May 14, 2013 • 32 mins
Formula One is one the world's most prestigious racing events -- but where did it come from? What is this 'formula,' exactly? Join Scott and Ben as they explore the past, present and future of Formula One.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff works dot com. Previously on
car Stuff. No, I'm kidding, I'm sorry. Welcome to car
Stuff everybody. I'm Ben Bowling and I'm Scatt Benjamin Ben.
Today we're going to have the second half of our
(00:22):
Formula one podcast. I'm pretty excited. I am thrilled. Let's
get right into it. You know, we're talking about like
engine building and you know maybe what you know, what
they can do with these things. Let's talk about the
cost of the engines maybe just for a moment. Oh
we oh, we have to put in that statistic too. Okay,
so these these amazing engines. Um, now, let's just to
(00:45):
put this back into the Grand Prix, uh Grand Prix
phase right for some context. We said that they were
doing seven hundred plus per race, right, seven hundred plus miles? Yes, so,
um on average, while a Formula one engine these days
will just smoke my money Carlo to the ground. UM,
(01:07):
I would say, so, yeah, I'm secure in admitting that
it's true. Uh, the Formula one engine is not near
as durable. No, no, no. As a matter of fact, yeah,
they have some strict rules about um, you know, okay,
you know what, I think we need to go back
for just one second. So yeah, just one second. And
I only want to say it because of the fuel. Um,
(01:28):
I think we do need to talk about the fuel,
and we did, but but the fuel is basically the
same type of fuel you can buy for you know,
you can buy out on the open market. Really yeah,
and the power boosting additives that you might be familiar
with you are not allowed. Yeah, and that is why
you know you're talking about durability and and how long
these things last. Um. The only reason I think we
(01:49):
need to mention fuel right now is because in the
early days, the fuel was so corrosive and so filled
with additives like benzine and alcohol and you know, just
are other type to feel like jet fuel really um,
extremely high actinge. Uh. They would actually corrode the engine
from within if you left it sitting in the engine
for longer than just for the race or qualifying. So
(02:10):
you have to break down the engine if you wanted
to save it almost immediately, you had to break it
almost immediately, almost immediately clean everything. And you know, of
course there's some parts that are just sacrificial, you know,
you just they they have to go. But you know,
in order to save that engine, which is a very
expensive engine. Is we'll find out after we talk about durability. Um,
it's developed the point where they don't need to do
(02:31):
that as much anymore because the fuel is is like
I said, it's it's really surprisingly so just about like
what you would find a conventional automobile gasoline. Now they
have some non hydrocarbon compounds that are allowed in, but
the very small qualities and uh, you typically if you
go to a gas station, you will have a choice
(02:53):
of three types of fuel. These guys work with fifty
different fuel blends, right, fifty five zero fifty blends. And
it's for track conditions, it's for weather conditions. Is for um,
you know exactly the altitudes that they're at. They've got.
It's it's really incredible. I mean we're talking humidity levels
(03:13):
things like that. Uh, fifty different blends of fuel that
to me would be a nightmare job trying to figure
out what blend of fuel to use at what race,
on what day. You're watching the weather forecast, you're watching
you know, the barametric pressure, you're watching everything, humidity levels,
trying to figure out what fuel to use. And let's
keep in mind that these are only the fifty blends
(03:33):
that have been submitted and approved by the f I
A so god knows how many uh different blends were submitted.
And you know that they're tested, so you know they're
sampled and tested. The f I test them and make
sure that you're not running an illegal fuel. And they
use a lot of fuel. Ben use that how many
they use one for during a single season, one team
(03:55):
would use um around two hundred thousand liters and that's uh,
that's not with the best mph Formula one car. One
of the reasons you wouldn't want to make it a
daily driver. It's about four miles to the gallon for
you know a c US listeners here. Um. That equates
to about fifty two thousand, eight hundred and thirty four
gallons of fuel in one season. Now, in their defense, Scott,
(04:18):
that is also for testing. Okay, Ben, okay, Now, now
you mentioned durability and I didn't mean to cut you
off of this fuel thing, but the fuel places so
heavily and durability on these things, or it did, um,
Now it's a little bit less of a factor and uh,
and the FIA has made some adjustments for that. Right, Yes,
we want the one stat that I'm really excited about
(04:39):
that I want to drop on us before we get
to the some more of the stuff about the engine
here is that these engines need to be rebuilt after
about five hundred miles on average. Okay, so that's maybe
two races. Really maybe maybe I would think that it's
probably every race, I mean, because I mean that mild
counter factors into testing. However, when you're talking about engines,
(05:02):
we're not saying it's a new engine. They can't just
you know, swap it out and put in a new one,
because there are also rules that tell you that that
state how many races the engine the teams are allowed
to use per season and per groups. And maybe I'm
not saying it's the right way how many races these
engines have to last. It's probably the best way, right
And I think the way the rule is written, um
(05:23):
is as you said, engines new engines per season or
total member engines. So it's like you may be allowed
one engine per two races race weekends. Uh so race weekends,
meaning that qualifying practice all that, you know, it has
to be done on one engine for two race weekends. Now,
that doesn't seem like a whole lot um, But you know,
when you consider that there are nineteen races in the
(05:44):
two thousand thirteen season, um, that means that the teams
then are limited to like maybe say eight engines per season. Now,
eight engines, that's a lot. And you know they have
the same thing for gearboxes, so that there's like each
gearbox has to last for something like five consecutive races.
So you know you need to rebuild that in order
to make that work for five races. And that's a
(06:06):
lot of races really, because you know they put up
with a whole lot. Now eight engines, Ben, that's got
to be expensive. How expensive is that? I'll tell you
how expensive this is. Engines For the team overall, about
fifty of their entire operating budget is spent on engines alone.
And so you guys are going to hear some numbers
(06:28):
right now, and we want you to remember that that's
half of the operating costs. And I want to tell
you that the numbers that I have are from a
long time ago. These these numbers that that popped up
because I don't I haven't found any current uh stats
on this that are real concrete. So yeah, it's it
can be tough to find some of the current info.
There's a little bit of secrecy. So imagine this eight
(06:49):
years ago. Ben Okay, this is from eight years ago,
so it's not it's not new data really, I mean
it's old data. When toy there was let's see, the
big series players were high to Toyota, McLaren, McLaren, Mercedes,
and Ferrari. Those four teams. Each one of those teams
spent approximately two hundred million dollars on engines alone in
(07:10):
that year alone, and that's an average of fifty of
their cost. That's their budgets, so um for yeah, exactly.
And then a smaller team like Reno, you can you
can kind of break this down. Uh, they spent about
a hundred and twenty five million that that season, and
Cosworth spent about fifteen million dollars for that season just
on engines. Now, that's incredible that that's enough right there
(07:33):
to bankrupt the smaller teams, right And you can tell
because the race wide average in two thousand seven for
the expense of an operating season was around a hundred
and twenty million, And that gives us a really good
sense of how large the variation here using costs. I
mean if you just look at Honda um at over
(07:54):
near the top and you look at Cosworth near the bottom,
I mean, this is not something that you can do
in your garage. Okay, I just thought of something, unless
you're j Leno. Now we mentioned Honda, Ferrari. You know,
those those makers, the amounts that they're spending. Now, now
we know that teams spend billions of dollars. Now this
was two thousand and six, and you know, if that's
(08:15):
fifty percent of the budget, that means that you know,
those giant teams, even like Ferrari, we're spending about four
hundred million dollars at that time on Formula one in
that in that year. You know, if you take that
now to say that you know, like there's well billions spent,
you can extrapolate from that that they're spending you know,
five hundred million, six hundred million dollars maybe maybe six
(08:35):
or seven hundred million dollars on engines alone for for
their their race series. And I would argue, now a
lot of people who are maybe not as big of
a fan of F one as you and I are.
