Info for F1 and Indy car engines

[blackslbenz]

I need some Info on F1 and Indy cars.

1) What is the displacement of F1 and Indy motors. and their number of cylinders, their HP and torque numbers and how High they rev. Plus their operating tempratures if possible.

2) Why do these cars use such high profile tires, Ive been thinking all along that low profiles are the ones that handle the best.

3) If we take a ferrari f1 car and a top of the line Indy car to two tracks, Indianapolis Oval and Silverstone in england...assuming both cars are driving at a 100% capacity of what they can do...which car will post better times?

4) has their ever been a race between f1 and Indy cars?

[johnnyperl]

1)F1 uses a 3L V10, ~900hp and ~400nm, rev to 18,000+rpm
2) thats true and one of the proposed rule changes is lager wheels in F1. larger sidewalls take away some of the shock on the supension. this is good and bad. good in that it decreases the impact on the suspension parts (pushrods, bellcranks, mounting points, damper) but bad in that its harder to control the performance of the tire. the tires damping will change with pressure which changes with temperature.
3)F1 on track, indy on oval. but theres a chance the F1 could have its aero changed to get good top speed to match the indy on oval. but i would assume its easier for the suspension to go from a track to oval than vice-versa. theres no way the indy car has a chance on a proper track.
4)no

[Matra et Alpine]

2) thats true and one of the proposed rule changes is lager wheels in F1. larger sidewalls take away some of the shock on the supension. this is good and bad. good in that it decreases the impact on the suspension parts (pushrods, bellcranks, mounting points, damper) but bad in that its harder to control the performance of the tire. the tires damping will change with pressure which changes with temperature.

Not a lot, the sidewalls over hte years have become a MAJOR part fo the control of the car adn the pressures became more abotu controlling the gootprint.

BUT the other main feature of a larger sidewall is it's ability to assist in the absorption of the torque and to make it easier to control the wheelspin that woudl be VERY prevalent with low-profile.

Very low profile is for SHOWS, NOT performance

[CoachZ]

1) Go to the straight to the source if you want the right answers to your questions: indyracing.com and formula1.com - their FAQs and rules/regulations pages, etc. will answer a lot of your questions.
2) See 1
3) Ferrari is not the current leader in F1 - Renault is, followed by McLaren-Mercedes, and then Ferrari. Schumacher is the third place driver at this point in the season. I get your point though: best Indy vs best F1. Anyway, F1 cars make about 250 hp more than Indy cars and weigh 95 kg less; that covers both sides of the power to weight ratio. F1 cars do not run oval courses, but Indy cars run both oval and road courses. This advantage for the Indy car would probably be outweighed by the greater hp, lower weight, advanced aerodynamics, and adaptability of the F1 car. I don't see the Indy car winning either race.

More detailed info on the engines may be difficult to come by, as the teams hold those secrets very tightly.

[johnnyperl]

Not a lot, the sidewalls over hte years have become a MAJOR part fo the control of the car adn the pressures became more abotu controlling the gootprint.

is the side wall fairly independant of pressure, not so much affectecd by changes in the pressure?

BUT the other main feature of a larger sidewall is it's ability to assist in the absorption of the torque and to make it easier to control the wheelspin that woudl be VERY prevalent with low-profile.

oh, of course. ive seen it on dragsters, looks amazing in super slow motion. didnt know that it had such an effect in F1 too, but why wouldnt it. thanks for the info.

[Matra et Alpine]

is the side wall fairly independant of pressure, not so much affectecd by changes in the pressure?

Not independant, but tyres in the last 20 years have gone through some major improvements in cosntruction. Matra were one of the first ordinary ROAD cars to be designed in CONJUNCTION with tyre supplier. Michelin provided a tyre with the requisite compliance for optimum handling in conjunction with the torsion bar suspension. Putting other rubber on with lower profiles has caused problems ever since. Thankfully Michelin product batches every so often of the original tyre

oh, of course. ive seen it on dragsters, looks amazing in super slow motion. didnt know that it had such an effect in F1 too, but why wouldnt it. thanks for the info.

NOT as drastic as drag but still present.

[cmcpokey]

about question #4, there wasnt really a difference in the beginning of F1. the eauropean teams woudl ship their formula cars over to race at Indy. ferrari was a dominant team for quite a while at Indy in the 50s. I am too lazy to get up and pull out a book to find which models they raced, but they did do a lot at Indy.

[Matra et Alpine]

about question #4, there wasnt really a difference in the beginning of F1. the eauropean teams woudl ship their formula cars over to race at Indy.

