F1 Semaphore and Safety Equipment of Racing/Drivers

In every F1 Grand Prix match, there are lots of colorful flags which are a series of instructions for the match to the drivers. Flag, is referred to as semaphore, the application of semaphore can greatly reduce the communication time and the race will not be impacted to ensure the normal operation.

F1 Semaphore

Black Flag

If the driver's number is displayed at the starting line while next to a black flag appears, it indicates that the driver needs to report to the pits after the finish of this circle. When a driver needs to be investigated because of improper behavior or when the rider fouls in the game it needs to show black flag. The banner appears, the driver is disqualified.

Black Red Circle Flag

If the driver's number is displayed at the starting line while the red circle next to a black flag appears, it imply that the drivers need to immediately get in touch with the repair station. When the game officials suspect a mechanical problem and needs to overhaul, they will show a red circle on black banner.

Black and White Diagonal Flag

Appears together with the driver’s numbers, it is warning the driver's driving behavior impede athletic morality.

Black and White Checkered Flag

When the checkered flag is shown, it represents the end of a game or practice. At this time, all the drivers must return to the starting overhaul lane or concentrated area. From here, the drivers need to drive their car to the seizure recorded place where the cars needs to be tested to ensure compliance with the contest rules and regulations. For each championship, black and white checkered flag will be waved for him, for the ones after the championship, it will still produce a black and white checkered flag.

Yellow Flag
It shows that there is an obstacle in front of the lane, such as a car crashed or failed reminding drivers to be careful driving. If the car parked on the track side or the obstructions are not on the track, then the yellow flag will be stationary. If the obstacle is on the track, then the yellow flag will shake back and forth to remind riders ready to change direction. If the track was completely blocked, it will shake both sides of the yellow flags. It is not allowed to overtake when appearing yellow flag. If a driver does not seriously read the yellow information and still drive to the accident location with the common speed, the driver will be subject to severe punishment or even be disqualified.

Double Yellow Flag
Waving two yellow flags one time, one is reminded drivers that the track was completely blocked for accident; the other is when the rider after lap and had stopped at the time of the accident the grid (eg.car suddenly stalled), the tournament will shake the double yellow, then restart lap (corresponding reduction in the number of race laps around). The car suffered an accident back to the pits to repair the car (such as re-ignition) , then departure from the maintenance area and the original driver on the grid will be vacated

Red and Yellow Vertical Stripes Flag

Red and yellow vertical stripes flag on behalf of the track in front of the road with oil or slippery road, the driver should drive carefully until the pennant recovered. If the match officials waving the flag, it represents the wet areas in the front which is not far from.

White Flag

When the white flag shows, it is an expression slow moving vehicles in front. This may be an ambulance, a trailer, or a tournament security vehicle. When it is the white flag, the drivers should drive carefully or even slow down appropriately.

Red Flag

Red indicates the race or the car ahead of the end for some reason or suspended. The red flag will also be presented at various locations throughout the track, at this time the driver should return to the pits where on standby to restore the game to know whether and when to resume the game. In a formal game, the red flag appears after the race which is more than 75%, it means that the game is finished, the final score would be the one before waving a red flag in twice prevail.

Blue Flag

Blue Flag said rear ferrule prepared vehicles are approaching and ready to overtake. The drivers who are presented by blue flag should slow down and let the racing line when it is necessary. If a drive is continuously produced waving blue flag reached three times, he/she will be punished.

Green Flag

Green Flag is the signal before the start of the race or the existed barriers existed have been cleared and the game returns to normal.

Safety Equipment

In the racing car with high speed, it is inevitable for collision, rolling and even the case of a fire. In order to improve the security of racing, the FIA has been constantly improved the safety standards for racing and racers.

Racing Safety Equipment

Racing safety equipment mainly includes rollcage, racing seat and four-point seat belts.

Rollcage: to keep the space of interior passengers unchanged to prevent the extrusion of the competitors by the vehicle deformation when a collision occurs, roll or even falling appear.

Racing Seat: aiming not to be broken at the time of collision and using fire-resistant fabrics is not combustion when firing in the car.

Four-point Seat Belts: matching with safety seats, is to fixed passengers to the seat and is not thrown from the seat when the vehicle rolled, using the special fast lock and can be quickly open the seat belt to escape.

Racer safety equipment

Racer safety equipment refers to racing clothing including racing gloves, racing shoes and helmets, etc. The racers are forced to wear a registered helmets, gloves, race suits and race shoes which must inspected by FIA officials be before the game, otherwise, they will be prohibited from participating in the competition.

REFERENCE 

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_67548d5c0102uxsn.html

Spectators Focus in F1 Racing and Little-Known Figures

In terms of many new people to F1 racing, it is often difficult to understand where the fun lies when watching broadcast via television, especially in the middle of the race, it usually only has two or three cars on the screen turn ahead with less chance of overtaking and it would be a little bit monotonous plus a closed track race on the screen. However, in fact, only three spectators focus need to be remembered when watching the F1 race: speed, technology, and policy.

