Ramifications and speculation around TD045 and how it affects team operations

[chrisc90]

Drawing a rules compliant set of bodywork is way less intensive than running CFD on an entire car or even just a decent section of a car. One can be done on a domestic-scale lap top. The other simply can't.

More than capable. People on here post CFD of full cars. No half, full cars.

Don’t forget there might be online CFD aswell which have much more processing power.

Sorry, no one here is doing whole cars to F1 standards on a lap top. And if someone were able to do it, and did it without booking time to the F1 car and it's allotted resources, the team would be in breach.

Making use of online processing power that isn't part of the F1 team's allotted resources would be a breach of the resource cap.

Doing these things is what TD045 is trying to prevent.

What computers/laptops are the likes of vanja, shub, and the Kyle engineers who do the odd bit of CFD of whole cars use then?

Either they have very very good computers, or the CFD stuff is done online at some server centre.

The exact same what that merc engineer is doing.

Can sugar-coat it all you want, doing that sort of project will help with his knowledge which he can bring straight to his desk at work.
He might have a floor designed that’s a direct copy of a red bull floor and tweaking by to understand the flows around it.

Just because it’s Mercedes, you know, doesn’t mean they are all clean and mighty and you need to stand and defend them as being completely innocent.


What evidence is there that the RB17 and its engineers are using CFD to F1 spec sort of stuff? There is absolutely none. I imagine it will be different given the FIA monitor the computers and servers/data centres that are used to process F1 material. Can you imagine a team going to the FIA and saying, 'please can we run this wheel housing through our F1 grade CFD programs so we can put it onto a road car? - We promise its nothing we could gain any advantage from towards a F1 car' They would simply laugh at you and say No.

[wesley123]

So a merc engineer uses LMH & LMDh FIA regulations which use ground effect at home and this is ok.

Red bull uses a RB17 which uses ground effect and this isn’t ok.

I see how it works now.

I guess this Merc engineer doesn’t learn anything that’s transferable or of any use in F1 ground effect either then.

It's obvious that you're trolling. But in the very, very off chance that this isn't the case;

There's quite a significant difference between what a single person does in his spare time and a company, who publicly announced the product by the way, does as its job.

And that is ignoring the semantics of how vastly different a Hypercar is versus F1 or other projects there is criticism about. Very, very significant parts of the floor of a F1 car aren't present in a hypercar. One of such things being the step plane.

[Just_a_fan]

More than capable. People on here post CFD of full cars. No half, full cars.

Don’t forget there might be online CFD aswell which have much more processing power.

Sorry, no one here is doing whole cars to F1 standards on a lap top. And if someone were able to do it, and did it without booking time to the F1 car and it's allotted resources, the team would be in breach.

Making use of online processing power that isn't part of the F1 team's allotted resources would be a breach of the resource cap.

Doing these things is what TD045 is trying to prevent.

What computers/laptops are the likes of vanja, shub, and the Kyle engineers who do the odd bit of CFD of whole cars use then?

Either they have very very good computers, or the CFD stuff is done online at some server centre.

The exact same what that merc engineer is doing.

Can sugar-coat it all you want, doing that sort of project will help with his knowledge which he can bring straight to his desk at work.
He might have a floor designed that’s a direct copy of a red bull floor and tweaking by to understand the flows around it.

Just because it’s Mercedes, you know, doesn’t mean they are all clean and mighty and you need to stand and defend them as being completely innocent.


What evidence is there that the RB17 and its engineers are using CFD to F1 spec sort of stuff? There is absolutely none. I imagine it will be different given the FIA monitor the computers and servers/data centres that are used to process F1 material. Can you imagine a team going to the FIA and saying, 'please can we run this wheel housing through our F1 grade CFD programs so we can put it onto a road car? - We promise its nothing we could gain any advantage from towards a F1 car' They would simply laugh at you and say No.

If the Merc chap is using a laptop and is running F1-grade CFD "off book" in some way to assess Red Bull's design, then Mercedes are in breach of TD045. It's quite simple - "off book" work that benefits the F1 car is naughty. I don't have a problem with that.

