Where The Rubber Hits The Research Road
Jun. 22nd, 2009 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frustratedpilotYesterday was a very busy day for big-time motorsports. Vettel won at Silverstone, Franchitti at Newton Iowa, and Kahne at Sonoma. And again, I spent the evening afterward doing donuts on Wikipedia trying to sort out where motorsports is going.
Basically I started because I was trying to answer some of Dad's questions (we watched the tape-delayed Fox coverage of Silverstone). F1 versus Indy, for example.
F1 has gone through many changes, and quite a number of them in recent years. The current engines are the tried-and-true V8s, but now with displacements less than half that of NASCAR Nextel Cup's cars--and a third smaller than Indy's. In fact, the displacement is equal to the more popular ranges of inline four-cylinder powerplants for passenger cars. But nobody is thinking of actually using these to power F1. (This class of engine is actually used by the Formula Atlantic league here Stateside!) Whereas none of the engines currently used in F1 are based on those of passenger cars.
Meanwhile, the FIA (beyond its current brouhaha with the F1 teams and drivers) is in the process of redefining the "feeder leagues", the lower Formula circuits. The current feeder leagues actually allow cars with bigger engines than are legal for F1, which seems upside down to me.
The lower Formulas are conceptually like the NASCAR-variety "late-models" in that most of the circuits use the same basic chassis layout but the main differences from one circuit to another are the actual setup and what engines are used. The same chassis kit could be built for any of half a dozen leagues.
So where IS motorsports going? I suppose we'll find out in a few laps.
FP
Basically I started because I was trying to answer some of Dad's questions (we watched the tape-delayed Fox coverage of Silverstone). F1 versus Indy, for example.
F1 has gone through many changes, and quite a number of them in recent years. The current engines are the tried-and-true V8s, but now with displacements less than half that of NASCAR Nextel Cup's cars--and a third smaller than Indy's. In fact, the displacement is equal to the more popular ranges of inline four-cylinder powerplants for passenger cars. But nobody is thinking of actually using these to power F1. (This class of engine is actually used by the Formula Atlantic league here Stateside!) Whereas none of the engines currently used in F1 are based on those of passenger cars.
Meanwhile, the FIA (beyond its current brouhaha with the F1 teams and drivers) is in the process of redefining the "feeder leagues", the lower Formula circuits. The current feeder leagues actually allow cars with bigger engines than are legal for F1, which seems upside down to me.
The lower Formulas are conceptually like the NASCAR-variety "late-models" in that most of the circuits use the same basic chassis layout but the main differences from one circuit to another are the actual setup and what engines are used. The same chassis kit could be built for any of half a dozen leagues.
So where IS motorsports going? I suppose we'll find out in a few laps.
FP
