I got into a somewhat heated argument last night about whether my watching Formula 1 racing is basically enriching billionaires without providing any benefit to the wider world. While I realise that some efficiency and safety technology does come out of F1, the counter-argument made to me was that other forms of car racing, especially rallying, has produced more useful everyday technology used by more road cars. Flappy-paddle gearboxes were dismissed as being used only on high-end sports cars, and buttons on steering wheels as fairly small potatoes.
Some quick searching didn’t really give me anything definitive either way, so does anyone care to weigh in? What technology that we see on an everyday road car (let’s take a family saloon or a hatchback as our example) can be directly attributed to research done in Formula 1, as opposed to other forms of motor racing?
Frankly, the same argument can be made (and even more strongly) about other spectator sports. I’d need numbers to prove this, but it is entirely possible that U.S. profession baseball/basketball/football wastes far more money than formula one. Those 100 million dollar players add up fast.
In any case, it may ‘provide entertainment’, but so do other things. In theory, if everyone got their entertainment from being mathletes, inventing stuff in their garage, or actually playing sports themselves or something, society as a whole would greatly benefit.
And in the case of those sports, no benefit whatsoever is accrued. In formula 1, they do legitimate R&D to make faster cars, even if we rarely see the benefits in the cars we drive. Ball moving sports, well, uh… I guess, weakly, it drove the developement of cable tv and uh…
Why are you singling out Formula 1? Can’t you ask the same question of other car races? Or of any other sports? It’s just entertainment; we’re not supposed to get anything from it.
I’m interested in singling out Formula 1 because I watch it, primarily, rather than for any other reason. “Motor sports” as a general category is too broad, and part of the discussion I was having was whether F1 (specifically) has any benefits when compared to other motor sports. The question is framed by the discussion.
The argument was specifically about F1 because I was trying to argue that while it’s *primarily *entertainment, there are clearly attributable technological benefits from it. Other sports (and it’s a whole another argument with the same person whether F1 is a sport) aren’t on the radar because they are *purely *entertainment. I watch cricket, but I’m not making any claims about its technological benefits. I’m trying to support that argument for F1 - but if I can’t find any evidence, I will concede my position.
Formula 1, like other extreme tech pursuits, provides funding to develop new technologies earlier than they might otherwise be developed, and as such can kick start things that would otherwise take longer to trickle down.
F1 has traditionally taken a lot of aero technologies and adapted them to cars. A good relatively recent one is the use of carbon fibre. Mclaren were the first to use a carbon fibre tub in the early 80’s - it was made for them by Hughes. Teams spent massive amounts of money and research time in working out how to make a good carbon tub. The needs of a car are very different to those of a plane component, and lots of work was done on developing specialised modelling and analysis software that could cope with the very weird failure modes of carbon layups, and matching that with the forces on a race car. Those codes have filtered down into more mainstream use of carbon and other composites. Currently some teams are working with TPT (Thin Ply Technonlogy) as an early adopter. Again, teams drive very expensive research and development of this ahead of it becoming more mainstream. (TPT is seriously cool stuff.)
F1 does also spend a lot of time and money on essentially useless stuff. Literally billions were spent on engine development getting engines that would rev past 20,000 rpm. Eventually the arms race was called off and engines limited to 19,000 rpm. Berrylium was similarly banned.
Historically F1 has introduced some other ideas into cars. Carbon disk brakes. Still very high end, but the leg work adapting them from aviation was done by the Brabham team. A lot of work on engine management systems was driven by the F1 teams. Again it was going to happen anyway, but the F1 cars had advanced management computers long before road cars, and a lot of the research they did kick started the technology. Telemetry systems are another one. Mclaren sell theirs, it has seen use in ocean racing yachts, and the like.
Another big one is aerodynamics. Aero is the big deal in F1, and has been ever since Williams worked out the first skirted car. A huge amount of effort has gone into computer sim and wind tunnel systems. F1 cars were working on this in the early 80’s, and again, this time and money spent kick started the technology for application to road cars.
Some things in F1 are deliberately more primitive. No traction control or stability control. A lot of this was again developed in F1, but eventually deemed to be taking away from the driver’s skills, so banned.
