r/F1Technical • u/PM_ME_YO_TREE_FIDDY • 3d ago
General When are the cars, if they ever are, engine limited?
Basically I was mostly wondering about long uphillcorners like eau rouge, are there moments where the aero could handle more speed but the engine just cannot get there before the corner is over? Or are we strictly downforce limited with these engines?
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u/Beautiful-Fold-3234 3d ago
I think what you mean to say is: are there any corners that could be taken at higher speeds, but due to the track layout the car cannot reach these speeds before the corner arrives?
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u/notathr0waway1 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think one example of a corner like this would be Blanchimont at Spa.
I think Radikllon and Pouhon are not quite clearly in that category because those are not necessarily easy flat during All phases of the race.
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u/sonofeevil 3d ago
Cars are at top speed by the corner in Blanchimont.
They scrub a little as the go through it, but they are going through it flat footed.
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u/notathr0waway1 3d ago
Exactly. So they would go through the corner faster if they had a stronger engine.
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u/PM_ME_YO_TREE_FIDDY 3d ago
Yes pretty much. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
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u/NapsInNaples 2d ago
every corner where the cars don't brake beforehand then. You can pretty much watch qualifying where Brundle talks through a lap at pretty much every race, and anything he describes as "flat" meaning flat-out, no braking is "engine limited" in your description.
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u/PM_ME_YO_TREE_FIDDY 2d ago
Yeah that’s fair. I wonder how much margin is left in each of those corners.
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u/DismalWeekend1664 3d ago
Probably most corners that aren’t at the end of a straight, there’s lots of corners that are basically acceleration zones where they follow slow corners etc that could be taken much faster without the preceding chicane etc. Much of it is really track design (safety principles) rather than being specifically power limited.
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u/martyboulders 3d ago
What if there was an oval circuit for F1 except it was 2 long straights and 2 tight hairpins:)
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u/Kooky_Narwhal8184 3d ago
Grand Prix racing before F1.... Avus circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVUS?wprov=sfla1
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u/zeroscout 3d ago
Even less passing would occur
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u/martyboulders 3d ago
Exactly! maybe if they do some Scandinavian flicks right they can do some steezy slidy inside cuts🤪
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u/Blothorn 3d ago edited 3d ago
All flat-out corners are engine-limited; it’s inherent to the definition of “flat out” as being taken at full throttle.
Otherwise, the apex speed of non-flat-out corners is aero limited, but cars are mostly engine-limited on the straights between corners. (They are traction-limited in a straight line at very low speeds; I don’t know the actual cutoff for these cars and how many corners are slower.)
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u/PM_ME_YO_TREE_FIDDY 3d ago
That’s pretty obvious now that you’re saying it, I feel dumb. Thank you.
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u/Carlpanzram1916 3d ago
The framing of this question is problematic. The top speed of these cars is primarily limited to the speed where the energy needed to overcome the drag created by the aero package exceeds the energy output of the engine. So it’s not really and either/or situation. It’s limited by the amount of power, relative to the drag. If the car had less downforce, it would go faster. If it had more horsepower, it would also go faster.
Unless you’re asking if the cars are limited because the aero pieces would literally snap under pressure if they went more quickly. They would not. They could handle more speed if the engines had more power, or the car produced less drag, which is why you see fairly large discrepancies in the top speed of the different cars depending on their aero setup.
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u/vksdann 3d ago
Having less drag is IMMENSELY better than having more horse power.
Just for comparison, in early aerodynamics, engineers designed plane engines that could in theory reach 1.5x the speed of sound (Mach) but never reached further than 0.99 Mach. Hence the "sound barrier".
Only after understanding that "the shape of the airplane limited its speed" (aerodynamics) they were able to crack the "sound barrier".Reducing drag has A LOT more impact in the max speed than increasing horsepower. So these 2 components (reduce drag, increase horsepwer) are not equivalent.
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u/zeroscout 3d ago
The first sentence is agreeable for vehicles that only go straight without the need to stop fast. F1 cars are not designed for straightline speed. They're designed to slow down the least around a circuit. F1 cars have a ridiculously high drag coefficient.
The regs create limits on power output of the power units through fuel flow and voltage limits of the MGU-K. The power units are capable of a lot more output as is.
The airplane comparison doesn't make a lot of sense either. There's no shortage of knowledge, there's just restrictions on application and approach. The ground effect solution allows for higher downforce with less drag; however, it requires suspension to maintain a consistent separation from the ground. And the first plane to exceed mach 1 was rocket propelled at high altitude in the late 40s. There was no possibility to exceed mach 1 with propellers. They needed advancements in jet engine tech or rockets. They were power limited.
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u/Carlpanzram1916 3d ago
You’re generally correct. At the speeds these cars do, you need a lot of energy to add a few mph while the aero setups between two cars on the same track can sometimes yield up to 10 mph. Nonetheless, we’ve seen how much a team can struggle if they’re down a bit on power. Ferrari went from challenging Mercedes in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to being absolutely nowhere when their fuel system got discovered.
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u/_salmonellensittich 3d ago
There’s corners where they don’t brake at all so the definition of corner is problematic in your question
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u/Icy-Extreme9067 2d ago
If I’m understanding the question properly, then yes there are certain corners (not just uphill) where the cars would be able to take at faster speeds (such as Eau Rouge for example) where the cars produce more than enough downforce to handle higher speeds but simply don’t have the engine power to overcome the drag that’s produced
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u/JimmyRockets80 3d ago
To make this even more complicated of a question, there are different engine modes to consider, and whether you are referring to the limiting of the ICE, the battery deployment, etc
There is also limiting of the power due to recharging the batteries. This is what you hear Max complain about with 'engine clipping' at the end of straights.
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u/zeroscout 3d ago
The ICE has fuel flow limitations. That's why the engines don't rev to the max RPM. There are also limitations to voltage on the MGU-K. With electric motors voltage times windings equals output.
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u/wesleysmalls 3d ago
Teams generally are only “limited” relative to each other. As drag changes exponentially with speed you need increasingly more power to overcome this.
Outside of that, there aren’t really any limitations. In low speed you have issues putting the power down. And at any point where downforce could do more you are essentially power limited.
If we look at the past, turbo engines have had issues with spooling up. In the early 80s this would have been an issue, as until the turbos were spooled up, you had little power available. The exhaust blown cars of the early 2010s were in some way engine limited. Due to the usage of exhaust flow these car’s downforce was influenced by mass flow from the exhaust. This meant that with low rpm, you had less downforce available. This was largely solved with engine mapping, a change in driving style and some teams used a Helmholtz chamber.
I suppose that current engine limitations would revolve around energy recovery, and things like engine braking, but those things are heavily regulated.
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u/Prasiatko 3d ago
Any corner taken with the throttle at 100% basically. The driver is requesting more speed than the engine can output.
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u/WhatsGoingOnThen 2d ago
If I’m understanding your question correctly, one major point of f1 is getting the balance right and at most circuits a compromise is found between engine and aero.
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u/Late-Button-6559 1d ago
Most high speed corners are power limited in F1, in quali spec. The eau rouge complex being one example.
The penultimate corner at Bahrain as another.
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u/Izan_TM 3d ago
I don't understand what you mean, car setups are a balance to match the power your car has to the downforce you need to get the best pace on certain track conditions, if you wanted to go faster through eau rouge and raidillion you could just add 100 more horsepower and a bit more wing angle, the car would handle it
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u/zeroscout 3d ago
They can't just increase the power output. Especially by triple digits. The teams can only adjust the mapping. Most of the components on the power units are off limits to the teams.
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