We started the evening with a bit of fun i.e. John asked:
- Who had been to an F1 Race – a few hands went up
- Who had watched an F1 Race on TV – lots of hands in the air
- Who watches regularly e.g. more than 6 races a year – about a 30% drop off on the previous question
- Who will be getting up to watch the Australian Grand Prix at 6am on 26 March – that will be me and about six other people then!
To set the scene John gave us a bit of background on the development of the Jaguar Racing F1 team, which evolved like many other F1 teams do, from an earlier team owned by Sir Jackie Stewart and his son Paul. Ford purchased the Stewart Grand Prix team back in 1999 and renamed it Jaguar Racing to promote the Jaguar premium car company.
Behind the scenes in F1 there is frantic hard work as the teams prepare their cars for the ultimate test in a very public arena. The sight and sound of racing cars revving up on the grid before the start of a Grand Prix is one of the most exciting moments in a uniquely glamorous sporting event. However, it is easy to forget that moment, and the winning or losing, is the culmination of an immense amount of hard work behind the scenes as the race teams prepare their cars for the ultimate test. During his presentation John described how both communications and computing provide the necessary speed for the whole business of F1 teams including the design, production and testing of the cars as well as during the race weekend.
I noted the following general points of interest during John’s presentation:
- Key business decisions have to be made in seconds;
- The ‘company HQ’ changes for 4 days every 1 or 2 weeks, in 20 countries across 5 continents;,
- F1 is the world most watched annual international sports event with:
- 20 races in 20 different countries
- Drivers from 14 different nations competing in 2017
- Up to 450,000 spectators over a race weekend
- Broadcast in 185 countries/territories
- Women make up 1/3 of the TV audience.
- A F1 car can accelerate up to 100mph and back to a stop in 10 seconds;
- In 2016 the F1 team budgets ranged from $87m to $491m
- R&D accounts for $7m-25m of the budget
- Manufacturing $1m-3.4m
- Engines $10m-$200m
- Telemetry $12m-£15m
- Steering wheel alone costs $50,000
- When Manor Motorsports finished in 2014 with two points in 10th place out of 11 teams, this equated to $40m extra prize money for the team, so poins truly do mean money in F1!
John moved onto the technical side of his presentation by setting the scene with regards to the number of people employed at the Jaguar team HQ, including how many people travel to race and the amount of equipment they take with them i.e. 14-40 tonnes per race. Systems have to be available all of the time and to lose even one hour during race weekend due to faulty systems is unthinkable. John also outlined the design and manufacturing of the car including a good overview on the aerodynamics from a CFD ‘virtual wind tunnel’ that the teams use to augment physical wind tunnel testing . Other parts of the processes such as CADCAM, Analysis, Vehicle Part Manufacture Assembly, Rig Testing were also highlighted.
- Did you know that the aerodynamics on an F1 car creates so much down force that at 180mph, the car could run on an inverted track!
I was particularly interested in the Data Logging and telemetry aspects of John’s presentation which gave us an in-depth overview of the evolution of Car to Pits information, back in 1950, when there was no such technology available. Instead the driver described to his engineers what was happening and together they made technical decisions. Sir Jack Brabham won the world driver’s title three times back then, not just because he was a good drive, but also a brilliant engineer. It was only in the early 1980s that telemetry was available in F1 and even then it was on board only, with no ability to transmit back to the pits and the on board memory could only store one lap’s worth of data. This has developed over the years to the extent that since 2008, each F1 team has networked and used standardized circuits for the electronic control unit. This makes it easier for the FIA to spot banned devices that can, for example, improve traction. A modern F1 car is fitted with about 100-300 sensors and during each race the amount of collected data from the three main areas of sensors i.e. powertrain, drive and chassis is now in the range of 1.5 billion samples!
We also heard about the Car to Pits Data transfer, how it’s analysed in the pits and the trackside to factory communications. Teams can now share data in real time with engineers back at mission control in the factory as they have the ability to undertake similar analysis to what’s going on trackside.
Following John’s excellent presentation there was a good Q&A session, with questions ranging from:
- What is the Concord Agreement and why does Ferrari get more money than the other teams?
- How sensitive are the telemetry sensors, is what you see correct?
- How did Bernie Ecclestone make his money!
- How is the £1.9bn revenue for FOM broken down?
- How does technology transfer from F1 to the Automotive Industry?
The only disappointing note from my perspective was that I was the only female in the audience.
If you have a wider interest in Motorsports you may be interested in some content from a recent Automotive & Road Transport TPN event on 'Electrification in Motorsports'. The TPN have produced a written technical insight , Click here to read and there's also a filmed technbite below.