Exactly who is spending this money and doing the research? Is it the organization or is it the contestants? If it is the contestants, then doesn’t the exact same thing happen in boat races and airplane races and other auto races? All the contestants are developing new ways to beat the previous record. I honestly know nothing about Formula One, and my question is what (if anything) makes them different from everyone else.
The contestants. It costs a good fraction of a billion dollars a year to run a top end F1 team. Most of that is engineering research and development. It does happen in all bleeding edge sports. The TPT stuff I noted came from sailing, and was used by Artemis in the previous America’s Cup before being sold to North Sails. F1 however is way ahead of any other sport in this game. People are complaining that an America’s Cup team costs nearly $100m over three years. Still mostly spent on people, with lots of R&D, but a tiny fraction to the investment in F1. Heck across all the teams F1 probably spent more money than the development costs of the 787 or Airbus 380 over the same time period.
I came across that page, but it doesn’t really make clear the difference between F1 and other road racing.
I’m looking for specific instances; for example, carbon-fibre monocoque chassis appear to have been developed primarily for use in F1, and then trickled down until now a small city car such as the BMW i3 benefits. Similarly electronic traction control was first seen on F1 cars in the early 1980s.
Are there specific aerodynamic, tyre or road surface technologies which first appeared on F1 cars or racetracks but are now available in road cars (even if they are only in fancy sports cars)? Perhaps that’s a better way of asking the question.
[QUOTE=Francis Vaughan]
Telemetry systems are another one. Mclaren sell theirs, it has seen use in ocean racing yachts, and the like.
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That’s just transplanting a tech from one form of racing to another. A comparable thing in “ball moving sports” (love the description, btw!) might be if someone found that inflating basketballs with argon gas instead of normal air made them easier to throw, and then someone starts putting argon into footballs.
Engine telemetry does have real-world uses, at least, especially in the area of fleet management. Big players like FedEx and UPS could benefit from putting intelligence into their vehicles so when a truck arrives at a depot or sort facility, the system can wirelessly poll the vehicle and get data on things such as oil condition and any sensed faults and ultimately be able to do maintenance when it’s needed but before a failure, rather than on a fixed schedule.
UPS drives over 3 billion miles a year. If they can safely stretch oil change intervals in a vehicle from every 5,000 miles whether it’s needed or not, to doing it perhaps at 6,000 when the engine sensors determine it’s needed, that’s a whole lot of oil being saved.
I read somewhere that Colin Chapman sold Lotus road cars mainly to fund his interest in racing. So racing cars, and F1 cars in particular, lead directly to various superb Lotus road cars becoming available for purchase. No F1, no Lotus Elite, Elan, Europa…
I think the difference is the gobs of $$. Though it was pointed-out up-thread that many of the sports have us watching millionaires using million-dollar technology, F1 does taste of wastefulness. I have been, and still am, an avid F1 (and MotoGP) fan, but at times I feel guilty for watching them burn gas, oil, and tires for my amusement. I justify it with things like FrancisVaughan posted, however, I still wonder where is the return on the investment. McLaren spends billions of Euros every year to chase a tenth of a second, and then Red Bull spends billions of Euros to chase the same tenth of a second + another tenth. Ferrari spends more money on the same chase, and the result after all these billions is sometimes only a fraction of a second. As **Francis **said, and I agree with, F1 surely contributes to our society, but I feel the greatest return on that investment is probably to make more millionaires.
I’ll leave with a poorly-paraphrased anecdote. I remember watching an interview w/ an F1 engineer (may have been on TopGear). Word was that he had met w/ a serious fork in his career path that had him choosing between NASA or F1. After pondering the ins-and-outs, plusses-and-minuses, he chose a technical career in F1 over NASA. He said that if he had worked with NASA, he could have seen his labors come to life maybe once, twice, or possibly never in his career. The pace at F1 was much quicker. With the game changing every 2 weeks, he was able to dream, design, and have his talent compete many times within his career, and he found that much more satisfying. I took from that 2 things; first that he was a lucky man, but also that the efforts in winning an F1 race contribute to our world in real-time.