Scott a lot of people might be seeing what a
waste of money, what a boondoggle. I object, and I
wanna take a moment to defend Formula One by saying, look,
(08:56):
I'd like to hear this. Okay, yeah, here's why, because
this is not just some sort of promotional thing for Ferrari.
You know, they're not just blowing seven million UM for fun, No,
for poops and giggles. If I want to keep it
clean for the radio, I think you should. But but
what they are doing, um, what they are doing is
driving innovation and research if you think about it. Behind
(09:20):
the whole um consumer pleasing and fan pleasing stuff about
the race, they're making some leaps and bounds in terms
of research for their future vehicles. You know what's cool
about a team like you know, Ferrari or McLaren or
anything like that, because you know they also make you know,
like world supercars also something that is developed in Formula
(09:42):
one can go almost immediately into their you know, they're
super high ends and they're in they're very very high
end cars and their customers benefit from it. You know
that season or you know just after that season, so um,
you know the rest of us, you know that that
we have to wait for to trickle down to our
you know, our Honda or our Toyota, whatever um in
some form for our users may be able to benefit
(10:04):
from something immediately, like let's say, paddle shifters, which is
one thing that you know, I just quickly comes to mind.
Paddle shifters, and paddle shifters are on a steering wheel,
and it's a way to shift gears without having to
rely on the typical foot operation. Yeah, without having to
remove one hand from the wheel in order to shift
as well, because you know, looking back at that, you
know the Grand Prix UH images and even you know
(10:25):
Formula one images from you know, as late as the
well nineties, even um, anything prior to that. You know,
you're seeing people that you know have to let go
of the wheel with one hand and reach down into
the side pocket and shift and then put their hand
back up on. And you're right, the primary advantage there
is keeping the hands on the wheels. And I spoke
one more quick side far fast, I promise, because we're
(10:48):
getting near the end here. That footage I was telling
you about one Manuel Fangio driving around in Italy. You
know they've got this camera obviously strapped to the front
of the car facing back at him driving as he
leaves the pits. And I have no idea how fast
he's go on. I'm assuming extremely fast. Um, he's he
takes his hands, both of them off of the wheel
as he's at speed. You know he's going straight. Of course,
(11:10):
both hands off the wheel, adjust as goggles fits the
helmet on a little bit tighter, hands back on the wheel.
You would never ever ever see that in current competition.
And I just struck me as so odd. Let's talk
about first, I hate to say it, we have gone
this far without mentioning the average speeds Scott, Okay, what
(11:31):
what are the average speed? Well, I don't know about
average speeds. You you have average speeds. I want to
hear the smooth I've got some. I've got a speed
stat that may may really shock you. How about that?
How about a zero to sixty time Ben, which really
I don't know. I mean, I guess it has a
lot to do with the sport because they do race
from a standing start. They don't have like a flying
(11:53):
start like a lot of other series. Do um zero
to sixty time for for a good launch right around
two seconds been two seconds zero to sixty. Now they'll
ponder that for just a moment, because you know, the
times that are quoted or somewhere around two point one
to two point five, that's kind of common. Um, But
times as low as one point six zero to sixty
(12:14):
have been recorded. Now that's like extremely fast motorcycle fast,
you know, like even you know, drag card type fast. Um.
And that's but the problem is that you know, the
two seconds is with no launch control or no traction
control rather and uh, you know, due to the fact
that you know, traction control is one of the outlawed
or one of the banded things recently. Um, that's one
(12:35):
of the things that you don't really see. But you know,
two seconds that's still incredibly quick. Um. And they say
that better times are better speeds are even possible. Uh.
So you know, watch for some advancements in that. I think,
I think that they come back. I think with the
especially with the addition of turbos. Yeah, that turbos are
no longer Pert. Did you have more to say about speed,
because I think I've got a little bit I can
(12:56):
I can add to this. But we've we've talked about
you know, formally e and it's top speed and you know,
I wasn't too impressed with that. Well, the top uh
Formula one speed ever recorded was done on like at
the private test track or something, and it was like
two hundred and sixty eight miles an hour or something
crazy like that. That's amazing. And you know during the race,
you know, you're the way the courses are set up,
(13:17):
they don't really go flat out for a long long
period of time like you went on an oval or
you know, high speed oval or any of the you know,
the big supertracks like we see here in the States
a lot, or NASCAR and Indy Car race. But you know,
the nature of the beast is, you know, they have
a long straightaway usually at some point in this where
they do achieve the top speed and it's really quick. Uh,
they get up to you know, like the T twenty
(13:38):
marks something like that, or you know some maybe as
low as one eighty, which is still ridiculously fast because
you know you've gotta make a hard right turn at
the end of that. That's what That's what I was
waiting for, because I think that's the That's one of
the important parts to remember here is that the difference
between two hundred sixty eight miles per hour and one
eight or two twenty may befuddle some p bowl, but
(14:01):
it just underscores that. It underscores the nature of F one,
which is that the governing body puts restrictions on the
um on the competitors. I mean, normally it seems weird
to think, Wow, they're not racing and they got to
sixty eight. But make no mistake, these are fast, fast,
fast cars. They're the top of their game really and uh,
(14:23):
you know, if they were allowed to race on an oval,
high speed oval where they had those two big straightways, yeah,
and and turns that you can pretty much go full
throttle all the way through. Uh, that's completely different than
the courses that you know these Formula one racers drive on.
I mean, if you look at if you look at
any Formula one track, try to imagine any place in
that track you're gonna be able to get the car
(14:44):
up to two hundred miles an hour and you'll be
without without wrecking. And you'll be astounded that they do
because these guys have incredible control. It's really it's really
a it's a driver's sport. Yes, And I want to
talk about just a couple more things. I'm so excited
about this, Scott that I feel like we're going to
run out of time without everything we want. You know,
I we it always happens, and maybe it'll show up,
(15:05):
you know, in a nuts and bolts thing, because can
I one, Maybe we should just mention things fast so
that we get them out there and we know, like
people can see that we know about them, we're acknowledging them.
How about like the care system. Okay, yes, you'll talk
about the care system. We'll we'll trade this off without
any need for order. You're just gonna hear some quick,
fast Scott and Bin facts. Sounds good, Okay. Care system?
(15:27):
Oh you want to go first, Okay, care system. There
are three types. There's the battery type, there's the flywheel type.
There's a hydraulic type. However, you're only going to hear
about the battery type because so far, you know, it's
not compulsory that they have the system initially. Um, it's
just that the teams that have opted to use the
care system, every single one of them has used the
battery type. And what is the care system? The care
(15:48):
system is a is like a it's a kinetic energy
recovery system. So it's like um regenerative breaking almost and
that you know, you build up energy and you store
it and then the driver can release it with a
push of a button on the steering wheel and that
incredible steering wheel. Right, And just to recap, as you said,
of the three that are there, only the battery has
been used. Let's talk about the wings for a second.
