2025/2026 Hybrid Powerunit speculation

[wuzak]

You missed my point, I was talking about the extremely narrow 2 stroke power band, not overall power.

No I didn't...

If you have a proper perusal of those dyno curves, you'll see for yourself.

Formula cars with 4 fat tyres & downforce are much more forgiving of
sudden/brutal powerbands than big heavy bikes...

What is the likely useful powerband of the current F1 cars? 1500-2000rpm?

Much more than that. But they don't use it, as they have 8 gears and can be at nearly optimum rpm all the time.

And it is also a function of the rules - fuel flow is restricted in relation to rpm below 10,500rpm to force the engine to rev higher.

[J.A.W.]

The biggest issue with 2-stroke engines IMO, is the stupidly narrow powerband - they would make F1 cars undrivable. I reckon the 80's turbo cars would be more drivable than an NA 2-stroke F1 car!

In point of fact, you'll have to revise that opinion, & actually, its about 180 degrees off course...

A few cases in point: Cosworth sliced a pair of cylinders from its very successful DFV F1 V8
back in the mid `70s - in an attempt to provide Norton with a 4-stroke capable of winning
bike G.P.'s ahead of the newly rampant 2-strokes, but it was a fail, being 'unrideable' tuned-up.

Honda tried again in `79-80, with a radical 'virtual V8' NR500 4-stroke, yet it was 'unrideable''.

Once the FIM allowed 990cc 4-strokes to compete in the 'Senior/500cc' class, Aprilia tried a 3cyl
slice off Cosworth's V10 F1, 'The Cube' - but this too, was... yeah, you guessed it.. 'unrideable'...

Not only did these massive Moto GP machines have to be 'de-rated' specific output-wise,
they also required all manner of electro-mechanical assists, from a back-torque limiting
'slipper' clutch, to traction-control for power-limiting in corners...

See the Honda dyno graph linked below - showing their 2-stroke G.P. bikes from over a 1/4
century ago, current Moto GP bikes are still nowhere near the (non-assisted, as Mick Doohan
pointed out, other than by the rider's proprioception & reaction time skills) power-density of
those Championship-winning 2-stroke G.P. bikes...

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/atta ... 1546116747

One might suspect that a 990cc 4 stroke GP bike with 280hp would be more difficult to ride than a 200hp 2-stroke.

Funnily enough, the last rider to win F.I.M. 500cc & MotoGP World Championships both, (V. Rossi) has
only recently retired, & he reckoned the much lighter, more highly tuned 500cc bike - which only
had the rider to regulate the power, (no complex suite of electronic power-control assistance) - it
surely took a greater level of skill to master... yet were much more rewarding to ride as a result..

Mick Doohan likewise complained, that when leaded fuel was banned (cutting peak power markedly)
& the minimum weight of 500cc bikes was raised to 130kg (both done to 'tame' the machines), it def'
made it "too easy" for riders of lesser skill to ride fast, & "spoiled" the "edge" that 500cc bikes had had.

A paraphrase of E. Bugatti's back-handed compliment to W.O. Bentley's successful sports-racing cars,
'...they are the worlds fastest lorries (trucks)...' was applied to MotoGP machines at their advent,
(& it may well be applicable to current F1 cars too - with their excessive size/weight/power?)

[mzso]

(& it may well be applicable to current F1 cars too - with their excessive size/weight/power?)

I think the car length and long wheelbase is the worst offender. Sure the weight is a lot but so is the downforce and grip.
They move like lummoxes, not conductive good for racing, and you don't feel their speed like with slower old cars (Sainz made a complaint once on social media).
I also think that drivers don't really make many intricate moves anymore because the car is so slow to react, it's pointless. I think Hülkenberg complained once in the media explicitly about current car's behavior.

Also I don't think drivers clipping the wall with the back wheel would happen like it did this year with Albon (I think) and more notably with Leclerc two Monaco GPs ago.

[wuzak]

(& it may well be applicable to current F1 cars too - with their excessive size/weight/power?)

I think the car length and long wheelbase is the worst offender. Sure the weight is a lot but so is the downforce and grip.
They move like lummoxes, not conductive good for racing, and you don't feel their speed like with slower old cars (Sainz made a complaint once on social media).
I also think that drivers don't really make many intricate moves anymore because the car is so slow to react, it's pointless. I think Hülkenberg complained once in the media explicitly about current car's behavior.

Also I don't think drivers clipping the wall with the back wheel would happen like it did this year with Albon (I think) and more notably with Leclerc two Monaco GPs ago.

The wheelbase is restricted now, so they are shorter than the longer cars from the past few seasons (like the Mercedes).

