Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? You know, folks? I
Speaker 1: had planned to have a brand new episode come out today,
Speaker 1: but technical issues got in the way. And yes, I
Speaker 1: am aware of the irony, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: irritating things where I haven't yet tracked down the actual
Speaker 1: source of the problem. So that has taken up a
Speaker 1: lot of my time today and it means that I
Speaker 1: did not get a new episode recorded. However, I would
Speaker 1: never want to leave you without an episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: So here's one that was recorded a few years ago.
Speaker 1: On August two thousand nineteen, we published it. It's about
Speaker 1: Formula one racing. It's called Formula one one oh one.
Speaker 1: And on this episode, I had the amazing guest of
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin on the show. Mr Scott, hope you are
Speaker 1: well and uh yeah, I thought we could go back
Speaker 1: and listen to this so that we could go fast.
Speaker 1: Even while we're sitting still today we are tackling a
Speaker 1: listener request. Michael Peach asked me ages ago if I
Speaker 1: could talk about Formula one race, cars, Formula one racing,
Speaker 1: what's it all about? How does that work? And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not really a car guy, like I've
Speaker 1: done car topics before, but it requires an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of research on my part because I don't I don't
Speaker 1: really know cars. So it it's it's like it's extra
Speaker 1: work for me. Not that I don't, you know, mind
Speaker 1: doing some extra work, but that's asking a lot. And
Speaker 1: then I thought, wait a minute, there's a dude who
Speaker 1: literally sits on the other side of the table from
Speaker 1: me at our workstations. His name is Scott Benjamin and
Speaker 1: he's not doing anything. So I'm just gonna grab him
Speaker 1: and pull him into the studio. Scott, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Did you just say not doing anything? Okay, that's totally
Speaker 1: at Scott's doing a lot of stuff. I'm doing some
Speaker 1: stuff over yeah. Now and then, so Scott, first of all,
Speaker 1: tell our listeners what you have been doing, because they
Speaker 1: may not be aware of the shows you're working. Well, First,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me on your show. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Every time I'm here, I have a good time,
Speaker 1: So let's keep that up. Okay, absolutely, And uh, I've
Speaker 1: been working on some other stuff. I've been cash for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. I've been doing some true crime stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might. You might recognize Scott's voice if you've listened
Speaker 1: to a Monster for example. Yeah, Voice of the Zodiac. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I've got my own show, which is called Insomniac.
Speaker 1: I've been doing that and that's kind of wrapping up
Speaker 1: right around now. And I've got a couple of a
Speaker 1: couple of car shows that are coming up soon and
Speaker 1: one has already been released. The other one we're kind
Speaker 1: of holding off on. But um, it's no secret. I
Speaker 1: don't think, I mean we are. We're going to re
Speaker 1: release car stuff. I'm gonna come back on the show
Speaker 1: just me, just myself. Ben will not be with me,
Speaker 1: and I'll explain all of that at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the of the series. And there's no big fight or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but just Ben and I are always
Speaker 1: in a big fight. But you've been you're you're you're
Speaker 1: still you're still close. No, no, so yeah, we're still
Speaker 1: tight and everything. He's just got a lot going on,
Speaker 1: more than more than a lot of us do. So
Speaker 1: there's that, and then I also have another show called
Speaker 1: The Fast Track, and The Fast Track is a lot
Speaker 1: like car stuff, only it's it's more focused on things
Speaker 1: that go fast, people to go fast, ways that we
Speaker 1: go fast. Um, just components, you know, race series, anything
Speaker 1: about speed and going quickly and how we can get
Speaker 1: there faster, and that's that's what it's all about. Awesome,
Speaker 1: So you are clearly the go to guy if we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Formula one and Uh, in the interest
Speaker 1: of full disclosure, guys, I was not joking when I
Speaker 1: say I'm not a car guy, and I'm certainly not
Speaker 1: a race car guy. I've I've never really watched racing.
Speaker 1: I'm aware of it from the sort of the cultural
Speaker 1: touchstones that are out there, and uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: aware that there are different kinds of racing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the Formula one, there's stock car racing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's NASCAR, which is sort of an offshoot of
Speaker 1: the stock car racing. But beyond that, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: necessarily been able to differentiate them. And I didn't really
Speaker 1: know much about Formula one before looking back into this,
Speaker 1: apart from you know, seeing it in movies and stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I remember joking with you Scott this morning, I said, well,
Speaker 1: to me, the history of race car, uh, driving, race
Speaker 1: cars and and and races in general kind of boil
Speaker 1: back to the day the second car rolled off the
Speaker 1: manufacturing plant and people started wondering, I wonder which of
Speaker 1: these two can go faster. It's essentially true, and it
Speaker 1: really did happen that way. I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 1: it was. As soon as there were enough cars to
Speaker 1: get together, they started a race or so you would
Speaker 1: get to a certain point faster. Yeah. And a lot
Speaker 1: of those early races it wasn't even just about speed.
Speaker 1: It was because cars were so new, it was literally
Speaker 1: seeing which one of these connects make that trip. There
Speaker 1: were reliability tests, right, like like will this car actually
Speaker 1: make this this trip from it was almost always Paris
Speaker 1: to something else, like the French were gaga that's French
Speaker 1: for walsa for for car racing. Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the the history of Formula one, if you look at it,
Speaker 1: really has its roots in an earlier part of racing,
Speaker 1: the whole grand pre concept, right absolutely, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, turn of the century, turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and more than the early early
Speaker 1: dawn of automobiles is when we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: the racing beginning, like you were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: when there's just more than a few in a field
Speaker 1: and they're trying to get somewhere or trying to you know,
Speaker 1: prove their endurance by by you know, racing twenty six
Speaker 1: miles or whatever it was. You know, it took some
Speaker 1: all day. Yeah, because there's their top speed might be
Speaker 1: like fifteen kilometers an hour, yeah, exactly, And and the
Speaker 1: roads and the conditions and the vehicles themselves, and it's
Speaker 1: just there's so many factors that go into why these
Speaker 1: races were just, um, it's brutal on the person that
Speaker 1: was you know, the in the driver's seat, were in
Speaker 1: the passenger seat, and mechanics seed or however you want
Speaker 1: to put it. Um a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: it came down to what the driver could stand. There
Speaker 1: was these are open cockpit cars and they were they
Speaker 1: were really really punishing on the person that was driving.
Speaker 1: The wheels were not inflatable tire wheels because the rope
Speaker 1: first of all, those had not really been invented yet. Also,
Speaker 1: the roads certainly were not uh in good enough shape
Speaker 1: to allow that kind of wheel to last for very long. No,
Speaker 1: these are wagon trails. Yeah, so you're talking about like
Speaker 1: hard rubber wheels or sometimes like metal wheels on these things.
Speaker 1: You know, so you can imagine if you've ever been
Speaker 1: in a bumpy car ride, that's not even coming close
Speaker 1: to what this experience was. Yeah, exactly. You know, the
Speaker 1: tires were not pneumatic tires or binding means, so a
Speaker 1: lot of times they were really really rough ride. But
Speaker 1: you know, the racing did begin early, early in the
Speaker 1: night rather the twentieth century, and by the time you
Speaker 1: get to round you know, the nineteen thirties, things have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better. I mean a lot better. We're
Speaker 1: gon we're talking some enormous engines, maybe not the highest
Speaker 1: horsepower output, but they are strong. I mean, they're putting
Speaker 1: aircraft engine in cars at this point in race cars,
Speaker 1: i should say, because you know they're obviously they're not
Speaker 1: a street car. There, there's something a little bit more
Speaker 1: than that. They're they're throwing you know, V sixteen engines
Speaker 1: into cars, and you know, the manufacturers are starting to
Speaker 1: get into it, and they're realizing that people are you know,
Speaker 1: taking note of the manufacturers that win the race or
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're proving that reliability, they're proving their speed,
Speaker 1: they're proving you know, just what that they're they're backing
Speaker 1: their product, they're they're throwing it out there for everybody
Speaker 1: to see. And of course that translates to sales, and
Speaker 1: racing has always translated to sales for for automakers, and
Speaker 1: that's exactly why they get into it. And you know,
Speaker 1: early on, you know, we're we're here to talk about
Speaker 1: Formula one, and uh, early on in the days that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, thirties, there was no Formula one, right right,
Speaker 1: at this point, you had some formula in this sense
Speaker 1: refers to us out of rules, right, so you would
Speaker 1: have different sets of rules for different races, but they
Speaker 1: changed all the time. In fact, Formula one rules have
Speaker 1: changed significantly since they were introduced. They changed weekly. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: to the point where you're like, why are you calling
Speaker 1: it a formula. It's kind of like the flavor of
Speaker 1: the week at this point, changing formula, But exactly it's
Speaker 1: it's it's no coke classic. But the the formulas are.
Speaker 1: The rules were usually things like they would govern how
Speaker 1: heavy your vehicle could be, and then generally the capacity
Speaker 1: of the engine, and there were some stretches where even
Speaker 1: that was thrown out the window. There were the so
Speaker 1: called Formula libre years, where that means formula free, right,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have those restrictions. That really was around
Speaker 1: when that happened. And this was also around the same
Speaker 1: time where to build these race cars it was a
Speaker 1: really expensive endeavor. And we'll get into costs like modern
Speaker 1: day costs later on, because while it was expensive back then,
Speaker 1: it was peanuts compared to what it is today. Mind boggling,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I mean, you've only shared with me a
Speaker 1: couple of figures. I wanted to save the best for
Speaker 1: the show because I think you'll hear my jaw hitting
Speaker 1: the desk multiple times. But the car manufacturers started to
Speaker 1: pull out around the late twenties early thirties, UH, in
Speaker 1: order to focus on building out their their consumer cars,
Speaker 1: because that's really when consumer vehicles were starting to take off,
Speaker 1: and you started seeing the rise of these specialty manufacturers,
Speaker 1: the Ferraris, the Bugattis, the Maserati's. And here there's a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting things I want to point out about
Speaker 1: that about those those manufacturers that are stepping in because um,
Speaker 1: you know, and we should say this too that you know,
Speaker 1: up until this point it's been called Grand Prix racing. Yes,
Speaker 1: grand Prix motor racing, I think, is how they actually
Speaker 1: said it. In Grand pre of course means I think
Speaker 1: that means like great prize in French. Right, So big old,
Speaker 1: big old honk and prize. Yeah, yeah, that's right, big trophy, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you win. And uh and so you know,
Speaker 1: early days of this type of racing, it was called
Speaker 1: Grand Prix racing. There was no Formula one up until
Speaker 1: a point that we're gonna get to in just a
Speaker 1: moment here, but manufacturers were starting to step in there
Speaker 1: like um um. Like Ferrari and f is a great
Speaker 1: example is because he really just wanted to go racing.
Speaker 1: That's all I wanted to do. He didn't want he
Speaker 1: didn't want a road car, and he had to build
Speaker 1: a certain number of road cars at a certain point
Speaker 1: in order to fund his racing program. That's what he did.