(16:09):
Very good. Now, those are some of my favorite things
when we talked about the bodies of these cars. Uh,
the wings first appeared in the nineteen sixties, so they
operate like airplane wings, but in reverse. So airplane wings
create lift, but wings on a Formula one car produced
down force. This holds the car onto the track. And
this gets kind of tricky because these cars have to
(16:31):
be built with a monocoque design to withstand tremendous down force.
That is going to tie into something that I saw
later on. We're gonna have just a real brief stuff's
got season that's said. The monocoque design is going to
tie into that. Um, there's no pace car in the series.
There's there's what they call a safety car and instead
and that's used for caution periods. But like I said,
they do a standing start. You'll see that. And that's
(16:53):
a very dramatic moment, by the way, when they're all
lined up on the grid and then the lights drop
and it's amazing. It's really cool to watch. And sometimes
there's a little bit of chaos that goes on there.
But Mercedes Benz has been supplying the safety car since
and the current model is an sl s amg uh
six point three litter V eight, which has five hundred
seventy one horsepower. It's a it's an incredible car. So
(17:14):
that car itself is pretty mean. It's it's really mean. Yeah,
it's a great car. It would be fun to drive. Okay,
so let's go to the steering wheel. I want people
to check out how Formula one works. An article and
how stuff works dot Com by William Harris, I think
has an excellent diagram of the Formula one steering wheel.
This thing is huge, Scott. It doesn't just have paddle shifters,
(17:37):
has everything. Um, I'm just gonna name some of the
stuff you'll see. You'll see a display, you'll see speed
limited radio driver drinking pump, um, multi function dials, traction
control when it was allowed, oil pump, fuel hatch, uh, gearshift, clutch, paddle. Um. There,
there's so much here that it reminds me of one
(17:57):
of the when video game controller started becoming bigger and bigger.
Overly overly complex. It's overly complex. You can't just hop
in these things. That's the point we're trying to make. Bet.
The thing is those are refined down to just what
they need. And look how complicated that is. So that
tells you something right there, how difficult it is to
drive these cars because they're loaded with electronics and and technology.
(18:18):
These things are basically rolling test beds for any manufacturer
that's in the series. And that's that's exactly what they
use it for. And that's why they have no problem
spending a billion dollars a year on these rolling test
beds because they get so much out of it. And
here's the thing. It does have to be simplified. The
rules state that a driver has to be able to
get out of the car within five seconds and you
(18:40):
can only remove the steering wheel. That's the only thing
you can remove in that five seconds. So to allow
for this, the steering wheel is joined with a snap
on connector. I will tell you about that in a moment,
I promised that's one of the things. All right. So
two things that the series no longer has that I
would like to tell you in a quick They have
no tire war. Um, so there's no you know, dual
suppliers for tires. That Parelli is the sole provider for
(19:02):
the series of it now and I think bridgtone was
in the past, and you know they are not not
sole provider, but there was a back and forth between
them like who had the better tire. And you know,
there's no tire war in that series. Perelli is the
only game. And they're super soft tires, very very soft. Yeah,
that's right. And they're preheated in the pits so that
they're ready to go and they leave. Uh. There's no
refueling during the race, and that's something that's relative a nuisance.
(19:24):
Two thousand ten, however, refueling was only allowed between two
ten and they they've completely removed it. So during the
race you're no longer allowed to add or remove fuel then,
now something that's that's important because there must have been
some fuel removing going on at some point for them
to add that, because you know that may be a
(19:44):
strategy a weight strategy for some team, right, great, and
that dovetails perfectly because let's talk about weight. Weight is
huge here there now Formula one. If you haven't gotten
the sense of it yet, let's just say this explicitly.
Formula one literally has a rule about everything, and when
somebody figures out a way around the rule, than boom,
there's another rule. And that's part of the game. That's
(20:06):
how it should be played. But there is of course
a rule for the total weight of a vehicle counting
the driver and not counting the driver. So there's ballast
weight to write ballast weight that they can move around, um,
you know, on their own. They decide when you know
where to use it. But they have to use the
exact amount because the car with driver has to weigh
a certain amount. And I think that that has been
(20:27):
up this year. I've got a note on it somewhere
and I'll have to dig it up, but it's been
increased by like I think it's by like two kilograms.
And that's because of the Pirelli tires. Uh. They said
that the tires wages a little bit more. They're going
to they made an allowance for it in this case.
So the ballast way then is you know, comes into
you know, play even more and things like the care
assistant that we talked about. That way is I think
(20:48):
thirty five ms. So the teams that opt for that,
they carry thirty of cares and less ballast weight, and
the other teams carry more ballast weights. Everybody is equal
in weight. So yeah, because this also comes into some
of the material science. Uh, the body of the Formula
one is made of a lot of carbon fiber dual compounds,
(21:11):
maybe over an aluminum mesh. UM. And this is too,
This is to fight for the all powerful weight to
power ratio, which you and I talked about frequently. UM.
One thing, Formula one teams each have two drivers. They
do not just have one driver. And these drivers are
not necessarily BFFs because Formula one drivers out to beat
(21:34):
his rivals, including the driver on the team. So this, Um,
there's been some controversy in the past and that in
one you know, one teammate allowing the other one or
allowing the other one to win, or allowing the other
one to block for him or her yet well or
I guess in some cases, yeah, and that's technically against
the rules, but it's tough to enforce that, that's true,
(21:56):
because it's it's really difficult to determine whether or not
someone is blocking or just being aggressive or you know,
defending their position. And we're back in Scott. You're killing
me because this has been a two part podcast, and
I respect your wishes about keeping this stuff, Scott See's secret,
but you gotta tell me it's time to let it
out of the bag, right alright. So here's what I've
(22:22):
got the other day on the way to work. This
ties perfectly into our f one podcast. And I can't
believe this. This just works out this way a lot
of times. This is two days ago. I saw this
on the road here in Buckhead, Georgia. UM. Driving through traffic.
Immediately to my right, a car zips past me and
you know, heavy, heavy trafficking in the morning, downtown Atlanta.
(22:43):
Car I had never seen on the road before, something unique,
something that I another, one that I didn't think I
would ever see, and I had to identify it when
I got to work. Based on what I saw, I
tried to remember certain characteristics. I couldn't even figure out
what it was really at first. It was a great car, supercar, UM.
It was a Laren MP four twelve C in Atlanta
in Atlanta, And this made me think of it because
(23:05):
you know, we're doing this F one podcast. We've been
researching already, and I know that there's so much Formula
one technology that's built into this this McLaren. And this
is just like one of those moments where like I
can't believe I'm seeing this right now, first one I've
ever seen on the road, and I see it two
days before we're recording this podcast on on Formula one.
So what a great tie in, right, And uh, I
(23:26):
mean it's an amazing, amazing car. I mean it's it's
like it's got a lot of F one style to it,
but it does have this carbon this this carbon monocoque
designed to it. It's called the carbon mono cell. And
I found out something interesting looking it up. It's manufactured
in Austria, and um, this mono cell thing, the production
(23:47):
I mean, that's where everything starts. It's like a it's
like a tub that the driver sits in and then
everything else is built around that tub. That's like the
safety part of this thing, and that comes directly from
Formula one racing. And uh, other cars have used this
and now the first the McLaren F one, the one
that you know Jay Leno has and you know you
see a lot of big name celebrities on this car.
(24:07):
It's a million dollar car. Uh. The same type of
cell that they used in this thing. Similar took about
three thousand hours just to complete the cell. Just to
build that cell. Wow, I know, it's shocking number. I
mean it's a it's it's it's a carbon fiber tub again. Um.
