Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Pay there, everybody, and welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech, and today we are tackling a listener request.
Speaker 1: Michael Peach asked me ages ago if I could talk
Speaker 1: about Formula one race cars? Formula one racing, what's it
Speaker 1: all about? How does that work? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not really a car guy, like I've done car
Speaker 1: topics before, but it requires an enormous amount of research
Speaker 1: on my part because I don't I don't really know cars,
Speaker 1: so it it's it's like it's extra work for me.
Speaker 1: Not that I don't, you know, mind doing some extra work,
Speaker 1: but that's asking a lot. And then I thought, wait
Speaker 1: a minute. There's a dude who literally sits on the
Speaker 1: other side of the table from me at our workstations.
Speaker 1: His name is Scott Benjamin and he's not doing anything.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna grab him and pull him into
Speaker 1: the studio. Scott, welcome to the show. You just say,
Speaker 1: not doing anything? Okay, that's totally Scott's doing a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I'm doing some stuff over yeah. Now and then,
Speaker 1: so Scott, first of all, tell our listeners what you
Speaker 1: have been doing, because they may not be aware of
Speaker 1: the shows you're working. Well. First, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me on your show. I really appreciate it. Every time
Speaker 1: I'm here, I have a good time. So let's keep
Speaker 1: that up. Okay, absolutely on this, And uh, I've been
Speaker 1: working on some other stuff. I've been gosh for a
Speaker 1: 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 Monster for example. Yeah, Voice of the Zodiac. And
Speaker 1: I've got my own show, which is called Insomniac. I've
Speaker 1: been doing that and that was 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 we are. We're going to re release car stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come back on the show just me, just myself.
Speaker 1: Ben will not be with me, and I'll explain all
Speaker 1: of that at the beginning of the of the series,
Speaker 1: and there's no big fight or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: just Ben and I are always in a big fight.
Speaker 1: But you're Ben, You're you're You're still you're still close. No, no,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we're still tight and everything. He's just got
Speaker 1: a lot going on now, more than more than a
Speaker 1: lot of us do. So, uh, there's that. And then
Speaker 1: I also have another show called The Fast Track, and
Speaker 1: The Fast Track is a lot like car stuff, only
Speaker 1: it's it's more focused on things that go fast, people
Speaker 1: to go fast, ways that we go fast. Um, just components,
Speaker 1: you know, race series, anything about speed and going quickly
Speaker 1: and how we can get there faster, and that's that's
Speaker 1: what it's all about. Awesome, So you are clearly the
Speaker 1: go to guy if we're gonna talk about Formula One,
Speaker 1: and uh, in the interest of full disclosure, guys, I
Speaker 1: was not joking when I say I'm not a car guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm certainly not a race car guy. I've I've
Speaker 1: never really watched racing. I mean I'm aware of it
Speaker 1: from the sort of the cultural touchstones that are out there,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I'm aware that there are different
Speaker 1: kinds of racing. You know, there's the Formula one. There's
Speaker 1: stock car racing. You know, there's there's NASCAR, which is
Speaker 1: sort of an offshoot of the stock car racing. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, I wouldn't have necessarily been able to differentiate them.
Speaker 1: And I didn't really know much about Formula one before
Speaker 1: looking back into this, apart from you know, seeing it
Speaker 1: in movies and stuff. Uh. And I remember joking with
Speaker 1: you Scott this morning, I said, well, to me, the
Speaker 1: history of race car, uh, driving race cars and and
Speaker 1: and races in general kind of boil back to the
Speaker 1: day the second car rolled off the manufacturing plant and
Speaker 1: people started wondering, I wonder which of these two can
Speaker 1: go faster? It's essentially true, but it really did happen
Speaker 1: that way. I mean, that's that's what it was. As
Speaker 1: soon as there were enough cars to get together, they
Speaker 1: started a race or so you would get to a
Speaker 1: certain point fast. Yeah. And a lot of those early
Speaker 1: races it wasn't even just about speed. It was because
Speaker 1: cars were so new. It was literally seeing which one
Speaker 1: of these can actually make that trip? There were reliability tests, right, like,
Speaker 1: like will this car actually make this this trip? From
Speaker 1: it was almost always Paris to something else, like the
Speaker 1: French were gaga that's French for walsa for for car racing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the the history of Formula one, if
Speaker 1: you look at it, really has its roots in an
Speaker 1: earlier part of racing, the whole grand pre concept, right absolutely, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about you know, turn of the century,
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, yea. And more than the
Speaker 1: early early dawn of automobiles is when we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the racing beginning like you were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, when there's just more than a few in
Speaker 1: a field and they're trying to get somewhere or trying
Speaker 1: to you know, prove their endurance by by you know,
Speaker 1: racing twenty six miles or whatever it was. You know
Speaker 1: it took some all day, Yeah, because they're their top
Speaker 1: speed might be like fifteen kilometers an hour, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And and the roads and the conditions and the vehicles
Speaker 1: themselves and just there's so many factors that go into
Speaker 1: why these races were just um, it's just brutal on
Speaker 1: the person that was you know, in the driver's seat,
Speaker 1: were in the passenger seat, and mechanics seed or however
Speaker 1: you want to put it. Um. A lot of times
Speaker 1: you know, it came down to what the driver could stand.
Speaker 1: There was these are open cockpit cars, and they were
Speaker 1: they were really really punishing on the person that was driving.
Speaker 1: The wheels were not inflatable tire wheels because the road
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 or rather the twentieth century, and by the time
Speaker 1: you get to round you know, the nies, nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: things have gotten a lot better, I mean a lot better.
Speaker 1: We're 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 is that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, there was no Formula one, right right
Speaker 1: at this point, you had some formula in this sense
Speaker 1: refers to a set 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. 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. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've only shared with me a couple of figures. I
Speaker 1: wanted to save the best for the show because I
Speaker 1: think you'll hear my jaw hitting the desk multiple times.
Speaker 1: But the car manufacturers started to pull out around the
Speaker 1: late twenties early thirties UH in order to focus on
Speaker 1: building out their their consumer cars. Because that's really when
Speaker 1: consumer vehicles were starting to take off and you started
Speaker 1: seeing the rise of these specialty manufacturers, the Ferraris, the Bugattis,
Speaker 1: the Maserati's. And here there's a couple of interesting things
Speaker 1: I want to point out about that, about those those
Speaker 1: manufacturers that are stepping in because um, you know, and
Speaker 1: we should say this too, that you know, up until
Speaker 1: this point it's been called grand Prix racing, Grand prix
Speaker 1: motor racing, I think, is how they actually said it.
Speaker 1: In Grand Prix of course means I think that means
Speaker 1: like great prize in French. Right, So big old, big
Speaker 1: 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, they're a fantastic rowd card. Of course,
Speaker 1: they've got a great racing program still, of course, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what the whole company is based on. But you know,
Speaker 1: they do build some incredible and just incredible street machines
Speaker 1: as well, and you know they always were great, just
Speaker 1: he was just more doing it, I guess, just out
Speaker 1: of his own own selfish needs really, you know, early
Speaker 1: on the initial days. Well, and this also kind of
Speaker 1: ties in and we're talking a lot about the pre
Speaker 1: Formula one days because it's really important to understand why
Speaker 1: Formula one came around when it did in those pre days.
