The Formula 1 car is like an upside down airplane, air
traveling over the front wings and under the floor creates a low pressure area
having the effect of forcing the car down on the track, this great enormous
grip allowing the car to corner and brake with five times more force than the
fastest road car. Generating aerodynamic down force also great turbulent drag
thought slows the car down and must be minimized by the designs. The fastest
around a race track is to reduce the angle of every corner by using the full
width of the track driving in straight line and turn in from edge of the track
then go near to the curve with the inside wheels at a peak point. After that
the driver will go in a straight line to get the best acceleration and to
prepare for the next corner. Formula 1 cars has minimum weight limit of 605 kg
including the driver, most car and driver combination are still potentially
underweight needing balance to reach the minimum limit which is 605, some metal
circles are fixed in the car under the front wing and under floor to both help
the car getting more weight and get balanced from the front and rear sides also
keep the center of gravity low. G-Force stands for gravitational force the
fastest road car generates (1 G) when cornering or breaking, because of the
aerodynamic down force and wide selected and powerful tires formula 1 cars
generates (5 G) or five times the force gravity this puts a tremendous effort
in mechanical parts and the driver especially his nick when controlling his
head into a corner or breaking zone. Unless it rains every driver must use two compounds of dry rubber tires in Grand Pre, the softer rubber makes the car
grained when driving hard resulting breaking turning and wheel spin problems
means easily to lose up to two seconds per lab usually the driver changes the
tires in 5 labs to avoid any problem cause of tire. Aerodynamic mechanical
balance is the most important for formula 1 cars performance, on the limit a
race car will always be sliding balance is necessary means the front and the
rear of the car slide in predictable and smooth way. Over steer is when the
back wheels slides more when cornering as the back of the car steps out it
points to the inside of a corner its over steered. Engineers from selected
teams and the (FIA) form the overtaking group and after a deep research and
hard work they got some brilliant ideas to avoid the cars from hitting each
other and increase overtaking opportunities by making the front cover of the
wheels more wide, this helps also the tires from getting dirty and stand for a
long time. Low and wider front wheels are also less affected by the air so it
will make the car goes faster with more traction on the front part of the car
and helps the driver follow more closely.
Three days before any Grand Pre each car must bass scrutineering checks
for both safety and eligibility, dimensions and weight are checked they check
everything like the wings height, rear wings overall size, total width of the
car and also they check the most important thing which is the cover under the
cars which is a big metal that prevent anything from hitting the car from
bellow, some of the teams remove it to make the car heavier so faster too and
only then the car is ready to race. Formula one regulation restrict each driver
to fourteen sets of dry weather tires plus four sets of intermediate conditions
tires and finally three sets of wet
tires that used in heavy rain day that is total of 84 tires. As a driver
approach any corner they need the front of the car to give predictable and
consist amount of torque then they can placed the car precisely for the optimum
line if the front tire slide cross the side surface and away from the corner
and the car is not turning enough this
is called understeer, Understeer makes
the car relatively easy to drive but slower and also damages the front
tires.
The front wheel of formula 1 car has a lot of buttons and
its complicated. The picture above is for f1 car but it’s not the latest model.
In the very top left we have the drag reduction system (DRS) button and next to it are the shift lights
that will tell the optimum time to shift gear, in the very top right we can see
the kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) button and next to it is three lights those are Marshall lights and
they will light up if this is a flag for example let’s say there is a crash
they will show the yellow flag so this those Marshall lights will let you know
about it. In the middle there is the information display so you can see things
like lab time if there is a problem with your engines it will appear their
also, moving further to the left there is the neutral button which you to hold
down before you shift to a neutral if you don’t hold it you can’t get into
neutral position so its safety feature then to the left of that which doesn’t
appears in the picture is the gear up which allows you to shift, so the reason
that the neutral on the left side while the gear down in the right side so you
can had a hand on each the white button on the top right is the ( corner
differential settings) what that does you can alter your differential how much
slip you want to allow while you are in a corner so that the outside tires can
rotate faster than the inside tires so to the right of that we have the pit
lane speed limit button in yellow color so what that button do is limit your
speed to 100 km/h which is the maximum speed allowed in the pit lanes so if we
moved down we can see a small black button that’s where the gear down is, right
to the left of that is the pit communications the radio button so you press it
if you want to communicate with your pit group if we go right to the center of
the wheel there is a torque selector
what this does is it alters how much power you create depending in how
much you push in gas. So if it’s raining and you don’t want the gas to be sensitive
just shut the torque button down So the more you push in the gas it doesn’t
give much power as before, to the left of that we have the Rev limiter so you
can limit the Rav of your engine right below that we got fuel mixtures if you
think fuel in running away you can adjust that button on your speed so it won’t
take lot of fuel to the left of that there is an oil pump button, basically
this is a bake up so if your oil pump fail that’s very big problem so you can
press this button and it will give a bake up oil so that you can keep racing
unless until you get to the pit or figure what’s the problem, and below that on
the right is the reverse button and just like the neutral button you would
press this and press down gear shift buttons and so then you can get to reverse
it won’t allow you unless your holding that button and that is safety features
so you want go to reverse by mistake moving over we got the clutch sittings so
how quickly or slowly the clutch will engage or how much slip is going to allow.
If you thirsty there is a nice button you just press that button and you will
get some water so that is great thing for the driver to the right of that we
have the clutch so this is just like the clutch in your car but it’s in the
wheel and that only used in the stars of the race to move to the first so you
can move the clutch a little bit and have a good start the very last one I’m
going to go over is the Engine kill button if you in emergency situation you
can press it.