Now the Mercedes Benz SLR, the McLaren version, Uh, they
(24:28):
took that down to five hours through advancements. And now
for this McLaren MP four twelve C that I saw,
four hours, four hours. They cut it down from three
thousand hours of production time to build this just the
tub part, not the car, the tub part, three thousand hours.
They took it down to four hours in the in
(24:50):
the the MP four twelve C. Now it's an expensive car.
It's about it's about a quarter of a million dollars.
That's what a base price. That's base price. But it's
like a six hundred horsepower seven speed again supercar. So
it's an I thought it was a cool thing to see. Now,
before we get to that less that I want to
do one thing here. UM, I want to read to
(25:12):
you a tweet that our buddy Tom Holland asked us. Okay,
so Tom asked us, why are women not competing enough
one when they're in g P two and the renown
formula is its strength or durability? Good question. We've had
a pretty concise answer for you here. Really, I mean,
I think, I mean women are coming back into the sport,
really and we're seeing that. And you mentioned that there's
(25:34):
not just one driver. There's also backup drivers, development drivers,
which test for the team because you know, the teams
are out on the road all the time, right, and
there are some current drivers. There's there's some women development drivers.
One of them is Susie Wolf and then there's also
Maria Dave Delta Dota maybe UM, but one of them,
(25:56):
uh is a Williams development driver. That's Susie and Maria.
She's a test driver for I think it's Russia or Marussia.
It's another team. I'm not sure how he pronounced it.
It looks like Russia. UM. But there have been Formula
One drivers in the past, Formula one women drivers and UM.
Now the controversy here comes up in very recent months
(26:17):
when uh Sterling Moss, he's uh again, here's the guy's
eighty three years old. He's a driving legend. Um, he's
you know, he's he won a lot of races that
no championships, though, I'm surprised to hear that Sterling Moss
never had a championship, but he had, he had sixteen
Grand Prix wins. Now recently, he infamously said that women
(26:37):
have the strength, but not the mental aptitude to raise
hard wheel to wheel. That is his direct quote. Now
that you know, provoked a lot of people into that's
a controversial. I disagree. I also disagree. I think that's
not not correct. Now. I mean, this is a guy
that raised from like fifty one to sixty one, so he's,
you know, the old school again, just kind of speaks
(26:59):
what he speaks his mind when he's out there, says
whatever he feels like saying. Maybe not the most politically
correct thing the thing to say, but um, you know,
he also was in the series when there were there
were there was at least one other female driver um
in the nineteen fifties late nineteen fifties was a driver
named Maria Teresa Dave Philippis and uh she had she
(27:21):
entered five times, had three starts, but didn't get any
points in the series. And the seventies there was um
uh Lala Lombardi and she actually had seventeen entries and
twelve starts and she earned a half a point. Now
that's important because that's the only point that's ever been
won by woman in F one driving. Um. Out of
the five that I'll mention here, there was also a
(27:43):
Davinia uh Galicia and Desire Wilson and Giovanni Amati and
you know, they're tough names to pronounce. Obviously I didn't
do well with them. But that's spans in the late
fifties up until the early nineteen nineties. And you know,
I mean, we've got so there are five women that
have entered at least one race. Only two have ever
(28:04):
qualified to start in a race, you know, they've qualified
for it, and only one of them has ever scored
an official point in Formula one, which is kind of
that's a big deal really. And then in n there
was an F one race where there were two women entered,
so they're there. Yeah, to answer your question, Tom, there
are female drivers and have been female drivers in f one. Uh,
(28:26):
there haven't been as many as men clearly, Oh, Scott,
oh brother, we uh, we have a lot of stuff
here we are. Uh, this is a long podcast and
we still have some things we need to talk about
before we get out of here. I know that we're
gonna walk out with extra things on our notepads here
that we never even covered. But we do have one
(28:47):
big world record that we've been teasing this whole episode,
and I think it's time to reward our listeners and
let them know what it is. And I'll do it
kind of quick here in you know, good fashion here
because you'll see because um now it's all about pit stops, okay,
and there is a new world record pit stop in
formula one, by the way. Um Now, formally these things
were kind of chaotic, yeah, and and famously fast already
(29:09):
exactly famously fast. You're right, they're very choreographed, you know,
they're they're what we'd call like millimeter precise events right now, right,
I mean, they're they're very very precise now pre Remember
there's no refueling, and then it was banned again in
two thousand tens, so that you know that led to
longer pitch stops and that they still had to add
this fuel and it was something that crazy. It's like
(29:30):
twelve leaders per second or something. They can get in there,
so it's really fast. But now UM, as of the
two thousand ten season, pit stops are really restricted to
UM you know, minor repairs on the car and UH
and tires because they don't do any refueling during the race.
So UH pit stops if you want to just get
a quick thing like the time to you mentioned the
(29:51):
steering WHEELI for and I told he is going to
tell you it takes two seconds to replace the steering wheel.
That means that that as someone leans in removes one
to one on two seconds. That's really quick. To change
a tire about three seconds. Now that's not true anymore,
as I'll tell you in just a moment, replace the
nose of the car. The entire front of the the car
takes about eleven seconds. But this this new record that
(30:14):
I'm gonna tell you about, Ben, this is incredible and
you have this is something you have to see to
believe you really do. UM. You have to look this
up because you I can describe it, you won't even
get it until you see it. The world record for
the fastest pit stop is and it happened in two
thousand thirteen at the Malaysian Grand Prix. UM and this
is the Infinity Red Bull Racing team, four tires the
(30:36):
fastest ever pit stop, all four tires on and off
two point five seconds I'm sorry, two point zero five seconds.
So we're talking like almost exactly two seconds. Now. Now
ponder that in your mind for just a moment. That
comes from the car telemetry, which says the cars that
are dead stop the cars moving. So it's not like
you know, someone with an inaccurate stop watching the pitch
(30:59):
stop saying in the pit area saying, you know it's
about two seconds. It's two point zero five seconds for
the pit stop. So robots, Yeah, that's nope, that's that's
a that's an incredibly precise team. Now, the previous record
was two point three one seconds. UM. It was held
by the McLaren team. Now that's incredibly quick as well,
of course, and to visually see this, you know, it's
(31:20):
not a whole lot different. But um, in fact, during
this race, the Red Bull Racing Team says they broke
that record five times during this race that we're talking
about where they actually broke the world record, and in fact,
the slowest pit stop for the team on that day
was faster than the previous record. So if you watch
this thing, I swear to you, it's like you're in
(31:41):
like imagine if you're in a parking lot and you
do come to a complete stop. You know a lot
of people roll through. But let's say you come you're
in a parking lot and you come to complete stop
and then you look and you go, that's how fast
this entire pit stuff is. And that's four tires on
and off, and that's like, I mean, I'm looking at
the picture here, it's like it's like fifteen or sixteen
guys over the wall or you know, out in the pit. Yuh,
it's incredibly fast. You've got it. You've literally got to
(32:02):
see it to believe it. And speaking of seeing it
to believe it, you can check it out right on
YouTube maybe, oh yeah, anywhere on YouTube you can play.
And if I just search world fastest pit stuff, don't
look at the McLaren one because and you know that's
the previous record. Look for the Red Bull te exactly
and you'll find it. And so we hope that you
(32:23):
guys have enjoyed our Bamboy podcasts on f one Racing Up.
Please let us know what you think. You can find
us on Twitter. You can drop us line on Facebook.
You can also send us an email at car stuff
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, this is how stuff works dot com.