Speaker 1: So in the very early years you had sort of
Speaker 1: French domination in in these in these races of France
Speaker 1: was uh, first of all, France was hosting most of
Speaker 1: the Grand Prix races and also was fielding at least
Speaker 1: half the vehicles in most of these races as well,
Speaker 1: so clearly they were going to dominate. After that, you
Speaker 1: started to see the rise of the Italian vehicles with
Speaker 1: the Ferraris coming in and really starting to challenge that,
Speaker 1: and then following that you started to see Germany really
Speaker 1: push hard to get into this space too with German engineering,
Speaker 1: and this became not just a sports thing but a
Speaker 1: political thing because it's if you're paying attention, this is
Speaker 1: the same as the rise of Hitler, and Hitler was
Speaker 1: very much determined to have Germany's profile raised in all
Speaker 1: fields of engineering and science, largely as a sort of
Speaker 1: a domination play. And you know, we also saw this
Speaker 1: in the Olympics. We saw it in also any place
Speaker 1: where Germany was going to have a place on the
Speaker 1: world stage. Hitler one Germany to be at the very
Speaker 1: top of that. And so you saw a lot of pressure,
Speaker 1: a lot of state sponsored programs in Germany to try
Speaker 1: and and boost their own performance in the UH in
Speaker 1: the racing world. Although I should also add that even
Speaker 1: states sponsored only covered part of the cost of developing
Speaker 1: these vehicles, because that's how expensive they were. You couldn't
Speaker 1: even have an entire country behind you instill compete. You
Speaker 1: had to have more money than that, sure, and that's
Speaker 1: why we see teams often come and go in the series,
Speaker 1: and even now a lot of teams just simply can't
Speaker 1: afford to compete, and we're talking about major, major manufacturers.
Speaker 1: They just don't see enough return on investment and a
Speaker 1: lot of times and or they may have come into
Speaker 1: it with only the plan to operate in there for
Speaker 1: a few years, learn what they can and then get out. Yep.
Speaker 1: So through all this we get to World War Two,
Speaker 1: and of course during World War Two, the Grand Prix stop.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there were more important things going on
Speaker 1: at that point. But as soon as World War Two
Speaker 1: was over, the world started to return to to normal,
Speaker 1: and even before World War Two had completely ended in
Speaker 1: all theaters that it ended in Europe, they were already
Speaker 1: starting to plan the next round of Grand Prix, which
Speaker 1: would take place. By nineteen forty six they started holding
Speaker 1: these races again. Yes, nineteen forty six, and nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six is an important year because I think that was
Speaker 1: when they held the very first official Formula One race.
Speaker 1: And the thing is it wasn't um It wasn't actually
Speaker 1: formalized until one year later, I believe, until nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: and then the first official I guess if you want
Speaker 1: to go with like the absolute official world class you
Speaker 1: know race, world class Formula one race, the World Championship
Speaker 1: race was held in nineteen fifty and this wasn't at
Speaker 1: Silverstone in the United Kingdom. Yeah, so these were all
Speaker 1: sort of the the stepping stones to establishing what truly
Speaker 1: would be Formula one, which again we're gonna go more
Speaker 1: into in our our next section after we come back
Speaker 1: from the break, we're going to talk more about what
Speaker 1: the Formula one rules were when they were originally put
Speaker 1: in place. That would obviously change a lot and also
Speaker 1: have some questions for Scott because the rules indicate things
Speaker 1: like like engine volume and I need to understand more
Speaker 1: about what that means. And that's why I have him here.
Speaker 1: I'll do what I can. Yeah, No, I unfortunately I
Speaker 1: know a little bit about it, so we can talk
Speaker 1: about kind of what these are. But these are things
Speaker 1: that these are terms that would pop up abound around
Speaker 1: racing that, because I was not in that world, to me,
Speaker 1: were just it was like Greek, completely understand just totally
Speaker 1: a mystery to me. So yeah, and now we finally
Speaker 1: get up to where you have the this organization in
Speaker 1: UH in Europe that has formalized the set of rules.
Speaker 1: This is the I A yeah, yeah, and so they've
Speaker 1: they've got this set now by the way, if you're wondering,
Speaker 1: are there other Formula races, Yes, there's Formula two, there's
Speaker 1: Formula three, there's Formula four. There's also Formula E, which
Speaker 1: is for electric vehicles. Um, and we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the differences largely between Formula one and Formula two,
Speaker 1: just on a very brief level in our next segment.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, we're going to really
Speaker 1: dive into some some engine stuff in a minute. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need to take a quick break to steal
Speaker 1: myself for this experience. So when we come back more
Speaker 1: about Formula one. Okay, So we get to the point
Speaker 1: where Formula one rules are set, and here's how I understand.
Speaker 1: The rule is to be based on my research, and Scott,
Speaker 1: if I if I go way wrong, just you know,
Speaker 1: not to use a pun, but steer me back on track. Okay.
Speaker 1: One thing, one thing I didn't mention earlier was one
Speaker 1: of the big differences between Formula one racing and say
Speaker 1: your your typical like your NASCAR races, is that the
Speaker 1: circuits on Formula one involve lots of different turns left
Speaker 1: and right right. That's not like a big oval like
Speaker 1: you would see in a lot of race car races. Now,
Speaker 1: these are road courses, so there's elevation changes, there are
Speaker 1: left and right turns. As you said, Um, it's not
Speaker 1: the high banked ovals like we're talking about in in
Speaker 1: NASCAR or you know, some other forms of racing. It's
Speaker 1: this is a it's a challenging race. I mean they're
Speaker 1: all challenging, but this becomes a sport where the person
Speaker 1: behind the wheel really does need to be an athlete.
Speaker 1: And if you don't believe me, try We talked about
Speaker 1: this off air, but try going go karting at an
Speaker 1: indoor track for maybe ten fifteen minutes at a time.
Speaker 1: You're exhausted. When you're done, Yeah, you'll make And that's
Speaker 1: just go karting. And that's and that's just for ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minutes. The Formula One race, by the way,
Speaker 1: has a time limit of two hours on a regular race,
Speaker 1: assuming no red flag conditions pop up. Yes, so you know,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. These guys are athletes. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and you could experience uh forces up to five g
Speaker 1: in strength, five times the the force of gravity on
Speaker 1: you in some of these turns. And they're taking like
Speaker 1: I said, turns left and right. Um, so it is.
Speaker 1: It also Formula one cars, today's modern ones, which will
Speaker 1: get to a little bit later, go a little faster
Speaker 1: than the fastest NASCAR cars, like by five miles per hour.
Speaker 1: It's like two is the top for NASCAR generally speaking,
Speaker 1: in two oh five for Formula one. But it's also
Speaker 1: a very different experience. It is. Yeah, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about average speeds where you know, going in a circle.
Speaker 1: You know, I hate to use that because a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, as nothing, but going in a circle
Speaker 1: and turn and left, it's not. It's not that easy,
Speaker 1: and it's for NASCAR. It's also incredibly brutal. It is difficult. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's more difficult than you would think. But but
Speaker 1: but honestly, like, um, you know, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: average speeds, I mean, these guys the cars accelerate a
Speaker 1: lot faster, lot quicker than a NASCAR would and they
Speaker 1: can break a lot harder than a NASCAR car would.
