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      11-19-2013, 11:44 AM   #1
Boss330
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While we await the transition from V8 to turbo 6, so does F1. With similar "concerns"

From an article in Autosport:

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As Formula 1 packed up at Austin on Sunday night and attention shifted to the final race at Interlagos just a few days away, it was hard to appreciate that this weekend marks the end of a significant chapter in the sport's history.

For when F1's engines burst back into life in the crisp winter air of Jerez next January, the screaming sound of the current-generation V8s will be just a distant memory as the sport rushes head-long into an exciting new V6 turbo era.

Although teams, engine manufacturers and fans are all flat-out focused on what delights await us in 2014, it's important we don't let the passing of the V8s go unnoticed.

While the V8 generation might not have produced the kind of headline-grabbing power figures of F1's mid-1980s turbos, or the dizzy RPM heights of the V10s, they still helped shape the way the sport developed.

Renault Sport's managing director Rob White is under no illusions that it'll be a significant moment when that last V8 engine is shut down on Sunday.

"It is a bit of a page-turner," says White. "It's not only eight cylinders that we turn the page on - it's a whole kind of family of normally aspirated engines that go all the way back to the end of the previous turbo era.

"I think for everybody in F1, the impact will be very tangible."

Looking back on the V8 era, a key factor that's not been fully appreciated is how the engines defined a whole new method of car development; one that perhaps helped pave the way for the era of 'blown-floor' Red Bull domination.

For many of us growing up hooked on F1, the central focus of any discussion about engines decades ago was pretty simple: how much horsepower has it got?

Tales of F1 drivers in the 1980s battling on the ragged edge as the lump of metal behind them spat out more than 1000bhp were enthralling. Power was king - and it mattered not how it was delivered.

That quest for horsepower stayed pretty much constant during the early years of the switch back to normally aspirated engines, even as late as the V10 era. Who can forget the battles that BMW helped deliver, its impressive power units allowing Williams to take the fight to Ferrari?

Yet the V8 era proved to be a game changer in switching the focus from the pursuit of out-and-out horsepower. The development freeze of 2007 all but put paid to the power-chasing rivalry, and instead it became more about how best to use the engine.

As Renault's head of track operations Remi Taffin explains: "In 2006 engines were developed all the time - changing camshafts, pistons, combustion chamber and so on, so it was a completely new way of working each race.

"Now it's much more about fine-tuning; working with mapping, driver torque maps and pedal maps to deliver optimal torque. We have found that there are greater gains in being lighter and more fuel efficient and not simply looking for more power, for instance.

"We have learned how to gain performance in other ways through installation, and then lately in the way the exhausts and maps have been used."

The freeze forced manufacturers to consider more how the power-unit contributed to the whole package. And the art of refinement was intense, with 95 per cent of the parts in the current Renault V8 being different from the version that first hit the track in 2007.

White adds: "The understanding of what's required has got better and the level of optimisation of engines in cars has got better, and of course the real optimisation target isn't any single engine parameter - it is the world championship result.

"So it's not power or fuel consumption or weight or stiffness or any of the other micro objectives that do exist, and need to be played off against each other, but the things that everybody has had to do in recent years.

"The current generation [of engines] has got much more explicit – and it is the optimisation of the whole car and the whole car/driver and team performance."

But if there is one concept that's been key to the current generation of cars, it's blown floors.

It's an area that Adrian Newey's team at Red Bull appears to have mastered better than anyone else, despite attempts to limit the concept's effect.

It is interesting to note that the exploitation of blown floors has been a consequence of the engine freeze in F1. With manufacturers not able to chase increased horsepower for lap time, they had to explore new ways to better use the power they already had.

As Taffin explains: "We could have thought about it at the start of the V8 era, but at that point we were focused on gaining horsepower.

"At the point when the power output was fixed at 750bhp we went horizontal rather than vertical. We looked at where the energy produced went, for instance.

"Of the available energy from the fuel, we saw that a third goes to the crankshaft and then two thirds go elsewhere, with more than 50 per cent dissipated in the exhausts. We asked ourselves if we could use this energy.

"The next stage was to increase the amount of gas produced by the engine to ensure a steady exhaust stream, which could be used aerodynamically. We worked on the throttle timing and keeping the stream steady – in essence we weren't touching the engine.