Speaker 1: So he started to build a company to fuel his
Speaker 1: racing ad exactly. Yeah, So Ferrari, the birth of Ferrari
Speaker 1: is really because of his desire to go racing. He
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, the best racing machine, but he
Speaker 1: had to build and sell cars to the to the
Speaker 1: public in order to fund that program. And it kind
Speaker 1: of became this, uh, I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: the way it's kind of this back and forth where
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a balancing act like if I
Speaker 1: if I build Okay, if I build twenty cars this year,
Speaker 1: I can afford to race one more season. If I
Speaker 1: build eight cars next year, I'll be able to afford
Speaker 1: another race car and do it for two more seasons
Speaker 1: or three more seasons or whatever. And it just became
Speaker 1: this thing that grew and grew and grew, and the
Speaker 1: team's got bigger, the cars got more expensive and faster,
Speaker 1: and he was more competitive on the track, and he
Speaker 1: had to build more rate more street cars, which he
Speaker 1: didn't really enjoy at first. He didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: He just just wanted the racing programs. And I know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's crazy, isn't it. That Like now when
Speaker 1: you look at Ferrari, there were a fantastic road card.
Speaker 1: Of course they've got a great racing program still, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what the whole company is based on.
Speaker 1: But you know, they do build some incredible and just
Speaker 1: incredible street machines as well, and you know they always
Speaker 1: were great, just he was just more doing it, I guess,
Speaker 1: just out of his own own selfish needs really and
Speaker 1: you know, early on the initial days. Well, and this
Speaker 1: also kind of ties in, and we're talking a lot
Speaker 1: about the pre Formula one day, because it's really important
Speaker 1: to understand why Formula one came around when it did
Speaker 1: in those pre days. So in the very early years
Speaker 1: you had sort of French domination in in these in
Speaker 1: these races of France was uh, first of all, France
Speaker 1: was hosting most of the Grand Prix races and also
Speaker 1: was fielding at least half the vehicles in most of
Speaker 1: these races as well, so clearly they were going to dominate.
Speaker 1: After that, you started to see the rise of the
Speaker 1: Italian vehicles with the Ferraris coming in and really starting
Speaker 1: to challenge that. And then following that you started to
Speaker 1: see Germany really push hard to get into this space
Speaker 1: too with German engineering, and this became not just a
Speaker 1: sports thing but a political thing because it's if you're
Speaker 1: paying attention, this is the same as the rise of
Speaker 1: Hitler and Hitler was very much determined to have Germany's
Speaker 1: profile raised in all fields of engineering and science, largely
Speaker 1: as a sort of a domination play. And you know,
Speaker 1: we also saw this in the Olympics. We saw it
Speaker 1: in also any place where Germany was going to have
Speaker 1: a place on the world stage. Hitler wanted Germany to
Speaker 1: be at the very top of that. And so you
Speaker 1: saw a lot of pressure a lot of state sponsored
Speaker 1: programs in Germany to try and and boost their own
Speaker 1: performance in the UH in the racing world. Although I
Speaker 1: should also add that even state sponsored only covered part
Speaker 1: of the cost of developing these vehicles, because that's how
Speaker 1: expensive they were. You couldn't even have an entire country
Speaker 1: behind you instill compete. You hadn't have more money than that, sure,
Speaker 1: and that's why we see teams often come and go
Speaker 1: in the series, and even now, a lot of teams
Speaker 1: just simply can't afford to compete. And we're talking about major,
Speaker 1: major manufacturers. They just don't see enough return on investment
Speaker 1: and a lot of times and or they may have
Speaker 1: come into it with only the plan to operate in
Speaker 1: there for a few years, learn what they can and
Speaker 1: then get out. Yep. So through all this we get
Speaker 1: to World War Two, and of course, during World War Two,
Speaker 1: the Grand Prix stop. I mean, obviously there were more
Speaker 1: important things going on at that point. But as soon
Speaker 1: as World War Two was over, the world started to
Speaker 1: return to to normal, and even before World War two
Speaker 1: had completely ended in all theaters that it ended in Europe,
Speaker 1: they were already starting to plan the next round of
Speaker 1: Grand Prix, which would take place. By nineteen forty six
Speaker 1: they started holding these races again. Yes, nineteen forty six
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty six is an important year because I
Speaker 1: think that was when they held the very first official
Speaker 1: Formula one race. And the thing is it wasn't um
Speaker 1: It wasn't actually formalized until one year later, I believe,
Speaker 1: until nineteen forty seven. And then the first official I
Speaker 1: guess if you want to go with like the absolute
Speaker 1: official world class you know race, world class Formula one race,
Speaker 1: the World Championship race, was held in nineteen fifty and
Speaker 1: this wasn't at Silverstone in the United Kingdom. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: these were all sort of the these stepping stones to
Speaker 1: establishing what truly would be Formula one, which again we're
Speaker 1: gonna go more into in our our next section. After
Speaker 1: we come back from the break, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: more about what the Formula one rules were when they
Speaker 1: were originally put in place. That would obviously change a lot.
Speaker 1: And I also have some questions for Scott because the
Speaker 1: rules indicate things like like engine volume, and I need
Speaker 1: to understand more about what that means. And that's why
Speaker 1: I have him here. I'll do what I can. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I un fortunately I know a little bit about it,
Speaker 1: so we can talk about kind of what these are.
Speaker 1: But these are things that these are terms that would
Speaker 1: pop up around around racing that because I was not
Speaker 1: in that world. To me, we're just it was like Greek,
Speaker 1: completely understand, just totally a mystery to me. So yeah,
Speaker 1: now we finally get up to where you have this
Speaker 1: organization in UH in Europe that has formalized the set
Speaker 1: of rules. Yeah, yeah, and so they got this set. Now.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you're wondering, are there other Formula races, Yes,
Speaker 1: there's Formula two, there's Formula three, there's Formula four. There's
Speaker 1: also Formula E, which is for electric vehicles. Um, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about the differences largely between
Speaker 1: Formula one and Formula two, just on a very brief
Speaker 1: level in our next segment. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: we're going to really dive into some some engine stuff
Speaker 1: in a minute, and uh, I'm gonna need to take
Speaker 1: a quick break to steal myself for this experience. So
Speaker 1: when we come back more about Formula one. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we get to the point where Formula one rules are set,
Speaker 1: and here's how I understand the rules to be based
Speaker 1: on my research. And Scott, if I if I go
Speaker 1: way wrong, just you know, not to use a pun,
Speaker 1: but steer me back on track. Okay. One thing, one
Speaker 1: thing I didn't mention earlier was one of the big
Speaker 1: differences between Formula one racing and say your your typical
Speaker 1: like your NASCAR races, is that the circuits on Formula
Speaker 1: one involve lots of different turns left and right right.
Speaker 1: That it's not like a big oval like you would
Speaker 1: see in a lot of race car races. Now, these
Speaker 1: are road courses, so there's elevation changes, there are left
Speaker 1: and right turns. As you said, Um, it's not the
Speaker 1: high banked ovals like we're talking about in in NASCAR
Speaker 1: or you know, some other forms of racing. It's this
Speaker 1: is a it's a challenging race. I mean they're all challenging,
Speaker 1: but this becomes a sport where the person behind the
Speaker 1: wheel really does need to be an athlete. And if
Speaker 1: you don't believe me, try We talked about this off air,
Speaker 1: but try going go karting at an indoor track for
Speaker 1: maybe ten fifteen minutes at a time. You're exhausted. When
Speaker 1: you're done, Yeah, you'll make And that's just go karting.
Speaker 1: And that's and that's just for ten or fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: The Formula one race, by the way, has a time
Speaker 1: limit of two hours on a regular race, assuming no
Speaker 1: red flag conditions pop up. Yes, so you know, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. These guys are athletes. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: you could experience uh forces up to five G in strength,
Speaker 1: five times the the force of gravity on you in
Speaker 1: some of these turns. And they're taking, like I said,
Speaker 1: turns left and right. Um, so it is it Also
Speaker 1: Formula one cars, today's modern ones, which we'll get to
Speaker 1: a little bit later, go a little faster than the
Speaker 1: fastest NASCAR cars, like by five miles per hour. It's
Speaker 1: like two is the top for NASCAR generally speaking. In
Speaker 1: two oh five for Formula One, but it's also a
Speaker 1: very different experience. It is. Yeah, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: average speeds where you know, going in a circle. You know,
Speaker 1: I hate to use that because a lot of people
Speaker 1: say that's nothing, but going in a circle and turn
Speaker 1: and left, it's not. It's not that easy for NASCAR.
Speaker 1: It's also incredibly brutal. It is difficult. Yes, it's it's
Speaker 1: more difficult than you would think. But uh but but honestly, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking about average speeds, I mean,
Speaker 1: these guys the cars will rate a lot faster, lot
Speaker 1: quicker than a NASCAR would and they can break a
Speaker 1: lot harder than a NASCAR car would. And so when
Speaker 1: you talk about average speeds, you're talking about over the
Speaker 1: course of a road course versus a an oval. It's
Speaker 1: a significant difference the type of racing that it is.
Speaker 1: So some of the basic rules for Formula One when
Speaker 1: it was first coming out was that originally there was
Speaker 1: no weight limit on vehicles. You did have different um uh,
Speaker 1: engine volumes that were allowed. If you were using a
Speaker 1: turbo charger or super charger, then you are limited to
Speaker 1: c C, which Scott kindly informed me does not mean
Speaker 1: carbon copy in this case, but cubic centimeter. We'll get
Speaker 1: into that in a second. And then the the I
Speaker 1: think that you could have up to three thousand cc
Speaker 1: for an naturally aspirated engine, sure, which means it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a supercharger, doesn't have a turbo or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just it's breathing. It's breathing Air's so so this
Speaker 1: was something that I actually had to look up because
Speaker 1: again not a car guy, but naturally aspirated means that
Speaker 1: it's using just the natural atmospheric pressure to feed oxygen
Speaker 1: into the uh, the engine. That's what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: not forced induction when I say it's breathing air. Of
Speaker 1: course every engine breathe air. This one is simply just
Speaker 1: you're right taking this taking the atmospheric um pressure. Yeah pressure,
Speaker 1: yea atmospheric air. I guess you gotta put that way.
Speaker 1: But a turbocharger or a supercharger, it's pushing air into
Speaker 1: the engine. It's forced air induction, is what that is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're using your you're forcing air into the engine. You're
Speaker 1: creating additional horsepower by by running, by ramming more air
Speaker 1: through there and fuel. Right, So that means that you're
Speaker 1: you're able to uh to get fuel to the the
Speaker 1: cylinders faster, and that's the cylinders are what we're referring
Speaker 1: to when we're talking about like CC, what you're really
Speaker 1: talking about is the volume that the cylinders can hold
Speaker 1: based on the full stroke of the piston. It's the
Speaker 1: displacement of the engine. So what you're looking at is
Speaker 1: the the the amount of space. I guess I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put this in the simplest way without really getting too much.
Speaker 1: When the pistons travel up and down, if it's all
Speaker 1: the way at the bottom, there's a there's a you know,
Speaker 1: in the cylinder itself, where the piston travels up and down,
Speaker 1: there's there's a volume of air there and that error
Speaker 1: is then you know, compressed and it's filled with fuel
Speaker 1: and that's where the explosion happens and proper us some
Speaker 1: piston down, et cetera. We we don't need to go
Speaker 1: into like the whole combustion cycle and everything right now,
Speaker 1: but um, that's the volume of displacement of the engine.