Speaker 1: And so when you talk about average speeds, you're talking
Speaker 1: about over the course of a road course versus a
Speaker 1: an oval. It's a significant difference the type of racing
Speaker 1: that it is. So some of the basic rules for
Speaker 1: Formula One when it was first coming out was that
Speaker 1: originally there was no weight limit on vehicles. You did
Speaker 1: have different um uh engine volumes that were allowed. If
Speaker 1: you were using a turbo charger or super charger, then
Speaker 1: you were limited to fIF c C, which Scott kindly
Speaker 1: informing does not mean carbon copy in this case, but
Speaker 1: cubic centimeter. We'll get into that in a second. Sure,
Speaker 1: and then the the I think that you could have
Speaker 1: up to three thousand cc for an naturally aspirated engine, sure,
Speaker 1: which means it doesn't have a supercharger, doesn't have a
Speaker 1: turbo or anything like that. It's just it's breathing. It's
Speaker 1: breathing air. So so this was something that I actually
Speaker 1: had to look up because again not a car guy,
Speaker 1: but naturally aspirated means that it's using just the natural
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure to feed oxygen into the uh the engine.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. It's not forced induction when I
Speaker 1: say it's breathing air. Of course every engine breathe are
Speaker 1: this one is simply just you're right taking this taking
Speaker 1: the atmospheric um pressure. Yeah pressure, yea atmospheric air. I
Speaker 1: guess you're gonna put that way. But a turbocharger or
Speaker 1: a supercharger, it's pushing air into the engine. It's forced
Speaker 1: air induction is what that is. Yeah, you're using you
Speaker 1: you're forcing air into the engine. You're creating additional horsepower
Speaker 1: by by running, by ramming more air through there and fuel, right,
Speaker 1: So that means that you're you're able to uh to
Speaker 1: get fuel to the cylinders faster. And that's the cylinders
Speaker 1: are what we're referring to when we're talking about like CC,
Speaker 1: what you're really talking about is the the volume that
Speaker 1: the cylinders can hold based on the full stroke of
Speaker 1: the piston. It's the displacement of the engine. So what
Speaker 1: you're looking at is the the the amount of space.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna put this in the simplest way
Speaker 1: without really getting too much. When the pistons travel up
Speaker 1: and down, if it's all the way at the bottom,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a you know, in the cylinder itself,
Speaker 1: where the piston travels up and down, there's there's a
Speaker 1: volume of air there and that error is then you know,
Speaker 1: compressed and it's filled with fuel and that's where the
Speaker 1: explosion happens. And proper piston down, et cetera. We we
Speaker 1: don't need to go into like the whole combustion cycle
Speaker 1: and everything right now. But um, that's the volume of
Speaker 1: displacement of the engine. In the United States, we typically
Speaker 1: use a different measurement. We use cubic inch displacement c
Speaker 1: I D because we're all about imperialism. If you want
Speaker 1: to think of of CC, then easy the easy way
Speaker 1: to think of like a cc displacement. Um, you've heard
Speaker 1: the term, like you know, two leader car, three leader engine,
Speaker 1: four leader engine, whatever. Um, it's typically about a thousand
Speaker 1: ccs per leader. So one thousand c C engine is
Speaker 1: like a one leader engine. And if you want to
Speaker 1: put it that way, so like the old Mustang g
Speaker 1: T S that had a five leader engine, roughly about
Speaker 1: five thousand ccs is what the displaced moent would be.
Speaker 1: And and to correct myself from earlier, I had said
Speaker 1: that I thought that the for a naturally aspirate it
Speaker 1: was like three thousand cc. It's actually four thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred c C. 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 can change. I have
Speaker 1: a real quick rundown of the changes, if you like,
Speaker 1: real quick. 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 nine 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 thousands
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: lead engines. So, um, gosh, I that's six c cs.
Speaker 1: I guess you want to put it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so this is this is also fascinating, is that
Speaker 1: you sit there and you look at this and you think,
Speaker 1: you know these what does this actually translate to, Right,
Speaker 1: you're talking about engine volume is not necessarily equivalent to
Speaker 1: more ccs being more speed. It's it's all about other
Speaker 1: elements as well, and engineering as a whole takes a
Speaker 1: very important part in this. Uh So, that was another
Speaker 1: thing that was confusing to me because all right, as
Speaker 1: a kid, I'm gonna I'm gonna really reveal my ignorance
Speaker 1: here as a kid. To me, the exposure of the
Speaker 1: concept of ccs for engines was limited to games that
Speaker 1: involved uh go kart racing video games because they would
Speaker 1: have the different you know, you have a fifty c
Speaker 1: C or one c C or on CC. 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 charge 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 got 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 charge, 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 consider 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 in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, so the and they're all over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, the United States only recently started to host
Speaker 1: them again. Uh, and it's in Austin, Texas that where
Speaker 1: it takes place. And um that the reason why the
Speaker 1: United States this is a whole different discussion, but it's
Speaker 1: largely because Formula one racing just never got super popular
Speaker 1: in the US, which you know, it was always seen
Speaker 1: as more of a European pursuit than an American one.
Speaker 1: Stock car racing was much more popular here. You know,
Speaker 1: when I first moved to Detroit. This is back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. This has been like four eighty five
Speaker 1: somewhere around there. Uh, they ran a Formula one race
Speaker 1: in downtown Detroit on the streets of Detroit. It was
Speaker 1: a road course that was on the streets of Detroit
Speaker 1: and it was in such condition at the time that
Speaker 1: it was able. They were able to do that, and
Speaker 1: later they moved it out to uh, you know, bell Aisle,
Speaker 1: and they're still doing that now. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: the Car to Indy Car series. It's a different series.
Speaker 1: It's not the F one guys like like it was
Speaker 1: in the past. But I found that pretty fast and
Speaker 1: it didn't last too long when I was there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many years they ran there. I
Speaker 1: can't remember, but um, I don't know. It's just it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me that, you know, F one just continually
Speaker 1: adjustice and I know it. It's maddening to the fans
Speaker 1: because they're always changing something around, making something different, and
Speaker 1: they're always trying to kind of level, like you said,
Speaker 1: level that plane field a little bit. And I know
Speaker 1: it's it's it's angering to us, you know, as fans
Speaker 1: to watch this and kind of you know, try to
Speaker 1: keep up with the rule changes and what's happening in
Speaker 1: the series. I can imagine. I can't imagine what it
Speaker 1: would be like to be a team owner that has
Speaker 1: to adhere to these and have to pay for all
Speaker 1: the changes and everything. But you know, one other thing
Speaker 1: that this does is that it can lead to incredibly
Speaker 1: boring racing if you get it to level, if you
Speaker 1: get everything to level, and and that was a critique
Speaker 1: of F one for a long long time, and it's
Speaker 1: not this way anymore. It's it's different now. I've been
Speaker 1: watching this past season, even the season before, and it's
Speaker 1: quite a bit different now because of a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about. You know that some
Speaker 1: 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. So really
Speaker 1: all of what mattered was how you qualified, because your
Speaker 1: order of qualification dependent determines your order in the in
Speaker 1: the starting for the race, and and if you weren't
Speaker 1: in that, you know, first place and after the second
Speaker 1: or third turn. Well, you know what place you're gonna get.
