Walter.
Sorry, Tony, that's.
Going above and beyond.
Tony Michael, I want to share something with you by all means. So today, before I came into the studio, there was this whole situation in my home with the dishwasher, and I'm going to spare the details, but the bottom line is I took this shit apart, I put it back together again. It's it's going great, and it's saved my family. Basically, you know, you're supposed to constantly clean out your dishwasher filter.
There's a lot of things in the household that we're supposed to do that we don't, right.
But that's why I'm saying it's like a pit stop, Like your dishwasher should do a pit stop, but it doesn't say that. I think one of the most important parts of being an adult is realizing how much of life is maintenance. Oh yes, the pit stops of life, paying bills, showing up when you said you were going to show up, being reliable to people, figure out your closet,
figuring out your refrigerator, maintenance, daily maintenance. It feels so insurmountable, but being a mature adult is doing that stuff in doing.
It before the foins tonight before it becomes a huge problem.
Correct, And how is all of this related to today's episode.
I think you'll figure that out.
I haven't figured that out, but maybe as we get into today's episode, it will start to make sense a truth about life in the car and the power unit. Maybe and maybe not. It's possible that it's totally unrelated. And at this point I'm not in charge of the post engineering of this podcast, but I hope they will just play the theme song and cut me off. But I'll keep talking and then hopefully they'll do for My Heart podcast one on one Studios and Sports Illustrated Studios.
This is choosing sides.
Yes one, wow, wow wa.
Can you hear me?
Okay, you're a bit low?
Oh right, low, Okay, hold on, I'll move my microphone a little bit.
I feel like this is going to be a big episode.
I think it is, and I think your high is certainly excited.
Yeah oh yeah, oh yeah.
Last week, there he is. Last week we focused on the drivers. But if F one is the merger of man and machine, this week it's going to be all about the machine. Bernie, welcome. Can you give us a brief explanation of who you are and how you sit into the wonderful world of Formula one.
Thank you for having me. So my name is Bernie Collins. I joined Formula one quite a few years ago now as a mechanical engineer. I started working at McLaren, spent some time design work there, but spent the twenty fourteen season as Jensen Button's performance engineer, So that was my first traveling season on the road. And then from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty two I was a strategist at no I Aston Martin, but then for India and I
work for Sky sportsf one. So now I'm on TV hopefully trying and explain some of that to those watching no Home.
Okay, can you give us a pitch of why being a technology fan in Formula one is the best kind of fan.
F one teams are driven by a single focus. So teams or maybe eight or nine hundred people all working to make two cars as fast as they can on tracks. They're not so worried about the commercial value. They're only worried about speed and the weight of the component, whatever it is. So there's this real drive to accelerate the technology forward, and that's why I F one, I've come up with some brilliant solutions, you know, you know, it's the most efficient engine that we have. It produced things
like carbon fibers. So there's so much new technology is generated by what I think are some of the brightest minds that we have in terms of engineers. And yeah, so it's really, I think a really interesting place.
Wondering if there's anything that you think of just like there is this interesting paradox of like we've got this uber NuTech and then yet there's still technology that still works today that we came up within the seventies or the eighties.
Yeah, I think the newest technology or the most advanced stuff is probably all around the engines trying to get you know, the curve system working, and a lot of that is actually where a lot of the advance was going. You know, there's a lot happening in the future with synthetic fuels to try and you know, reduce the carbon footprint.
So there's a lot of work happening on those sorts of and I think, you know, a lot of the new technologies and materials, so they're trying to for example of recycled carbon fiber or so there's a lot of growing in that area. Obviously, AI has been for a long time in F one a big thing, and so how can we use computers to manage our data to make some decisions or at least like point us in the right direction for a decision. So that that data world is massive and has been for a long time,
but just growing exponentially. Whereas the oldest technology like that's there's some of the simplest things that's still work well. So you know, I guess the lowest technology if we think of it. If you get a new floor component and you're trying to get it quite close to the tire, sometimes you'll just put pen on it, and if the pens rubbed and the tires rub and the floor, you could get a really complicated sensor. But the pen works. And that's been like that, you know, from from reason begun.
I love it because I these conversations always come up when you see duct tape come out and you're just like, it's formula one outcomes the duc tap and anyone that's new is just like, isn't this supposed to be the most technologically advanced kind in the world. But sometimes the simplest solution.
