F1 Performance: is it the car, is it the driver?

[Blanchimont]

And finally, what about Heisenberg? (Not that Breaking Bad guy)

[Writinglife]

And finally, what about Heisenberg? (Not that Breaking Bad guy)

I'm just not certain about that guy

[Ciro Pabón]

PlatinumZealot.

Do you agree cars are bound to the laws of physics?
If you do not, then I question your participation here.

Fromula Une cars ar not bunded by fisics laws, their debelopeed by extraterrestrals that wanna finish the uman raice and are in bed with Jitler and Maikel Jakson who are alibe and they wanna fatten us so we become estupid and dumbasses so they can take us in ther special ships to breed more eslaves for them who are a more evolved raice and their going to take us all as eslaves.

Ecclestone is a grey, notice the height

[Ciro Pabón]

And finally, what about Heisenberg? (Not that Breaking Bad guy)

I'm just not certain about that guy

Hulkrnberg drives in Force Indy, he's not even in Fromula Une.

Indy Car: with this car, it's not the driver

[FoxHound]

I like it Ciro, out of this world.

@the forum
I prefer to think of it, and if we absolutely must draw pictures by using percentages, as this:

If we take the fastest car(Car A) as 100%.
And we then take the next fastest car (car B) as 99.5% as fast. We have a 0.5% performance differentiation. Doesn't sound like much...

Over a 90 second lap(rough average of F1 circuit times) this equates to 0.450 seconds.

We can see that difference over a couple of laps.

Now imagine for one moment, that drivers in midfield to top teams are all similarly matched in terms of potential times.
But to make it starker, I'll settle that the top 5 drivers in F1 are within 0.2 seconds of each others absolute best.

So on any given meeting, it would not be unreasonable to expect Car A to have an "on menial average" advantge of at least 0.300.
On an off day, it could be no difference at all if Driver B Car B combo are on song.
Over a season though, Driver B is always going to struggle. It's a mismatch, always has been and in the context of how close the drivers are, the best driver could fart thunderbolts and still get beaten by the eventual winners teammate! This actually happened.

I will make a concession that I do not believe the above should apply(not uniformly) from 1990/1 back. And the reason I'll hold is that aerodynamics and tech changed the face of F1.
There is tons of on board footage you can find of guys actually driving a car with laughable levels of grip.

Now that...that is driving. Easy to see why in those days, and in that formula, drivers could make a bigger difference than they do today.

[PlatinumZealot]

If you want to define limits its best to look at the tyres. At a certain condition of slip, it stops giving more force. The driver's job is to stay near that peak as much as possible.
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5351/94922530ci2.jpg

The interesting parts concerning the driver are:

• Concerning the front axle, at the peak the slope goes to zero so steering sensitivity and general response also go to zero which makes it very difficult for a driver to make corrections mid turn because the car stops responding in yaw.
• Almost without exception, cars are setup with a degree of steady state understeer so that at the limit the rear axle is not at the peak but somewhat below it. While this is throwing away grip, its simply not possible for a human driver to control a car where both the front and rear axles are saturated. In fact they start complaining of instabilities even before you reach the rear axle peak and your cornering stiffness goes to zero.

This is why I laugh when I hear people saying driver X drives a car beyond its limit. The truth is that car's are deliberately setup below their optimum in terms of grip potential so that the driver's are able to control them.

That tyre performance plot is done in prescribed conditions. What if a driver finds a way to thermally prepare or even "mechanically massage" the rubber into such a condition that raises the performance envelope beyond what is chartered? It should possible... He wont be breaking the laws of physics of course but he will be over the "limits" as seen by the pirelli engineer who looks on his slip angle and force plots.

As someone asked me what do i mean by limit :- For me, a limit is man made boundary, derived under some rule or some condition, so it is not necessarily a physical maximum.

[PlatinumZealot]

PlatinumZealot.

Do you agree cars are bound to the laws of physics?
If you do not, then I question your participation here.