The reason TD045 exists is to ensure that no team can do "off book" stuff and claim they didn't know it was wrong. Thus, if Red Bull are using the RB17 project to make gains, they can't claim that it was done innocently. Likewise any other team that might choose to do a similar project.

There's no need to take an aggressive stance - let's discuss the issue in a friendly manner.

[hollus]

Don’t go around in circles, please. When you have said what you had to say, don’t say it again. Reading through the repetitions is tedious.

There will be warnings for spam if that continues to continue below this post.

[dans79]

What computers/laptops are the likes of vanja, shub, and the Kyle engineers who do the odd bit of CFD of whole cars use then?

Either they have very very good computers, or the CFD stuff is done online at some server centre.

Their isn't a 1 to 1 correlation between the machine being used an how much of the car can be tested. what maters is the amount of detail you want to see, how accurate you need it to be, and how fast you want it!


Vyssion actually did a post/article about this, and covers what I would consider consumer grade hardware.
viewtopic.php?t=28562

[Just_a_fan]

What computers/laptops are the likes of vanja, shub, and the Kyle engineers who do the odd bit of CFD of whole cars use then?

Either they have very very good computers, or the CFD stuff is done online at some server centre.

Their isn't a 1 to 1 correlation between the machine being used an how much of the car can be tested. what maters is the amount of detail you want to see, how accurate you need it to be, and how fast you want it!


Vyssion actually did a post/article about this, and covers what I would consider consumer grade hardware.
viewtopic.php?t=28562

Vyssion's post was excellent. I'm sure this article has been referenced before but I include it for completeness: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simulati ... vid-penner

And before people jump up and down and shout "Merc guy doing CFD at home!", the article was written nearly a year before he joined Mercedes F1.

The article mentions this:

Aerodynamicist 1 tells me that "a proper half car CFD of a car geometry like this is somewhere on the order of 200M trimmer cells". After a discussion about mesh sizing, this was my target when using an 8mm base sizing, where the base size is the maximum cell size on the car surface (most of the surface is much smaller due to automatic curvature refinements and the specified refinements below). All said and done, an 8mm mesh ends up at 224M cells, however note that my simulation also lacks any internal geometry. As a result of my mesh independence tests, I ended up with a 10mm mesh with 146M cells.

Compare to Vyssion's post where he mentions up to 100m cells. No idea if the CFD assessments presented on the forum are at that order of cells or smaller but I'm sure they did half car and then just mirrored the result. But F1 are talking 200m per half car, so already a big step up.

But from memory (which is hazy after 13 years of not studying CFD (and the stuff I did was to do with combustion and the like)), if you double the number of cells, you don't necessarily just double the CPU time - increasing the number of cells in a given overall model volume means making the cells smaller and as the time step is related to cell size, doubling the number of cells and halving the cell size (to give twice the number in the same overall volume) increases the time step by 4 not 2. So you very quickly need a lot of grunt to do things. And, of course, the issue is how many runs you need to get a reliable result. The article talks about needing 2000 iterations before starting to average.

Oh, and he mentions that the run was done on 200 cores. So a big lap top indeed.

[TFSA]

Sorry, no one here is doing whole cars to F1 standards on a lap top. And if someone were able to do it, and did it without booking time to the F1 car and it's allotted resources, the team would be in breach.

Making use of online processing power that isn't part of the F1 team's allotted resources would be a breach of the resource cap.

Doing these things is what TD045 is trying to prevent.

This entire discussion with people arguing whether or not you can run proper CFD-simulations on a laptop has taken a completely wrong turn if you ask me, because it completely misses that this isn't what this TD is directed at. TD045 very specifically mentions bringing in intellectual property from the outside.

People can do whatever they like outside of F1. TD45 isn't trying to prevent anyone from doing anything outside of F1. If you're an F1 engineer, you can rent an entire Amazon data center and run any simulation you want for all they care, just as Adrian Newey can spend his entire summer 24/7 at his drawing board if he wants to.

TD45 is about one thing only: if you bring something concrete/tangible (including data) into F1 from the outside, it must be accounted under the cost cap off you wish to bring it into the factory. As long as anything you produce, which can be considered intellectual property, stays out of the F1 factory, it doesn't fall under the TD, and it's fair game.

