xpensive wrote:If you behold the contraption as a unit, you might be right, but we are talking hundreds of mechanical components, each with their individual bell-curve. If you begin your selection already at that level, surely +/- 5% is possible?
By your logic, it would become impossible to build any suitably complex machine simply because errors in each component would multiply up to form too large an error in the total machine to ever have it work.
I mean... it's theoretically possible that you might have an engine that got all the largest cylinder bores, and all the smallest piston, and all the worst fitting valves, and all the slightly out of alignment cams, and ... but such a beast would be
extremely rare, and sat on the edge of the bell curve.
In short – the distribution of the bell curve for the whole machine would be roughly the same as the average distribution of the individual components, because each engine will get good/well fitting parts in one place, and less so in another.
Bottom line – again, I do not believe that engines so precisely engineered as F1 engines have anywhere close to a 5% standard deviation in performance.
As an aside – even if they
did have a 5% standard deviation in performance, that would put 66.67% of engines within that bracket, and would mean that McLaren's engines were
inside the standard deviation, not outside it. Meaning McLaren would
still not be getting engines 50hp short. Even if they could be distributed as you seem to think they can be, Merc would be getting the 16% that are more powerful than 787hp, and 16% that were between about 760 and 787. Guessing by graph shape (because I can't be arsed doing the maths atm) they would average out to ~770hp. McLarens being centred on the bell curve would average out to ~751hp. Thus – even if there were a 5% standard deviation on engine power (which I doubt), and even if they could distribute them as they chose (which I doubt), they would still only have engines about 20hp more powerful than McLaren – you'd need to be talking about a 10-15% standard deviation before they were getting engines on average 50hp more powerful, and that's getting
way into the realms of fantasy.