Speaker 1: In the United States, we typically use a different measurement.
Speaker 1: We use cubic inch displacement CD because we're all about imperialism, yes,
Speaker 1: but if you want to think of of c C
Speaker 1: there an easy the easiest way to think of like
Speaker 1: a cc displacement. Um, you've heard the term like you know,
Speaker 1: two leader car, three leader engine, four leader engine whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: it's typically about a thousand ccs per leader. So one
Speaker 1: thousand cc engine is like a one leader engine. And
Speaker 1: if you want to put it that way, So like
Speaker 1: the old Mustang GTS that had a five leader engine,
Speaker 1: roughly about five thousand ccs is what the displaced more
Speaker 1: would be. And and to correct myself from earlier, I
Speaker 1: had said that I thought that the for a naturally
Speaker 1: aspirate it was like three thousand cc. It's actually four thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred cc. For that first race it was the
Speaker 1: four thousand, five hundred cc limit on on engine volume.
Speaker 1: And this changes all the time, all the time, which
Speaker 1: is why I why I I was fumbling because it
Speaker 1: changes like year to year. I think I have a
Speaker 1: real quick rundown of the changes, if you like real quick,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear this super quick. Um. So
Speaker 1: so maybe we should talk about the current engine last.
Speaker 1: But pre nineteen nine it was unlimited cylinders. You could
Speaker 1: have as many cylinders, you want sixteen cylinders, twelve cylinders, whatever,
Speaker 1: doesn't um. In the nineteen nineties they switched this to
Speaker 1: twelve cylinders, and and then in the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: they went to V tens. Then up until about two
Speaker 1: thousand eight they use V eights, and they have recently
Speaker 1: this is in nineteen right now. What they're using is
Speaker 1: a very specific it's one point six leader four stroke
Speaker 1: turbocharged V six. So you know, those incredible cars and
Speaker 1: the incredible speeds and sounds that we hear are coming
Speaker 1: from a turbocharged V six that's relatively small. And they've
Speaker 1: been doing this since again, just a one point six
Speaker 1: leader engine. So, um gosh, I that's CS I guess
Speaker 1: you want to put it that way. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: this is this is also fascinating is that you sit
Speaker 1: there and you look at this and you think, you
Speaker 1: know these what does this actually translate to? Right, you're
Speaker 1: talking about engine volume is not necessarily equivalent to more
Speaker 1: ccs means more speed. It's it's all about other elements
Speaker 1: as well, and engineering as a whole takes a very
Speaker 1: important part in this. Uh So that was another thing
Speaker 1: that was confusing to me because all right as a kid,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna really reveal my ignorance here as
Speaker 1: a kid. To me, the exposure of the concept of
Speaker 1: ccs for engines was limited to games that involved uh
Speaker 1: go kart racing video games because they would have the
Speaker 1: different you know, you have a fifty C C or
Speaker 1: one C C or on c C. So to me,
Speaker 1: it was just like bigger just means faster, you know,
Speaker 1: that's typically the way it is, really, I mean, but
Speaker 1: somewhere along the way, you know, engineering got a whole
Speaker 1: lot better, and they're able to get so much more
Speaker 1: power out of a smaller engine. And that's what we're
Speaker 1: seeing here. I mean, we've gone from unlimited cylinders and
Speaker 1: you know, the sixteen cylinder engines in these in these
Speaker 1: F one cars down to you know, turbo charged V
Speaker 1: six is and I you know, I don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but I would say that they're going to continue to
Speaker 1: shrink in size. I just have a gut feeling they're
Speaker 1: going to just continue to get smaller and smaller. It's
Speaker 1: also interesting because just the where where we've seen the
Speaker 1: changes in the limitations for how big the engine is
Speaker 1: allowed to be, and then we've gotten to the point
Speaker 1: now where it's even uh, it's uniform, that's saying, well,
Speaker 1: they all have to be specifically this particular engine volume.
Speaker 1: The other element that has changed quite a bit has
Speaker 1: been whether or not you could even have a turbocharged
Speaker 1: engine in your vehicle. Some years it was yes, you
Speaker 1: could either have a turbo engine of this capacity or
Speaker 1: naturally aspirated of this capacity. You could have like just
Speaker 1: for an example, you could have a turbocharge V six
Speaker 1: or you could have a naturally aspirated V eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they there were some years where they said, okay,
Speaker 1: well now you can't have turbo charged at all. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was there was a time just really in the
Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies where that became a thing where
Speaker 1: they said, all right, we're gonna remove turbo charged, largely
Speaker 1: because there there seemed to be an unfair advantage of
Speaker 1: some of the vehicles that were engineered with turbo charged.
Speaker 1: They were giving the natural aspirated engines a chance to
Speaker 1: catch up in a way. This is something that we
Speaker 1: see from the governing body that I think they're constantly
Speaker 1: tweaking these rules in part because they want to have
Speaker 1: the what they considered to be the most entertaining result, right,
Speaker 1: the most entertaining, most most competitive race, because if it's
Speaker 1: not competitive, people start to lose interest. You know that.
Speaker 1: You've got to remember that the Formula one World Championship
Speaker 1: is actually a series of races. It's not one race winner.
Speaker 1: Take hall now it's twenty or I think it's races
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen. So the and they're all over
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, in fact, the United States only recently
Speaker 1: started to host them again. Uh. And it's in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: That where it takes place. And um, that the reason
Speaker 1: why the United States this is a whole different discussion,
Speaker 1: but it's largely because Formula one racing just never got
Speaker 1: super popular in the US, which you know, it was
Speaker 1: always seen as more of a European pursuit than an
Speaker 1: American one. Stock car racing was much more pop are here.
Speaker 1: You know, when I first moved to Detroit. This is
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties. This has been like eight
Speaker 1: four eighty five somewhere around there. Uh. They ran a
Speaker 1: Formula one race in downtown Detroit on the streets of Detroit.
Speaker 1: It was a road course that was on the streets
Speaker 1: of Detroit. And it was in such condition at the
Speaker 1: time that it was able they were able to do that,
Speaker 1: and later they moved it out to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: bell Aisle and they're still doing that now. But it's
Speaker 1: you know, the Car to Indy Car series. It's a
Speaker 1: different series. It's not the F one guys like like
Speaker 1: it was in the past. But I found that pretty
Speaker 1: fast and it didn't last too long when I was there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how many years they ran there.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but um, I don't know. It's just
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to me that, you know, F one
Speaker 1: just continually a justice and I know it. It's maddening
Speaker 1: to the fans because they're always changing something around, making
Speaker 1: something different, and they're always trying to kind of level,
Speaker 1: like you said, level that plane field a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I know it's it's it's angering to us, you know,
Speaker 1: as fans to watch this and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: try to keep up with the rule changes and what's
Speaker 1: happening in the series. I can imagine. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: what it would be like to be a team owner
Speaker 1: that has to adhere to the help to pay for
Speaker 1: all the changes and everything. But you know. One other
Speaker 1: thing that this does is that it can lead to
Speaker 1: incredibly boring racing if you get it to level, if
Speaker 1: you get everything to level. And and that was a
Speaker 1: critique of F one for a long long time, and
Speaker 1: it's not this way anymore. It's it's different now. I've
Speaker 1: been watching this past season even the season before, and
Speaker 1: it's quite a bit different now because of a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're going to talk about. You know that
Speaker 1: some of the new technologies. But um, there was no passing.
Speaker 1: You know, you you'd start the race and whatever order
Speaker 1: they would end up in, you know, after turn one,
Speaker 1: turn two, that was that's how they finished. And it
Speaker 1: was so boring for a long long time. Really, all
Speaker 1: what mattered was how you qualified, because your order of
Speaker 1: qualification dependent determines your order in the uh, in the
Speaker 1: starting for the race, and and if you weren't in that,
Speaker 1: you know, first place and after the second or third turn,
Speaker 1: well you know what place you're gonna get. A road
Speaker 1: course is very difficult to pass on. There's very few
Speaker 1: passing zones, you know, for you to use to to
Speaker 1: manipulate and and uh, you know, it's gotten a lot
Speaker 1: better if you haven't watched Formula One, and that was
Speaker 1: your argument against it. It's it's a lot different now
Speaker 1: if you watch and and that is in uh, in
Speaker 1: relation to some of the technologies that we can we
Speaker 1: can talk about a little bit later, because there are
Speaker 1: some advancements that have made they're racing a lot more
Speaker 1: exciting for the fans to watch and a lot more
Speaker 1: exciting for the drivers. I'm sure it's not it's not
Speaker 1: you know, you don't you don't finish in the order
Speaker 1: that you started exactly. Yeah, it's it's just it's a
Speaker 1: it's a much better race now. Yeah. And and so
Speaker 1: at the end of the series of races, what they
Speaker 1: do is they have points given out to the top
Speaker 1: ten finishers of each Grand Prix of each race, and
Speaker 1: then at the end of the season, those points are
Speaker 1: totaled up, and whoever has the most is the Grand
Speaker 1: Champion driver. But then you also have the winner teams
Speaker 1: instructor championship constructor championships. Yeah, and then when you get
Speaker 1: to that point, if you're the company that is making
Speaker 1: the vehicle, that is like sometimes you see like one
Speaker 1: company just dominating the top sometimes top ten teams. Then
Speaker 1: that is where the value comes from that that company.
Speaker 1: So for example, Mercedes has been doing quite well, um
Speaker 1: in the last few years, and that ends up being
Speaker 1: a really valuable tool for them because, as we've said before,
Speaker 1: this really does help sell cars if you're able to say, listen,
Speaker 1: we make the cars where the elite drivers, not just
Speaker 1: elite drivers who come from the same country that made
Speaker 1: the cars, but other elite drivers who they want to play,
Speaker 1: they want to drive for a winning team, they come
Speaker 1: to us. That's a powerful advertising tool. Oh sure is yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know what, as you mentioned Mercedes right now,
Speaker 1: they are currently as we're recording this, they're they're number
Speaker 1: one in the Constructor's Championship and uh their driver, the
Speaker 1: driver is Lewis Hamilton. He's number one in the Driver's
Speaker 1: Championship as well, obviously, I mean he's a brit to Mercedes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is a brit and um he I think he's
Speaker 1: on his fifth title at this point even and Mercedes
Speaker 1: is also on their fifth title. They they're they're very
Speaker 1: successful in the series, very successful and as is you know,
Speaker 1: you'll find that Ferrari and McLaren, you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: all they all have their moments, you know, they all have.
Speaker 1: It's kind of this updown thing, you like, where one
Speaker 1: team does dominate the series and and you'll find that
Speaker 1: this switches around routinely, not not not necessarily throughout the
Speaker 1: season because once you once you do find that, you
Speaker 1: know someone is dominating the season, like I would bet
Speaker 1: that Lewis Hamilton's gonna win his fair share of the
Speaker 1: next ten races or however many or left as well,
Speaker 1: and Mercedes along with him, of course, and it'll probably
Speaker 1: just go the way you think it's gonna go. But
Speaker 1: next year, who knows. From season to season, you've got
Speaker 1: because you have so many people that are focusing on
Speaker 1: ringing out every single little drop of performance you can
Speaker 1: get out of these vehicles. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you're pairing them with the best drivers in the world
Speaker 1: who can endure the incredible amount of punishment they're going
Speaker 1: to have dealt upon them. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: back at the history of Formula one racing and you
Speaker 1: want to look at stories of drivers who have gone
Speaker 1: through incredible trials and tribulations in the process of racing,
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of those stories. I remember coming across
Speaker 1: one of there was a a driver I want to
Speaker 1: say he was something like five ft three inches tall.