Speaker 1: A course is very difficult to pass on. There's very
Speaker 1: few passing zones, you know, for you to use to
Speaker 1: to manipulate. And and and uh, you know, it's gotten a
Speaker 1: lot better. If you haven't watched Formula One, and that
Speaker 1: was your argument against it, it's it's a lot different
Speaker 1: now if you watch. And and that is in uh,
Speaker 1: in relation to some of the technologies that we can
Speaker 1: we can talk about a little bit later, because there
Speaker 1: are some advancements that have made they're racing a lot
Speaker 1: more exciting for the fans to watch and a lot
Speaker 1: more exciting for the drivers. I'm sure it's not it's
Speaker 1: not you know, you don't you don't finish in the
Speaker 1: order that you started exactly. Yeah, it's it's just it's
Speaker 1: a it's a much better race now. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: so at the end of the series of races, what
Speaker 1: they do is they have points given out to the
Speaker 1: top ten finishers of each Grand Prix of each race,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the season those points
Speaker 1: are totaled up and whoever has the most is the
Speaker 1: Grand Champion driver. But then you also have the winner
Speaker 1: teams Instructor Championship Constructor Championships. Yeah, and then when you
Speaker 1: get to that point, uh, if you're the company that
Speaker 1: is making the vehicle, that is like sometimes you see
Speaker 1: like one company just dominating the top sometimes top ten teams,
Speaker 1: then 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 tools. 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 in Mercedes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has 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 up down thing, you like, where
Speaker 1: one team does dominate the series and and you'll find
Speaker 1: that this switches around routinely, not not not necessarily throughout
Speaker 1: the season because once you once you do find that,
Speaker 1: you know someone is dominating the season, Like I would
Speaker 1: bet that Lewis Hamilton's gonna win his fair share of
Speaker 1: the 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 say,
Speaker 1: he was something like five ft three inches tall, this
Speaker 1: from the classic days of racing, who uh was so
Speaker 1: determined to race. Ferrari was actually begging him to withdraw
Speaker 1: from a race because the car itself was starting to
Speaker 1: fall apart, and it was one of these road races
Speaker 1: from one say to another, and they were begging him
Speaker 1: to to stop racing. He was racing on behalf of Ferrari,
Speaker 1: and he said no, no, no. His Ferra said, I
Speaker 1: was absolutely certain that his determination was to die behind
Speaker 1: the wheel doing what he loved. Turned out, he ended
Speaker 1: up having to eventually withdrawal from the race simply because
Speaker 1: the car couldn't perform anymore. Yeah, he was, according to
Speaker 1: the stories, coughing up blood but still wanted to race,
Speaker 1: and he died. He died in bed five years later,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like he passed away immediately thereafter, but
Speaker 1: he was in failing health and was still determined and
Speaker 1: he was still winning too. He was twenty nine minutes
Speaker 1: ahead of the next fastest car, significant distance. Yes, so
Speaker 1: also shows you a lot of difference between this and
Speaker 1: and say NASCAR racing. And again we're not we're not
Speaker 1: 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 is doing. Everything is about down force. You want
Speaker 1: the car to stick to the ground, so the faster
Speaker 1: you go, the more it adheres to the ground. And
Speaker 1: of course 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 uh, it's it's an interesting looking car, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's definitely 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 and
Speaker 1: every single bit of that car is engineered for speed
Speaker 1: and for its ability to cut through the air and
Speaker 1: to again provide down force. We're talking about the tiniest
Speaker 1: little components behind the wheels, We're talking about the side
Speaker 1: pods that are next to the driver. I mean, every
Speaker 1: little bit of this thing is is just tuned to
Speaker 1: perfection for for it to be slippery through the air,
Speaker 1: to 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 gonna be made more efficient, somehow, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: made of a stronger material, but a lighter material. It's
Speaker 1: going to 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. There's so many things. Again, this whole
Speaker 1: series is mind boggling. When you look at the rules,
Speaker 1: you look at the way, um, everything again just has
Speaker 1: to be just just going over and over and over
Speaker 1: and 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, we were talking about
Speaker 1: pit stops. I was actually talking about stuff I don't
Speaker 1: understand in racing. I was like, you know, I even
Speaker 1: had to look up how pit stops work because I
Speaker 1: know about pit stops. I know what they're meant to do,
Speaker 1: but I was thinking, like, well, how does that work
Speaker 1: in the in the sense of the action of the
Speaker 1: race as a whole, Like you're obviously off the track
Speaker 1: at that moment, you're no longer accumulating laps, You're you're
Speaker 1: having your car. Uh, having the tires usually replaced, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. How does that work in the context
Speaker 1: of the full race? Not thinking, oh wait, everybody else
Speaker 1: also has to do that. So in the end it
Speaker 1: ends up being how how fast and efficient your pit
Speaker 1: stop crew can be. That's when you said, why don't
Speaker 1: you take a look at like a typical Formula one
Speaker 1: pit stop? And the video, by the way, guys, was
Speaker 1: fifty five seconds long. Ten seconds in, it was still
Speaker 1: just the title picture. It was there were no there's
Speaker 1: no video. Around twelve seconds in we saw the picture
Speaker 1: of the PET crew. We didn't see a car pull
Speaker 1: into the space till about thirty three seconds into this
Speaker 1: fifty 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'll 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 terrifying,
Speaker 1: it is so choreographed, it's 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,
Speaker 1: you know, to add sometimes twenty plus gallons of fuel
Speaker 1: to a car, it only takes a few seconds. Really,
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 know, you
Speaker 1: don't want that technology. There's there's a lot of problems
Speaker 1: that come with with forcing plus gallons of fuel into
Speaker 1: a car and you know in three seconds. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: might think while you're standing there, I would really especially
Speaker 1: if you're saying outside in the Georgia heat in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day, refilling your car, you might think,
Speaker 1: I would really like to get back in the air conditioning.
Speaker 1: But some things were be to trade off on. Yes, 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: to 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 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: six teen 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
Speaker 1: back jack, and you know there's there's people making adjustments
Speaker 1: and all that. But um, when you have there's was
Speaker 1: it three or three maybe even four people per tire,
Speaker 1: it's I think it's three per tire. It's one to
Speaker 1: take it off, one person who's one person who's bringing
Speaker 1: on the new tire, so they have the new tire,
Speaker 1: they're waiting. Do you have one person whose job it
Speaker 1: is to take the tire off, and then you have
Speaker 1: one person whose job it is to remove and replace
Speaker 1: the nuts. So just getting those three people in that
Speaker 1: one tiny little area to operate and and function without,
Speaker 1: you know, knocking each other over every time, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to watch it, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: the countless hours they have to practice to make every
Speaker 1: single move perfect. Right, you have to conserve your your
Speaker 1: space because if you're not, then you're wasting time. Now
Speaker 1: if you make if you make a pit stop, that
Speaker 1: is even let's say it's double the time that we
Speaker 1: just talked about. Let's say it's it's three point eight seconds.
Speaker 1: That's a disaster. Yeah, I mean that's crazy to think about,
Speaker 1: but three point eight seconds is a disaster because you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to make up that lost time someone else.
Speaker 1: Even if you were in number one. If you're leading
Speaker 1: by less than two seconds and the person behind you
Speaker 1: when they have their pit stop is not taking nearly
Speaker 1: as long, you know you've you've lost time. Pit strategy
Speaker 1: is is really something fun to watch. And I know
Speaker 1: that it sounds terribly boring when I just say it
Speaker 1: like this, but when you're watching the race and you
Speaker 1: kind of get into it, you know, towards the end,
Speaker 1: and you know, the pit strategy becomes so vital in
Speaker 1: winning race in a lot of cases. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's there's far more to it than you might think. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's fascinating to watch. It's a game
Speaker 1: of chess. We were talking a bit about the distance
Speaker 1: you have to go, So the last thing I saw
Speaker 1: about distances was that you would complete a number of
Speaker 1: laps that are equivalent actually that exceed three five kilometers.
Speaker 1: So the minimum of a Grand Prix is three kilometers,
Speaker 1: with one exception, that exception being Monaco. In Monaco, it
Speaker 1: is two hundred sixty and a half kilometers, a tighter
Speaker 1: track there. Yeah, it's a smaller area as you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Monica is not a very large was it was providence?
Speaker 1: What is what is Monica? I don't even need a
Speaker 1: principality to me, it's it's the most magical place on Earth.
Speaker 1: I visited it and it's amazing. I bet it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved beautiful. I'd love to go, it'd be cool.
Speaker 1: But but it is, it is very tight, and uh,
Speaker 1: Monica is a different race altogether, right. Well, And if
Speaker 1: you were to add another lap on there so that
Speaker 1: it would end up, you know, being closer to the
Speaker 1: correct distance, it would go too far. So it's one
Speaker 1: of those where you have to you know, you have
Speaker 1: to make a call. And uh, but yeah, Monica is
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal. It's also whenever I see footage of the
Speaker 1: race and Monico, it is terrifying to me to watch
Speaker 1: these cars going down these these roads and and sometimes
Speaker 1: you see people watching on not terribly far away from
Speaker 1: where these cars are are rushing by, and more than
Speaker 1: two or there on balconies kind of hanging over the track.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's an interesting race. I love Monica. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful and um, it's fun to watch the race there
Speaker 1: because it is so um, it's steeped in history as well.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so tight and it's so fast, and
Speaker 1: you get that real sensation of speed there um that
Speaker 1: you might not get well you actually you know, you
Speaker 1: get it in a lot of road courses. But there's
Speaker 1: just something magical about Monaco. It is. It's beautiful, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Um, you don't you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: where to go with this. I We've got so much
Speaker 1: material here. I don't know if I'm overstepping my bounce.
