Quote:
Originally Posted by gts135
On the surface, I would agree with your comments, but if you look at the technologies employed in the tools utilized to design F1 cars, I believe there is a lot of knowledge transfer within a manufacturer.
Aero - do road cars benefit from advances in F1? Sure, an F1 car aero is all about balancing downforce vs drag - the principles/software/theories/hardware used to better determine this in F1 trickle down to production cars - but with the balance more towards less drag and less towards downforce. Lots of cars now have cD's of less than 0.3 - almost unheard of a generation ago.
Tires - same thing plus the learnings taken from the chemistry in the tire compounds
Engines - ditto. Now we start adding the leading edge practical application of combustion dynamics, material advancements, FEA modelling basis reliability/weight, etc. that are developed in the lab, fine tuned in F1, and then transformed into use in the design of production cars.
Organization - want to motivate your engineers and put them on almost vertical learning curves? Assign them to the F1 team. Learn more in one season than ten on the assembly line.
Return on Investment - want to develop a new car line? Well, would you rather take a $1B and spread that out over 6 years or 4 before generating a return. I'll take 4, and to do that I need leading edge management of change processes, rapid prototyping, computer design, etc. All things that the F1 pressure cooker teaches and pushes.
Probably many more examples than that if I could type quicker.  |
A few years ago McLaren "bragged" about spending $7 million for just a few tenths of a second. I don't see how this translates or benefits a road car. Road cars NEVER need/see this kind of lift and they never really needed F1 principles to teach companies on how to build a low-drag car. Road cars don't need wings and diffusers and vortex generators to keep themselves from flyng off the road.
And like I said earlier, I have read enough motorsport engineer interviews that stated aero is the most worthless thing you can transfer from a race car to road car.
LIke you, I have some other stuff to say, but I can't spend too much time while at work...
Edit: read towards the end of the interview. It was done 14 years ago:
http://www.grandprix.com/ft/ft00222.html