Speaker 1: This from the classic days of of racing. Who uh
Speaker 1: was so determined to race? Ferrari was actually begging him
Speaker 1: to withdraw from a race because the car itself was
Speaker 1: starting to fall apart, and it was one of these
Speaker 1: road races from one say to another, and they were
Speaker 1: begging him to to stop racing. He was racing on
Speaker 1: behalf of Ferrari, and he said no, no, no, is
Speaker 1: Ferra said, I was absolutely certain that his determination was
Speaker 1: to die behind the wheel doing what he loved. Turned out,
Speaker 1: he ended up having to eventually withdraw from the race
Speaker 1: simply because the car couldn't perform anymore. Yeah, he was,
Speaker 1: according to the stories call thing up blood, but still
Speaker 1: wanted to race. And he died. He died in bed
Speaker 1: five years later, So it wasn't like he passed away
Speaker 1: immediately thereafter. But he was in failing health and was
Speaker 1: still determined, and he was still winning too. He was
Speaker 1: twenty nine minutes ahead of the next fastest car, significant distance. Yes,
Speaker 1: so also shows you a lot of difference between this
Speaker 1: and and say NASCAR racing. And again we're not we're
Speaker 1: not trying to say one is better than the other. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I don't know we keep saying that, but it's been
Speaker 1: just to point out how different they are. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to talk about before we
Speaker 1: go to break is that the Formula one form factor
Speaker 1: is very distinctive, very different from the look of stock
Speaker 1: cars and other types of race cars. It's very low
Speaker 1: to the ground as almost sort of this very wing
Speaker 1: kind of design. And uh, the interesting thing to me
Speaker 1: is that it's it's a wing, but it's a wing
Speaker 1: that's meant to do the opposite of what an aircraft
Speaker 1: wing doing. Everything is about down force. You want the
Speaker 1: car to stick to the ground, so the faster you go,
Speaker 1: the more it adheres to the ground. And of course
Speaker 1: the tires are gonna work with this as well. Um,
Speaker 1: the whole car is really a giant wing, you right,
Speaker 1: that that provides down force instead of instead of lift.
Speaker 1: And if you turn around, if you're going backwards in
Speaker 1: this thing, that's the unfortunate thing. You get into a
Speaker 1: turn and you turn, you spin around, and you're going
Speaker 1: just as fast backwards. The problem is it becomes the
Speaker 1: opposite problem to lift the car off. Yes, it happens
Speaker 1: in Uh, it happens in a lot of forms of racing.
Speaker 1: You'll find that, you know, as soon as the car
Speaker 1: spins around, the back end wants to come straight up
Speaker 1: in the air on you. And that's that's an issue
Speaker 1: with with any of these cars that you know, down
Speaker 1: forces a major part of the design. But yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: it is it's open, it's open wheel, it's open cockpit. Um,
Speaker 1: that's changed just a tiny little bit, and I think
Speaker 1: they're gonna go maybe even a little bit further with
Speaker 1: this idea. But um, that's the whole halo thing that
Speaker 1: we can talk about when we talk about technology. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's an itesting looking car for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's definitely it looks like a spaceship really,
Speaker 1: And they're getting to the point where there are so
Speaker 1: many facets and uh you know, um surfaces and every
Speaker 1: single bit of that car is engineered for speed and
Speaker 1: for its ability to cut through the air and to
Speaker 1: again provide down force. We're talking about the tiniest little
Speaker 1: components behind the wheels, We're talking about the side pods
Speaker 1: that are next to the driver. I mean, every little
Speaker 1: bit of this thing is is just tuned to perfection
Speaker 1: for for it to be slippery through the air, to
Speaker 1: conserve fuel, to go fast, to be lightweight. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all these things and every single factor is the
Speaker 1: thought of and everything is um you know, scrutinized to
Speaker 1: the point where if it doesn't belong, if it if
Speaker 1: it has no purpose, of course, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be on the car. If it has um. If it
Speaker 1: does have a purpose, it's going to be made lighter somehow,
Speaker 1: it's going to be made more efficient. Somehow, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be made of a stronger material, but a lighter material.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be um, you know, slippery through the air.
Speaker 1: As we said, you know, every every little thing is
Speaker 1: just is to the the tiniest, tiniest little minute detail
Speaker 1: is scrutinized by every single person on that team and
Speaker 1: and it makes for a fantastic vehicle and and it
Speaker 1: gets better and better every year. The problem is then,
Speaker 1: you know, f one will come back and say like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make some changes, and they change it. Now
Speaker 1: your now your strategy is no longer applicable. No, and
Speaker 1: you do have to change. And that change is something
Speaker 1: that has a domino effect. You change something at the
Speaker 1: front of the car. It not only affects that one
Speaker 1: little piece at the front of the car, it has
Speaker 1: this domino effect on the aerodynamics of the car all
Speaker 1: the way back to the tail end of it. And
Speaker 1: that has to be kind of dealt with almost a
Speaker 1: total redesign every time. Yeah exactly, well yeah, not almost,
Speaker 1: I mean not quite. But you have to refine so
Speaker 1: many different things just because of that one little change
Speaker 1: at the front of the car, and and that happens.
Speaker 1: You know, they might change something in the middle of
Speaker 1: the car and that affects everything from that point back. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just there's so many things. Again, this whole series
Speaker 1: is mind boggling when you look at the rules, you
Speaker 1: look at the way, um everything again just has to
Speaker 1: be just just going over and over and over and
Speaker 1: over again to make sure that everything is perfect. Man,
Speaker 1: Well they are perfect. When we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to dive into that perfection a bit. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about uh stuff like like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just learned before we came in here
Speaker 1: that they don't do refueling anymore, because when I was
Speaker 1: looking at the old histories, they talked about refueling and
Speaker 1: pit stops. We're gonna talk about pit stops, talk about
Speaker 1: how much fuel these things carry, uh, and you know
Speaker 1: that will tell you how efficient they have to be
Speaker 1: in order to complete these distances, because the distance for
Speaker 1: Formula one is considerable. And we'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: this incredible technology that you find in the vehicles of
Speaker 1: today when we come back. Now, Scott, before we uh
Speaker 1: came into the studio, you know, I we were talking
Speaker 1: about pit stops. I was actually talking about stuff I
Speaker 1: don't understand in racing. I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: even had to look up how pit stops work, because
Speaker 1: I know about pit stops. I know what they're meant
Speaker 1: to do. But I was thinking, like, well, how does
Speaker 1: that work in the in the sense of the action
Speaker 1: of the race as a whole, Like, you're obviously off
Speaker 1: the track at that moment, you're no longer accumulating lapse,
Speaker 1: You're you're having your car uh having the tires usually
Speaker 1: replace that sort of thing. How does that work in
Speaker 1: the context of the full race? Not thinking oh wait,
Speaker 1: everybody else also has to do that. So in the end,
Speaker 1: it ends up being how how fast and efficient your
Speaker 1: pit stop crew can be. That's when you said, why
Speaker 1: don't you take a look at like a typical Formula
Speaker 1: one pit stop. And the video, by the way, guys,
Speaker 1: was fifty five seconds long. Ten seconds in, it was
Speaker 1: still just the title picture. It was. There was no
Speaker 1: there's no video. Around twelve seconds in we saw the
Speaker 1: picture of the pit crew. We didn't see a car
Speaker 1: pull into the space to about thirty three seconds into
Speaker 1: this second video. Uh, the car was at a full
Speaker 1: stop by thirty five seconds and the car was gone
Speaker 1: at thirty eight seconds. Within that span of thirty five
Speaker 1: seconds to thirty eight seconds, the pet crew completely removed
Speaker 1: and replaced all four tires on this Formula one race car.
Speaker 1: And that's a relatively slow stop, yes, And then Scott
Speaker 1: blew my mind by telling me how fast the fastest
Speaker 1: Formula one pit stop ever was, which happened this year.
Speaker 1: I think where was it was the Grand Prix um
Speaker 1: in Great Britain. I think you remember exactly where it happened.
Speaker 1: But um, it was a one point nine second stop
Speaker 1: and that means four tires off, four tires on and
Speaker 1: back out. And it's that fast. It's one point nine seconds. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the world record time at this moment, and it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna drop even more. Um, but it's an incredible
Speaker 1: thing to watch. If you've never seen one, take a
Speaker 1: look at it. Because and F one pit stop is
Speaker 1: a is a thing of beauty. It's it's so it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: It is so choreographed, it so it's so perfect in
Speaker 1: every in every aspect, I mean, the way that the
Speaker 1: team handles themselves. It's it's completely different from any other
Speaker 1: series in the way that they do this. Now we've
Speaker 1: taken out the complexity of adding fuel that does take
Speaker 1: some time, not as much time as you might think. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to add sometimes twenty plus gallons of fuel
Speaker 1: to a car, it only takes a few seconds. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when when you when you compare that to your average
Speaker 1: experience at a typical fuel pump, you might think, when
Speaker 1: were we going to get that technology? You don't want
Speaker 1: that technology. There's there's a lot of problems that come
Speaker 1: with with forcing plus gallons of fuel into a car,
Speaker 1: and you know in three seconds. Yeah, you might think
Speaker 1: while you're standing there, I would really, especially if you're
Speaker 1: saying outside in the Georgia heat in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day, refilling your car, you might think I would
Speaker 1: really like to get back in the air conditioning, but
Speaker 1: some things were happy to trade off on that. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a lot easier. And they have just
Speaker 1: switched over to this, and I think they've done it
Speaker 1: for a couple of years now. Uh, they've removed the
Speaker 1: the idea that there are are refueling a car during
Speaker 1: the race, so you feel up before the race and
Speaker 1: after the race, of course, you know, during qualifying and
Speaker 1: you know other other activities practice. Uh, they are allowed
Speaker 1: of fuel in the pits, of course they have to,
Speaker 1: but during the race they just don't do it. The
Speaker 1: cars are designed so that they burn, or they're intended
Speaker 1: to burn, and that's one of the f one regulations
Speaker 1: is that you, um, your engine is only allowed to
Speaker 1: burn a certain amount of fuel per hour, and they
Speaker 1: calculated that that out so that you know, during the race,
Speaker 1: it doesn't burn more than what you're able to carry,
Speaker 1: and if it does, that means that your engine is
Speaker 1: running too rich anyway, and you're not supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing that. You're you're in violation of the rules. So, um,
Speaker 1: every car that's out there has enough fuel in them
Speaker 1: from the very beginning to go the full distance without
Speaker 1: having to do that. They just do the tires only,
Speaker 1: and that's different right there. The other thing is that
Speaker 1: you know they have like I think it's fourteen or
Speaker 1: sixteen people out to do this procedure, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: you know stop. Yes, it's a much larger pet crew
Speaker 1: than you would see a NASCAR for example. Yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: has just one single job. And I know that in
Speaker 1: a NASCAR, you know there's a you know, they're very
Speaker 1: specific jobs as well, or you know, an IndyCar or whatever,
Speaker 1: but far fewer people are over the wall as they
Speaker 1: say in those in those sports. Now this one, there's
Speaker 1: a garage area and so they just kind of wander
Speaker 1: out into this this box you know, where they pull
Speaker 1: into to do the pit stuff. But um, fourteen or sixteen,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the number of people that that do this.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, when you have one job, I
Speaker 1: mean one job. All you do is your job is
Speaker 1: to remove the tire that comes in off the car
Speaker 1: that was just on the track. That's it. Just take
Speaker 1: the tire off once it's once the the wheel nut
Speaker 1: is gone, which is another person's job. Wheel nut comes off,
Speaker 1: the wheel night goes back on. You know, it's that's it.