Formula One that why it was called the land of fighter and extremely respected by the world, mainly because of its unparalleled performance with good handling under high speed. So when carefully observes on screen flashed F1 car, the beauty of the process of science and technology could be found. Whatever the aerodynamic mechanics or air suspension load design, F1 combines all the processes of crystallization. F1 has come to a limit of vehicle’s technology and continue to show the greatest possibility in the race. Moreover, the observation of a same straight road with a different vehicle acceleration, the same corners with a different vehicle’s cornering speed and then more carefully look at the settings of spoiler, tire pressure and hardness of suspended load, the different development directions would be obtained of each motorcade.

More importantly, the technology of F1 drivers lies brilliant. Through racing, the 20 strongest riders in the world will present the advanced driving skills including how to decide turning point, make brakes, which route to go and how to make a continuous speed with curve. 

And after watching the performance of vehicles and drivers, it is necessary to observe the drivers and teams on the track from the perspective of strategies.

F1 racing walking in the limit has no extra stuff. Naturally, every action of the driver and the team, imply a special meaning behind it, and there is only one goal: to win the championship. So from the start of qualifying, it is easy to observe the performance of two drivers from the same team, the time difference due to the different arrangements of the two drivers reflects that the team effort in order to achieve the maximum benefits. In addition, among the races, the team members is to help each other, or compete with each other and the team how to use the contradictions between these two would be a fantastic point when watching F1 race. Besides, the driver with the team on the track how to use some tricks to provoke the opponent, how to choose the timing of pit stops, where and when to go beyond, how many preparations he/she did before overtaking, and how much the drivers do to defense in front of the driver. These spectacular performance changes leading to the awesome highlights attracting so much global population obsessed with F1 racing.

Little-Known Figures Relating F1 Racing

Produced approximately 200,000 parts in 12 months.

The temperature at the F1 exhaust pipe can reach 800 ℃ in the race.

A driver loses about 600 calories during the F1 race.

A car from concept to finish require 250,000 hours of work.

F1 car can accelerate within 7 seconds from 0 km/h to 200 km / h and deceleration to 0 km/h.

The weight of a 3 Liter 10-cylinder engine is less than 100 kg, from 2008, it began with an 8-cylinder engine

After each race, F1 racing chassis need to be disassembled and inspected the contents of more than 200.

F1 car can accelerate in 2.5 seconds from 0 to 100 km / h and in 5 seconds to reach 200 km / h

Top F1 team racing manufacture need to produce an alarming number of parts during manufacturing process such as the BMW, Williams motorcade.

F1 racing has a strong braking characteristics, it can slow down within 1.9 seconds from 200 km / h to 0 and the braking distance is 55 meters.

The energy making a car speed reduced from 315 km needed / h to 185 km / h is equivalent to the energy which make an elephant jump up 10 meters.

F1 drivers have to shift during racing about 2600 times and an engine ignition takes about 8 million times during the racing.

REFERENCE http://www.021f1.com/view-f1zhishi-892.html

F1 Engine Suppliers and Application of Turbocharged Engine

Generally speaking, engine and tires of racing are purchased from the professional and specific suppliers, there are some popular F1 engine suppliers, such as Benz, Ferrari, Renault and Cosworth, etc.

Benz is the best F1 engine supplier with benefits of low fuel consumption, high output power and excellent stability. Ferrari is good at power performance and stability for long distance, but high fuel consumption. Renault has lower power performance than Benz and Ferrari, but perfect fuel consumption ability. Cosworth had achieved best performance in the past. However, there are some problems (scuffing) happened later. 

From the beginning of 2014, 1.6-liter V6 turbocharged engine has replaced the 2.4-liter V8 engine with natural aspiration. This is considered to be one of the biggest technological change since twenty-five years of F1 racing. As compared the changes from V10 to V8 changes which happened eight years ago, this is not just cut down the two cylinders and reduced 0.8 liters of displacement again, but the first time to induce turbocharged engines replacing naturally aspirated engines, this means that the engine is completely different from the output characteristics, in particular the torque, and more importantly, the energy recovered (ERS-Energy Recovery System) for the kinetic and thermal energy are involved. 

In 2014 F1 race, Renault launched a 1.6L V6 turbocharged engine with an electric power auxiliary power system after three years research and design. The important parts of this engine power system is engine and motors.