I keep hearing people referring to the new regulations and the new era cars, and from last season I thought it was new regulations, But what does that mean? How often is the regulations happening? How much is this tie in? What's changed?
All that go regulations for a few reasons, One to sort of move the sport on so that we're not set in the previous regulation that we have. We're trying to work the same page for everyone. I think the regulations now are probably tighter than they've been at any point in the past. So although we get differences in the car, you know, they're broadly the same. A few years ago, we had what we call our very errow regulations and they were brought in to try and improve racing,
to try and improve the overtaken of the cars. The next change that we have, the big change that we have coming is twenty twenty six, and that's to try and take an extra step and engine efficiency. So that is to try and for these new engine manufacturers, can we develop technologies that can go in your road car.
And you know, ultimately F one is used by these big companies as an advertisement platform, so you know, Mercedes for many years when they were making the best engine, are they selling more road cars?
Like?
That's fundamentally what people are trying to do with it. So that's why you get these changes in regulation. But obviously with each big step in regulation, you sometimes get one manufacturer that gets it right and one that gets it wrong.
For a new person maybe joining the sport, they'll look at it and go, how like how how how? How Is that an easy way of explaining just the red bull domination.
I think if we like go back a little bit. We had new engine regulations in twenty fourteen and they brought in the hybrid engines. Mercedes were the strongest, said that they won for many many years under those engine regulations. Then we had the change in twenty twenty two. I think. So over those years that we had the engine REGs, teams, like I said, were converging and other engines were getting better, so all the engines were sort of the same then.
And then we had this rule that was about aerodynamics, so how the car sticks to the road.
The twenty twenty two car had a whole people describe it as having a whole new philosophy.
The people they could describe the cars had a whole new philosophy.
Yeah you want to talk about life.
Yeah, we're going to talk about life.
The philosophy is just someone a high level designer will come up with some bs ideas, and they might be really simple things like we're going to design the car around this wheel use. And they'll have, you know, done a lot of work on why they've come up with that number, but they'll have come up with this number, and that'll be like the HW they design that car. They'll design that car as much as they possibly count. But obviously that's a really big thing to change, Like
that starting point is a massive change. So if you decide that you can't develop the car anymore or it's not working for whatever reason, you will go back and change that starting point. And that is what we talk about the new philosophy of the car, and it applies to so many things. It could be the engine layer, it could be the right height of the car so high high, the rear of the car is. It could be,
like I said, the wheel raise. So people will start to talk about philosophies, but they'll use that word real interchangeably. Depending on which aspect of the beginning is changing. Teams will be looking at the cars around. Then you know the I photographers are there and if they see something very different, they'll begin doing some tests on it. They'll
begin looking at alternatives. They'll begin to put some of that in the wind tunnel and say, can we is there something we're missing here and what potential has it?
I actually think it's a great way of describing the car like it drives differently, that the approach to building the car was different, and it ultimately means that the car has completely been reinvented in every single way possible.
What's an example of one of the changes.
Aerodynamics fundamentally is about producing downforce on the car, so load on the car such that it's more stable and corner in. So if you think of a car, your car contacts the road by the four tires. That is the only point of contact. So all your speed comes from how well you can manage the load on those four tires. It's that simple. So the more stable you can have it in cornering in straight line, whatever the case will be, the better the driver can predict how
the car is going to react. And red ball with Adrian Nuei and you know, a fantastic teams It's not just one person. We tend to talk about Adrian, but it's the team he's built, how they developed the car, how they test it, how they run it, and the Win tunnel, all these things they have produced. And even before the regulation change, they had the best aerow car, they had the best aero concept. It's just that it
was less important than when the regulation changed. Suddenly. The fact that they're strong in this area of development really makes a difference to all the other cars.
Some teams missed the point and went back to the drawing board and started again and tried new things, and that's already happening. This year.
We see McLaren catching up faster than most other teams. Teams will catch up eventually, as they develop and learn and do more tests and more experiments, they will catch up. It's just they're not there yet. The longer we have a regulation, hopefully, the more the fail converges. So you know, the margin that red Ball had in previous years should get smaller as others close the gap and work to develop their car.
So it's going to take us a handful of years before we can safely say did we hit the mission of these new twenty twenty two regulations.
By which time, of course we'll have a new set of regulations.
Yeah, how many parts are in an F one car? Because to me it looks like one part.
It's one big car.
It seems like that just comes out of the the F one machine and it's like, oh, there's the car.