(32:44):
Let us know what you think, send an email to
podcast and how stuff works dot com
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff works dot com. Previously on
car Stuff. No, I'm kidding, I'm sorry. Welcome to car
Stuff everybody. I'm Ben Bowling and I'm Scatt Benjamin Ben.
Today we're going to have the second half of our
(00:22):
Formula one podcast. I'm pretty excited. I am thrilled. Let's
get right into it. You know, we're talking about like
engine building and you know maybe what you know, what
they can do with these things. Let's talk about the
cost of the engines maybe just for a moment. Oh
we oh, we have to put in that statistic too. Okay,
so these these amazing engines. Um, now, let's just to
(00:45):
put this back into the Grand Prix, uh Grand Prix
phase right for some context. We said that they were
doing seven hundred plus per race, right, seven hundred plus miles? Yes, so,
um on average, while a Formula one engine these days
will just smoke my money Carlo to the ground. UM,
(01:07):
I would say, so, yeah, I'm secure in admitting that
it's true. Uh, the Formula one engine is not near
as durable. No, no, no. As a matter of fact, yeah,
they have some strict rules about um, you know, okay,
you know what, I think we need to go back
for just one second. So yeah, just one second. And
I only want to say it because of the fuel. Um,
(01:28):
I think we do need to talk about the fuel,
and we did, but but the fuel is basically the
same type of fuel you can buy for you know,
you can buy out on the open market. Really yeah,
and the power boosting additives that you might be familiar
with you are not allowed. Yeah, and that is why
you know you're talking about durability and and how long
these things last. Um. The only reason I think we
(01:49):
need to mention fuel right now is because in the
early days, the fuel was so corrosive and so filled
with additives like benzine and alcohol and you know, just
are other type to feel like jet fuel really um,
extremely high actinge. Uh. They would actually corrode the engine
from within if you left it sitting in the engine
for longer than just for the race or qualifying. So
(02:10):
you have to break down the engine if you wanted
to save it almost immediately, you had to break it
almost immediately, almost immediately clean everything. And you know, of
course there's some parts that are just sacrificial, you know,
you just they they have to go. But you know,
in order to save that engine, which is a very
expensive engine. Is we'll find out after we talk about durability. Um,
it's developed the point where they don't need to do
(02:31):
that as much anymore because the fuel is is like
I said, it's it's really surprisingly so just about like
what you would find a conventional automobile gasoline. Now they
have some non hydrocarbon compounds that are allowed in, but
the very small qualities and uh, you typically if you
go to a gas station, you will have a choice
(02:53):
of three types of fuel. These guys work with fifty
different fuel blends, right, fifty five zero fifty blends. And
it's for track conditions, it's for weather conditions. Is for um,
you know exactly the altitudes that they're at. They've got.
It's it's really incredible. I mean we're talking humidity levels
(03:13):
things like that. Uh, fifty different blends of fuel that
to me would be a nightmare job trying to figure
out what blend of fuel to use at what race,
on what day. You're watching the weather forecast, you're watching
you know, the barametric pressure, you're watching everything, humidity levels,
trying to figure out what fuel to use. And let's
keep in mind that these are only the fifty blends
(03:33):
that have been submitted and approved by the f I
A so god knows how many uh different blends were submitted.
And you know that they're tested, so you know they're
sampled and tested. The f I test them and make
sure that you're not running an illegal fuel. And they
use a lot of fuel. Ben use that how many
they use one for during a single season, one team
(03:55):
would use um around two hundred thousand liters and that's uh,
that's not with the best mph Formula one car. One
of the reasons you wouldn't want to make it a
daily driver. It's about four miles to the gallon for
you know a c US listeners here. Um. That equates
to about fifty two thousand, eight hundred and thirty four
gallons of fuel in one season. Now, in their defense, Scott,
(04:18):
that is also for testing. Okay, Ben, okay, Now, now
you mentioned durability and I didn't mean to cut you
off of this fuel thing, but the fuel places so
heavily and durability on these things, or it did, um,
Now it's a little bit less of a factor and uh,
and the FIA has made some adjustments for that. Right, Yes,
we want the one stat that I'm really excited about
(04:39):
that I want to drop on us before we get
to the some more of the stuff about the engine
here is that these engines need to be rebuilt after
about five hundred miles on average. Okay, so that's maybe
two races. Really maybe maybe I would think that it's
probably every race, I mean, because I mean that mild
counter factors into testing. However, when you're talking about engines,
(05:02):
we're not saying it's a new engine. They can't just
you know, swap it out and put in a new one,
because there are also rules that tell you that that
state how many races the engine the teams are allowed
to use per season and per groups. And maybe I'm
not saying it's the right way how many races these
engines have to last. It's probably the best way, right
And I think the way the rule is written, um
(05:23):
is as you said, engines new engines per season or
total member engines. So it's like you may be allowed
one engine per two races race weekends. Uh so race weekends,
meaning that qualifying practice all that, you know, it has
to be done on one engine for two race weekends. Now,
that doesn't seem like a whole lot um, But you know,
when you consider that there are nineteen races in the
(05:44):
two thousand thirteen season, um, that means that the teams
then are limited to like maybe say eight engines per season. Now,
eight engines, that's a lot. And you know they have
the same thing for gearboxes, so that there's like each
gearbox has to last for something like five consecutive races.
So you know you need to rebuild that in order
to make that work for five races. And that's a
(06:06):
lot of races really, because you know they put up
with a whole lot. Now eight engines, Ben, that's got
to be expensive. How expensive is that? I'll tell you
how expensive this is. Engines For the team overall, about
fifty of their entire operating budget is spent on engines alone.
And so you guys are going to hear some numbers
(06:28):
right now, and we want you to remember that that's
half of the operating costs. And I want to tell
you that the numbers that I have are from a
long time ago. These these numbers that that popped up
because I don't I haven't found any current uh stats
on this that are real concrete. So yeah, it's it
can be tough to find some of the current info.
There's a little bit of secrecy. So imagine this eight
(06:49):
years ago. Ben Okay, this is from eight years ago,
so it's not it's not new data really, I mean
it's old data. When toy there was let's see, the
big series players were high to Toyota, McLaren, McLaren, Mercedes,
and Ferrari. Those four teams. Each one of those teams
spent approximately two hundred million dollars on engines alone in
(07:10):
that year alone, and that's an average of fifty of
their cost. That's their budgets, so um for yeah, exactly.
And then a smaller team like Reno, you can you
can kind of break this down. Uh, they spent about
a hundred and twenty five million that that season, and
Cosworth spent about fifteen million dollars for that season just
on engines. Now, that's incredible that that's enough right there
(07:33):
to bankrupt the smaller teams, right And you can tell
because the race wide average in two thousand seven for
the expense of an operating season was around a hundred
and twenty million, And that gives us a really good
sense of how large the variation here using costs. I
mean if you just look at Honda um at over
(07:54):
near the top and you look at Cosworth near the bottom,
I mean, this is not something that you can do
in your garage. Okay, I just thought of something, unless
you're j Leno. Now we mentioned Honda, Ferrari. You know,
those those makers, the amounts that they're spending. Now, now
we know that teams spend billions of dollars. Now this
was two thousand and six, and you know, if that's
(08:15):
fifty percent of the budget, that means that you know,
those giant teams, even like Ferrari, we're spending about four
hundred million dollars at that time on Formula one in
that in that year. You know, if you take that
now to say that you know, like there's well billions spent,
you can extrapolate from that that they're spending you know,
five hundred million, six hundred million dollars maybe maybe six
(08:35):
or seven hundred million dollars on engines alone for for
their their race series. And I would argue, now a
lot of people who are maybe not as big of
a fan of F one as you and I are.