Fromula Une cars ar not bunded by fisics laws, their debelopeed by extraterrestrals that wanna finish the uman raice and are in bed with Jitler and Maikel Jakson who are alibe and they wanna fatten us so we become estupid and dumbasses so they can take us in ther special ships to breed more eslaves for them who are a more evolved raice and their going to take us all as eslaves.

Ecclestone is a grey, notice the height
http://gypsynester.com/ros7.jpg

I see Toto! Ooh is that Max i see too?

[PlatinumZealot]

I like it Ciro, out of this world.

@the forum
I prefer to think of it, and if we absolutely must draw pictures by using percentages, as this:

If we take the fastest car(Car A) as 100%.
And we then take the next fastest car (car B) as 99.5% as fast. We have a 0.5% performance differentiation. Doesn't sound like much...

Over a 90 second lap(rough average of F1 circuit times) this equates to 0.450 seconds.

We can see that difference over a couple of laps.

Now imagine for one moment, that drivers in midfield to top teams are all similarly matched in terms of potential times.
But to make it starker, I'll settle that the top 5 drivers in F1 are within 0.2 seconds of each others absolute best.

So on any given meeting, it would not be unreasonable to expect Car A to have an "on menial average" advantge of at least 0.300.
On an off day, it could be no difference at all if Driver B Car B combo are on song.
Over a season though, Driver B is always going to struggle. It's a mismatch, always has been and in the context of how close the drivers are, the best driver could fart thunderbolts and still get beaten by the eventual winners teammate! This actually happened.

I will make a concession that I do not believe the above should apply(not uniformly) from 1990/1 back. And the reason I'll hold is that aerodynamics and tech changed the face of F1.
There is tons of on board footage you can find of guys actually driving a car with laughable levels of grip.

Now that...that is driving. Easy to see why in those days, and in that formula, drivers could make a bigger difference than they do today.

Yes very true. Did you see Ocon's quote on how easy the lotus e21 is to drive?! He got into the rythm, being able to push near to the limits of the car in few laps... That was a little bit of a suprise for me... Did not expect a blown diffuser car to be so easy to learn .... If you put kimi beside him... There might no be much difference.

[Andres125sx]

As someone asked me what do i mean by limit :- For me, a limit is man made boundary, derived under some rule or some condition, so it is not necessarily a physical maximum.

No, you´re taking engineers definition as reality, but it´s just their calculation, their attempt to find out where the real limit is. They try to define it as accurately as possible, and for that they need to make assumptions, for example track temperature. But you cannot take that as the real limit. The real limit is the physical one they try to define, but if they fail to define it accurately that is their fault, not that anyone is going beyond the limit

Imagine some engineer say the limit for a car/track is 90 seconds, and then his driver do it in 88 seconds, but using soft tires when the engineer assumed medium tires on his simulation. Did the driver go beyond the limit? No, the engineer failed with his simulation assuming best tires where medium

This can be applied to some hundred parameters, so it´s very easy to make some mistake. That´s the reason sometimes some driver go beyond the simulation, because there´re too many parameters to match them all perfectly, so there will always be mistakes on the simulation. Nobody went beyond the limit, engineers failed to define it.

[Phil]

That tyre performance plot is done in prescribed conditions. What if a driver finds a way to thermally prepare or even "mechanically massage" the rubber into such a condition that raises the performance envelope beyond what is chartered? It should possible... He wont be breaking the laws of physics of course but he will be over the "limits" as seen by the pirelli engineer who looks on his slip angle and force plots.

As someone asked me what do i mean by limit :- For me, a limit is man made boundary, derived under some rule or some condition, so it is not necessarily a physical maximum.

The limit isn't a predetermined boundary. It's derrived from many factors - ranging from basically the cars ability just as well as track (surface + weather) conditions. This would also include tires - if a driver is able to get the tires in a state where they perform better, the 'limit' simply moves upwards.

