2026 F1 Cars - General Thread

[mzso]

by organic » 2023-12-13 Wed, 15:03
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/reve ... /10557347/

Please succeed in making nimbler cars

It already sounds like a failure. 20cm reduction in length and 10 in width... Little more than symbolic, and the width reduction will be even a hindrance to the behavior of cars, which are already clumsy.

[NL_Fer]

It though to read here about the new flexible aerodynamics for 2026. But apparently it is still about fuels vs electrics, as we have discussing the last decade.

Can’t we just praise F1/FIA for creating this new platform in 2026 where manufacturers can showcase both their electric and combustion technology for the next decade? This platform can evolve in the next years to accommodate new fuels or “energy carriers” and new battery and electric motor tech.

Sure it’s going to raise a few eyebrows in 2026 with the cars switching to recharge on the straight. But if feel that on the long term, this formula can attract new manufacturers or keep them interested and increase the competitiveness.

[mzso]

It though to read here about the new flexible aerodynamics for 2026. But apparently it is still about fuels vs electrics, as we have discussing the last decade.

Fell free start up a conversation. But there's little info and it's vague.
Sounds like an auto-DRS, I'm guessing front and rear (not specified). It's not encouraging that they don't know what to do for the new DRS replacement.

Can’t we just praise F1/FIA for creating this new platform in 2026 where manufacturers can showcase both their electric and combustion technology for the next decade? This platform can evolve in the next years to accommodate new fuels or “energy carriers” and new battery and electric motor tech.

To me it feels that the F1 will be more behind the curve. I don't think at this point ICE can come back, and feels more and more like the end of a dead-end.
Plus there's no exciting change on either front. They just changed the power allowance.

Sure it’s going to raise a few eyebrows in 2026 with the cars switching to recharge on the straight. But if feel that on the long term, this formula can attract new manufacturers or keep them interested and increase the competitiveness.

I think the lot crying about engine noise nowadays, will switch to crying about engines running during breaking and turns. Even if they are louder.

[Tommy Cookers]

... I don't think at this point ICE can come back, and feels more and more like the end of a dead-end.....

in a race an F1 car's aggregate propulsion often has less carbon input/energy output than an FE car's ...
(an FE venue country often has eg 80% of its electricity made from fossil fuel incl. coal at c.40% efficiency)

FE should advertise events as (efficiency-equivalent) 20% carbon-free E, (equivalent) 40% carbon-free E, etc

[mzso]

... I don't think at this point ICE can come back, and feels more and more like the end of a dead-end.....

in a race an F1 car's aggregate propulsion often has less carbon input/energy output than an FE car's ...
(an FE venue country often has eg 80% of its electricity made from fossil fuel incl. coal at c.40% efficiency)

FE should advertise events as (efficiency-equivalent) 20% carbon-free E, (equivalent) 40% carbon-free E, etc

In fact FE cars have no carbon output at all. I don't understand why people bring up such nonsense as this and F1 aero transport. It's a technology showcase, it's not about 20-30 cars that race.
With EVs you feed them electricity, and the source of it is yours. Whether it's thermal power plants, nuclear, solar/wind, or hamsters in hamster wheels.

[wuzak]

In fact FE cars have no carbon output at all. I don't understand why people bring up such nonsense as this and F1 aero transport. It's a technology showcase, it's not about 20-30 cars that race.
With EVs you feed them electricity, and the source of it is yours. Whether it's thermal power plants, nuclear, solar/wind, or hamsters in hamster wheels.

That's Tommy's point.

For most races fuel is burnt to generate the electricity to run the FE cars, thus producing CO2 emissions.

Which Tommy says is equivalent, or greater than, the CO2 emissions of an F1 car and its hybrid engine burning petrol.

[wuzak]

by organic » 2023-12-13 Wed, 15:03
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/reve ... /10557347/

Please succeed in making nimbler cars

It already sounds like a failure. 20cm reduction in length and 10 in width... Little more than symbolic, and the width reduction will be even a hindrance to the behavior of cars, which are already clumsy.

Much of the width reduction will come from making the wheels and tyres narrower. This will produce a reduction in drag, even if nothing else is done.