Yeah, I'm thinking it's like hundreds of thousands of components. There's some off the shelf stuff, but mostly not so even to the point where, like when I was doing suspension design at McLaren, where the wishbone connects to the way you'd have a bracket, Yeah, and the boat that you're potting in there there might be like a standard one that's I don't know, fifty mil long, but you might want forty or forty five mile long or whatever.
So you you take that standard bolt and machine it down to get the right size because those few extra mill will either clash with something else or are adding weight to the car. So there's very few even standard components. We try and use as many as you can because that's cheaper, but most things are machined, like BA spoke for that car, and there's hundreds of parts in each assembly. You know, in the suspension or the whale or the uprighters.
There's so many pieces that go into it, and you know, from year to year you might carry over some of the parts, but not all of them. We might we might take one that's you know, maybe a similar design and start with that basis, but there's so many parts designed new year on year.
It's like putting together in Ikea. It's like when they just just get a bag of parts and it's like.
There is an ike of fun fact that flat packs kitchens with the inspiration from one of the parts in f one car of just like how you put it in locking in and you don't need other devices and for the front wing the nose of the car.
Ikea is not a furniture company. It's a packing and unpacking company.
You know what. I have dreamt for us to have an Ikea sponsorship in Formula one because to me, it makes a lot of sense because to your point, the car is and doesn't just arrive, it doesn't travel as one part. We take a part everything and we rebuild it. So after your face, I would love an Ikea partnership.
We have to take a quick break and we'll be back back from the ads Okay, if you're has and I'm Mercedes, do we use the same screw on the wing the banister flack or can I invent my own screw? And you know, I mean, what's the okay variability?
There great question. There's a distinction to be made between the different buckets of car components, and in the most simplistic way, let's start off with this. There are a specific number of individual parts of the chassis, which is the main part of the racing car.
And the chassis will include all of the little bits to go with that. So the seat, this, you know, how everything interacts with the.
Driver, the radio, yes, the sixties CD changer in the back.
That's not heavy at all.
The tube splits. Then are suspension, which is everything that hangs off the car, So the wishbones, any of the dampers that are inside the chassis to get suspension will be one group of designers. And then you get arrow bodywork and wings. Yeah, a lot of what we see is all aero components that are all sort of dressed.
That's the first bucket. Then there's the second bucket, which are there pieces that they are not allowed to design and build themselves, but they need to purchase from the accreditated FIA third party vendors. Okay, you can probably get already. The first ones.
Wheels, that's pretty tie listening.
Little girls start. The second one is the halo, which makes a lot of sense when you think.
That the halo was built that a head protection.
It's the head protection, which makes sense because this is all about they don't want teams tweaking and changing with something that can save a driver's life.
That there's actually there's quite a few sort you know, standard components. The majority of work the teams do is designing, building, checking their own components, and they'll they'll test them themselves as well, because obviously they have a duty of care to the driver, so they want it to be as see if as they possibly can as well. But certain things are either tested by the FA or provided by the FA.
Then there's a number of other pieces that can be purchased from specialists but don't have to be You can build them yourself or they will say, hey, there's a bunch of people here that build great things. That's things like the fuel tanks and the wheels and the brakes, et cetera. Not the actual tires, but the wheels. Finally the rest of the car. And then remember when we talked about how there are works teams and there are
constructor teams. This is where they comes in. The rest of the car is essentially designed and manufactured by the works teams. These other teams that actually build all the components, and then they sell as part of their business model some of these components to the other constructor team.
So customer team like Aston Martin or Buy and Mercedis engines. So you've got like the big engine bits, You've got gearbox, ense or transmission. You can think of transmission being everything from the back of that engine until it gets to the rear wheels. So that's another big section of the car.
Some of these teams, you're saying, they're making their car and they're also making shit for other people.
Yeah, this would be like if Rafael.
And Nadal on the side was in the locker room making rackets and selling them to Novak Djokovic.
I mean, it's just hilarious to me.
These are known by the way as like transferable parts, and they can be bought and sold between the different teams.
How many people does it take to build an F one car?
You know? The one thing that's limited is you've got fifty eight technical people at the track, So that's an FA limit that at the track for each team there are fifty eight people and that will be split acrawl, mechanics and engineers. Then in the factory you've probably got four or five hundred people direct you know, you've got the design of the car is one branch of people. Then you've got the people who are manufacturing the components. So generally we tend to have the teams where the
design offices upstairs and then the manufacturings downstairs. That tends to be the layout. So you'll have people design and drawing components split into the groups that we said like suspension or front wing or whatever, and then they can go downstairs and see it being built. So you'll have people in machine shops building it or building individual components.
