Formula "Free"

[brutus]

So we all get frustrated at times with the excessive regulations that we see in all racing series, particularly F1. People are disappointed with cars that must have the same number of cylinders, same tyres, same fuel flow, etc. There are two reasons the regulators point to justify restrictions:

1- By banning materials/technology, they hope to lower the cost and make the series more attractive to teams.
2 - Safety: sometimes cars can get too fast and not safe enough, have too much cornering speed, etc.

I think reason #1 has been proved to be a mistake. It actually causes the opposite effect:when you have too much regulations, you force teams to fight for little marginal improvements on existing technologies, which is always costly. By contrast, if you have very permissive regulations, you allow someone to come up with a different idea, such as double deck diffuser, F-duct, fan car, etc, and gain an advantage due to creativity rather than money.
There's also the fact that, if people (sponsors) are willing to throw money at racing teams, why restrict that? It's not like the money comes from the taxpayers. So they should just let teams spend whatever they want.

Now, reason #2 is of course legitimate, and that's where my idea kicks in: what if we did away with safety concerns? that's of course impossible if we want people to risk their lives in a car, but what if we use R/C cars?

By R/C i don't mean the regular toys you see on nano tracks, parking lots, etc. I was thinking about using a car with onboard cameras, that would be driven by someone in a racing cockpit in a cabin, similar to those used in videogames. The driver would see the onboard cockpit angle from the cameras, and would have controls just like in a car (instead of regular R/C controls we see).

These cars would race in real tracks, such as Monaco, Interlagos, Laguna Seca, etc.
Also the cars would be full sized, or close to that. This would allow them to be easily seem by spectators, and also to have big engines.

Now, think about all the benefits.

1- No driver means less weight
2 - no driver means engine can be moved forward to allow better weight distribution
3 - no driver means no crumble zones, survival cell, roll loop, etc, so cars are even lighter.
4 - Since we need not worry about g force causing the driver to get uncounscious, we can develop all kind of crazy ground effects car pulling several G of lateral force.
5 - Old tracks that are deemed too dangerous can be used, like the Nordschleife.
6 - Less cost with medical crew, racing suit, helmet, etc, so more money can go into car development.

As for the regulations, i was thinking there could be none at all. I mean. Even car size, weight, fuel limits, engine type, could be all free. I think the only regulation would be requiring cars to use tyre traction, lest someone would try a jet powered car, or something. And if the optimal design turned out to be too small, there could be a minimum size regulation too. But other than that, it should be free. Six wheeled cars, two stroke engines, whatever.

what do you guys think?

[machin]

.....Get rid of the wheels and race guided missiles.....

... get rid of the whole thing and watch TV instead. It would be way cheaper.

[void]

We already have GT, Forza, iRacing, rFactor to do this, just need some kind of TV transmission, or a streaming one.

[brutus]

But the thing is, people would actually see the cars on track, cornering at enormous speed. And games are not good simulators when it comes to physics, especially considering high speed cars, of which there is really no data for them to be able to simulate realistically (since the kind of speed attainable would be far in excess of what is currently achievable).

Also, you're disregarding all the technical innovations that we would see with design freedom. It would be mostly an engineering competition. It would be the complete opposite of a spec series, where it's mostly about the driver, with F1 somewhere in between.

[krisfx]

I saw a similar idea pitched as a crowd funding request a year or so ago, it was even posted on this forum. It didn't work out too well, but I can't remember why.

[Cold Fussion]

I would be surprised if it were currently possible to have a camera + transmission + display pipeline that had a low enough latency to be able to drive a car at the sort of speeds you're hoping for. You would need at the very least sub 50 ms latency, but ideally in the sub 10 m/s range.

[Andres125sx]

That´s called FPV (first person view)

I do it with planes for more than 10 years (old video pre-HD era, but a good summary of the evolution from first setup to some nice MX bikes chasing), and I´ve even do it with small rc cars

Forza, GT, iRacing etc are games, this would be real cars driven remotedly, quite different

There would be some problems tough:

- Safety does not concern only drivers, but audience too. With cars cornering at 10Gs (wich means lots of corners at 300kmh or more) there´s no track that may ensure audience safety if a car loose control

- Link. Currently there are problems with tv broadcasting for the onboard cameras at some long tracks with trees, you can´t rely the control of such a quick car to something wich is not reliable enough. Nordschleife would be impossible. This point could be solved with some investment tough

- Cost. I disagree with your statement about limiting development is not effective. There was an unlimited competition some decades back, Can-Am, it died because of too high costs. Developing blown diffusers, fric, double difussers, etc may be expensive, but that´s nuts compared to investing on new and unlimited solutions. Teams may have unlimited departments developing every single area with unlimited funds each one. That´s what unlimited means, crazyness


I´d love that competition, but don´t see it feasible, at least like you propose it, maybe with some limitations....

