It makes me laugh all this talk of Formula 1 teams developing technology for road cars. I was reminded of this during this weekends German grand prix. Renault was having to decide whether to run forward or rear facing exhausts and it occurred to me how little a Formula 1 car has in common with a real car. Formula 1 engines turn over at 19,000 revs reasonably comfortably and so there is a big benefit in spitting the exhaust out over the floor and pushing the car into the ground. Normal road car engines do not rev in the 19,000 range and so the blown diffuser technology has 0 relevance to anything except Formula 1 cars. The same can be said for double diffusers, F-ducts, mass dampers and DRS yet manufacturers will always pretend that they are in the sport to develop technology for the average Joe like you and me. Does anybody believe this? Do people think that Mercedes builds a better road going V8 engine because they happen to build a good Formula 1 V8 engine? Apparently people are that stupid otherwise the teams would have put up less opposition to transfering to 4 cylinder turbos. Instead we are heading to V6 turbos so that stupid people will believe that Formula 1 technology will trickle down into their cars and they will have V6 turbos in their road cars designed by Norbert Haug. It seems to me that a car designed to transport you and your family to work and back in one piece and a car designed to shoot a skinny midget around a race track as fast as possible don't have much in common and we should stop pretending they do.
If manufacturers were serious about developing racing technologies that could be used in road cars then they would seriously look into racing electric cars. There some development in battery capacity and charging could actually be transferred into a car that we should be considering taking seriously. I have seen small clips of the first electric car Grand Prix at Pau and think that it has a lot of potential. I don't think, like Bernie, that race fans turn up for the noise and the noise alone. I like the noise of Formula 1 cars, but I also love the much quieter Formula 1600 cars. I don't think too many people fell out of love with the almost silent Audi Le Mans cars and I don't think racing fans would be anything but excited to see electric cars raced hard by good racing drivers on good racing circuits.
If manufacturers were serious about developing racing technologies that could be used in road cars then they would seriously look into racing electric cars. There some development in battery capacity and charging could actually be transferred into a car that we should be considering taking seriously. I have seen small clips of the first electric car Grand Prix at Pau and think that it has a lot of potential. I don't think, like Bernie, that race fans turn up for the noise and the noise alone. I like the noise of Formula 1 cars, but I also love the much quieter Formula 1600 cars. I don't think too many people fell out of love with the almost silent Audi Le Mans cars and I don't think racing fans would be anything but excited to see electric cars raced hard by good racing drivers on good racing circuits.
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