It is not just the current cars that have been lazy in slow corners, the previous generation (2017-2021) were too.

But it was surprising to see hoe close they got at Monaco - Leclerc's last lap would have been less than a second off last year's pole time had he been able to complete it.

[mzso]

It is not just the current cars that have been lazy in slow corners, the previous generation (2017-2021) were too.

But it was surprising to see hoe close they got at Monaco - Leclerc's last lap would have been less than a second off last year's pole time had he been able to complete it.

I didn't claim it started this year. They've been horrible for a good while.

Though I'm not sure how/when it happened. I see 2007 cars are still only 4.5 meters. I don't comparisons or data for car length for the cars since then. I guess it might have been progressive.
The 2010 Mercedes 01 with refueling newly banned is still only 4.8m (per f1t), a meter shy of where the Mercedes cars got.

[Holm86]

The wheelbase is restricted now, so they are shorter than the longer cars from the past few seasons (like the Mercedes).

It's restricted to 3600mm which isn't much shorter than the last couple of years, and still about half a meter too long IMO

[mzso]

Ugh, stupid comment...

[wuzak]

The wheelbase is restricted now, so they are shorter than the longer cars from the past few seasons (like the Mercedes).

It's restricted to 3600mm which isn't much shorter than the last couple of years, and still about half a meter too long IMO

Longer than a whole F1 car in 2007...

About 1m shorter than the Ferrari F2007, whose wheelbase was still over 3m.

https://www.ultimatecarpage.com/spec/30 ... F2007.html

3,600mm is the maximum and some, I'm sure, are less than that.

The Mercedes of the past few years has been longer.

[mzso]

It's restricted to 3600mm which isn't much shorter than the last couple of years, and still about half a meter too long IMO

Longer than a whole F1 car in 2007...

About 1m shorter than the Ferrari F2007, whose wheelbase was still over 3m.

https://www.ultimatecarpage.com/spec/30 ... F2007.html

3,600mm is the maximum and some, I'm sure, are less than that.

The Mercedes of the past few years has been longer.

Yeah, stupid, I don't know why I tend to think a meter more when I see 3 and some....

[J.A.W.]

The biggest issue with 2-stroke engines IMO, is the stupidly narrow powerband - they would make F1 cars undrivable. I reckon the 80's turbo cars would be more drivable than an NA 2-stroke F1 car!

In point of fact, you'll have to revise that opinion, & actually, its about 180 degrees off course...

A few cases in point: Cosworth sliced a pair of cylinders from its very successful DFV F1 V8
back in the mid `70s - in an attempt to provide Norton with a 4-stroke capable of winning
bike G.P.'s ahead of the newly rampant 2-strokes, but it was a fail, being 'unrideable' tuned-up.

Honda tried again in `79-80, with a radical 'virtual V8' NR500 4-stroke, yet it was 'unrideable''.

Once the FIM allowed 990cc 4-strokes to compete in the 'Senior/500cc' class, Aprilia tried a 3cyl
slice off Cosworth's V10 F1, 'The Cube' - but this too, was... yeah, you guessed it.. 'unrideable'...

Not only did these massive Moto GP machines have to be 'de-rated' specific output-wise,
they also required all manner of electro-mechanical assists, from a back-torque limiting
'slipper' clutch, to traction-control for power-limiting in corners...

See the Honda dyno graph linked below - showing their 2-stroke G.P. bikes from over a 1/4
century ago, current Moto GP bikes are still nowhere near the (non-assisted, as Mick Doohan
pointed out, other than by the rider's proprioception & reaction time skills) power-density of
those Championship-winning 2-stroke G.P. bikes...

https://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/atta ... 1546116747

One might suspect that a 990cc 4 stroke GP bike with 280hp would be more difficult to ride than a 200hp 2-stroke.

Here's a few words from Honda's 1st 500cc World Champion - Freddie Spencer - on a 2-stroke,
about their prior attempt via a (defacto V8) NR500 V4 4-stroke race bike:

"I was running it between 18,000 & 22,000 because that's really where the useable power was...
...but the reality was, it didn't have much torque... I'd hit a gust of wind, & the rpm would drop...
...to get the power required, there was a lot of friction... another thing was, that the valve springs
were pretty weak because of massive amount of heat the engine was generating... in the event the
valve springs broke... it generated so much excess heat that it caused a lot of the unreliability issues...
...it wasn't reliable (yet) they learned a great deal... being such a radical design."

&, per: 'The Honda Way':

"Was it successful on the racetrack? No, but what it gave us was even more valuable."

[JordanMugen]

800HP/400ftlb is plenty for F1 if it goes back to 1800mm cars and 500Kg minimum weight.