Scott a lot of people might be seeing what a
waste of money, what a boondoggle. I object, and I
wanna take a moment to defend Formula One by saying, look,
(08:56):
I'd like to hear this. Okay, yeah, here's why, because
this is not just some sort of promotional thing for Ferrari.
You know, they're not just blowing seven million UM for fun, No,
for poops and giggles. If I want to keep it
clean for the radio, I think you should. But but
what they are doing, um, what they are doing is
driving innovation and research if you think about it. Behind
(09:20):
the whole um consumer pleasing and fan pleasing stuff about
the race, they're making some leaps and bounds in terms
of research for their future vehicles. You know what's cool
about a team like you know, Ferrari or McLaren or
anything like that, because you know they also make you know,
like world supercars also something that is developed in Formula
(09:42):
one can go almost immediately into their you know, they're
super high ends and they're in they're very very high
end cars and their customers benefit from it. You know
that season or you know just after that season, so um,
you know the rest of us, you know that that
we have to wait for to trickle down to our
you know, our Honda or our Toyota, whatever um in
some form for our users may be able to benefit
(10:04):
from something immediately, like let's say, paddle shifters, which is
one thing that you know, I just quickly comes to mind.
Paddle shifters, and paddle shifters are on a steering wheel,
and it's a way to shift gears without having to
rely on the typical foot operation. Yeah, without having to
remove one hand from the wheel in order to shift
as well, because you know, looking back at that, you
know the Grand Prix UH images and even you know
(10:25):
Formula one images from you know, as late as the
well nineties, even um, anything prior to that. You know,
you're seeing people that you know have to let go
of the wheel with one hand and reach down into
the side pocket and shift and then put their hand
back up on. And you're right, the primary advantage there
is keeping the hands on the wheels. And I spoke
one more quick side far fast, I promise, because we're
(10:48):
getting near the end here. That footage I was telling
you about one Manuel Fangio driving around in Italy. You
know they've got this camera obviously strapped to the front
of the car facing back at him driving as he
leaves the pits. And I have no idea how fast
he's go on. I'm assuming extremely fast. Um, he's he
takes his hands, both of them off of the wheel
as he's at speed. You know he's going straight. Of course,
(11:10):
both hands off the wheel, adjust as goggles fits the
helmet on a little bit tighter, hands back on the wheel.
You would never ever ever see that in current competition.
And I just struck me as so odd. Let's talk
about first, I hate to say it, we have gone
this far without mentioning the average speeds Scott, Okay, what
(11:31):
what are the average speed? Well, I don't know about
average speeds. You you have average speeds. I want to
hear the smooth I've got some. I've got a speed
stat that may may really shock you. How about that?
How about a zero to sixty time Ben, which really
I don't know. I mean, I guess it has a
lot to do with the sport because they do race
from a standing start. They don't have like a flying
(11:53):
start like a lot of other series. Do um zero
to sixty time for for a good launch right around
two seconds been two seconds zero to sixty. Now they'll
ponder that for just a moment, because you know, the
times that are quoted or somewhere around two point one
to two point five, that's kind of common. Um, But
times as low as one point six zero to sixty
(12:14):
have been recorded. Now that's like extremely fast motorcycle fast,
you know, like even you know, drag card type fast. Um.
And that's but the problem is that you know, the
two seconds is with no launch control or no traction
control rather and uh, you know, due to the fact
that you know, traction control is one of the outlawed
or one of the banded things recently. Um, that's one
(12:35):
of the things that you don't really see. But you know,
two seconds that's still incredibly quick. Um. And they say
that better times are better speeds are even possible. Uh.
So you know, watch for some advancements in that. I think,
I think that they come back. I think with the
especially with the addition of turbos. Yeah, that turbos are
no longer Pert. Did you have more to say about speed,
because I think I've got a little bit I can
(12:56):
I can add to this. But we've we've talked about
you know, formally e and it's top speed and you know,
I wasn't too impressed with that. Well, the top uh
Formula one speed ever recorded was done on like at
the private test track or something, and it was like
two hundred and sixty eight miles an hour or something
crazy like that. That's amazing. And you know during the race,
you know, you're the way the courses are set up,
(13:17):
they don't really go flat out for a long long
period of time like you went on an oval or
you know, high speed oval or any of the you know,
the big supertracks like we see here in the States
a lot, or NASCAR and Indy Car race. But you know,
the nature of the beast is, you know, they have
a long straightaway usually at some point in this where
they do achieve the top speed and it's really quick. Uh,
they get up to you know, like the T twenty
(13:38):
marks something like that, or you know some maybe as
low as one eighty, which is still ridiculously fast because
you know you've gotta make a hard right turn at
the end of that. That's what That's what I was
waiting for, because I think that's the That's one of
the important parts to remember here is that the difference
between two hundred sixty eight miles per hour and one
eight or two twenty may befuddle some p bowl, but
(14:01):
it just underscores that. It underscores the nature of F one,
which is that the governing body puts restrictions on the
um on the competitors. I mean, normally it seems weird
to think, Wow, they're not racing and they got to
sixty eight. But make no mistake, these are fast, fast,
fast cars. They're the top of their game really and uh,
(14:23):
you know, if they were allowed to race on an oval,
high speed oval where they had those two big straightways, yeah,
and and turns that you can pretty much go full
throttle all the way through. Uh, that's completely different than
the courses that you know these Formula one racers drive on.
I mean, if you look at if you look at
any Formula one track, try to imagine any place in
that track you're gonna be able to get the car
(14:44):
up to two hundred miles an hour and you'll be
without without wrecking. And you'll be astounded that they do
because these guys have incredible control. It's really it's really
a it's a driver's sport. Yes, And I want to
talk about just a couple more things. I'm so excited
about this, Scott that I feel like we're going to
run out of time without everything we want. You know,
I we it always happens, and maybe it'll show up,
(15:05):
you know, in a nuts and bolts thing, because can
I one, Maybe we should just mention things fast so
that we get them out there and we know, like
people can see that we know about them, we're acknowledging them.
How about like the care system. Okay, yes, you'll talk
about the care system. We'll we'll trade this off without
any need for order. You're just gonna hear some quick,
fast Scott and Bin facts. Sounds good, Okay. Care system?
(15:27):
Oh you want to go first, Okay, care system. There
are three types. There's the battery type, there's the flywheel type.
There's a hydraulic type. However, you're only going to hear
about the battery type because so far, you know, it's
not compulsory that they have the system initially. Um, it's
just that the teams that have opted to use the
care system, every single one of them has used the
battery type. And what is the care system? The care
(15:48):
system is a is like a it's a kinetic energy
recovery system. So it's like um regenerative breaking almost and
that you know, you build up energy and you store
it and then the driver can release it with a
push of a button on the steering wheel and that
incredible steering wheel. Right, And just to recap, as you said,
of the three that are there, only the battery has
been used. Let's talk about the wings for a second.
(16:09):
Very good. Now, those are some of my favorite things
when we talked about the bodies of these cars. Uh,
the wings first appeared in the nineteen sixties, so they
operate like airplane wings, but in reverse. So airplane wings
create lift, but wings on a Formula one car produced
down force. This holds the car onto the track. And
this gets kind of tricky because these cars have to
(16:31):
be built with a monocoque design to withstand tremendous down force.