And then you'll have the race team. So generally the fifty eight or maybe another twenty that are building the car the track will also be maybe building the car in the factory, so if they in between races, they might come back and do it, or sometimes you'll get other people that are just in the factory doing it.
So yeah, and then you know, you've got other departments like your vehicle dynamics who are trying to work out, you know, what type of spring or damper or simulation in order to improve the speed of the car.
Then there's also a team of aeronautical engineers that run the wind tunnel, and both of those simulator and the wind tunnel is also about understanding how far we can push the car. Again, it goes back to the point that we can't just test these cars out on track constantly.
And those are different. The wind tunnel is different than the simulator.
Correct, They both offer you different data points, different insights into how the car runs.
Is everything based on aerodynamics? Is this all wind?
Most people, a lot of people would argue.
On what are they doing in the wind tunnel? Those are cool pictures that I see, but what the hell are they doing?
You have this squares section that the car sets in. That car isn't powered in the same way a car. It's not run by an engine or anything, but it'll have like a strut that comes up from the front of it and that'll load it in the way we expect and carries all the sensors basically, and the car would be largely dumb on the end side, but you'd have all the move and suspension components. The wheels well be free to move independently. And it's a it's on
a road. We call it a rolling road. It's a treadmill for the car it's running up up to speed, so there's a limit on the speed that they can run the cars. And then on this car treadmill, we then put wind on it, so you're a fire and wind through this wind tunnel at this car that's moving
on a track. Now there's so much detail that can be going too that the road that it's on the treadmill can be different ingredients of roughness to represent different tracks, because a really rough track the air that comes off it is different two really smooth tracks. So there's lots of different things that you do. And the FIA limits wind on time, so how much that car is running with the wind on When we talk about limited wind
tunnel time, that's that's what they're limited. And then the car and the road can turn relative to the wind. It only turns in one direct because your presumption is the other direction is symmetrical. But what you're trying to do is in the situation where cars cornering and the wind is coming at a slightly different angle. You're trying to replicate all the situations and how you're getting data
is a few ways. You can do it just through the sensors in the car, so you get load data from the sensors that are telling you what literally how much you're pushing down each tire. You can do it through the flow of is that we see on the cars on track, which is just paint that then moves that shows how the air has flown over that component. Or you can do it sometimes you can do it through UV light in the air, so you can see you can physically see the light moving.
Wow.
So I have lots of questions about specific parts or these names. I hear that I would like to know what the hell they're talking about. But before we get.
Into all that, one thing, I am wondering, how much do the cars cost?
Let me take a step back. All of these pieces are bespoke work and bespoke elements that are you know, bought and sold across all the different teams. So the cost of the actual car itself has been widely debated, and everyone is more or less, you know, guessing. At this point, the guesstimate is around fifteen million dollars to manufacture a Formula one car.
Wow.
If you are a Volvo fan, you can think of that as equivalent of three hundred brand new twenty twenty three Volvo station wagons if you needed a comparison.
I don't really like love Volvo, but then you get an accident and you're in one, and.
Then then you love Volvo.
Just keep talking about volvos.
I like Volvo. Layoff, stop weighing me after each episode.
You don't have a You don't have a Volvo.
Well, I have Evolva. You have a Volve. I drive a Volvo.
Look, I just want everyone to know that I have Evolva. But I used to be cool at one point. I have Evolvo, don't Yeah, just own it.
It's Swedish.
Yeah, and it's a good car.
It's a good car.
And if I were to have three hundred of them, it would be the rough equipment valent value to one F one car.
There you go, Okay, but how many elephants?
Elephants are categorized as critically endangered species. Although an average price on the black market can be established on the dark Web. We will not be entertaining Michael Costa's question as it is deemed insensitive and inappropriate.
Can you guys imagine Evolvo F one team?
Yeah, I mean it wouldn't be that exciting, but everybody would feel very safe.
That's what you want? Yeah, okay, question for you, what do you think is the most expensive part on a Formula one car?
Probably the driver is the most expensive part of it.
Oh, this is going to be really sad. There were definitely rookie drivers on the grid right now who costs less than an engine.
It's like with the US military knows that I could rather kill the pilot than lose the airplane anyway, or as you call him, which is also my nickname in high school, the power in it.