Driving over the limit isn't difficult - driving over the limit means effectively that a car loses grip (which results in losing time = results in an overal slower laptime). What makes drivers special is their ability to be as close to the limit as often as possible - irregardless of what surface + weather or the car dictates - and to perform consistently close to that limit.

Some drivers might be closer to that limit on some tracks while less on others, or closer in some cars than others - like Vettel who was probably closer to the limit in the EBD cars (relative to Webber), but less so in the 2014 cars. Alonso, who is often praised to be very adaptable is probably close to the limit in all conditions across all cars he's driven (but perhaps not to the same extend on every single day/track/car).

Perhaps instead of talking and arguing semantics about what limit means - we should be arguing over which driver consistently is closer to the perfect lap - the perfect lap being the ultimate lap, when car and driver is operating at the maximum on what is physically possible. The perfect lap is different from car to car and track to track, for obvious reasons.

[Richard]

We're getting caught on semantics. IMHO the use of the word "limit" in this conversation refers to the laws of physics that result in the fastest lap time. By definition driving beyond the limit is to crash, within the limit is to go slowly. Mod decision is final, time to move on.

As an aside, an important lesson for any engineer is that analysis and calculations don't define how something works, they're merely an attempt at a credible description of how it might work in order to give us the confidence that it would be worth making it. Or as Dr AR Dyke said more eloquently in 1976:

Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.

Or as RJ Roak said in 1938:

No calculated value of stress, strength, or deformation can be regarded as exact. The formulas used are based on certain assumptions as to properties of materials, regularity and form, and boundary conditions that are only approximately true, and they are derived by mathematical procedures that often involve further approximations. In general, therefore, great precision in numerical work is not justified. Each individual problem requires the exercise of judgement, and it is impossible to lay down rigid rules of procedure

[Stradivarius]

If it's always the car, why did Fisichella finish in 5th place for Renault in 2005, while Alonso won the title? Alonso won the title with a margine of 21 points over Raikkonen, but Fisichella lost out to Raikkonen by 54 points.

If we look earlier in the thread, you'll find your answer.
A cars total maximum performance cannot be transcended by a driver. It is impossible unless he can climb out and push the vehicle faster while driving.
If a car has 100 percent performance potential, the driver can only ever extract 100 percent from this potential.

Why did Alonso trounce Fisicho? Same car different results, with Alonso able to extract more from the car than Fisichella. So you could naturally conclude Alonso being better. What Alonso did not do, was go beyond what that Renault was capable of.

So it is pertinent to say the best drivers extract the most potential out of the cars they drive without ever going over what the car is possible of achieving.

I really don't see your point here. I am not disputing that each car has a theoretical performance limit, and that no driver can exceed this limit. And I am certainly not claiming that Alonso was extracting more than 100% of his Renault in 2005. What I am saying is that there is no way to conclude that it's always the car, since observations show that the performance gap between different cars isn't always greater than the performance gap between different drivers.

To put this very simple: If it was always the car that determined the results/performance, that means the McLaren was better than the Renault in 2005 because Raikkonen's performance/results were better than Fisichella's. But at the same time, Alonso's performance/results were better than Raikkonen's and that means we have to draw the opposite conclusion; the Renault was better than the McLaren. Since the hypothesis "it's always the car" leads to a contradiction when applied on real life results, we are forced to discard that hypothesis. Thus, it isn't always the car. Some times it's the driver, as I am surprise that not everyone have realized in the first place.

Note that I am not talking about exceeding any car's performance. You could just as well argue that the regulations dictate an ultimate performance for the car and the teams can't exceed this performance limit without breaking the rules. Thus, every legal car is limited to a utilization of 100% or less, depending on how well the team works in optimizing the design. So for every car on the grid, there is a utilization factor for the car and a utilization factor for the driver and the product of these two factors give the performance. Since the performance can be expressed by two factors, I don't see how anyone can claim that it is always the one factor (the car factors) that matters. I am aware that it usually matters the most, but in several cases it is the other factor (the driver factor) which tips the scale.