That is going to tie into something that I saw
later on. We're gonna have just a real brief stuff's
got season that's said. The monocoque design is going to
tie into that. Um, there's no pace car in the series.
There's there's what they call a safety car and instead
and that's used for caution periods. But like I said,
they do a standing start. You'll see that. And that's
(16:53):
a very dramatic moment, by the way, when they're all
lined up on the grid and then the lights drop
and it's amazing. It's really cool to watch. And sometimes
there's a little bit of chaos that goes on there.
But Mercedes Benz has been supplying the safety car since
and the current model is an sl s amg uh
six point three litter V eight, which has five hundred
seventy one horsepower. It's a it's an incredible car. So
(17:14):
that car itself is pretty mean. It's it's really mean. Yeah,
it's a great car. It would be fun to drive. Okay,
so let's go to the steering wheel. I want people
to check out how Formula one works. An article and
how stuff works dot Com by William Harris, I think
has an excellent diagram of the Formula one steering wheel.
This thing is huge, Scott. It doesn't just have paddle shifters,
(17:37):
has everything. Um, I'm just gonna name some of the
stuff you'll see. You'll see a display, you'll see speed
limited radio driver drinking pump, um, multi function dials, traction
control when it was allowed, oil pump, fuel hatch, uh, gearshift, clutch, paddle. Um. There,
there's so much here that it reminds me of one
(17:57):
of the when video game controller started becoming bigger and bigger.
Overly overly complex. It's overly complex. You can't just hop
in these things. That's the point we're trying to make. Bet.
The thing is those are refined down to just what
they need. And look how complicated that is. So that
tells you something right there, how difficult it is to
drive these cars because they're loaded with electronics and and technology.
(18:18):
These things are basically rolling test beds for any manufacturer
that's in the series. And that's that's exactly what they
use it for. And that's why they have no problem
spending a billion dollars a year on these rolling test
beds because they get so much out of it. And
here's the thing. It does have to be simplified. The
rules state that a driver has to be able to
get out of the car within five seconds and you
(18:40):
can only remove the steering wheel. That's the only thing
you can remove in that five seconds. So to allow
for this, the steering wheel is joined with a snap
on connector. I will tell you about that in a moment,
I promised that's one of the things. All right. So
two things that the series no longer has that I
would like to tell you in a quick They have
no tire war. Um, so there's no you know, dual
suppliers for tires. That Parelli is the sole provider for
(19:02):
the series of it now and I think bridgtone was
in the past, and you know they are not not
sole provider, but there was a back and forth between
them like who had the better tire. And you know,
there's no tire war in that series. Perelli is the
only game. And they're super soft tires, very very soft. Yeah,
that's right. And they're preheated in the pits so that
they're ready to go and they leave. Uh. There's no
refueling during the race, and that's something that's relative a nuisance.
(19:24):
Two thousand ten, however, refueling was only allowed between two
ten and they they've completely removed it. So during the
race you're no longer allowed to add or remove fuel then,
now something that's that's important because there must have been
some fuel removing going on at some point for them
to add that, because you know that may be a
(19:44):
strategy a weight strategy for some team, right, great, and
that dovetails perfectly because let's talk about weight. Weight is
huge here there now Formula one. If you haven't gotten
the sense of it yet, let's just say this explicitly.
Formula one literally has a rule about everything, and when
somebody figures out a way around the rule, than boom,
there's another rule. And that's part of the game. That's
(20:06):
how it should be played. But there is of course
a rule for the total weight of a vehicle counting
the driver and not counting the driver. So there's ballast
weight to write ballast weight that they can move around, um,
you know, on their own. They decide when you know
where to use it. But they have to use the
exact amount because the car with driver has to weigh
a certain amount. And I think that that has been
(20:27):
up this year. I've got a note on it somewhere
and I'll have to dig it up, but it's been
increased by like I think it's by like two kilograms.
And that's because of the Pirelli tires. Uh. They said
that the tires wages a little bit more. They're going
to they made an allowance for it in this case.
So the ballast way then is you know, comes into
you know, play even more and things like the care
assistant that we talked about. That way is I think
(20:48):
thirty five ms. So the teams that opt for that,
they carry thirty of cares and less ballast weight, and
the other teams carry more ballast weights. Everybody is equal
in weight. So yeah, because this also comes into some
of the material science. Uh, the body of the Formula
one is made of a lot of carbon fiber dual compounds,
(21:11):
maybe over an aluminum mesh. UM. And this is too,
This is to fight for the all powerful weight to
power ratio, which you and I talked about frequently. UM.
One thing, Formula one teams each have two drivers. They
do not just have one driver. And these drivers are
not necessarily BFFs because Formula one drivers out to beat
(21:34):
his rivals, including the driver on the team. So this, Um,
there's been some controversy in the past and that in
one you know, one teammate allowing the other one or
allowing the other one to win, or allowing the other
one to block for him or her yet well or
I guess in some cases, yeah, and that's technically against
the rules, but it's tough to enforce that, that's true,
(21:56):
because it's it's really difficult to determine whether or not
someone is blocking or just being aggressive or you know,
defending their position. And we're back in Scott. You're killing
me because this has been a two part podcast, and
I respect your wishes about keeping this stuff, Scott See's secret,
but you gotta tell me it's time to let it
out of the bag, right alright. So here's what I've
(22:22):
got the other day on the way to work. This
ties perfectly into our f one podcast. And I can't
believe this. This just works out this way a lot
of times. This is two days ago. I saw this
on the road here in Buckhead, Georgia. UM. Driving through traffic.
Immediately to my right, a car zips past me and
you know, heavy, heavy trafficking in the morning, downtown Atlanta.
(22:43):
Car I had never seen on the road before, something unique,
something that I another, one that I didn't think I
would ever see, and I had to identify it when
I got to work. Based on what I saw, I
tried to remember certain characteristics. I couldn't even figure out
what it was really at first. It was a great car, supercar, UM.
It was a Laren MP four twelve C in Atlanta
in Atlanta, And this made me think of it because
(23:05):
you know, we're doing this F one podcast. We've been
researching already, and I know that there's so much Formula
one technology that's built into this this McLaren. And this
is just like one of those moments where like I
can't believe I'm seeing this right now, first one I've
ever seen on the road, and I see it two
days before we're recording this podcast on on Formula one.
So what a great tie in, right, And uh, I
(23:26):
mean it's an amazing, amazing car. I mean it's it's
like it's got a lot of F one style to it,
but it does have this carbon this this carbon monocoque
designed to it. It's called the carbon mono cell. And
I found out something interesting looking it up. It's manufactured
in Austria, and um, this mono cell thing, the production
(23:47):
I mean, that's where everything starts. It's like a it's
like a tub that the driver sits in and then
everything else is built around that tub. That's like the
safety part of this thing, and that comes directly from
Formula one racing. And uh, other cars have used this
and now the first the McLaren F one, the one
that you know Jay Leno has and you know you
see a lot of big name celebrities on this car.
(24:07):
It's a million dollar car. Uh. The same type of
cell that they used in this thing. Similar took about
three thousand hours just to complete the cell. Just to
build that cell. Wow, I know, it's shocking number. I
mean it's a it's it's it's a carbon fiber tub again. Um.