[brutus]

Range and interference from trees are important considerations, and you're probably right in that long tracks like Nordschleife wouldn't really be viable. (They could be, if the track were fitted with transmitters along the circuit, connected by cable, but thats probably not cost effective.)

As far as the latency, its also a good point, but it just means that drivers have to adapt to a different driving style. Remember in the 80s drivers were risking their lives in 1000hp + cars that had up to 2seconds turbo lag. So 50 miliseconds doesn't sound that bad, especially if you're not in the cockpit. Of course, not being in the cockpit also means you have less feedback from the road, but as i said, its all about adapting to the driving conditions.

Regarding safety for audience, i don't think it would be such a big deal. If on one hand cars have higher cornering speeds, on the other hands they would be lighter, lessening the energy of the impact. Also, to pose a danger to spectators they would have to fly, as opposed to just go off the track, in which case they just hit the barrier. And if they were closed wheel prototypes, they would be much less prone to flying due to wheel to wheel contact.

[Cold Fussion]

As far as the latency, its also a good point, but it just means that drivers have to adapt to a different driving style. Remember in the 80s drivers were risking their lives in 1000hp + cars that had up to 2seconds turbo lag. So 50 miliseconds doesn't sound that bad, especially if you're not in the cockpit. Of course, not being in the cockpit also means you have less feedback from the road, but as i said, its all about adapting to the driving conditions.

Apples to oranges, turbo lag is just a delay in power, having 50 ms of input lag will make driving around at such high speeds incredibly difficult, 2 seconds of input lag would be completely undrivable. Load up 2 seconds of input lag into your computer and try and play a racing game and report back to me how easy it is.

[brutus]

But we won't have 2sec delay! It's just a matter of a few miliseconds, of course that's a challenge, but it's just another condition drivers will have to adapt to. I'm not saying it's the same as turbo lag, what i'm saying is that same way drivers had to adjust their style to suit turbo lag, they will adjust to a much smaller lag in input.

The latency means it won't be possible to drive as fast as if there was no lag,, but it does not mean that the car will be impossible to drive.

[wesley123]

It's not a challenge, it is an actual impossibility. Because in every input, this lag is happening. Thus, when a driver moves left while you are on it's left side, there too will be this delay. Thus, you'll have another extra delay. Oh, and don't forget the delay on the other side, too.

Also, on the real life circuits you will find that signal can become weaker/less stable over different parts of the circuit, thus adding even more lag to it.

Thus, driving in such a fashion will become more of a destruction derby rather than anything else.

And even without this lag issue, I don't see why this would be any better than either watching RC cars, or watching an online league.

[brutus]

If it's impossible, how do RC cars even exist? It's obvious that a lag in response means the driving will never be optimal, but it's possible. If nothing else, at least straight line speeds should be much higher.

As for the signal decaying, that's not an issue with decent equipment, which is not too expensive. RC planes have a good range.

And comparing with RC cars, well, this formula would be much faster, and bigger cars on real tracks. And compared to virtual reality, i don't get why people keep saying that real cars on a real track it's the same thing as a game. And again, if that were the case, how come people use RC cars, planes, etc, instead of simulators? Also, with games you don't get technical (mechanical and technlogical) development, like more powerful engines, better suspensions, aerodynamics, etc. This could actually have more potencial for creating new technology for the auto industry because it wouldn't be limited by regulations. For instance, you can't develop a two stroke/direct injection to run in WEC, and you can't have a diesel in F1, even if you're convinced they would be better.

[Cold Fussion]

An RC car can't be compared to what you propose. The bandwidth requirements for a HD camera are probably close to a million times more intensive than the RC signals, and the processing requirements are similarly much higher. With an RC car you also remove a step from the pipeline, which is the visual aspect. I would expect the actual control signals to be in near real time for both applications, however, if you're relying purely on the cameras then the control signals must be synced to the visuals, which means you're saddled with the delay. Don't forget that typical RC applications occur at either much lower speeds than F1, or they are not as time sensitive as wheel to wheel racing. Don't forget that at 250 km/h, a 50ms amounts to a distance of 3.5 m, the implications of that distance are significant, especially when you start adding more than one vehicle to mix and you start having compounding latencies.

[Andres125sx]

Who said HD cameras?

That´s not neccessary at all, and avoiding HD you get rid of any noticeable lag

It´s perfectly doable, at least on this regard. I have 10 years experience on this field

[George-Jung]

Drivers need to feel what a car is doing..

Because if a car starts to slide, they will immediately feel that, before they actually see it..