There was quite a difference in the Lola and Lotus chassis used at Indy.
They were all longer and slightly bigger.
Teh Offies dominated the 50s totally didnt' they ?
I do remember reading that when Brabham brought the first lightweight, European rear engined Cooper to Indy that A.J. Foyt declared it a "bunch of tubes held together with chicken wire" and loudly stated he would never drive one
hee-hee, only a few years later and the BIG offenhausers were pushed into the history books

[culver]

There was quite a difference in the Lola and Lotus chassis used at Indy.
They were all longer and slightly bigger.
Teh Offies dominated the 50s totally didnt' they ?
I do remember reading that when Brabham brought the first lightweight, European rear engined Cooper to Indy that A.J. Foyt declared it a "bunch of tubes held together with chicken wire" and loudly stated he would never drive one
hee-hee, only a few years later and the BIG offenhausers were pushed into the history books

Actually the Offys were around into the 70's. Reductions in allowed boost pressure killed them. Because of their integrated head and cylinder design they could handle more boost than the Cosworth motors. At peak boost the Offys were well over 1000hp, not that far off the peak F1 boost numbers and in the 70's they set the record for Hp/L.

Currently I think both series are limited to 3.0L. The IRL (Indy) cars use Methaol powered V8s with rev limiters. I think they produce something like 650-700hp. The powers that be don't want them to go faster.

Before the CART/IRL split Indy cars were powered by turbo V8's with 2.65L of displacement. They were producing upwards of 900hp. In I think '92 Ilmor produced a pushrod V8 to take advantage of a loop hole in the rules. The pushrod motor produced almost 1100hp from 3.4L of turbo motor. Most of these engines could have made more power but ever since the '70's Indy rule makers have put limits on boost pressure to keep hp down.

F1 motors are V10's running on "pump gas." Around 900hp.

?#2:
Because the rules say so. F1 especially. I believe the rule makers set the wheel diameter to limit brake disc size. They ended up with a race car that has far more tire than most race cars. For a given load on the suspension both the tire and suspension will compress. In most racecars half the compression occurs in the tires and half in the suspension (ei for 2cm of travel, 1cm will be tire compression and the other 1cm will be suspension travel). For an F1 car it's something like 75% in the tires. Just like the grooved tires, the designers wouldn't choose this set up but that's the rules.
As was said before, the super low profile stuff is for show.

?#3:
With the current cars it would be close assuming you could reconfigure the F1 car for top speed. At Indy the cars were going something like 215+mph during green laps. At the ends of the strait they were going 230+ mph. F1 cars, due to the tighter tracks, rarely get going that fast. Because they don't go that fast their aerodynamics packages are set up for tighter, slower tracks.
That said, the current IRL cars are rather limited by their rules and they are down on power. Assuming the F1 cars didn't loose a tire on the oval they might go faster. They however are not built with as much crash protection (In Indy the car protects the driver, in F1 long run off areas and tire walls protect the driver). Part of the weight difference is the extra driver protection to keep the cars safe when hitting the walls.
Now if we use the rules from a few years back it would unquestionably be the CART/Indy cars. Back then, thanks to differences in rules, the Indy cars could produce more downforce with less drag (thanks to underbody tunnels) than the F1 cars. They had just as much power to boot. The extra grip and lower drag aero would have made a Indy victory at a high speed oval a sure thing. Even today the fastest race qualifying time was set by a CART/Indy car at Michigan. It was Team Green with a qualifying average lap speed of something like 241mph.

Things get different on the road courses. IRL cars just don't produce as much down force. The CART/Indy cars did but they weigh more. On the tighter tracks accelerate and weight become more important. Also, F1 cars are allowed to use more advanced brakes (carbon carbon vs ceramic) that improve braking performance.

?#4:
Yes, Indy used to be part of the Grand Prix points circuit. In the late 60's the cars were generally similar. Until the advent of aerodynamic downforce both cars tried to race the same way, go faster down the straits and hold on through the turns. Minimum drag was all we cared about. When aerodynamic downforce came into play the rules started to diverge and aero designs were optimized for low speed or high speed tracks (well it was more complex than that).

[Matra et Alpine]

thanks culver good info.

When was the Offy's last win at Indy ?
I just remember the TOTAL dominance that they had in the 50s and reading them not being afraid of the tiny British cars in the 60s -- until they won and the layout changed forever.