Speaker 1: And one person operates of course, the front jack, the backjack,
Speaker 1: and you know there's there's people making adjustments and all that.
Speaker 1: But um, when you have there's was it three or
Speaker 1: three maybe even four people per tire, it's I think
Speaker 1: it's three per tire, it's one you take off one person,
Speaker 1: who's one person who's bringing on the new tire. So
Speaker 1: they have the new tire, they're waiting. Do you have
Speaker 1: one person whose job it is to you take the
Speaker 1: tire off, and then you have one person whose job
Speaker 1: it is to remove and replace the nuts. So just
Speaker 1: getting those three people in that one tiny little area
Speaker 1: to operate and and function without you know, knocking each
Speaker 1: other over every time, it's incredible. It's really interesting to
Speaker 1: watch it. And I can't imagine the countless hours they
Speaker 1: have to practice to make every single move perfect. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to conserve your your space because if you're not,
Speaker 1: then you're wasting time. Now if you make if you
Speaker 1: make a pit stop, that is even let's say it's
Speaker 1: double the time that we just talked about. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's it's three point eight seconds, that's a disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's crazy to think about. But three point
Speaker 1: eight seconds is a disaster because you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: make up that lost time someone else, even if you
Speaker 1: were in number one. If you're leading by less than
Speaker 1: two seconds and the person behind you when they have
Speaker 1: their pit stop is not taking nearly as long, you
Speaker 1: know you've you've lost time. Pit strategy is is really
Speaker 1: something fun to watch. And I know that it sounds
Speaker 1: terribly boring when I just say it like this, when
Speaker 1: you're watching the race and you kind of get into it,
Speaker 1: you know, towards the end, and you know the pits
Speaker 1: strategy becomes so vital in winning a race in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. Um, it's it's it's there's far more
Speaker 1: to it than you might think. Really, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to watch. It's a game of chess.
Speaker 1: We were talking a bit about the distance you have
Speaker 1: to go. So the last thing I saw about distances
Speaker 1: was that you would complete a number of laps that
Speaker 1: are equivalent actually that exceed three five kilometers. So the
Speaker 1: minimum of a Grand Prix is three kilometers, with one exception,
Speaker 1: that exception being Monaco. In Monaco, it is two hundred
Speaker 1: sixty and a half kilometers. A tighter track there. It's
Speaker 1: a smaller area as you can imagine. Monica is not
Speaker 1: a very large was it was Providence. What is what
Speaker 1: is Monica? I don't even need a principality to me,
Speaker 1: it's it's the most magical place on Earth. I visited
Speaker 1: and it's amazing. I bet it is. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: BEAUTI I'd love to go. That'd be cool, but but
Speaker 1: it is. It is very tight and uh, Monaco is
Speaker 1: a different race altogether, right well, And if you were
Speaker 1: to add an their lap on there so that it
Speaker 1: would end up, you know, being closer to the correct distance,
Speaker 1: it would go too far. So it's one of those
Speaker 1: where you have to you know, you have to make
Speaker 1: a call. And uh, but yeah, Monica is pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: It's also whenever I see footage of the race and Monaco,
Speaker 1: it is terrifying to me to watch these cars going
Speaker 1: down these these roads and and sometimes you see people
Speaker 1: watching on not terribly far away from where these cars
Speaker 1: are are rushing by, and more than two or there
Speaker 1: on balconies kind of hanging over the track. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting race. I love Monico. It's beautiful and um,
Speaker 1: it's fun to watch the race there because it is
Speaker 1: so um, it's steeped in history as well. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so tight and it's so fast, and you get
Speaker 1: that real sensation of speed there um that you might
Speaker 1: not get well you actually, you know, you get it
Speaker 1: in a lot of road courses. But there's just something
Speaker 1: magical about Monco. It's beautiful. It's really interesting. Um, you
Speaker 1: don't you know, I don't know where to go with this.
Speaker 1: We've got so much material here. I don't if I'm
Speaker 1: overstepping my bounce, But I would love to talk about
Speaker 1: the engine for just a moment. We can because the
Speaker 1: engine and we haven't talked about cost or anything on
Speaker 1: this yet, so all right. I recently did a program
Speaker 1: on the on the Fast Track about why there are
Speaker 1: five reasons why you can't put an F one engine
Speaker 1: into your road car because a lot of people have
Speaker 1: engine swap questions, and like you said before, you don't
Speaker 1: really know a whole lot about racing engines versus car engines,
Speaker 1: and they're dramatically different, especially in F one engine, and
Speaker 1: you can't just stuff and F one engine into a
Speaker 1: road car and expect it to work. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons it's probably a hundred reasons why this
Speaker 1: wouldn't work, but the five and I'm gonna go through
Speaker 1: them super fast. If you want to hear it, you can.
Speaker 1: I guess I can plug my own shiller, right. You
Speaker 1: could go over to the fast track and listen to
Speaker 1: the five reasons explained in more detail. But um, the
Speaker 1: first one is they're they're really hard to start. Now
Speaker 1: this is kind of tough to comprehend here, but a
Speaker 1: normal engine, you're able to attach a wrench to it
Speaker 1: in the front and spin the engine. You're able to
Speaker 1: make the pistons move up and down using a large lever.
Speaker 1: It does take some mechanical advantage to be able to
Speaker 1: do that, but you can spin your own car engine
Speaker 1: that way. It's a lot like turning the prop on
Speaker 1: an airplane. If you can imagine that, it's it's started,
Speaker 1: and you could theoretically turn it fast enough to start
Speaker 1: the car like the old crank starts. But I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, so um with quickly breaking everyone
Speaker 1: in your body start spinning, absolutely shatter your arms. Um
Speaker 1: this uh, you know with the UP one engine, it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot different. You cannot turn an F one
Speaker 1: engine when it's cold. They're they're created with such a
Speaker 1: tight or high tolerance. They're engineered so uh precisely, like
Speaker 1: like a like a fine watch or something like that.
Speaker 1: That I mean, they're so precisely engineered and fitted together
Speaker 1: that the pistons are essentially seized in the engine at
Speaker 1: at like the ambient temperature. So it doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: the temperature is out of here, it's it's you have
Speaker 1: to pump. You have to extern and use external pumps
Speaker 1: to pump heated fluids through this thing. You know, both
Speaker 1: coolant and the engine will the lubricant, and it has
Speaker 1: to be up to I think it's a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six degrees fahrenheit before you can even begin to
Speaker 1: move the pistons within the piston uh cylinders. That's how
Speaker 1: tightly they are they are engineered. There's there's such precision machines,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea that that was, you know,
Speaker 1: a factor in this whole thing. So you would not
Speaker 1: be able to just get into the car and start
Speaker 1: it up like you could a normal engine. You would
Speaker 1: have to have these external pumps heat up the engine
Speaker 1: and then you know, and then even then you would
Speaker 1: have to have an external starting, which is like a
Speaker 1: big drill that starts the whole thing. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it spins it like, you know, several thousand rpm in
Speaker 1: order to get it even going. And even then it's
Speaker 1: hard to start. It's it's difficult to get the fuel
Speaker 1: flowing correctly and all that. So this is this is amazing.
Speaker 1: What reminds me of is um how you start up
Speaker 1: jet engines, because a jet not not that it works
Speaker 1: on the same principle. These are two different principles, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. But to start a jet engine, you
Speaker 1: have to pump uh pressurized air through the jet engine
Speaker 1: because it's designed to operate once you are at a
Speaker 1: certain speed moving through the air. Well. Obviously on ground
Speaker 1: you're not moving through the air yet, so you can't
Speaker 1: get those turbines turning at the proper speed for it
Speaker 1: to be a self propelling reaction. Right. This idea that
Speaker 1: the turbines turn because of the outgoing UH exhaust from
Speaker 1: the jet engine, that that provides the turning force to
Speaker 1: keep the turbines coming. To pull air through the engine,
Speaker 1: so you have to pump uh pressurized air into it first,
Speaker 1: and typically you do that either using an auxiliary power
Speaker 1: unit or you have, uh, the little huffer carts that
Speaker 1: hook up to an engine. So to me, like when
Speaker 1: you started explaining this, I'm like, wow, this sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like how it's hard to start a jet engine.
Speaker 1: It's just that we're talking about an internal combustion engine,
Speaker 1: not a jet engine obviously, so now there are differences,
Speaker 1: but that's fascinating that you have to have these external
Speaker 1: factors in order to begin the thing, even to even
Speaker 1: start the process. And that's what this is. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna tap the brakes here so that we
Speaker 1: could take one more you know, break for ads, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to be back with the conclusion of
Speaker 1: Formula one one on one. As you might have guessed,
Speaker 1: they're not cheap. And this is the first time we're
Speaker 1: gonna really talk about prices here on this. I think
Speaker 1: this is the first time. Get this, okay, and I
Speaker 1: this blew me away. I'm talking about just the engine,
Speaker 1: just the price of the engine. These range between seven
Speaker 1: point seven million and ten and a half million dollars
Speaker 1: per per engine, just the engine, for just the engine.
Speaker 1: Another good reason why you weren't going to put these
Speaker 1: in a regular road car. Just one engine. That's all
Speaker 1: we're talking about. So yeah, even I mean, any manufacturer
Speaker 1: would never be able to justify putting an engine like
Speaker 1: this in their car. Now, there are there are some
Speaker 1: derivatives of an F one engine that have been have
Speaker 1: kind of showed up into road cars, you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe the V ten engine that was used in an
Speaker 1: F one car. But it's not, you know, meticulous, it's
Speaker 1: not as um um finally tuned, is not as you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have all of the the components of the
Speaker 1: F one engine. Of course, it's just derived from it, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's the design of the F one informed the
Speaker 1: design of this other engine exactly. And and these F
Speaker 1: one engines they spent at something like fifteen thousand RPMs.
Speaker 1: They can go up to twenty r p m s,
Speaker 1: which is like, I mean, that's that's like that's motorcycle
Speaker 1: or even faster RPMs in a in an engine for
Speaker 1: a race car. If you if you saw that that
Speaker 1: gauge on your dashboard, you might flip out of this
Speaker 1: next one is what you're what you're talking about. It's cooling. Um.