Now, that could change at a later point of course, with more potential technical directives to come. But the purpose of this discussion was the implication of TD045. And this discussion about what people do - or can do - outside of the factory is moot, because it's very clear that this isn't what this technical directive is targeting, unless the teams actually bring it in.

[Just_a_fan]

Sorry, no one here is doing whole cars to F1 standards on a lap top. And if someone were able to do it, and did it without booking time to the F1 car and it's allotted resources, the team would be in breach.

Making use of online processing power that isn't part of the F1 team's allotted resources would be a breach of the resource cap.

Doing these things is what TD045 is trying to prevent.

This entire discussion with people arguing whether or not you can run proper CFD-simulations on a laptop has taken a completely wrong turn if you ask me, because it completely misses that this isn't what this TD is directed at. TD045 very specifically mentions bringing in intellectual property from the outside.

People can do whatever they like outside of F1. TD45 isn't trying to prevent anyone from doing anything outside of F1. If you're an F1 engineer, you can rent an entire Amazon data center and run any simulation you want for all they care, just as Adrian Newey can spend his entire summer 24/7 at his drawing board if he wants to.

TD45 is about one thing only: if you bring something concrete/tangible (including data) into F1 from the outside, it must be accounted under the cost cap off you wish to bring it into the factory. As long as anything you produce, which can be considered intellectual property, stays out of the F1 factory, it doesn't fall under the TD, and it's fair game.

Now, that could change at a later point of course, with more potential technical directives to come. But the purpose of this discussion was the implication of TD045. And this discussion about what people do - or can do - outside of the factory is moot, because it's very clear that this isn't what this technical directive is targeting, unless the teams actually bring it in.

Oh, I agree. There was some suggestion that people could take home a lap top and do real CFD work on it, which is nonsense, and no one would know. Well, no one would know if the team chose to hide that activity, true enough, but that wouldn't stop it being "illegal" under TD045 (and thus the resource rules).

The TD was brought in because of teams of people - whole teams - being used on side-hustle projects that might allow the use of resources not booked to the F1 car but used to do F1 car work. That's a no-no, as well know. There is a separate thread for a "mythical" example of such a project, for example.

[mzso]

TD45 is about one thing only: if you bring something concrete/tangible (including data) into F1 from the outside, it must be accounted under the cost cap off you wish to bring it into the factory. As long as anything you produce, which can be considered intellectual property, stays out of the F1 factory, it doesn't fall under the TD, and it's fair game.

That doesn't stop the teams setting hundreds of people designing F1 car concepts "outside" F1, even using data from the official F1 project. Then bringing them back and doing it again from experience and memory.

[Hoffman900]

TD45 is about one thing only: if you bring something concrete/tangible (including data) into F1 from the outside, it must be accounted under the cost cap off you wish to bring it into the factory. As long as anything you produce, which can be considered intellectual property, stays out of the F1 factory, it doesn't fall under the TD, and it's fair game.

That doesn't stop the teams setting hundreds of people designing F1 car concepts "outside" F1, even using data from the official F1 project. Then bringing them back and doing it again from experience and memory.

The teams aren’t charities and the name of the game these days is profitability.

It’s pretty easy to police an engineering firm that claims to have zero revenue and millions of dollars of sunk costs, and they would have to disclose where their funding is coming from. This all has to be reported for tax reasons anyway.

I see people talking, but clearly with zero experience in any kind of corporate accounting what-so-ever.

[dans79]

The teams aren’t charities and the name of the game these days is profitability.

It’s pretty easy to police an engineering firm that claims to have zero revenue and millions of dollars of sunk costs, and they would have to disclose where their funding is coming from. This all has to be reported for tax reasons anyway.

I see people talking, but clearly with zero experience in any kind of corporate accounting what-so-ever.

Sorry Hoffman900, but it isn't that simple. Teams can have all kinds of staff outside of the cap, be it none racing related departments, or completely separate side projects. Not to mention none of the top teams care about profits, as they are basically just marketing for their parent companies. As long as they aren't tens of millions in the red the parent company doesn't care.

not to mention many companies the size of the top teams can have several year in the red and still be fine, depending on what kinds of assets & capital they have.