"We've also looked at the way we use the engine modes, such as running on four cylinders, two cylinders and then one cylinder, which delivered radical improvements in efficiency and driveability.

"The changes were not extreme, but the results were."

White believes that the freeze might be frustrating, but it's also helped drive clever thinking in a different way.

"It's been a double-edged sword because on the one hand it means the spec doesn't change for performance reasons, but there's still an amount of in-the-background defensive work going on to keep these things alive.

"It's an error to imagine that these are engines that are solid, with everything steady. They are extremely highly stressed, and they are right on the knife-edge.

"We learned to understand and exploit the technology better than we would have done if the spec had been moving all over the place.

"There is some frustration that you can't do what you want. But you should never suggest that it wasn't an interesting period or there was nothing to do."

But when the pitlane falls silent in Brazil on Sunday as the last V8 is shut down, the biggest talking point about engines for 2014 will be what they'll sound like.

The doom-mongers fear the audible delights of the new power units will not match what fans have got used to in the V8 era.

White is not too concerned, and is quick to remind us that many people were up in arms when F1 went from V10s to V8s.

"I think there's no escaping that for the fans that come to the tracks and get close to the cars, the noise of the current generation of normally aspirated engines is a massively important thing," he says.

"We should not escape the reality that the V6s will have a lower volume. The sound intensity will be less because the exhausts are bunged up with a turbocharger and we are doing a fair amount of graft to extract the heat, and by consequence acoustic energy, from the exhaust. But the frequency content will be interesting.

"The V6 has a nice sound inherently. The fact that we join the exhausts together in a single turbo has an impact on frequency that I think will be favourable.

"If we do our job as we should – in the sense of making it for the people who come to the track – it's still an impressive sight and sound."

Let's reserve judgement until we hear those new engines for the first time next year.

For Interlagos, let's celebrate all that the V8s have brought us as they go into battle for the last time.
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      11-19-2013, 01:03 PM   #2
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sad story....our cfo was there over the weekend and was in the pits by invitation....where was my invite?!
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      11-20-2013, 01:11 AM   #3
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The doom-mongers fear the audible delights of the new power units will not match what fans have got used to in the V8 era.

thats me
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      11-20-2013, 07:12 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ezio View Post
The doom-mongers fear the audible delights of the new power units will not match what fans have got used to in the V8 era.

thats me
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      11-20-2013, 12:44 PM   #5
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V10's, V8's - pfft, the biggest lament is we no longer have the mighty Ferrari flat-12
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      11-20-2013, 01:48 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paddy335 View Post
V10's, V8's - pfft, the biggest lament is we no longer have the mighty Ferrari flat-12
The 1970-1980 engines you mean?

Those had the 180 degree 12 cyl engine, but 1989-1995 was a V12 with 65-75 degree V. After that it was V10 and then V8.

My memories are of the V12 engines that Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger drove, those engines sounded sweet
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      11-20-2013, 01:55 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boss330 View Post
The 1970-1980 engines you mean?

Those had the 180 degree 12 cyl engine, but 1989-1995 was a V12 with 65-75 degree V. After that it was V10 and then V8.

My memories are of the V12 engines that Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger drove, those engines sounded sweet
The 1970's, that's the one. My first (vague) F1 memories.

Yeh the Berger/Alesi V12's were epic too.

Have you ever listened to a 1950's BRM V16 soundtrack, now THAT is a glorious sound.
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      11-20-2013, 02:07 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by paddy335 View Post
The 1970's, that's the one. My first (vague) F1 memories.

Yeh the Berger/Alesi V12's were epic too.

Have you ever listened to a 1950's BRM V16 soundtrack, now THAT is a glorious sound.
Yes, one of the all time great racing engine sounds. One of my favourites are the Ford Cosworth BDA engine in a rally Escort. That induction noise is just awesome
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      11-20-2013, 09:54 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boss330 View Post
My memories are of the V12 engines that Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger drove, those engines sounded sweet
I second this sentiment, that Ferrari V12 in 95 screamed thunder. I still have a sentiment for the McLaren MP4/5 with the Honda 3.5 V10 turbo. It had a unique sound that I just liked.

Sound is definitely important in F1, this transition to a V6 turbo will definitely be a challenge to make it sound good. Especially where the exhaust is bunged up with the turbocharger. Imagine "if ever" F1 will transition to a diesel engine.... I can't imagine that day.
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