It just may be that the cars cannot be significantly shorter with the battery. It is not necessarily the size of the battery, but its weight and effect on the weight distribution.

The position of the battery with respect to the front wheels is more or less set by the survival cell dimensions. Reductions is wheelbase will have to come from behind the tub.

The shorter the wheelbase, therefore, the more rearwards the weight bias.

[Rodak]

by organic » 2023-12-13 Wed, 15:03
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/reve ... /10557347/

Please succeed in making nimbler cars

It already sounds like a failure. 20cm reduction in length and 10 in width... Little more than symbolic, and the width reduction will be even a hindrance to the behavior of cars, which are already clumsy.

Much of the width reduction will come from making the wheels and tyres narrower. This will produce a reduction in drag, even if nothing else is done.

It just may be that the cars cannot be significantly shorter with the battery. It is not necessarily the size of the battery, but its weight and effect on the weight distribution.

The position of the battery with respect to the front wheels is more or less set by the survival cell dimensions. Reductions is wheelbase will have to come from behind the tub.

The shorter the wheelbase, therefore, the more rearwards the weight bias.

It might help to remove the mandatory front/rear weight balance.

[mzso]

In fact FE cars have no carbon output at all. I don't understand why people bring up such nonsense as this and F1 aero transport. It's a technology showcase, it's not about 20-30 cars that race.
With EVs you feed them electricity, and the source of it is yours. Whether it's thermal power plants, nuclear, solar/wind, or hamsters in hamster wheels.

That's Tommy's point.

For most races fuel is burnt to generate the electricity to run the FE cars, thus producing CO2 emissions.

Which Tommy says is equivalent, or greater than, the CO2 emissions of an F1 car and its hybrid engine burning petrol.

No it is not. Your missing mine. The emissions of an electric car is zero.
Musings about the power grid is of no relevance, and is meaningless. How they produce electricity is a matter of choice. It might as well be wholly CO2 free. It's not the burden of the car to deal with that, and definitely not a race series'. It does shows of non-polluting vehicles racing.

Also, the comparison is outright wrong. If you're arbitrarily count every CO2 output during the production of electricity, you need to also do the same for petrol. All the mining, transport, refining, related waste and CO2 burden. Also we can't know how costly (including energy, CO2 output) is the production of the specialized race fuels of F1.

And ultimately looking and background stuff like that only highlights one thing: Fossil fuel based. ICE inherently pollute with CO2 and otherwise. Because all the mining, refining and other processing required. Meanwhile electricity can be completely free of that, via nuclear or renewable.
And so far bio-fuel doesn't seem to be better. Planting vast fields of corn only turn them into fuel, super inefficiently.
(and synfuel is a dream as of now)

[mzso]

by organic » 2023-12-13 Wed, 15:03
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/reve ... /10557347/

Please succeed in making nimbler cars

It already sounds like a failure. 20cm reduction in length and 10 in width... Little more than symbolic, and the width reduction will be even a hindrance to the behavior of cars, which are already clumsy.

Much of the width reduction will come from making the wheels and tyres narrower. This will produce a reduction in drag, even if nothing else is done.

It just may be that the cars cannot be significantly shorter with the battery. It is not necessarily the size of the battery, but its weight and effect on the weight distribution.

The position of the battery with respect to the front wheels is more or less set by the survival cell dimensions. Reductions is wheelbase will have to come from behind the tub.

The shorter the wheelbase, therefore, the more rearwards the weight bias.

Sure it decreases drag, but I was talking about car behavior.
I don't know why it was down-voted, but if you decrease decrease the width by a larger fraction, than the length to width ratio even gets worse, as is the front-back weight balance. And cars are already sluggish and clumsy. With drivers clipping each other all the time.

I recall Leclerc driving an old Ferrari F1 car. Where he said he enjoyed how he could play with the rear, whereas with a contemporary car, if the rear goes it goes hard, with drivers being lucky if they can bring it back at all.

I don't see any problem with making cars much shorter. Designers would simply just need to get used to a different sort of packaging. The FIA might need to change the restrictions on fuel cell size/position at some point. Not sure if there are any restriction for batteries in a similar fashion.

[Vanja #66]

if you decrease decrease the width by a larger fraction, than the length to width ratio even gets worse, as is the front-back weight balance. And cars are already sluggish and clumsy. With drivers clipping each other all the time.

