Oh yes, the insanity of the new F1 power units! The goal was 50/50 Electric/ICE split... but why go hybrid when the cars use fully synthetic fuel and have essentially no runtime carbon footprint? Well for car makers to signal their virtue of course! Did they worry about the mega tons of goods they ship around the globe to race in 24 different countries... or perhaps the armada of VIP private planes that follow... or the 1M fans that drive to each venue?

Ok, so hybrid... but where will the E energy come from? Clearly from the brakes, the rear brakes... the same ones that get only a fraction of the braking energy because all the forces move to the front under deceleration. Where is the energy stored, in the battery of course... which is so small it runs out halfway down a single straight. So you basically have a big complicated heavy car with half the power it should...

And naturally you have lots of software controlling "deployment" of your meager E reserves. It even guesses where you are on track based on time/speed, because GPS is illegal for that. Sigh...

To be clear... I am not arguing ICE is good or E is bad. Just that F1's current specs for the ICE/E mixture is horrible.

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fsh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

F1 is a constructors championship, and the constructors are interested in developing electric power trains. Nobody wants to spend 100 million to tweak the last 0.1% performance out of a turbo-charged V8.

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SA9G 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Quite right, on the constructor part... that is very much the appeal for us techies. But they do spend 100 million tweaking the last 0.1% of aero advantage and tire-deg management. a) They could just homologate a common engine, like in F2 and concentrate on the chassis or b) make a properly designed hybrid PU. By (b) I mean have an E component that gets adequately charged... the MGU-H (E-Turbo) of the last generation seemed to work fine. The current specs is nuts, definitely NOT advancing technology.

	▲	fsh 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Banning teams like Ferrari or Mercedes from competing with their own cars (including the engines) would be the end of F1. The current regulations are extremely ambitious such that constructors can get a significant advantage from developing better tech. And it's working, the Mercedes powertrain is clearly dominating, even though the Ford V8 is more powerful.

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unglaublich 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because electric engines are more performant than gas ones so you can in theory have better driving perfomrance? I.e., high, flat and predictable torque curve, re-use braking energy (so it adds up to ICE), extremely high energy density of the engine unit.

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SA9G 5 hours ago | parent [-]

All that, yes. But they don't work too well if the battery runs out halfway down the straight... and there is too little charging.

I wasn't politicizing E vs ICE... but commenting on the particular specifications these rules mandate for F1. Specifications that are not fit for purpose.

	▲	coderenegade 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's no reason the battery should run out on the straight, though. You can charge at any point while driving, not just during braking. Obviously you're taking torque from the engine to do so, but that's a strategic consideration.

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ilogik 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My understanding is that the switch to hybrid was to get rid of needing to refuel during a race, since that is dangerous. The 50/50 split is new this year, but they're already working on fixing that for next year. But even then, they had to reduced the number of laps because otherwise they would need to re-engineer the entire car to allow more fuel.

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guax 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Let’s all just watch go karts and ignore what F1 always was because we think electricity is political now.