Socially moving on, the engines are too point absolutely the most expensive parts on a Formula one car. They cast around twelve million pounds a year. But rest asure, that's not just you don't just get one engine with twelve million pounds. It is estimated that to build just one unit, we're talking three point five million.
So how many power units will a team build?
Again that goes into the regulation. They will will if they're building power units just for themselves or for themselves and the others that they sell to the other teams. So that depends, which goes back to our point about you know, when they will argue, but our team needs to be bigger. Don't give us a cost cap because we also need.
To build right. You know, is there an FIA manual?
Yes, it's very long and it changes constantly, and it's pain in everyone's existence.
I want to see it, can bring it in.
I've got it here.
I'm going to send it to you, okay.
No, I want to print it okay at the studio within the next thirty It's.
Also translated in both English and French.
French.
Let's talk about these power units. Yeah, but first of all, why don't we call them engines? Or is that just a semantic thing?
I think because when people think of an engine, they think of an internal combustion engine. So the bit that's burning fuel in order to turn the wails over, whereas n F one night, we have an engine that's recovering energy from you know, it's got a big battery associated with it, so it's basically a hybridge. You know, if we think of any of the cars out there that
are part electric part I see, like internal combustion. That's effectively why you have it as a power in it, you know, And you can't mix and match the two. So you can't take Mercedes engine and Honda's battery. It's all the one. So that's why we tend to think of them as a party. And how they operate is in terms of like the modes that they can use or how they distribute the energy throughout them. It's all
very like bespoke to each each manufacturer. So they develop it as a unit, which is why we think of it as a party unit rather than an engine. I probably still say engine too.
Much, but anyway, Michael, yes, are you ready for this?
What that?
Can you bring it into the can you bring it into them?
Shit? Did you just to oh? Shit? Here in books?
This is This is the twenty twenty four Formula one Sporting Regulations, which was last updated October twenty fifth. It's one hundred and eleven pages. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read a random sentence, okay, okay, nineteen point three, page nineteen. I'm going to read a where the fuel bladder is attached to the survival cell. Fixings must be designed so that it is pulled away from the survival cell the attachment will fail without compromising the
integrity of the fuel bladder. For this assessment, the pull out load for any fitting will be calculated from the clamp area between the fitting and the bladder on one face of the bladder. This sounds this is like a sketch, almost like a comedic sketch.
Well maybe this is your We're just giving you, you know, ideas for the next ques.
For some people reading this manual is the definition of fun.
And you've got the same for mass power unit. Obviously in the fuel system, Oil Electrical Systems.
Et cetera, Page seventy one, number five conformity with the Power Unit Homo Legation Dossier, all power units must be delivered such as the seals required under Article two point one six of the Sporting I mean, it's just this is insane.
I think we should go go for a quick ad break and then we're gonna come back and the rest of the episode will We're just gonna be Michael Costa reading.
Okay, you wanted ASML people, this is a SML for a FUO nuts.
Please come back.
Buckle up, We're back at it. Are they still doing that turbo thing?
Oh you're talking DRS.
DRS. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. That's still happening.
That's the drag reduction system.
Yes, let's talk about DRS.
What do you want to know?
What is it? How does it work? Why do I care?
I will try so. Normally, when you're designing a race car, you're design the front wings the side of the car, and the rear wings to produce down force. Now, down force is basically created by air flowing over a surface, and the pressure of that air creates load on the wing on the car on a rear wing. In very simple terms, the more of the rear wing you can see, the more diwing force it's created. The less of the
wing you can see, the less down force. In very simple terms, DRS works by taken from a vertical position to a horizontal position. Not change from vertical to horizontal reduces the diwing force. Down force is really useful and corner and because you're load in the car, but not so useful in a straight line because you're slow in the car. To create that push down you're slow in the car. So by letting off the downing force from
the DRS. You increase the straight line speed because you're effectively running a lower down force car.
I'm looking at a giff of it right now, a gift of.
A who knows.
In qualifying, for example, they can use DRS regardless of the distance to the car in front, because using DRS is quicker every lap. In qualifying, you can use the DRS as you want in those zones of the track that just makes the quick slab time because you're reducing that down force. It's always quicker to have the DRS open on the straight irrespective of how close you are to the car in front. When you have a car in front, in a real situation, you open in your
DRS will give you that straight line speed advantage. Plus, because you have this car in front, you're effectively what we call toad. And by being toad, exactly like when you're running or on a bicycle or whatever, that car in front is in an air gap for you, so you rarely have some street line advantage over that car, and then the DRS magnifies that. So it's it's to help overtaken.