Speaker 1: But I would love to talk about the engine for
Speaker 1: just a moment. We can because the engine, and we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about cost or anything on this yet, so
Speaker 1: all right. I recently did a program on the on
Speaker 1: the Fast Track about why there are five reasons why
Speaker 1: you can't put an F one engine into your road car,
Speaker 1: Because a lot of people have engine swap questions and
Speaker 1: like you said before, you don't really know a whole
Speaker 1: lot about racing engines versus car engines, and they're dramatically different,
Speaker 1: especially in F one engine that you can't just stuff
Speaker 1: an F one engine into a road car and expected
Speaker 1: to work. And there's a lot of reasons. It's probably
Speaker 1: a hundred reasons why this wouldn't work, but the five
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go through them super fast. If you
Speaker 1: want to hear it, I guess I can plug my
Speaker 1: own shill, right, you could go over to the fast
Speaker 1: track and listen to the five reasons explained in more detail.
Speaker 1: But um, the first one is they're they're really hard
Speaker 1: to start. Now, this is kind of tough to comprehend. Here.
Speaker 1: It a normal engine. You're able to attach a wrench
Speaker 1: to it in the front and spin the engine. You're
Speaker 1: able to make the pistons move up and down using
Speaker 1: a large level. It does take some mechanical advantage to
Speaker 1: be able to do that, but you can spin your
Speaker 1: own car engine that way. It's a lot like turning
Speaker 1: the prop on an airplank. If you can imagine that
Speaker 1: it's it's started, and you could theoretically turn it fast
Speaker 1: enough to start the car like the old crank starts,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to do that so um with
Speaker 1: quickly breaking in your body as it starts, absolutely shatter
Speaker 1: your arms. Um this uh you know with the UP
Speaker 1: one engine, it's it's a lot different. You you cannot
Speaker 1: turn an F one engine when it's cold. They're they're
Speaker 1: created with such a tight or high tolerance. They're engineered
Speaker 1: so uh precisely, like like a like a fine watch
Speaker 1: or something like that. That I mean, they're so precisely
Speaker 1: engineered and fitted together that the pistons are essentially seized
Speaker 1: in the engine at at like the ambient temperature. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the temperature is. How to hear
Speaker 1: it's it's you have to pump. You have to external
Speaker 1: use external pumps to pump heated fluids through this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, both coolant and the engine oil the lubricant,
Speaker 1: and it has to be up to I think it's
Speaker 1: a hundred and seventy six degrees fahrenheit before you can
Speaker 1: even begin to move the pistons within the piston uh cylinders.
Speaker 1: That's how tightly they are they are engineered. There's there's
Speaker 1: such precision machines and I had no idea that that
Speaker 1: was you know, a factor in this whole thing. So
Speaker 1: you would not be able to just get into the
Speaker 1: car and start it up like you could a normal engine.
Speaker 1: You would have to have these external pumps heat up
Speaker 1: the engine and then you know, and then even then
Speaker 1: you would have to have an external starting which is
Speaker 1: like a big drill that starts the whole thing. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it spins it like you know, several thousand
Speaker 1: rpm in order to get it even going. And even
Speaker 1: then it's hard to start. It's it's difficult to get
Speaker 1: the fuel flowing correctly and all that. So this is
Speaker 1: this is amazing. What it reminds me of is um,
Speaker 1: how you start up jet engines, because a jet not
Speaker 1: not that it works on the same principle. These are
Speaker 1: two different principles, don't get me wrong. But to start
Speaker 1: a jet engine, you have to pump uh pressurized air
Speaker 1: through the jet engine because it's designed to operate once
Speaker 1: you are at a certain speed moving through the air.
Speaker 1: Well obviously on ground you're not moving through the air yet,
Speaker 1: so you can't get those turbines turning at the proper
Speaker 1: speed for it to be a self propelling reaction. Right,
Speaker 1: This idea that the turbines turn because of the outgoing
Speaker 1: uh exhaust from the jet engine, that that provides the
Speaker 1: turning force to keep the turbines coming to pull air
Speaker 1: through the engine, so you have to pump uh pressurized
Speaker 1: air into it first, and typically you do that either
Speaker 1: using an auxiliary power unit or you have uh the
Speaker 1: little huffer carts that hook up to an engine. So
Speaker 1: to me, like when you started explaining this, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: this sounds a lot like how it's hard to start
Speaker 1: a jet engine. It's just that we're talking about an
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine, not a jet engine. Obviously, sofers No,
Speaker 1: there are differences, but that's fascinating that you have to
Speaker 1: have these ex turn old factors in order to begin
Speaker 1: the thing, even to even start the process. And that's
Speaker 1: what this is. Um, all right, I know we're probably
Speaker 1: starting to run tight on time, so let's keep going.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated. As you might have guessed, they're not cheap.
Speaker 1: And this is the first time we're gonna really talk
Speaker 1: about prices here on this. I think this is the
Speaker 1: first time get this, and I this blew me away
Speaker 1: talking about just the engine, just the price of the engine,
Speaker 1: These range between seven point seven million and ten and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars per per engine, just the for
Speaker 1: just the engine. Another good reason why you weren't going
Speaker 1: to put these in a regular road car. Just one engine,
Speaker 1: that's all we're talking about. So yeah, even I mean,
Speaker 1: any manufacturer would never be able to justify putting an
Speaker 1: engine like this in their car. Now, there are there
Speaker 1: are some derivatives of an F one engine that have
Speaker 1: been have kind of showed up into road cars, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe the V ten engine that was used in
Speaker 1: an F one car. But it's not you know, meticulous,
Speaker 1: it's not as um um uh finally tuned, is not
Speaker 1: as you know, it doesn't have all of the components
Speaker 1: of the F one engine. Of course, it's just derived
Speaker 1: from it, right, It's it's the design of the F
Speaker 1: one informed the design of this other engine exactly. And
Speaker 1: and these F one engines they spent at something like
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand RPMs. They can go up to twenty RPMs,
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 dissipate
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: as 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 a in a regular road car 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. Uh.
Speaker 1: They do carry around two leads for a rate stough,
Speaker 1: so that's a lot of fuel that they're carrying on
Speaker 1: board fuels things. So they do get through the whole
Speaker 1: race without without refueling. That's about sixty gallons of fuel
Speaker 1: that they carry. And by the end of the race
Speaker 1: they're 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 experiment in a lot
Speaker 1: with that. But then there were rules that essentially said
Speaker 1: that Formula one race cars were to run on petrol. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just it's very precisely formulated petrol. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's very exacting science. So it's not exactly what we're
Speaker 1: thinking of when we go to the pump like hitting
Speaker 1: Formula one. No, it's not not quite that simple, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're exact requirements for each one, and then
Speaker 1: even then they fine tuned it throughout the season, extremely
Speaker 1: fine tuned. The last one on this is of course
Speaker 1: the lifespan of the engine. Now we've all seen races
Speaker 1: where a car goes out in h you know, two
Speaker 1: laps in they developed some major problem and you know,
Speaker 1: after all this money, all this everything we've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, they're there, I don't know, ten miles into
Speaker 1: the race and there's catastrophic engine failure because they're they're
Speaker 1: subjected to so much pressure, so much, so much force
Speaker 1: is happening in these engines at this time. I mean
Speaker 1: we're saying that you know, they spin around what pm.