What amazes me is how some think that DOHC engines are bad and yet THE most dominant American designed and built racer EVER was an American double overhad with record hp/l AND race performance We hosted an event at the Peterson Museum and they had a special display on the Offys with quite a few there They were big

[culver]

The following is paraphrased from a book called Classic Racing Engines

The Offy started life in the 1930’s. It was originally a product of Harry Miller’s racing shop. In ’33 the design was purchased by Fred Offenhauser. It was first run at Indy in the 1950’s with a supercharger. The engines were redesigned in the 1965 to withstand the pressure of “the latest supercharging methods.” In 66’s they added an AiResearch turbo. Both SC and turbo motors ran at Indy in ‘66. The 2.7L turbos reved to 9500 RPM. In 1973, the last year of unlimited boost and fuel consumption limits, the engines were boosting as high as 42psi above atmospheric (14.7psi = 1 bar). On the McLaren Engines dyno with 37.5psi of boost the motor produced 650lb ft of torque at 7600rpm and 959hp at 8000rpm. At 9200 rpm it was still developing over 950hp. This equals 369hp/L and was the highest specific power of any piston engine in 1973. At about the same time Grand Prix cars were producing around 500hp. The 1987 Tag motor produced 645hp with a boost pressure of 3.48 bar (51psi or 2.48bar/36.5psi above atmospheric).
The engine won Indy consecutively from ’72 – ’76. As boost was decreased by ruled limits the engine had trouble competing with the higher reving Cosworths. It last raced in ’81. Basically the famous Offy’s started life in ’65 and were done by ’81.

My take:
They may have still been used for sprint cars but the ready availability of low cost domestic V8’s capable of well over 500hp made the Offy’s a tough sell. Also, as more rule makers set rules that favored the domestic pushrod V8s. The love of pushrod V8 racing motors in the US did start because people thought it was the best idea. It was because you could create a cheep powerful engine from production based parts (that’s not to say these were production motors). For a given displacement a Chevy 350 wasn’t going to produce more power than a MB DOHC 5.5L motor. What it was going to do is produce a lot more Hp/$. None of this is really tied into the Indy vs F1 discussion but if you look at the history of why things evolved one way in Europe and another in the US much of it makes sense. Perhaps it’s the same sort of cultural, geographical, etc reasons that resulted in France becoming known as a culinary leader while England didn’t.

[fa22_raptor]

There's no way an F1 would be able to survive a long race on an oval track at an event such as the Indy 500 because F1 cars aren't designed to maintain full throttle for that long. The longest section on full throttle in the F1 calendar this year is the main straight on the Indianapolis track, and this already caused the teams some anxiety as to reliability. Nothing can survive revving at 19000rpm for too long, whereas an Indy car is designed to operate at full throttle for extended periods.

[Matra et Alpine]

There's no way an F1 would be able to survive a long race on an oval track at an event such as the Indy 500 because F1 cars aren't designed to maintain full throttle for that long. The longest section on full throttle in the F1 calendar this year is the main straight on the Indianapolis track, and this already caused the teams some anxiety as to reliability. Nothing can survive revving at 19000rpm for too long, whereas an Indy car is designed to operate at full throttle for extended periods.

IF it was an oval only then all the F1 engine ECU does is reduce the rev limiter and they change the gearing to suit.

So you drop a little on the acceleration due tot the gearing and win it on the high speed on the oval.

F1 cars are more focussed on track races with corners where grip and acceleration is the decidign factor.

Equally so if Indy cars were to compete on many tracks they/d reduce the wheelbase lower the gear and go for it.

Any comparison on the cars as the race on each others turf is prett much irrelevant and any comparison on modifying them to do best on the other turf is pointless because they'd get close to each other once all the canges were made/allowed.

[fa22_raptor]

Any comparison on the cars as the race on each others turf is prett much irrelevant and any comparison on modifying them to do best on the other turf is pointless because they'd get close to each other once all the canges were made/allowed.

Discounting reliability issues for the F1 on an oval (yes, I still think they wouldn't make the distance even if the rev limiter was dropped), the F1 would undoubtedly win on both a conventional track and an oval because of its lower weight and more power (if both were modified to suit whatever track). F1 teams have much bigger budgets, and this would be reflected in the on-track performance.

[Matra et Alpine]

Discounting reliability issues for the F1 on an oval (yes, I still think they wouldn't make the distance even if the rev limiter was dropped),

Why do you say that ?

Plenty of F1 inspired engines ran in Le Mans Not so many of the modern ones yet.

SOME F1 engines even CAME from there - Peugeot - an example which actually blew up MORE on the F1 track than it did in GT racing

the F1 would undoubtedly win on both a conventional track and an oval because of its lower weight and more power (if both were modified to suit whatever track). F1 teams have much bigger budgets, and this would be reflected in the on-track performance.

yeah, weigth too, if you allowed the Indy cars to drop to F1 weights though it woudl all be pointless again.
BUT bang on the money ( pun intended ) that the budget makes the difference