Some people still look at this and say this is a gimmick. Why do we need this?
See it feels gimmick to me, but it.
Does put But it does again add to those strategies of like can you give someone, can you give a teammate a little bit of a toe? Can you get within that one second? Can you get into.
So you're in front of me, I'm within a second or in the DRS zone, I can hit it.
You can basically hit it. It's a little thing that I have to hit all of those components for the car to allow you to hit that DRS.
It is so much, so much to factuate.
Another reason why you need all of those sensors, both on the car and on the track.
And then they will give it'll give me a push, but then you're in front of me. You can only do it if you're within those.
Seconds of the person in front, and so forth and so on.
So I see, So they're.
Always trying to avoid the person getting too close because you know that the moment they get too close, you're basically done. Especially if you've got a good car like the Ferraris do really good well, if you get with it that one second, then you know you're going to get that extra push. So you want to try and keep people behind you. Obviously Max with Sappan doesn't have that issue because most people are sixteen seconds behind him.
But this is a rule that they want there to be more leaders, more different leaders.
Another way of like getting those little extra opportunities for overtaking.
Okay, how do these drivers survive crashes that I've seen? You know, the car gets destroyed and they walk out of there like drinking a latte or whatever.
So remember when we talked about the different buckets of parts in a Formula one car, and I mentioned that one of them that they had to get from the FI specifically, and that was the halo. The halo is a big part of that. Okay, that's not the only one. There's a handful of safety mechanisms in play.
I'm watching a crash right now.
Okay, which crash are you watching?
This is a joke on you. It is crashing twenty two Silverston GP.
Is that the start taken by a spectator so they're probably drunk?
Wow? Oh yeah, he's just fully upside down and skidding, skidding into the fence.
Woof walking Hell, that's all I can hear. That was just the start too, and he stays there for a long time, trapped really, and.
Then amazingly he was actually back racing the very next week.
And by the way, that one was an interesting one because, if I'm not mistaken, George Russell was behind him and slowed down and had definitely could see the human moment of oh, I feel like I need to stop, get out and check because this doesn't look good. And I always, I always wonder what goes through the minds of these drivers when they're just like, well, we've got a race to go and continue.
You can't look, you can't get out and check. I mean, come on, well, actually, Eric Comas coming through the second part of flat out in six year something like one hundred.
Imagin in a race in nineteen ninety two, Erton Senna did stop his car and you know, jumped out and essentially saved his fellow driver's life.
I love this, But then I was the only driver to stop, get out of his car and go and see what conditioned commass in.
We'll have a lot more to say about the Legendaryrton Senna, who of course himself died in a car crash just two years after this incident. On next week's episode.
Look The good thing is we have more safety mechanisms in Formula one than ever before. I think everyone has gotten over like it was a passive thing. When the halo was first introduced, drivers hated it.
I'll just say when the when the halo came out, Max Forstappen was a vote. He was just a twenty year old at the time but already on the grid and he was one of the biggest opponents of that system and he called it abusing the DNA of F one.
Right, I think as soon as I have that thing on my car, I don't like it.
The excitement has already gone before I'm even sitting in the car.
Of course, cut a few years later, if Hamilton didn't have the halo on his car, the same Max for stopping would have killed Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I mean all all change in sport is always resisted at first, all change and everything and everything and everything.
Yeah.
It's really interesting though that that is our human nature to just be like, no, not change, but it's going to be better.
No.
Yeah, I agree with Max. It takes away some of the passion that Formula one is all about. And you know, when you look at the car if it's ugly. You know from one cars aren't ugly. They're not meant to be ugly. And there's a reason that you know, a Ferrari is more exciting than a Master. It's something passion and if it looks shit.
It is shit.
They hated the aesthetic of it. They needed the look and feel of it. We had every excuse possible and imaginable in the book about it of why it shouldn't be a thing. I think we've definitely gotten over and it's proven like that is a perfect joke on news. Crash is a perfect example of this. Save this driver's life. In the seventies, if we go all the way back, there was a driver named Helmut Kunning and I probably destroyed that name. Who's actually decapitated. So you would think
they're given all of this. Yeah, that drivers, you know, would welcome the extra safety. But again, I think the mentality of being a Formula one driver has definitely shifted over the years. You know, when you're in the seventies or eighties, I think it's very different to today. I am one of those firm believers that I don't think we should be doing sports if they are dangerous to people or they you know's there's a pretty good chance that someone's going to die.