Speaker 1: In order to keep these engines cool, you would have
Speaker 1: to travel at such incredible rates of speed. And not
Speaker 1: only that the design of your car would have to
Speaker 1: be so dramatically different from what it is that that
Speaker 1: you would have to build these enormous side pods on
Speaker 1: it with these huge radiators, and that would kind of
Speaker 1: like negate any performance advantage you might have from such
Speaker 1: a strong engine. You're gonna you're gonna have such a
Speaker 1: like a wacky design, I guess a better lass lack
Speaker 1: of a good way to say this, just to paint
Speaker 1: the heat that's coming off those those enormous side pods
Speaker 1: on the car, the ones that are next to the driver,
Speaker 1: those are big cooling pods, and and think of those
Speaker 1: is having giant radiators inside them that are laid out
Speaker 1: at kind of a forty five degree angle from the
Speaker 1: front kind of laid down to the back. They're they're
Speaker 1: really big. They're they're several feet long, and they're except
Speaker 1: you know, extremely as wide as they can make them,
Speaker 1: really and that requires so much airflow over top of
Speaker 1: them to keep it cool, you know, because these engines
Speaker 1: run so hot, um that you know, you just would
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't be possible to keep the amount of
Speaker 1: incoming cooler that you would need to keep the engine
Speaker 1: cool in in a regular road car and without dramatically
Speaker 1: redesign everything. Um, we did talk about fuel a little bit,
Speaker 1: and UM, I want to tell you that these are
Speaker 1: designed you're not allowed to burn through more than one
Speaker 1: of petrol per hour of driving. So that's the limit
Speaker 1: is a hundred liters per hour. That's about thirteen point
Speaker 1: two gallons of fuel. If you want to, um, you know,
Speaker 1: extrapolate what that what that hundred liters amounts to. They
Speaker 1: do carry around two leads for a race, though, so
Speaker 1: that's a lot of fuel that they're carrying on board
Speaker 1: fuels things, so they do get through the whole race
Speaker 1: without without refueling. That's about sixty gallons of fuel that
Speaker 1: they carry, and by the end of the race they're
Speaker 1: probably running pretty low if I had to guess, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like the again, the time limit and max,
Speaker 1: assuming there are no red flag stoppages, is two hours.
Speaker 1: And this is surprising to me. The fuel mixture that
Speaker 1: they use is not terribly different from what you might
Speaker 1: use in a road car. It's strange. Now you might
Speaker 1: think that you know, they're using some kind of crazy
Speaker 1: jet fuel or something, you know, like the people love
Speaker 1: to think that, you know, they're using rocket fuel or something.
Speaker 1: It's really not that much different from what we use.
Speaker 1: It is. It is formulated a little different. It's very
Speaker 1: specific per vehicle. And I'll tell you how they do that.
Speaker 1: At the end of the race, they analyze um the oil.
Speaker 1: They take the engine oil from each car and they
Speaker 1: take a sample of it and they run it to
Speaker 1: their chemist, and their chemist looks at it for up
Speaker 1: to fifteen different types of metal that might be found
Speaker 1: in that oil at the end of a race, so
Speaker 1: that that indicates where the wear is coming from. So
Speaker 1: part of an engine is wearing a little bit prematurely,
Speaker 1: causing metal flakes to break off and get into the oil.
Speaker 1: They know where that metal came from, because it might
Speaker 1: be the piston ring, it might be the piston itself,
Speaker 1: it might be from you know, the the camshaft, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever bearings they have in there. They're able to determine
Speaker 1: from the fifteen different types of metal where that wear
Speaker 1: is coming from, and then they send that information to
Speaker 1: the person who is is developing the fuel for them
Speaker 1: or the company that's developing the fuel, and then they
Speaker 1: specially formulate the fuel for the next race in order
Speaker 1: to minimize the amount of where that happens and that
Speaker 1: one part of the engine in the next race. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so that's how specific this gets. And you can imagine
Speaker 1: that that's not cheap to do that. Yeah. Now, there
Speaker 1: was a time before the the formalization of these rules
Speaker 1: where there was a little bit more experimentation with with
Speaker 1: car fuels, and that's probably where these stories about rocket
Speaker 1: fuel and stuff come out of, largely from also Germany
Speaker 1: pre World War Two happened, they experimented a lot with that.
Speaker 1: But then there were rules that essentially said that Formula
Speaker 1: one race cars were to run on petrol. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: just it's very precisely formulated petrol. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very exacting science. So it's not exactly what we're thinking
Speaker 1: of when we go to the pump like hitting Formula one. No,
Speaker 1: it's not not quite that simple, you know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're exact requirements for each one, and then even then
Speaker 1: they fine tune it throughout the season, extremely fine tuned.
Speaker 1: The last one on this is of course, the life
Speaker 1: span of the engine. Now we've all seen races where
Speaker 1: a car goes out and you know, two laps in
Speaker 1: they developed some major problem. And you know, after all
Speaker 1: this money, all this everything we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: they're there, I don't know, ten miles into the race
Speaker 1: and there's catastrophic engine failure because they're they're subjected to
Speaker 1: so much pressure, so much, so much force is happening
Speaker 1: in these engines at this time. I mean we're saying
Speaker 1: that you know, they spin around what pm. That means
Speaker 1: that the the pistons are traveling up and down about
Speaker 1: three hundred times every second. Yeah, three times every single second.
Speaker 1: So that's the type of pressures that we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're saying, like I want to say, it's
Speaker 1: like fifteen thousand or p s I is what those
Speaker 1: cylinders are subjected to every second. So a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure in these things, and of course they have to
Speaker 1: be rebuilt all the time, and we know this from racing.
Speaker 1: We've seen this in so many different series, um, you know,
Speaker 1: drag racing, and they practically do it every quarter mile.
Speaker 1: They rebuild engines all the time, right or even less
Speaker 1: if it doesn't make it a quarter mile. Um, but
Speaker 1: most race cars can only last one, maybe two races.
Speaker 1: At the most before they to be rebuilt. These are
Speaker 1: every race and the maximum that they can reach is
Speaker 1: about maybe maybe two races at the most. Like SIS,
Speaker 1: it's about a thousand kilometers, is like the maximum life
Speaker 1: at optimal conditions for an F one engine, which means
Speaker 1: that if you were to put one of these into
Speaker 1: your road car, think about you know how many not
Speaker 1: only is it seven to twelve million dollars, but seven
Speaker 1: to twelve million dollars every this many times. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you so, the average US person person puts thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy six miles on a car every year.
Speaker 1: That's average. If you own a vehicle, that means that
Speaker 1: you would be rebuilding your engine twenty two times each
Speaker 1: year if you were average. Now most a lot of people,
Speaker 1: of course, are gonna be way above that average, are
Speaker 1: going to be under. But twenty two times per year,
Speaker 1: you're spending seven and a half to ten and a
Speaker 1: half million dollars. So I'm gonna need to sell some
Speaker 1: more girls, do you see what I mean? Like and again,
Speaker 1: if you want more detail on all this, and maybe
Speaker 1: you don't, maybe that was way too much to be
Speaker 1: but it's not. But if you go, and if you
Speaker 1: want more detail on this, you can go to the
Speaker 1: Fast Direct show and listen all about it. But I
Speaker 1: find the numbers in Formula one to be just fascinating
Speaker 1: and the dollar amounts. And should we just briefly talk
Speaker 1: about the car, Yeah, because we've we've started it with
Speaker 1: the engines. Let's talk about how expensive this kind of
Speaker 1: vehicle is when you're looking at it soup to nuts,
Speaker 1: and then we'll also talk about you can also mention
Speaker 1: things like that's one expense, right, one expense is just
Speaker 1: the vehicle, But then beyond that, you have to actually
Speaker 1: pay money to be part of this whole experience. So
Speaker 1: there are companies that are spending mind boggling amounts of
Speaker 1: money on participating in Formula one. Yeah. And so for
Speaker 1: some of the smaller teams if you want to call
Speaker 1: them that, the ones that aren't in the upper echelon, uh,
Speaker 1: they're spending right around twitter and fifty million dollars a
Speaker 1: year to be part of F one for one season,
Speaker 1: so a quarter of a billion dollars per year and
Speaker 1: to be in this and if you're happen to be
Speaker 1: working for Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull you know, the
Speaker 1: top teams in the series. Right now, we're talking about
Speaker 1: four hundred plus million dollars every single year and a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Of course, this goes into the car.
Speaker 1: It takes you know, between it's gonna I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: I see a number here that's a little bit low,
Speaker 1: given that we just learned that, you know, the engine
Speaker 1: is ten and a half million. Sometimes, I'm gonna say that, um,
Speaker 1: anywhere between twelve and fifteen million dollars per vehicle per car.
Speaker 1: So when you see, you know, an F one car
Speaker 1: that's destroyed in an accident on the track, you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, between twelve and fifteen million dollar loss to
Speaker 1: the team. They might be able to salvage a few
Speaker 1: parts here and there, but essentially it's a twelve to
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollar loss at that point. Um. Then of
Speaker 1: course that doesn't happen often where they lose every single
Speaker 1: bit of the car, but they do lose parts and
Speaker 1: and I've got a list here of the parts, and
Speaker 1: I will not go over every part of this, but
Speaker 1: this kind of blew my mind when I saw this.
Speaker 1: You know, how often, uh, do you see where an
Speaker 1: F one cargoes out on the track and they hit
Speaker 1: a little bit of debris, you know, something that not
Speaker 1: a tire necessarily, but something that's on the track. They
Speaker 1: bump a corner or whatever, another car even Um, you
Speaker 1: know that front wing is designed to come right off
Speaker 1: and right back on. They do it super quick. They
Speaker 1: can do it in a second, two seconds, whatever it takes.
Speaker 1: It's super fast. That part, that front wing part can
Speaker 1: cost be anywhere between one hundred and fifty thousand to
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. It's kind of
Speaker 1: beginning to feel like I'm in their own business. You
Speaker 1: can make two wings a year, you know the thing like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap up with with another one
Speaker 1: in in a moment here because I want to show
Speaker 1: you something in specific. But um, if the transmission in
Speaker 1: the car we talked about the engine already, the transmission
Speaker 1: in the car can can be up to six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars um. You know, if you're on a lower
Speaker 1: end team, you're only paying them only about four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand for that. But if you want to grade, you know,
Speaker 1: you you're gonna have a six d dollar engine. That's
Speaker 1: for the top teams. Again, the fuel tank alone, just
Speaker 1: because of the way it's designed and with the materials
Speaker 1: made of hundred and forty dollars and that's kind of
Speaker 1: again a low end tank. The the the carbon fiber
Speaker 1: monocoque design, you know, which is essential to the safety
Speaker 1: of the driver and the structure of the car itself.
Speaker 1: That's very expensive and teams won't scrimp on that. There
Speaker 1: are lower cost options, I believe, but most teams are
Speaker 1: paying around six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that.
Speaker 1: And of course once it's damaged, it's done. You don't
Speaker 1: get you don't get to reuse that. That has to
Speaker 1: be replaced UM, as is with with most of these parts.
Speaker 1: UM there's the halo device, which is that crazy thing
Speaker 1: that goes over there over their heads now kind of
Speaker 1: blocks in the um UM. It protects the um exposed
Speaker 1: helmet and head of the of the driver. That's something
Speaker 1: that I wish we had more time to talk about. Really,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty fascinating piece of tech that that I
Speaker 1: just love the tech that goes into these cars, I
Speaker 1: really do. There's that is uh it's designed to hold
Speaker 1: the weight of a double decker bus, a London double
Speaker 1: decker bus. If you were to just set it on
Speaker 1: top of it, I think it's like twenty six thousand
Speaker 1: five pounds. It can withstand that. And it's designed again
Speaker 1: like if a you know, a tire is coming at
Speaker 1: the driver. If it's it's an outside company that builds it.