Good luck with that, the tub (with halo) already weighs nearly 150kg now!

It's not going to be acceptable to revert to year 2000 safety standards and 50 kg tubs for obvious reasons: safety improves over time, safety features are almost never removed once introduced.

150kg tub + 80 kg driver = just 270kg for everything else! I'm not sure that's possible...

Say you use a 95kg naturally aspirated engine, can you really fit all the bodywork, all the radiators, all the suspension, all the wheels and the transmission & rear crash structure all within just 175kg?! The 2013 minimum weight with a 95kg engine was not 500kg but already 643kg, and that was with 5kg less driver allowance and about 40 kg less safety provisions on the tub, so it's more like 687kg in like-for-like terms to a modern car.

[Zynerji]

800HP/400ftlb is plenty for F1 if it goes back to 1800mm cars and 500Kg minimum weight.

Good luck with that, the tub (with halo) already weighs nearly 150kg now!

It's not going to be acceptable to revert to year 2000 safety standards and 50 kg tubs for obvious reasons: safety improves over time, safety features are almost never removed once introduced.

150kg tub + 80 kg driver = just 270kg for everything else! I'm not sure that's possible...

Say you use a 95kg naturally aspirated engine, can you really fit all the bodywork, all the radiators, all the suspension, all the wheels and the transmission & rear crash structure all within just 175kg?! The 2013 minimum weight with a 95kg engine was not 500kg but already 643kg, and that was with 5kg less driver allowance and about 40 kg less safety provisions on the tub, so it's more like 687kg in like-for-like terms to a modern car.

Ok! I'd take that! Maybe shave the engine 95kilo by moving the current v6 to NA and 20k rpm?

[JordanMugen]

Ok! I'd take that! Maybe shave the engine 95kilo by moving the current v6 to NA and 20k rpm?

Yeah that would be fine. I'm guessing a 1.6 V6 would produce around 1.6/2.4*800=530hp (assuming the 2.4 V8s made 800hp @ 20,000rpm in 2006)? Though perhaps add a bit more to that total by the use of direct injection and modern efficiency techniques (600hp? 650hp?).

You'd need a pretty substantial hybrid system (and therefore battery) to boost that up to 800hp or 1000hp, but batteries and electric motors are heavy...

Would a ~670 kg Grand Prix car (~690kg with the V8, 13" wheels & 2022 safety minus 20 kg for the V6) with 530hp be fast enough otherwise? I guess a delta wing approach could be taken to find more dramatic weight savings?

[Big Tea]

800HP/400ftlb is plenty for F1 if it goes back to 1800mm cars and 500Kg minimum weight.

Good luck with that, the tub (with halo) already weighs nearly 150kg now!

It's not going to be acceptable to revert to year 2000 safety standards and 50 kg tubs for obvious reasons: safety improves over time, safety features are almost never removed once introduced.

150kg tub + 80 kg driver = just 270kg for everything else! I'm not sure that's possible...

Say you use a 95kg naturally aspirated engine, can you really fit all the bodywork, all the radiators, all the suspension, all the wheels and the transmission & rear crash structure all within just 175kg?! The 2013 minimum weight with a 95kg engine was not 500kg but already 643kg, and that was with 5kg less driver allowance and about 40 kg less safety provisions on the tub, so it's more like 687kg in like-for-like terms to a modern car.

Ok! I'd take that! Maybe shave the engine 95kilo by moving the current v6 to NA and 20k rpm?

Also mention that cars do not have to be at the minimum weight to race. If no car makes it, then there is room for ongoing development. We may see some good things come from it.

[Zynerji]

Good luck with that, the tub (with halo) already weighs nearly 150kg now!

It's not going to be acceptable to revert to year 2000 safety standards and 50 kg tubs for obvious reasons: safety improves over time, safety features are almost never removed once introduced.

150kg tub + 80 kg driver = just 270kg for everything else! I'm not sure that's possible...

Say you use a 95kg naturally aspirated engine, can you really fit all the bodywork, all the radiators, all the suspension, all the wheels and the transmission & rear crash structure all within just 175kg?! The 2013 minimum weight with a 95kg engine was not 500kg but already 643kg, and that was with 5kg less driver allowance and about 40 kg less safety provisions on the tub, so it's more like 687kg in like-for-like terms to a modern car.

Ok! I'd take that! Maybe shave the engine 95kilo by moving the current v6 to NA and 20k rpm?

Also mention that cars do not have to be at the minimum weight to race. If no car makes it, then there is room for ongoing development. We may see some good things come from it.

Yes. Let's open the door to high-strength, casting of aerogel composites!