Speaker 1: That means that the pistons are traveling up and down
Speaker 1: about three time 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 d p s I is what
Speaker 1: those cylinders are subjected to every second. So a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure in these things, and of course they have
Speaker 1: to be rebuilt all the time. And we know this
Speaker 1: from racing. We've seen this in so many different series. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, drag racing, and they practically do it every
Speaker 1: quarter mile. They rebuild engines all the time, right, or
Speaker 1: even less if it doesn't make it a quarter mile. Um,
Speaker 1: but most race cars can only last one maybe two
Speaker 1: races at the most before they to be rebuilt. These
Speaker 1: are every race, and the maximum that they can reach
Speaker 1: is about maybe maybe two races at the most. They're
Speaker 1: like sie miles, it's about a thousand kilometers. Is like
Speaker 1: the maximum life at optimal conditions for an F one engine,
Speaker 1: Which means that if you were to put one of
Speaker 1: these into your road car, think about you know how
Speaker 1: many not only is it seven to twelve million dollars,
Speaker 1: but seven to twelve million dollars every this many times.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you the average US person person puts
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand, four hundred and seventy six miles in a
Speaker 1: car every year. That's average. If you own a vehicle,
Speaker 1: that means that you would be rebuilding your engine twenty
Speaker 1: two times each year if you're average. Now most a
Speaker 1: lot of people, of course, are gonna be way above
Speaker 1: that average. We're gonna be under, but twenty two times
Speaker 1: per year, you're spending seven and a half to ten
Speaker 1: and a half million dollars, So I'm gonna need to
Speaker 1: sell some more girls, do you see what I mean? Like?
Speaker 1: And again, if you want more detail on all this,
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't, maybe that was way too much
Speaker 1: to be it's not. But if you go and if
Speaker 1: you want more detail on this, you can go to
Speaker 1: the Fast Direct show and listen all about it. But
Speaker 1: I find the numbers in Formula one to be just
Speaker 1: fascinating and the dollar amounts. And should we just briefly
Speaker 1: talk about the car, yeah, because we've we've started it
Speaker 1: with the engines. Let's talk about how expensive this kind
Speaker 1: of vehicle is when you're looking at it soup to nuts,
Speaker 1: and then we'll also talk about I mean, you can
Speaker 1: also mention things like that's one expense, right, one expense
Speaker 1: is just the vehicle, But then beyond that, you have
Speaker 1: to actually pay money to be part of this whole experience.
Speaker 1: So there are companies that are spending mind boggling amounts
Speaker 1: of money on participating in Formula one. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: for some of the smaller teams, if you want to
Speaker 1: call 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 going to
Speaker 1: say that, um, anywhere between twelve and fifteen million dollars
Speaker 1: per vehicle per car. So when you see, you know,
Speaker 1: an F one car that's destroyed in an accident on
Speaker 1: the track, you're talking about, you know, between twelve and
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollar loss to the team. They might be
Speaker 1: able to salvage a few parts here and there, but
Speaker 1: essentially it's a twelve to fifteen million dollar loss at
Speaker 1: that point. Um. Then of course that doesn't happen often
Speaker 1: where they lose every single bit of the car, but
Speaker 1: they do lose parts and and I've got a list
Speaker 1: here of the parts, and I will not go over
Speaker 1: every part of this, but this kind of blew my
Speaker 1: mind when I saw this. You know, how often, uh
Speaker 1: do you see where an F one car goes out
Speaker 1: on the track and they hit a little bit of debris,
Speaker 1: you know, something that not a tired necessarily, but something
Speaker 1: that's on the track. They bump a corner or whatever,
Speaker 1: another car even Um, you know that front wing is
Speaker 1: designed to come right off and right back on. They
Speaker 1: do it super quick. They can do it in a second,
Speaker 1: two seconds, whatever it takes, it's super fast. That part,
Speaker 1: that front wing part can cost be anywhere between one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. It's kind of beginning to feel like I'm
Speaker 1: in the wrong business. Like two wings a year, king,
Speaker 1: you know the thing Like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wrap up with with another one in in a moment
Speaker 1: here because I want to show you something in specific.
Speaker 1: But um, if the transmission in the car we talked
Speaker 1: about the engine already, the transmission in the car can
Speaker 1: can be up to six hundred thousand dollars. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're on a lower end team, you're only paying
Speaker 1: only about four hundred thousand for that. But if you
Speaker 1: want to upgrade, you know, you you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: six h thousand dollar engine. That's for the top teams. Again,
Speaker 1: the fuel tank alone, just because of the way it's
Speaker 1: designed and with the materials made of hundred and forty
Speaker 1: thou dollars and that's kind of like again a low
Speaker 1: end tank. The the carbon fiber monocoque design, you know,
Speaker 1: which is essential to the safety of the driver and
Speaker 1: the structure of the car itself. That's very expensive and
Speaker 1: teams won't scrimp on that. There are lower cost options,
Speaker 1: I believe, but most teams are paying around six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars for that. And of course, once
Speaker 1: it's damaged, it's done. You don't get you don't get
Speaker 1: to reuse that. That has to be replaced UM, as
Speaker 1: is with with most of these parts. UM there's the
Speaker 1: halo device, which is that crazy thing that goes over
Speaker 1: there over their heads now kind of blocks in the
Speaker 1: um UM. It protects the um exposed helmet and head
Speaker 1: of the of the driver. That's something that I wish
Speaker 1: we had more time to talk about. Really it's a
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating piece of tech that that I just love
Speaker 1: the tech that goes into these cars. I really do.
Speaker 1: There's that is uh it's designed to hold the weight
Speaker 1: of a double decker bus, a London double decker bus.
Speaker 1: If you were to just set it on top of it,
Speaker 1: I think it's like twenty six thousand five pounds. It
Speaker 1: can withstand that. And it's designed again like if a
Speaker 1: you know, a tire is coming at the driver. If
Speaker 1: it's it's an outside company that builds it, they build
Speaker 1: kind of like the it's it's made out of um
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I have a note here. It's made out
Speaker 1: 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 what we're worried about. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I can tell you now, I found this note. Um.
Speaker 1: It is the strongest part of the car, and that
Speaker 1: shows you, It tells you how much they're you know,
Speaker 1: firmly um backing this idea that driver's safety is becoming
Speaker 1: more and more and more important as the decades progress.
Speaker 1: In Formula one and in the sixties, they were a
Speaker 1: little bit more lax with that type of thing. And
Speaker 1: that's why drivers like Jackie Stewart and several others that
Speaker 1: other names that you would recognize, uh, that they really
Speaker 1: they protested. They they sat out races, they didn't race
Speaker 1: in certain places because they were losing friends every month.
Speaker 1: Then the reason why we saw changes was largely because
Speaker 1: the drivers and the races were starting to demand changes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cars were getting so fast, so fast, and the
Speaker 1: tracks were so fast, and the safety standards just weren't there.
Speaker 1: They just weren't protecting the drivers the way that they
Speaker 1: should and and Jackie Stewart realized this and several other
Speaker 1: racers did as well. There's there's a lot of information
Speaker 1: out there on Jackie Stewart and what he did to
Speaker 1: kind of push safety forward in Formula one, and it's
Speaker 1: a huge leap forward for the drivers and the safety
Speaker 1: and you know, just kind of their overall well being.