Now the Mercedes Benz SLR, the McLaren version, Uh, they
(24:28):
took that down to five hours through advancements. And now
for this McLaren MP four twelve C that I saw,
four hours, four hours. They cut it down from three
thousand hours of production time to build this just the
tub part, not the car, the tub part, three thousand hours.
They took it down to four hours in the in
(24:50):
the the MP four twelve C. Now it's an expensive car.
It's about it's about a quarter of a million dollars.
That's what a base price. That's base price. But it's
like a six hundred horsepower seven speed again supercar. So
it's an I thought it was a cool thing to see. Now,
before we get to that less that I want to
do one thing here. UM, I want to read to
(25:12):
you a tweet that our buddy Tom Holland asked us. Okay,
so Tom asked us, why are women not competing enough
one when they're in g P two and the renown
formula is its strength or durability? Good question. We've had
a pretty concise answer for you here. Really, I mean,
I think, I mean women are coming back into the sport,
really and we're seeing that. And you mentioned that there's
(25:34):
not just one driver. There's also backup drivers, development drivers,
which test for the team because you know, the teams
are out on the road all the time, right, and
there are some current drivers. There's there's some women development drivers.
One of them is Susie Wolf and then there's also
Maria Dave Delta Dota maybe UM, but one of them,
(25:56):
uh is a Williams development driver. That's Susie and Maria.
She's a test driver for I think it's Russia or Marussia.
It's another team. I'm not sure how he pronounced it.
It looks like Russia. UM. But there have been Formula
One drivers in the past, Formula one women drivers and UM.
Now the controversy here comes up in very recent months
(26:17):
when uh Sterling Moss, he's uh again, here's the guy's
eighty three years old. He's a driving legend. Um, he's
you know, he's he won a lot of races that
no championships, though, I'm surprised to hear that Sterling Moss
never had a championship, but he had, he had sixteen
Grand Prix wins. Now recently, he infamously said that women
(26:37):
have the strength, but not the mental aptitude to raise
hard wheel to wheel. That is his direct quote. Now
that you know, provoked a lot of people into that's
a controversial. I disagree. I also disagree. I think that's
not not correct. Now. I mean, this is a guy
that raised from like fifty one to sixty one, so he's,
you know, the old school again, just kind of speaks
(26:59):
what he speaks his mind when he's out there, says
whatever he feels like saying. Maybe not the most politically
correct thing the thing to say, but um, you know,
he also was in the series when there were there
were there was at least one other female driver um
in the nineteen fifties late nineteen fifties was a driver
named Maria Teresa Dave Philippis and uh she had she
(27:21):
entered five times, had three starts, but didn't get any
points in the series. And the seventies there was um
uh Lala Lombardi and she actually had seventeen entries and
twelve starts and she earned a half a point. Now
that's important because that's the only point that's ever been
won by woman in F one driving. Um. Out of
the five that I'll mention here, there was also a
(27:43):
Davinia uh Galicia and Desire Wilson and Giovanni Amati and
you know, they're tough names to pronounce. Obviously I didn't
do well with them. But that's spans in the late
fifties up until the early nineteen nineties. And you know,
I mean, we've got so there are five women that
have entered at least one race. Only two have ever
(28:04):
qualified to start in a race, you know, they've qualified
for it, and only one of them has ever scored
an official point in Formula one, which is kind of
that's a big deal really. And then in n there
was an F one race where there were two women entered,
so they're there. Yeah, to answer your question, Tom, there
are female drivers and have been female drivers in f one. Uh,
(28:26):
there haven't been as many as men clearly, Oh, Scott,
oh brother, we uh, we have a lot of stuff
here we are. Uh, this is a long podcast and
we still have some things we need to talk about
before we get out of here. I know that we're
gonna walk out with extra things on our notepads here
that we never even covered. But we do have one
(28:47):
big world record that we've been teasing this whole episode,
and I think it's time to reward our listeners and
let them know what it is. And I'll do it
kind of quick here in you know, good fashion here
because you'll see because um now it's all about pit stops, okay,
and there is a new world record pit stop in
formula one, by the way. Um Now, formally these things
were kind of chaotic, yeah, and and famously fast already
(29:09):
exactly famously fast. You're right, they're very choreographed, you know,
they're they're what we'd call like millimeter precise events right now, right,
I mean, they're they're very very precise now pre Remember
there's no refueling, and then it was banned again in
two thousand tens, so that you know that led to
longer pitch stops and that they still had to add
this fuel and it was something that crazy. It's like
(29:30):
twelve leaders per second or something. They can get in there,
so it's really fast. But now UM, as of the
two thousand ten season, pit stops are really restricted to
UM you know, minor repairs on the car and UH
and tires because they don't do any refueling during the race.
So UH pit stops if you want to just get
a quick thing like the time to you mentioned the
(29:51):
steering WHEELI for and I told he is going to
tell you it takes two seconds to replace the steering wheel.
That means that that as someone leans in removes one
to one on two seconds. That's really quick. To change
a tire about three seconds. Now that's not true anymore,
as I'll tell you in just a moment, replace the
nose of the car. The entire front of the the car
takes about eleven seconds. But this this new record that
(30:14):
I'm gonna tell you about, Ben, this is incredible and
you have this is something you have to see to
believe you really do. UM. You have to look this
up because you I can describe it, you won't even
get it until you see it. The world record for
the fastest pit stop is and it happened in two
thousand thirteen at the Malaysian Grand Prix. UM and this
is the Infinity Red Bull Racing team, four tires the
(30:36):
fastest ever pit stop, all four tires on and off
two point five seconds I'm sorry, two point zero five seconds.
So we're talking like almost exactly two seconds. Now. Now
ponder that in your mind for just a moment. That
comes from the car telemetry, which says the cars that
are dead stop the cars moving. So it's not like
you know, someone with an inaccurate stop watching the pitch
(30:59):
stop saying in the pit area saying, you know it's
about two seconds. It's two point zero five seconds for
the pit stop. So robots, Yeah, that's nope, that's that's
a that's an incredibly precise team. Now, the previous record
was two point three one seconds. UM. It was held
by the McLaren team. Now that's incredibly quick as well,
of course, and to visually see this, you know, it's
(31:20):
not a whole lot different. But um, in fact, during
this race, the Red Bull Racing Team says they broke
that record five times during this race that we're talking
about where they actually broke the world record, and in fact,
the slowest pit stop for the team on that day
was faster than the previous record. So if you watch
this thing, I swear to you, it's like you're in
(31:41):
like imagine if you're in a parking lot and you
do come to a complete stop. You know a lot
of people roll through. But let's say you come you're
in a parking lot and you come to complete stop
and then you look and you go, that's how fast
this entire pit stuff is. And that's four tires on
and off, and that's like, I mean, I'm looking at
the picture here, it's like it's like fifteen or sixteen
guys over the wall or you know, out in the pit. Yuh,
it's incredibly fast. You've got it. You've literally got to
(32:02):
see it to believe it. And speaking of seeing it
to believe it, you can check it out right on
YouTube maybe, oh yeah, anywhere on YouTube you can play.
And if I just search world fastest pit stuff, don't
look at the McLaren one because and you know that's
the previous record. Look for the Red Bull te exactly
and you'll find it. And so we hope that you
(32:23):
guys have enjoyed our Bamboy podcasts on f one Racing Up.
Please let us know what you think. You can find
us on Twitter. You can drop us line on Facebook.
You can also send us an email at car stuff
at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, this is how stuff works dot com.
(32:44):
Let us know what you think, send an email to
podcast and how stuff works dot com
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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