Speaker 1: They build kind of like the it's it's made out
Speaker 1: of um oh, gosh, I have a note here. It's
Speaker 1: made out of like platinum. I think, um, that's not cheap. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not cheap. And you know I do have a note.
Speaker 1: I'll have to I'll find it here in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But it's a it's like a certain aerospace grade platinum
Speaker 1: level five something. It's it's crazy, it's really really expensive,
Speaker 1: and it's it's um it's it's kind of a heavy item,
Speaker 1: but it's essential for their safety because it is this
Speaker 1: open cockpit and they have had so many, um, you know,
Speaker 1: incidents where a tire has come up, or a piece
Speaker 1: of suspension or a full car you know, has come
Speaker 1: up and landed on the on the other vehicle, and
Speaker 1: of course you know with your your helmet your head
Speaker 1: exposed there. It's it's a really dangerous type of racing.
Speaker 1: This open cockpit, I mean, that's that's been part of
Speaker 1: the Formula one history. Two is the fact that it's
Speaker 1: been a very dangerous sport, one in which in the
Speaker 1: early years of Formula one racing, not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of thought was given to drivers safety necessarily. It was
Speaker 1: you know, that was not It was sort of considered
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the space race in many ways,
Speaker 1: and that it was thought that that if you were
Speaker 1: the type of person to pursue a career in that space,
Speaker 1: you were a thrill seeker, and it was the the
Speaker 1: the importance of racing and going fast was more important
Speaker 1: than uh, doing you know, safety features like you have astronauts.
Speaker 1: You you can listen to interviews with astronauts about well
Speaker 1: do you worry about like how dangerous this is? Like
Speaker 1: I'm no, I'm I'm I have I feel compelled to
Speaker 1: do this. And the same thing was sort of thought
Speaker 1: of in the old racing days was that, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: safety be great now, but that's not right what we're
Speaker 1: worried about. Well, you know, I can tell you now.
Speaker 1: I found this note. Um. It is the strongest part
Speaker 1: of the car and that shows you it tells you
Speaker 1: how much they're you know, firmly um backing this idea
Speaker 1: that driver's safety is becoming more and more and more
Speaker 1: important as the decades progress. In Formula one and in
Speaker 1: the sixties, they were a little bit more lax with
Speaker 1: that type of thing. And that's why drivers like Jackie
Speaker 1: Stewart and several others that other names that you would recognize, uh,
Speaker 1: that they really they protested. They they sat out races,
Speaker 1: they didn't race in certain places because they were losing
Speaker 1: friends every month. The reason why we saw changes was
Speaker 1: largely because the drivers and the races were starting to
Speaker 1: demand changes. Yeah, the cars were getting so fast, so fast,
Speaker 1: and the tracks were so fast, and the safety standards
Speaker 1: just weren't there. They just weren't protecting the drivers the
Speaker 1: way that they should and and Jackie Stewart realized this,
Speaker 1: and several other racers did as well. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of information out there on Jackie Stewart and what
Speaker 1: he did to kind of push safety forward in Formula one,
Speaker 1: and it's a huge leap forward for the drivers and
Speaker 1: the safety and you know, just kind of their overall
Speaker 1: well being, I guess, and I found um this note
Speaker 1: about the halo. And I'm sorry, I think I said,
Speaker 1: did I say platinum? I hope I didn't say platinum
Speaker 1: when I when I said what material wastum, it's it's
Speaker 1: a mandatory UM device. Obviously it's aerospace Industry grade five titanium.
Speaker 1: It probably does yeah, UM, but it can. Again, it
Speaker 1: can withstand the weight of that London double decker bus,
Speaker 1: which is like twenty six It is incredible. It is
Speaker 1: the strongest part of the car at this point. And
Speaker 1: again that's a that's a nod to safety. UM. Another
Speaker 1: piece of tech, A couple of pieces of tech that
Speaker 1: UM finally written a tech right type stuff. UM. You
Speaker 1: know they have biometric gloves that the drivers were Now
Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew this or not. You
Speaker 1: didn't talk about this, but they the drivers wear biometric gloves.
Speaker 1: And this is actually a safety feature because it facilitates
Speaker 1: the medical response to the driver when they're you know,
Speaker 1: if there's a medical situation that's happening and the driver
Speaker 1: doesn't even really know what's happening yet. It registers in
Speaker 1: these gloves with pulse rate. UM. It's also got um,
Speaker 1: what's the oxygen level in your blood? Blood? It measures
Speaker 1: that um, but it will tell them as they approached
Speaker 1: the vehicle, you know, if it's been in an accident,
Speaker 1: the driver's condition and what to look for. You know,
Speaker 1: the don't know pretty much exactly what's going on with
Speaker 1: that driver at that point, whether they've got a pulse,
Speaker 1: whether they don't. Unfortunately a lot of times they don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, these these rex are pretty severe when they
Speaker 1: do happen. You're going on incredible speeds in a in
Speaker 1: a vehicle that's still even with the added safety features,
Speaker 1: it's very design is one that you could easily see
Speaker 1: there there'd be some pretty catastrophic injuries if there is
Speaker 1: a crash. And I didn't mean to step over your
Speaker 1: your discussion about the Space race and you know the
Speaker 1: astronauts and how they I mean, but these guys they
Speaker 1: know going into this, just like just like the astronauts,
Speaker 1: they know going into this that they're in it for
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It's either it's all or none for them.
Speaker 1: And there's always that chance every single time. And it's
Speaker 1: not being overly dramatic, It's true. Every single time they
Speaker 1: get into that car, it could be the last time
Speaker 1: they get in that car, and they know it and
Speaker 1: as does as do the astronauts. They know it, they
Speaker 1: know what they're in for, but they knowingly take the
Speaker 1: risk because you know, the reward for them is so
Speaker 1: great that they decided that, you know, this is something
Speaker 1: I want to do and I want to dedicate my
Speaker 1: life to this, really, so they've got these these biometric gloves.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've also noticed about Formula
Speaker 1: one race cars is, uh, the steering mechanism is very
Speaker 1: different from what you would see in a standard vehicle.
Speaker 1: Have you been peaking at my notes? No, I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about pictures I've seen of these crazy easy steering mechanisms.
Speaker 1: You remember early on when we sat down and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn this piece of paper over on the
Speaker 1: desk here so you can't see what it is. That
Speaker 1: is what it is. It's a steering wheel. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what's more complex, my notes around the steering
Speaker 1: wheel or the steering wheel itself, but the steering wheel
Speaker 1: in a Formula one car is incredibly complex. And the
Speaker 1: thing is, I've watched a lot of videos about this,
Speaker 1: and the buttons really do make sense when you have
Speaker 1: a driver described to you what they are, right, So
Speaker 1: if you were to look at a picture of this,
Speaker 1: because you know, obviously this being an audio podcast, you
Speaker 1: aren't given the benefit of what Scott just showed me,
Speaker 1: which was a picture of this. It looks kind of
Speaker 1: like a video game controller in a way. Right It's
Speaker 1: it's calling it a wheel seems uh like it would
Speaker 1: be misdirection because it's not a full wheel shape. You've
Speaker 1: got the you've got the little bit of the wheel
Speaker 1: on the left and right sides. But it really does
Speaker 1: look kind of like a video game controller, almost like
Speaker 1: it has a screen in the in the Front's got
Speaker 1: some dials and some buttons that are an easy reach
Speaker 1: where of your hand place. Man, I see now that
Speaker 1: there are clutch buttons on the wheel itself, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: I I have no idea what the rest of these
Speaker 1: things do. So tell me a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: I'll make it quick because there's way too much to
Speaker 1: cover here. This is his own podcast. Really that the
Speaker 1: tech that's involved in in a Formula one steering wheel
Speaker 1: is unbelievable. Their videos about this, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: online articles about it, and in fact, I will tell
Speaker 1: you that the price of the steering wheel, it probably
Speaker 1: would not surprise you to hear that this is expensive
Speaker 1: as well, between fifty and one thousand dollars per wheel. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of racers, a lot of drivers for each
Speaker 1: car will have up to three different wheels. They'll have
Speaker 1: a primary wheel that they normally use. They'll have a backup,
Speaker 1: you know, just in case something happens, you know, during
Speaker 1: an accident or whatever, you know, practice or just malfunctions.
Speaker 1: And then they'll also have a lot of times an
Speaker 1: experimental wheel that then loads on new buttons, has new systems,
Speaker 1: new settings, that type of things, you know, So the
Speaker 1: buttons do different things, and it's it's less complicated than
Speaker 1: you might think. I mean, when you're looking at it,
Speaker 1: it's extremely complicated. But the drivers learn this very quickly.
Speaker 1: They understand every single function of it, and it's all
Speaker 1: within reach, and it's it's all customized to them. The
Speaker 1: hand grips are customized. They're formed to their hands so
Speaker 1: they fit exactly in their hand. It's not a it's
Speaker 1: not a one size fits all thing. They're all different shapes,
Speaker 1: they're all different sizes, and the buttons are essentially the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's I mean, I gotta go through every
Speaker 1: single one again. But you know there's like a radio button.
Speaker 1: As you might expect, there's a neutral and reverse button
Speaker 1: for the car so you don't um inadvertly run over
Speaker 1: your crew as you pull into the pit. You know
Speaker 1: you can get neutral. There's the pit lane speed limitter,
Speaker 1: which is limited to either eighty kilometers per hour or
Speaker 1: sixty depending on the track and how much space do
Speaker 1: you have. Each track has its own pit lane speed.
Speaker 1: There's um how there's a button for something called the
Speaker 1: drag reduction system, which we haven't even talked about. But
Speaker 1: drag reduction system is like movable aerodynamic wing on the
Speaker 1: back of the car. So it's like the elements you
Speaker 1: would see on an on an aircraft. Yes, yes, it's
Speaker 1: like the flight surfaces on wings and tails of aircraft. Yes.
Speaker 1: And you can reduce your drag by by pushing this
Speaker 1: button and there are certain parameters where driver is allowed
Speaker 1: to do that, but it's controlled by the driver with
Speaker 1: a button on this wheel. And it's really it's just
Speaker 1: the flap on the rear wing that gives you an
Speaker 1: aerodynamic advantage in order to pass the car that's in
Speaker 1: front of you. And you have again the parameters are
Speaker 1: like certain zones on the track that you're able to
Speaker 1: use this, and I think you have to be within
Speaker 1: one second of the car in front of you in
Speaker 1: order to push the button one second following speed. Now, UM,
Speaker 1: I guess that's up to you know, F one rulemakers.
Speaker 1: You know exactly how close you were when you use this.
Speaker 1: But it does give it give you advantage and it
Speaker 1: promotes passing. So that's one of the things they've done
Speaker 1: to make a little more exciting. Um. They're differential settings
Speaker 1: that are for entry and exitive turns, and this changes
Speaker 1: the balance of the car while you're driving it, so
Speaker 1: you can kind of promote um, you know, additional additional oversteer,
Speaker 1: additional understeer, whatever you like. You can kind of fine
Speaker 1: tune the car as you're driving it. Um. There are,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, there's this clutch operation for your shifts.