But what like Johai says, there is a violent yearning for humanity and this sport taps into some of that. I mean, there's that's part of what we enjoy about this sport is the danger.
And again it's why you know the clips, which I it just says so much about humans, but the clips that do really well on the in and out the clips of all of these crashes, and I'm just like, ah, this was fair.
Let me ask a sad question. When was the last death in Formula one?
It was in twenty fourteen.
The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, a controversial race run. I made monsoon like conditions.
So Jules Bianchi lost control and crashed into this tractor type thing that was actually busy removing a different car that had just crashed.
His family has confirmed that the brain injury he suffered is a diffuse actional injury. Now, this type of injury is calmon amongst patients with severe head trauma and is one of the most devastating.
Nine months later, French Formula one driver Juli Bianki has died of injuries suffered during last year's Japanese Grand Prix. Many have fun figures showed up at his funeral.
Including Sebastian Fertile, his fellow French countryman Romant Grogan for Lipe Masa, who remember attended to him at the hospital in Japan where.
His mother gave a heart wrenching ulity.
My baby, Without you, life will be a very grievous ordeal in the future.
Where else is their cool tech in this sport? Besides the safety of the driver, it's everywhere.
So yeah, technology in Formula one is not only about finding those extra seconds of speed and improving safety and improving the reliability of the car, but there's also an entertainment value to it.
Yeah.
I can't think of another sport that is as visually attractive as Formula one, Like you want to see these cars go fast, and so they've spent countless time, effort and money on developing on things like the onboard cameras and the helmet cameras.
Watching an F one race to me is like entering a new world.
It's like getting on an airplane and traveling to a whole new galaxy where you have to present your passport and it's like the metaverse, the but the cool version.
They have done such.
A great job of making it feel fun, cool, technologically advanced.
They crush it.
They crush it.
The TV broadcasting absolutely crushes it.
And look, we could spend hours. Actually we should have done an episode on like the TV broadcasting. It's like really interesting. It takes one hundred, one hundred and twenty two hundred and forty cameras to broadcast an F one race, which is absolutely wild. One of the best inventions has been the helmet camera, what they call the driver's eye. Mark Blunder first started the trend of like the driver's
eye all the way back in nineteen ninety four. Now he had basically had a helmet with a camera mounted on top of it. And it looks ridiculous, but it's definitely not a dinky little thing, right Like it.
Looked ridiculous, like a big old camera.
The big old camera stap to his helmets. Not far from that, the first actual proper F one helmet mounted camera was worn by Fernando Alonso in the twenty twenty one Belgian GP.
This just it looks like you can follow the dash, I mean, take a view through your rouge and just watch this.
This is hippic.
Oh so yeah, just sit back.
And listen to this.
I remember being in the paddock in twenty twenty one and the team that had the Formula One team that had built the helmet cam was showing me the little camera that goes inside like the squishing us around the helmet inside it goes into that in the foam and it was two point five grams and I was like, wow, that's impressive and tiny, and they're like, wait till you see next years, it's going to be even lighter. And they stay true to their word. The helmet cam is
now one point five grams, which is insane. What it's tiny, and it offers this incredible view and there's a bunch of other views that's really interesting. So they keep adding different cameras with different camera angles to bring us closer to the sport because there's nothing. That helmet camview basically gives us the view of the driver within the car and what they see.
Which I got say, I gotta watch some right now. It's the helmet cam is remark not steady. You feel like this is a violent, aggressive car I'm in. It's really hard to keep your eyes off of it.
Yeah.
More importantly, this is cool in the sports school blahlah blah. But how does any of this tech help me?
Tony?
Okay? Michael Michael. Yeah, there's a lot that gets developed inside of Formula one that trickles down into road cars, which makes sense. There's also a lot that gets developed inside of Formula one and the Formula one teams that trickles down into a variety of other sectors. Actually, got a fun fact for you. Love fun facts, We love the fun facts.
We love.
The rearview mirrors on the car first started out when cars were racing and they wanted to eliminate the need of a second person in the car that would tell you who's coming up behind you. And they thought, well, let's replace the human and put in this rearview mirror. So the review mirror that we have in our cars first started out with racing.