Speaker 1: I guess. And I found UM this note about the
Speaker 1: Halo and I'm sorry, I think I said. Did I
Speaker 1: say platinum? I hope I didn't say platinum when I
Speaker 1: when I said what material was? It's it's a mandatory
Speaker 1: UM device. Obviously it's aerospace industry grade five titanium probably
Speaker 1: does yeah, UM, but it can again, it can withstand
Speaker 1: the weight of that London double decker bus, which is
Speaker 1: like twenty It is incredible. It is the strongest part
Speaker 1: of the car at this point. And again that's a
Speaker 1: that's a nod to safety. UM. Another piece of tech,
Speaker 1: A couple pieces of tech that UM finally written a
Speaker 1: tech right type stuff. UM. You know, they have biometric
Speaker 1: gloves that the drivers were. Now I don't know if
Speaker 1: you knew this or not. We didn't talk about this,
Speaker 1: but they the drivers wear biometric gloves and this is
Speaker 1: actually a safety feature because it facilitates the medical response
Speaker 1: to the driver when they're you know, if there's a
Speaker 1: medical situation that's happening, and the driver doesn't even really
Speaker 1: know what's happening yet. It registers in these gloves with
Speaker 1: pulse rate UM. It's also got UM what's the oxygen
Speaker 1: level in your blood blood? It measures that UM. But
Speaker 1: it will tell them as they approached the vehicle, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's been in an accident, the driver's condition and
Speaker 1: what to look for. You know, don't know pretty much
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on with that driver at that point,
Speaker 1: whether they've got a pulse, whether they don't. Unfortunately a
Speaker 1: lot of times they don't. I mean, these these rex
Speaker 1: are pretty severe when they do happen. You're going on
Speaker 1: incredible speeds in a in a vehicle that's still even
Speaker 1: with the added safety features, it's very design is one
Speaker 1: that you could easily see there there'd be some pretty
Speaker 1: catastrophic injuries if there is a crash. And I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to step over your your discussion about the space race,
Speaker 1: and you know the astronauts and how they I mean,
Speaker 1: but these guys they know going into this, just like
Speaker 1: just like the astronauts, they know going into this that
Speaker 1: they're in it for the whole thing. It's either it's
Speaker 1: all or none for them, and there's always that chance
Speaker 1: every single time. And it's not being overly dramatic. It's true.
Speaker 1: Every single time they get into that car, it could
Speaker 1: be the last time they get into that car. And
Speaker 1: they know it, and as does as do the astronauts.
Speaker 1: They know it, they know what they're in for, but
Speaker 1: they knowingly take the risk because you know, the reward
Speaker 1: for them is so great that they decide that, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something I want to do and I want
Speaker 1: to dedicate my life to this, really, so they've got
Speaker 1: these these biometric gloves. One of the things that I've
Speaker 1: also noticed about Formula one race cars is, uh, the
Speaker 1: steering mechanism is very different from what you would see
Speaker 1: in a standard vehicle. Have you been peaking at my notes? No,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about pictures I've seen of these crazy
Speaker 1: steering mechanisms. Do you remember early on when we set
Speaker 1: down and I said, I'm gonna turn this piece of
Speaker 1: paper over on the desk here so you can't see
Speaker 1: what it is. That is what it is. It's a
Speaker 1: steering wheel. And I don't know what's more complex, my
Speaker 1: notes around the steering wheel or the steering wheel itself.
Speaker 1: But the steering wheel in a Formula one car is
Speaker 1: incredibly complex. And the thing is, I've watched a lot
Speaker 1: of videos about this, and the buttons really do make
Speaker 1: sense when you have a driver described to you what
Speaker 1: they are. Right. So, if you were to look at
Speaker 1: a picture of this, because you know, obviously this being
Speaker 1: an audio podcast, you aren't given the benefit of what
Speaker 1: Scott just showed me, which was a picture of this,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a video game controller in
Speaker 1: a way, right. It's it's calling it a wheel seems
Speaker 1: uh like it would be misdirection because it's not a
Speaker 1: full wheel shape. You've got the you've got the little
Speaker 1: bit of the wheel on the left and right sides.
Speaker 1: But it really does look kind of like a video
Speaker 1: game controller, almost like it has a screen in the
Speaker 1: in the Front's got some dials and some buttons that
Speaker 1: are an easy reach where of your hand placement. I
Speaker 1: see now that there are clutch buttons on the wheel itself,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. I have no idea what the rest
Speaker 1: of these things do. So tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about this. I'll make it quick because there's way too
Speaker 1: much to cover here. This is his own podcast. Really
Speaker 1: that the tech that's involved in in a Formula one
Speaker 1: steering wheel is unbelievable. Their videos about this, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of online articles about it. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: will tell you that the price of the steering wheel,
Speaker 1: it probably would not surprise you to hear that this
Speaker 1: is expensive as well, between fifty and one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per wheel. Now, a lot of racers, a lot of
Speaker 1: drivers for each car will have up to three different wheels.
Speaker 1: They'll have a primary wheel that they normally use, they'll
Speaker 1: have a backup, you know, just in case something happens,
Speaker 1: you know, during an accident or whatever, you know, practice
Speaker 1: or just malfunctions. And then they'll also have a lot
Speaker 1: of times an experimental wheel that then loads on new buttons,
Speaker 1: has new systems, new settings, that type of things, you know,
Speaker 1: So the buttons do different things, and it's it's less
Speaker 1: complicated than you might think. I mean, when you're looking
Speaker 1: at it, it's extremely complicated. But the drivers learn this
Speaker 1: very quickly. They understand every single function of it, and
Speaker 1: it's all within reach, and it's it's all customized to them.
Speaker 1: The hand grips are customized. They're formed to their hands
Speaker 1: so they fit exactly in their hand, it's not. 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
Speaker 1: button as you might expect. There's a neutral and reverse
Speaker 1: button for the car, so you don't um inavertly run
Speaker 1: over 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 you have.
Speaker 1: Each track has its own pit lane speed. There's um
Speaker 1: there's a button for something called the drag reduction system,
Speaker 1: which we haven't even talked about. But drag reduction system
Speaker 1: is like movable aerodynamic wing on the back of the car.
Speaker 1: So it's like the elements you would see on an
Speaker 1: on an aircraft. Yes, yes, it's like the flight surfaces
Speaker 1: on wings and tails of aircraft. Yes. And you can
Speaker 1: reduce your drag by by pushing this button. And there
Speaker 1: are certain parameters where drivers allowed to do that, but
Speaker 1: it's controlled by the driver with a button on this
Speaker 1: wheel and it's really it's just the flap on the
Speaker 1: rear wing that gives you an aerodynamic advantage in order
Speaker 1: to pass the car that's in front of you. And
Speaker 1: you have again the parameters are like certain zones on
Speaker 1: the track that you're able to use this. And I
Speaker 1: think you have to be within one second of the
Speaker 1: car in front of you in order to push the
Speaker 1: button one second following speed. Now, UM, I guess that's
Speaker 1: up to you know, F one rulemakers. You know exactly
Speaker 1: how close you were when you use this. But it
Speaker 1: does give it give you advantage and it promotes passing.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the things they've done to make
Speaker 1: it a little more exciting. Um. There are 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 there's clutch operation for gear 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 wants 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. There's the one
Speaker 1: that has a little hard on it. The most confusing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's funny. The most confusing ones to me
Speaker 1: are the dials. There are dials at the bottom that
Speaker 1: have you know, like tire presets or chassis presets, and
Speaker 1: you can kind of fine tune the chassis that way.
Speaker 1: But it's not just a button. The driver has to
Speaker 1: remove his hands from the wheel, his biometric glove from
Speaker 1: the wheel, and fine tune the chassis and the tires
Speaker 1: and you know all this. It's it's just it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating feature to this whole thing, and you can control
Speaker 1: so much from it. I can. I can understand why
Speaker 1: it's expensive, but yeah, I don't know, fifty dollars expensive.
Speaker 1: It's I mean that's the price of a car's just
Speaker 1: that wheel. Get up to a hundred thousand, that's the
Speaker 1: price of a small house, you know, and and they
Speaker 1: need three per vehicle. I mean, it's it's it's incredible.
Speaker 1: The prices are just insane. But I love the series overall.
Speaker 1: I think, as you've been able to tell, I've I've
Speaker 1: gone on and on here for probably far too long,
Speaker 1: but I I am. I'm a big Formula One fan.
