FORMULA ONE TECHNOLOGY


By Peter Wright.

Published by SAE International.

Wow, how long has it been since a technical F1 publication found its way into this column? Annual Piola releases aside, I don't recall much for technophiles to get excited about over the past couple of years as far as books are concerned.

What a way to break a drought. One problem with some of the tech books to have been released in the past few years is that they were written by people without any direct involvement in the sport. With F1 being as insular as it is, this can often mean that there is only so much that the authors can provide beyond either general specifications or wide-eyed observations about how phenomenally lightweight the engines are.

That said, people with the kind of experience required to transcend the fundamentals are hard to come by. For one thing, there were relatively few of them to begin with. Besides which, those that are in such a position are either too busy earning millions by actually designing (or supervising the design of) F1 cars, or lying on a beach in Thailand enjoying the millions that they have already earned by doing the same thing.

Luckily for, well, the world, Peter Wright was not too busy on the beach. Indeed, if you were to track down an ex-F1 man to write this kind of book, the ex-Lotus technical director ­ and the man who first nailed the concept of ground-effect ­ you couldn't ask for someone better. Besides which, he is as good a writer as he was a technical director. Which helps a lot.

This book, to put it simply, covers virtually every imaginable (and some unimaginable) aspects of F1 technology and design. It is thick (over 400 pages), substantial, and, as one would expect from someone who spent 21 years working in F1, not a word is wasted.

Indeed, an inadvertent insight of sorts into the thinking of an F1 designer can be gleaned as early as the acknowledgement page. Not only are the kudos delivered in alphabetical order (hey, that's almost standard practice), but they are subdivided into three categories. Organisation at all costs!

Clocking in at 19 chapters and five appendices, this is a comprehensive study of just about every non-driver aspect of racing that you can imagine. Opening with an overview of the basic nature of racing and race cars, and an examination of the various forces that act on a race car at different points on a circuit.

And just for good measure, there are also comparative charts that illustrate such details as the different g-loadings on the Ferrari F300, the Williams FW15, the Lotus T95 and 72, and the Mercedes W196; or a graph of changes in downforce over the past few decades as factors such as wings, ground effect, skirts, and the aftermath of Imola 1994 came into play. And at this point, we're only up to page 25.

From there, the book goes everywhere. Systems Integration? Yep. Engines and transmissions? Goes without saying. Aerodynamics, suspension, brakes, data systems, design tools, simulations, and test rigs? Check.

Those who are not completely swept up in the nuts and bolts of F1 design are catered for too. My personal favourite chapter was that which dealt with banned technologies. Finding information about such anomalies as Brabham's fan car, six-wheelers, four-wheel-drive, or skirts is easy enough, but Wright goes several steps further by exploring the impact that their appearance - and subsequent demise - has had on both the sport and the automotive industry as a whole. If you're a stickler for perspective, you're going to wear this book out in a couple of weeks.

And then there are the appendices. A ten page essay on the development of ground effect ­ from the guy that helped to do it ­ is probably almost worth the purchase price alone. Couple with that are similar examinations of carbon-fibre and active suspension. Then, for good measure, you get the complete 2001 F1 Technical Regulations and parts of the 2001 F1 Sporting Regulations.

There are lots of diagrams, charts, and graphs scattered throughout the pages, with a few photos for good measure. All are black and white, but do an adequate job of illustrating whatever point they may be relevant to. Some are particularly interesting from an historical angle, too. Have you ever seen a picture of a car, running a rear airfoil section, dated circa 1900?

You don't need a great technical background to get the most out of this book, but it does help. Wright doesn't go out of his way to make things complicated, but nor does he make too many concessions to those who may find automotive technology a little mystifying.

Wright's dry sense of humour contributes greatly to the overall readability of the book. It's not laugh-a-minute stuff, but there is an underlying affability that helps displace the clinical dryness that sometimes infests technical writing. For example:

"The last attempt to change the concept of selecting a gear in a racing gearbox, away from the system of face-dogs was, to the best of my knowledge, the Lotus 'queerbox' fitted to the T78 on occasion in 1977. Based on a principle used in the Gogomobile bubble car, the gears were selected by balls being forced out through holes in the shaft, into grooves in the internal bore of the gear to be driven.

"The arrangement resulted in a very short gear cluster, having removed the need for gear face-dogs and dog-rings and probably would have worked well with a hydraulic gear change system to provide the selection load. As it was, the feedback through the gear lever gave the drivers tennis elbow, and I distinctly remember the day at Snetterton when the gearbox selected a gear by itself while the engine was being warmed up. The car wandered off across the paddock, chased by the mechanics." (p. 91)

As often as I try to refrain from labelling something as 'definitive', I'm struggling to think of how anybody with an interest in technical aspects of F1 could find this book wanting. While aimed at as general audience as possible, it more than caters to the serious tech-head, while being largely accessible enough for less knowledgeable readers to make good use of it. This is a rare and special publication that more than deserves its place on any F1 bookshelf.