[TFSA]

TD45 is about one thing only: if you bring something concrete/tangible (including data) into F1 from the outside, it must be accounted under the cost cap off you wish to bring it into the factory. As long as anything you produce, which can be considered intellectual property, stays out of the F1 factory, it doesn't fall under the TD, and it's fair game.

That doesn't stop the teams setting hundreds of people designing F1 car concepts "outside" F1, even using data from the official F1 project. Then bringing them back and doing it again from experience and memory.

And it isn't intended to do that, because it's not a problem, and for several reasons:

1) human memory is still limited
2) you still have to redo all the work in the F1 factory.
3) people can freely move to competitors and take that knowledge with them
4) F1 moves fast, and having to recreate the work from scratch is gonna put you behind
5) any time spent outside of F1 isn't being spent helping the team. So you'll essentially be moving part of your talent pool outside of F1 to do inefficient work.

This is not the secret advantage people make it out to be. In fact, i think it's a waste of money.

[JordanMugen]

That doesn't stop the teams setting hundreds of people designing F1 car concepts "outside" F1, even using data from the official F1 project. Then bringing them back and doing it again from experience and memory.

You need to show the history of all your paper/CAD designs to the FIA.

A highly refined design that does not need multiple iterations (in CFD/wind tunnel) would raise suspicion.

That somebody drew something good on CAD or a drawing board in the first place because they are experienced however, hardly seems like a reasonable thing to penalise.

5) any time spent outside of F1 isn't being spent helping the team.

The outside projects could be used to improve and optimise processes and techniques, no?

It doesn't help the design of the Grand Prix car directly, but it could help make Grand Prix car designing more efficient.

[dans79]

And it isn't intended to do that, because it's not a problem, and for several reasons:

1) human memory is still limited
2) you still have to redo all the work in the F1 factory, and people can
3) people can freely move to competitors and take that knowledge with them
4) F1 moves fast, and having to recreate the work from scratch is gonna put you behind
5) any time spent outside of F1 isn't being spent helping the team. So you'll essentially be moving part of your talent pool outside of F1 to do inefficient work.

This is not the secret advantage people make it out to be. In fact, i think it's a waste of money.

Some things are are very hard to learn, but are very easy to reproduce and remember once you have learned them.

For example during ww2 Miles Aircraft in the Uk put a lot of hard work into developing the M52. Miles believed it would be the first aircraft to break the sound barrier.

In late 44 members of Bell Aircraft visited the UK and reviewed the design and data associated with the M52. Bell was already working on the design of the X1, but was having issues with pitch control at high speeds because they used traditional elevators. Someone on Bells team noticed the m52 solution (what later became known as a stabilator), and they took that klodege back with them, and that knowledge fixed the X-1's control issues. hence why it was the first plane to break the sound barrier.


Lots of similar examples exist throughout history.

[TFSA]

Some things are are very hard to learn, but are very easy to reproduce and remember once you have learned them.

For example during ww2 Miles Aircraft in the Uk put a lot of hard work into developing the M52. Miles believed it would be the first aircraft to break the sound barrier.

In late 44 members of Bell Aircraft visited the UK and reviewed the design and data associated with the M52. Bell was already working on the design of the X1, but was having issues with pitch control at high speeds because they used traditional elevators. Someone on Bells team noticed the m52 solution (what later became known as a stabilator), and they took that klodege back with them, and that knowledge fixed the X-1's control issues. hence why it was the first plane to break the sound barrier.


Lots of similar examples exist throughout history.

Yes, but F1 is an entirely different development race. So i don't consider your examples comparable.

In F1, you are chasing the very smallest margins, and even the tiniest details matter. Some (or rather, most) teams don't even understand their current car and its aerodynamic behavior properly, and doing work outside the factory isn't gonna help them do that compared to doing work inside that factory. That simply isn't gonna work in practice because of how everything on the car is connected, and how the cars are developed and improved.

If we went back 40-50 years in time to how F1 cars were developed back then, with teams introducing new groundbreaking inventions in their cars on almost a yearly basis, I'd buy into that. But not in 2023.