Speaker 1: I hadn't watched it for a long time. I kind
Speaker 1: of got back into it last season. And the problem
Speaker 1: here in the United States is that oftentimes the races,
Speaker 1: because they're being held many times over in Europe, they
Speaker 1: might start at you know, six in the morning here,
Speaker 1: you know, when it's like a midday race there, and
Speaker 1: so that makes a little difficult to watch unless you're
Speaker 1: recording it right and I have in the past record
Speaker 1: of them. But if I happen to be up on
Speaker 1: Sunday morning at six am, usually that's what's on my screen.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. I mean, like I said, just the
Speaker 1: watching the videos that I've seen, uh, it really does
Speaker 1: bring together that that necessary combination of incredible engineering and
Speaker 1: technology and amazing like laser focus for everybody involved on
Speaker 1: that team, whether it's the driver or the crew, it's
Speaker 1: it's phenomenal, how synchronized everything has to be in order
Speaker 1: to ring out every thousandth of a second you can,
Speaker 1: because that could be the difference between coming in first
Speaker 1: or second. Sure, and you know we are I think
Speaker 1: we say this every time, or at least I do
Speaker 1: on my show. Anyways, this is kind of the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg. Yeah, there's there's so much tech that
Speaker 1: is crammed into these cars. Their their entire sections. On
Speaker 1: the f one site, if you go to f one
Speaker 1: dot com, you can look up just the technical information
Speaker 1: and just the technical advantages that have been created or
Speaker 1: or um um, you know, fine tuned just this year
Speaker 1: by certain teams, and you can go back in different years.
Speaker 1: You can look at teens upgrades and seventeens, and you
Speaker 1: can look at historical documents, and there's so much information
Speaker 1: available in the series. And it's just again, if you're
Speaker 1: a tech person, and I would guess that you would
Speaker 1: be listening to this podcast, Uh there there is more
Speaker 1: tech here than you can imagine. It's just it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating series. It is amazing. It is amazing. Saying now,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things I want to say before
Speaker 1: we sign off. One of those is that I did
Speaker 1: mention I was gonna briefly explain the difference between Formula
Speaker 1: one and Formula two racing. The biggest difference is that
Speaker 1: in Formula two racing, every team is racing with the
Speaker 1: same car, essentially the same basic type of vehicle and engine.
Speaker 1: So there's no differentiation there. And the idea is to
Speaker 1: create a more level playing field and also to reduce
Speaker 1: the cost of entry um. And if you go to
Speaker 1: Formula three and Formula four, as you go up the numbers, uh,
Speaker 1: then you'll see that the barrier to enter is slightly lower.
Speaker 1: By lower, I mean it's in the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars instead of the millions of dollars. So it's
Speaker 1: so your mileage may vary. You're not buying a ten
Speaker 1: and a half million dollar engine for your Formula four car. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's also kind of it becomes sort of almost
Speaker 1: a league, a farm league for for future Formula one drivers.
Speaker 1: There's only so many Formula one drivers who are allowed
Speaker 1: to participate per year. Yeah, so f one scouts not
Speaker 1: only will they go to other series and look for
Speaker 1: Draft one drivers, people that are are talented in their
Speaker 1: own series, whether that's uh gosh, you could even be NASCAR,
Speaker 1: could be Indycarcart, could be any of those series. But
Speaker 1: they often will go to, you know, the Formula two
Speaker 1: series and take a look at you know, who's who's
Speaker 1: the young rising star that series, right, and maybe we
Speaker 1: try them out and add them to the team next
Speaker 1: season for the Formula one team. Yeah. Here, here the keys.
Speaker 1: It'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 the history
Speaker 1: of Grand Prix racing. But that's something that you and
Speaker 1: Ben covered at great length in a previous episode of
Speaker 1: Car Stuff, and I want people to be aware of
Speaker 1: that because if you really. I mean, this is an
Speaker 1: 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 what, there might even be drama in
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm not sure. I mean, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of a drama queen, not between Ben and Ei. There
Speaker 1: might be a little bit of drauma. You never know.
Speaker 1: But we did actually a two part series on this.
Speaker 1: We did How Formula One Works. So, um, if you
Speaker 1: search how Formula one Works on Car Stuff Show dot
Speaker 1: Com in the the search box up there, you will
Speaker 1: find back in May, we did that two part series
Speaker 1: and it's roughly you know, I think you're about minutes
Speaker 1: each and uh, and I think it's 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,
Speaker 1: and you know it never hurts to get that download
Speaker 1: number popping up a couple of months as good. Why not.
Speaker 1: It's been fun, but yeah, it's also I mean, it's
Speaker 1: to to nail this home. I mean, we know that
Speaker 1: in twenty the it'll be different from twenty nineteen, Like
Speaker 1: there'll be different rules that will come into play, and
Speaker 1: it'll it'll end up putting teams in a in a
Speaker 1: you know, a scramble to get everything finally tuned, and
Speaker 1: we'll see that progression happened throughout the season as well.
Speaker 1: I know the fans are already talking one they're talking
Speaker 1: about rules and potential rules and you know what that's
Speaker 1: gonna mean. And fans love to talk about this stuff
Speaker 1: and you know, to argue about it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's really kind of fun to get into the
Speaker 1: forums and read about some of this stuff and you're
Speaker 1: just you know, kind of kind of lurk there in
Speaker 1: the background and watch what's going on. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and here here is a baseball fan. I thought, just
Speaker 1: getting into arguments about the designated hitter rules passionate and
Speaker 1: I've got nothing on race car fans. They do get
Speaker 1: they do get passionate, get intense, they do they get intense.
Speaker 1: That's a good word for it. And maybe we'll even
Speaker 1: do a deeper dive on tech in Formula one in
Speaker 1: the in the near future, kind of really dive into
Speaker 1: some of this stuff a bit more. But I felt
Speaker 1: like for the first episode it was more important to
Speaker 1: get kind of that general overview, like obviously, like we've
Speaker 1: been going on for a while, we could go on
Speaker 1: for another two hours just about the tech. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so Scott, I may tap on your shoulder one day
Speaker 1: and say, hey, how about we go in and finish
Speaker 1: what we started perfectly fine? And I hope I didn't
Speaker 1: stretch your show out too long here on I'm fine
Speaker 1: with it. Is the one who's you know, she's the
Speaker 1: one who's yelling at me. Yeah, she's ready to go home.
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a lot to say about the series,
Speaker 1: as you can tell. I've I've been an open wheel
Speaker 1: racing fan my whole life. I love Indy Car um
Speaker 1: Formula one a little bit less than any car, but
Speaker 1: I'm still a big fan, as you can tell. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's all fascinated to me. I could talk
Speaker 1: for hours about this stuff. I really could. And I
Speaker 1: think you and I just have kind of a good
Speaker 1: report and we're able to go back and forth with
Speaker 1: the stuff pretty good. We have conversations like this at
Speaker 1: our desk all the time. Absolutely. That's why I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to get Scott back into the studio. And
Speaker 1: then Michael tweeted me and I was saying, Hey, where's
Speaker 1: that Formula one podcast? You promised me ages ago? And
Speaker 1: I thought this is the perfect opportunity. Michael. I appreciate
Speaker 1: it too, because I love to get into the studio
Speaker 1: and talk about this stuff. It's fun. Yeah, it was great,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, Well we'll come back to this in
Speaker 1: a future episode and we will cover more about the
Speaker 1: the space age technology that's that are in these vehicles
Speaker 1: and how that again helps contribute to the amazing performance
Speaker 1: we see. How about how titanium is not platinum. Listen, Scott,
Speaker 1: if we want to go down a list of things
Speaker 1: that have been said on this podcast that turned out
Speaker 1: to not be accurate. We're gonna be here for a
Speaker 1: very long time because I've been doing this for more
Speaker 1: than a thousand episodes, and I make a gaff at
Speaker 1: least once a show. Perfectly fine. I think it's that's acceptable. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: we're we're We're well under the threshold. We're fine, alright.
Speaker 1: So guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, you can reach out via email the
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can pop on over to our website that's tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an archive of all
Speaker 1: of our past episodes there, you'll find where we are
Speaker 1: on social media over there, and you'll find a link
Speaker 1: to our online store, where every purchase you go goes
Speaker 1: to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it. And
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Ye