Obviously, your road car isn't going to have big wings on it, so the aerodynamic stuff maybe doesn't trickle down, you know, as directly to what you see on the road. But the main things that we see are materials. So you know, carbon fiber is a big one where we see a real drive for lighter materials that are still strong. The other things that we see are the power units of the engines, so trying to make them efficient, like
using the batteries. How can we get you know, the best out of the fuel, How can we make a greener So there's a big drive in that direction. And then some of the stuff that's maybe not seen in the outside world, but how we manufacture, so a lot of you know, we used to manufacture all over the world by taking a big bit of metal and cotton bits away, and now we manufacture by like addedive manufacturer, where we basically build up little bits of metal that's
not so wasteful. So there's a lot of pussion sort of the manufacturing side and how we do stuff. And you know, the software side is going the same way, and that's some of what we do in terms of traction control or like a BS you know, all those sorts of things. They were they were people who there's a lot of software people in the background thinking how
can we make this car go faster? And obviously if you can have traction control or launch control or any of those things that on your f one car, that makes it makes a better night because they've tried to
bring it back to the driver. A lot of those things in F one have actually now been made illegal, but they were big development bits and F one and even things like you used to have an F one like active errow so like that each of the wheels could be controlled separately, or like active active dampers, or sort of a lot of like software type control things, which now is in a lot of cars where you can change the height of your car or whatever the case would be. A lot of that will will have
developed from motorsport. But the thing I'm excited about, which there's a lot of talk, boy, we're trying to develop a synthetic fuel, And a synthetic fuel is basically going to extract carbon from the atmosphere some sort of engineering magic and then produce a fuel. So basically, although that fuel will still emit carbon as you burn it, it will only admit as much carbon as it's already taken
in from the atmosphere. So rather than pollen oil out of the ground, you're going to take carbon out of the atmosphere and then produce fuel. And if we can do that, we can use it for jet fuel. We can use it for so many other things. And if you could do that cheaply enough, you could replace what's currently in your power the pump with a green fuel.
Oh, essentially, what you're describing is recycling emissions.
Yeah, exactly.
That's interesting.
So there's things like that that you wouldn't normally think about. But there's definitely a lot of areas that impact our day to day lives.
Let me tell you how it impacts my life. Tell me when.
Society invests time, energy, emotions, and optimism into advancement, yeah, rather than death war, we all win. Yeah, we all win. I mean trying to improve upon something trickle down, which trickle economics has proven to be bullshit.
But I believe in.
Trickle down optimism, positivity, desire, growth, thirst for knowledge that only is just contagious and influences everybody.
I love that. So, Michael, what are your thoughts? Are you a tech nerd? Are you interested in this? You want to hear more about this?
I got one thing to say about this, Okay, Page x eight one point two. The Homo legation dossier must include details of all parts described as IC, PUCE EXH and MGU dash K in the PU element column of Appendix three of the Technical Regulations B include all documents required and Article one of this appendix c be submitted
and updated. According to the procedure detailed in the appendix of the regulations, a power unit will be homo legated for the competitor once a complete homo legation dossia has been submitted by the relevant power unit manufacturer and has been approved by the FIA. Such approval to take place within fourteen days from submission of the homo ligation dossier.
I can't be saying that correctly. Each power unit manufacturer must be submitted one homo logation dot C. I find this very interesting, but I'd rather talk about humans and our fallibility.
Speak for yourself, Michael.
I'm a human guy. I'm a human guy.
This has been Choosing Sides F one, a production of Sports Illustrated Studios, iHeart Podcasts and one oh one Studio podcast. The show is hosted by Michael Costa and Tony Cowan Brown. This episode was edited, scored, and sound designed by senior producer Jojai may Thad Scott Stone is the executive producer and head of audio, and Daniel Wexman is Director of
podcast Development. And production manager at one o one Studios, at iHeart podcast Sean Taito as our executive producer, and a special thank you to Michelle Newman, David Glasser, and David Hoodkin from one oh one Studios. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, go visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and whatever you do, don't forget to rate us and tell your friends it really does mean a lot.
Let's talk a little bit about next week, but it's weird to talk about the future when actually the episode of next week is going to look back at the past of Formula one. Oh, this is the episode for the history buff.
I love history great.
You know.
I think it was Marcus Garvey who once said a people without knowledge of their past are like a tree without roots.
Let's stick into those roots.
Yep.