleted uranium? It's just a metal...

[Lycoming]

Yea, it's just ballast. Sure it's not the cleanest thing to have on a car in a crash, but it's not like they're peppering the roads with tons and tons of the stuff.