Tyre track width influences roll stability and small changes have little influence on cornering radius (on its own). Narrower track means smaller moment of inertia, which is beneficial for cornering behaviour. It also means you have slightly more race track width available in every corner relative to car symmetry plane, so you can take slightly wider lines which means you can go slightly faster.

Wheelbase has a lot more influence on cornering radius and 200mm shorter WB will have a big impact. WB of 3400mm is only 100mm longer than 2008 cars and is actually 100mm shorter than 2016 Merc W07. Of course, shorter WB is also much better for smaller moment of inertia.

Narrower tyres will mean lighter tyres and I expect they will also reduce the thread radius. Both things are beneficial if you want a nimbler car. So everything the rules will change is beneficial for nimbler cars and it will be especially visible in slow corners on street tracks.

I recall Leclerc driving an old Ferrari F1 car. Where he said he enjoyed how he could play with the rear, whereas with a contemporary car, if the rear goes it goes hard, with drivers being lucky if they can bring it back at all.

Those old cars actually had wider rear track than front, which is not good for traction stability of RWD cars. Which is why for a long time maximum car width is the same for front and rear axle and having wider rear tyres ensures the rear track is narrower than front track.

[wuzak]

Narrower tyres will mean lighter tyres and I expect they will also reduce the thread radius. Both things are beneficial if you want a nimbler car. So everything the rules will change is beneficial for nimbler cars and it will be especially visible in slow corners on street tracks.

The talk is of 16 inch rims, which will save weight compared to the 18 inch rims in use now.

And the tyre diameter will probably be reduced to somewhere between what we have now (725mm) and the old sizes (670mm)

[hollus]

Allright, too many posts are about politics, and they are getting more and more about politics.

We all know that the total life cycle of fuels is complicated, and different from place to place, and hard to quantify. Equally, the life cycle of electric energy is possibly more complicated, and even more changing from place to place and year to year.
And if you don't know that both are extremely complicated... you are just pretending not to know.
Same way you are just pretending not to know the policies about politics and the destination of all C-politics discussions over here.

You came here to talk about racing cars, let's keep it about racing cars. And yes, FIA apparently has decided to go somewhere like 50-50 on the split above. Their decision, we will not change it either way.

So no more C-politics, thanks. They'll be mercilessly deleted.

Back to future fast cars. Thanks.

[mzso]

if you decrease decrease the width by a larger fraction, than the length to width ratio even gets worse, as is the front-back weight balance. And cars are already sluggish and clumsy. With drivers clipping each other all the time.

Tyre track width influences roll stability and small changes have little influence on cornering radius (on its own). Narrower track means smaller moment of inertia, which is beneficial for cornering behaviour. It also means you have slightly more race track width available in every corner relative to car symmetry plane, so you can take slightly wider lines which means you can go slightly faster.

Wheelbase has a lot more influence on cornering radius and 200mm shorter WB will have a big impact. WB of 3400mm is only 100mm longer than 2008 cars and is actually 100mm shorter than 2016 Merc W07. Of course, shorter WB is also much better for smaller moment of inertia.

Narrower tyres will mean lighter tyres and I expect they will also reduce the thread radius. Both things are beneficial if you want a nimbler car. So everything the rules will change is beneficial for nimbler cars and it will be especially visible in slow corners on street tracks.

I recall Leclerc driving an old Ferrari F1 car. Where he said he enjoyed how he could play with the rear, whereas with a contemporary car, if the rear goes it goes hard, with drivers being lucky if they can bring it back at all.

Those old cars actually had wider rear track than front, which is not good for traction stability of RWD cars. Which is why for a long time maximum car width is the same for front and rear axle and having wider rear tyres ensures the rear track is narrower than front track.

I have huge doubts about those big impacts.

Those old cars actually had wider rear track than front, which is not good for traction stability of RWD cars. Which is why for a long time maximum car width is the same for front and rear axle and having wider rear tyres ensures the rear track is narrower than front track.

Eh? Am I missing something? When when was the rear ever narrower than the front?

[Vanja #66]

Eh? Am I missing something? When when was the rear ever narrower than the front?

Track width, not tyre width