Speaker 1: Of course that's what you saw earlier. There's paddles on
Speaker 1: both sides up and down. Uh, there's an overtake button,
Speaker 1: there's a messaging buttons, there's it seems like there's of course,
Speaker 1: there's an energy recovery harvesting button, which means that you know,
Speaker 1: you can gain that little extra boost of power if
Speaker 1: you need it for passing. Uh, there's the button to
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite ieheart radio podcasts. That one has
Speaker 1: a little hard on it. The most confusing, Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's funny. The most confusing ones to me are the dials.
Speaker 1: There are dials at the bottom that have you know,
Speaker 1: like tire presets or chassis presets, and you can kind
Speaker 1: of fine tune the chassis that way. But it's not
Speaker 1: just a button. The driver has to remove his hands
Speaker 1: from the wheel, his biometric glove from the wheel, and
Speaker 1: fine tune the chassis and the tires and you know
Speaker 1: all this. It's it's just it's a fascinating feature to
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and you can control so much from it.
Speaker 1: I can. I can understand why it's expensive, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Fifty dollars expensive, it's I mean that's
Speaker 1: the price of a car, just that wheel get up
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand. That's the price of a small house,
Speaker 1: you know, And and they need three per vehicle. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the prices are just insane. But I
Speaker 1: love the series overall. I think, as you've been able
Speaker 1: to tell, I've I've gone on and on here for
Speaker 1: probably far too long, but I I am I'm a
Speaker 1: big Formula One fan. I hadn't watched it for a
Speaker 1: long time. I kind of got back into it last season.
Speaker 1: And the problem here in the United States is that
Speaker 1: oftentimes the races, because they're being held many times over
Speaker 1: in Europe, they might start at you know, six in
Speaker 1: the morning here, you know, when it's like a midday
Speaker 1: race there, and so that makes a little difficult to
Speaker 1: watch unless you're recording it, right and I have in
Speaker 1: the past record of them. But if I happen to
Speaker 1: be up on Sunday morning at six am, usually that's
Speaker 1: what's on my screen. It's pretty cool. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, just the watching the videos that I've seen, Uh,
Speaker 1: it really does bring together that that necessary combination of
Speaker 1: incredible engineering and technology and amazing like laser focus for
Speaker 1: everybody involved on that team, whether it's the driver or
Speaker 1: the crew. It's it's phenomenal how synchronized everything has to
Speaker 1: be in order to ring out every thousandth of a
Speaker 1: second you can, because that could be the difference between
Speaker 1: coming in first or second. Sure, and you know, we
Speaker 1: are I think we say this every time, or at
Speaker 1: least I do on my show. Anyways, this is kind
Speaker 1: of the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, there's there's so
Speaker 1: much tech that is crammed into these cars. Their their
Speaker 1: entire sections. On the F one site, if you go
Speaker 1: to f one dot com, you can look up just
Speaker 1: the technical information and just the technical advantages that have
Speaker 1: been created or or um um you know, fine tuned
Speaker 1: just this year by certain teams, and you can go
Speaker 1: back in different years. You can look at eighteens upgrades
Speaker 1: and seventeens, and you can look at historical documents, and
Speaker 1: there's so much information available in the series. And it's
Speaker 1: just again, if you're a tech person, and I would
Speaker 1: guess that you would be listening to this podcast, Uh
Speaker 1: there there is more tech here than you can image.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a fascinating series. It is amazing. It
Speaker 1: is amazing. Now, there's a couple of things I want
Speaker 1: to say before we sign off. One of those is
Speaker 1: that I did mention I was gonna briefly explain the
Speaker 1: diffence between Formula one and Formula two racing. The biggest
Speaker 1: difference is that in Formula two racing, every team is
Speaker 1: racing with the same car, essentially the same basic type
Speaker 1: of vehicle and engine, so there's no differentiation there, and
Speaker 1: the idea is to create a more level playing field
Speaker 1: and also to reduce the cost of entry um. And
Speaker 1: if you go to Formula three and Formula four, as
Speaker 1: you go up the numbers, uh, then you'll see that
Speaker 1: the barrier to enter is slightly lower. By lower, I
Speaker 1: mean it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars instead
Speaker 1: of the millions of dollars. So it's so your mileage
Speaker 1: may vary. You're not buying a ten and a half
Speaker 1: million dollar engine for your Formula four car. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's also kind of it becomes sort of almost a league,
Speaker 1: a farm league for for future Formula one drivers. There's
Speaker 1: only so many Formula one drivers who are allowed to
Speaker 1: participate per year. Yeah, so f one scouts not only
Speaker 1: will they go to other series and look for drift
Speaker 1: one drivers, people that are are talented in their own series,
Speaker 1: whether that's uh, gosh, it could even be NASCAR, could
Speaker 1: be Indycarcart, could be any of those series. But they
Speaker 1: often will go to, you know, the Formula two series
Speaker 1: and take a look at you know, who's who's the
Speaker 1: young rising star that series, right, and maybe we try
Speaker 1: them out and add them to the team next season
Speaker 1: for the Formula One team. Yeah. Here, here the keys.
Speaker 1: He's not keys, but here's the uh, let's just say
Speaker 1: it that way. Anyway, Here the keys to the fifteen
Speaker 1: million dollar car. Don't don't wreck it, Junior, don't don't
Speaker 1: get a scratch on the paint, please. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I don't think there are any F one drivers
Speaker 1: that are named Junior, probably not. Lots of lots of
Speaker 1: NASCAR drivers, lot of juniors over in NASCAR. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you'll have a lot of the thirds. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, that's that was one of the things.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to mention was that, you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of toyota around a little bit in the
Speaker 1: history of Grand Prix racing. But that's something that you
Speaker 1: and Ben covered at great length in a previous episode
Speaker 1: of Car Stuff, and I want people to be aware
Speaker 1: of that because if you really, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: an incredibly rich and fascinating history. Um, it's full of drama,
Speaker 1: not just in the races, but in just the progression
Speaker 1: the evolution of the sport. And so yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to do you do you have that episode? I do.
Speaker 1: And you know, there might even be drama in the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I mean it's it's sort of a
Speaker 1: drama queen between Ben and I. There might be a
Speaker 1: little bit of druma. You never know. But we did
Speaker 1: actually a two part series on this. We did how
Speaker 1: Formula one Works. So, um, if you search how Formula
Speaker 1: one works on Car Stuff Show dot Com in the
Speaker 1: the search box up there, you will find back in May,
Speaker 1: we did that two part series and it's roughly, you know,
Speaker 1: it's I think you're about forty forty five minutes each
Speaker 1: and uh, and I think it's, uh, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good look back at Grand Prix racing and then of
Speaker 1: course Formula one and some of the players and some
Speaker 1: of the uh, the rules, and of course now we're
Speaker 1: six years beyond this, so you know, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now is a little bit different than what
Speaker 1: it was back then. But essentially the history is never
Speaker 1: going to change, obviously, so you're gonna get a full
Speaker 1: story there if you want to go back and look
Speaker 1: at that. And awesome, thank you for referring to them
Speaker 1: to absolutely always use some more views on that one, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, it never hurts to get that download
Speaker 1: number popping up a couple of months as good. Why
Speaker 1: not fun? But yeah, it's also I mean, it's to
Speaker 1: to nail this home. I mean, we know that in
Speaker 1: twenty the it will be different from nine, Like there'll
Speaker 1: be different rules that will come into play, and it'll
Speaker 1: it'll end up putting teams in a in a you know,
Speaker 1: a scramble to get everything finally tuned. And we'll see
Speaker 1: that progression happened throughout the season as well. I know
Speaker 1: the fans are already talking one. They're talking about rules
Speaker 1: and potential rules, and you know what that's gonna mean.
Speaker 1: And if fans love to talk about this stuff and
Speaker 1: you have to argue about it, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's really kind of fun to get into the forums
Speaker 1: and read about some of this stuff. You're just you know,
Speaker 1: kind of kind of lurk there in the background and
Speaker 1: watch what's going on. Yeah, I mean, and here here
Speaker 1: is a baseball fan. I thought, just getting into arguments
Speaker 1: about the designated hitter rules, passionate and I got nothing
Speaker 1: on race car fans. They do get they do get passionate,
Speaker 1: get intense, they do, they get intense that's a good
Speaker 1: word for it. And maybe we'll even do a deeper
Speaker 1: dive on tech in Formula one in the in the
Speaker 1: near future, kind of really dive into some of this
Speaker 1: stuff a bit more. But I felt like for the
Speaker 1: first episode it was more important to get kind of
Speaker 1: that general overview, like obviously, like we've been going on
Speaker 1: for a while, we could go on for another two
Speaker 1: hours just about the tech. Uh. And so Scott, I
Speaker 1: may tap on your shoulder one day and say, hey,
Speaker 1: how about we go in and finish what we started
Speaker 1: perfectly fine, And I hope I didn't stretch your show
Speaker 1: out too long here on. I'm fine with it. Is
Speaker 1: the one who's you know, she's the and yelling at me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's ready to go home. I've got I've got a
Speaker 1: lot to say about the series. As you can tell,
Speaker 1: I've I've been an open wheel racing fan my whole life.
Speaker 1: I love Indy car Um Formula one a little bit
Speaker 1: less than any car, but I'm still a big fan,
Speaker 1: as you can tell. And it's just it's all fascinated
Speaker 1: to me. I could talk for hours about this stuff,
Speaker 1: I really could. And I think you and I just
Speaker 1: have kind of a good report, and we're able to
Speaker 1: go back and forth with the stuff pretty good. We
Speaker 1: have conversations like this at our desk all the time. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: That's why I was like, I need to get Scott
Speaker 1: back into the studio. And then uh, Michael tweeted me
Speaker 1: and I was saying, Hey, where's that Formula one podcast
Speaker 1: you promised me ages ago? And I thought, this is
Speaker 1: the perfect opportunity. Michael. I appreciate it too, because I
Speaker 1: love to get into the studio and talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Yeah, it was great, and uh yeah, well
Speaker 1: we'll come back to this in a future episode and
Speaker 1: we will cover more about the the space age technology
Speaker 1: that's that are in these vehicles and how that again
Speaker 1: helps contribute to the amazing performance we see. How about
Speaker 1: how titanium is not platinum? Listen, Scott, if we want
Speaker 1: to go down a list of things that have been
Speaker 1: said on this podcast that turned out to not be accurate.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be here for a very long time because
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for more than a thousand episodes,
Speaker 1: and I make a gaff at least once a show. Perfectly,
Speaker 1: that's acceptable. Yeah, No, We're we're we're well under the threshold,
Speaker 1: We're fine. I hope you enjoyed that classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from three whole years ago, not even three yet,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah. Also just uh shout out to Scott
Speaker 1: and and love sent through the universe to him. I
Speaker 1: hope he's doing well. Miss you, buddy, And um yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope you all enjoyed this episode. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should tackle on future episodes, A
Speaker 1: lot of people have been reaching out with some great,
Speaker 1: great suggestions and I am working on those ideas, so
Speaker 1: that will be coming up. But if you would like
Speaker 1: to be one of those folks, reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The show's handle is tech Stuff h s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really sick. Yes.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.