F1 Engine

Compared with 2013 Renault F1 engine, Renault reduced engine displacement from 1.6L to 2.4L and altered engine from naturally aspirated to single turbo intake and eight cylinders instead of six cylinders resulting in engine bore and stroke occurred corresponding change. Regarding the injection mode, by applying multi-point injection to direct injection, the limited engine speed is reduced from 18 000 rev / min to 15,000 rev / min, and an engine heat recovery motor is added based on the original braking energy recovery motor which has more motor limited speed of 50,000 rev / min. The advantage of this V8 engine is that more powerful, much lighter and lower fuel consumption so as to be called “Energy F1” by Renault.

F1 Motor

There are two kinds of motors mounted in 2014 Renault F1 engine, MGU-H and MGU-K. MGU (Motor Generator Unit) can be taken as both motors and generators. As a motor, it can convert electrical energy to mechanical energy, when it is a generator, the mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy.

However, MGU-H (Heat) is installed in the turbocharger and connected to the turbine shaft, when the turbine works, MGU-H converts some of the mechanical energy of rotation of the turbine into electrical energy which can be supplied directly to MGU-K motors, and also can be stored in batteries to meet the subsequent requirements, at this time, and MGU-H is a generator. In addition, MGU-H motor is also able to transfer the stored electrical energy into mechanical energy to control the rotational speed of the turbine so that reducing excessive rotation of the turbine to prevent overheating, accelerate the rotational speed of the turbine and eliminate turbo lag phenomenon while MGU-H acts as a motor.

Moreover, compared to the motor MGU-K in 2013 Renault F1 power system, output power of the new version of MGU-K motor is double (120kW VS. 60kW). Overall, the application of MGU-K and MGU-H can improve the engine's fuel efficiency and eliminate turbo lag and transmit power rapidly

The new Renault F1 V6 turbo engine has been improving in many places, for example, the turbine size becomes smaller and fuel efficiency is increased by 40% by the introduction of direct injection technology. In addition, some detailed design including the use of DLC coating in camshaft and PVD treatment in piston rings are to ensure the maximum efficient output of fuel efficiency.

REFERENCE 

http://www.google.de/imgres

Composition and Design Considertions of Racing

Unlike the ordinary vehicles in the daily life in which engine accounts for a major function. Moreover, in the racing cars, chassis, suspension, tires and body structure also plays a significant role due to the special racing track and rules. The design requirements of racing are different according to different categories of racing. 

Taking Formula 1 Grand Prix (F1) as an example. In F1 racing field, speed is everything, the technicians in each motorcade never stopped improvements of racing car in pursuit of speed, every improvement would be a perfect progress. However, it is admitted that there is never a racing team with the exactly same design of racing cars in each race.

Originally, Grand Prix Formula One is defined that a vehicle which has at least four wheels which are not in a line, where at least two wheels for steering and at least two wheels for driving." More specific definition refers to the Formula One racing that the cylinder volume is 3.5 liters, power of engine is about 600 hp and a maximum speed is 315 km. Here the "formula" takes a certain format, it means to the strict rules of the car weight, length, width, distance and the size of tires. In all Formula racing, Formula One racing is the most senior level.

FIA (International Automobile Federation) requires the displacement of engine in racing car is 3L and 12 cylinders below, naturally aspirated engine without the supercharger. Chassis should be manufactured with carbon fiber for the manufacture due to lightweight and strong intensity. Furthermore, chassis is very low and only 50-70 mm minimum clearance from the ground. Compared with ordinary cars, F1 racing has many unique characteristics including thin and long body structure, low ride height, the large wheels very are conspicuous and completely exposed. 

Here introduced the composition of F1 racing and related design considerations.

Chassis: Chassis which locates under the vehicle is a major part of F1 racing, the main component is a single shell connecting with all other components. The chassis of F1 is made from carbon fiber composite material, and polyethylene.

Cylinder: cylinder is a part of the engine where combustion power is generated. The fuel gas mixture combust in the cylinder pushing piston reciprocating in the cylinder.

Diffuser: Diffuser is an air outlet at the bottom rear of the vehicle which plays an important role in F1 racing aerodynamics. Pressure is obtained by generating the low pressure area under the bottom of the body and it is the main source of racing raising top and bottom pressure in the high-speed corners.

ECU: Electronic Control abbreviation unit which is used to control and record all electronic F1 racing program, it is installed in the car's black box.

Engine: Engine, a 2.4 liter V8 engine is normally applied with F1 racing with the request of weigh must be more than 95 kg.

Front Wing: the front wing making under pressure for the front part of the body, therefore, it is an important component in F1 aerodynamics. In each race, the team of each motorcade will improve the front wing depending on the different requirements of under pressure for a particular track. In addition, the driver can also do the front wing adjustment in the course of the race, the main content of the adjustment is to change the angle of the wing attached.

Fuel: Fuel, super unleaded gasoline is used in F1 racing, in which the composition must meet the FIA rules and strict emissions standards of EU. In order to ensure the legitimacy of fuel in each team, FIA will conduct random checks at every races. Before the season, the manufacturer must provide a sample to the FIA in order to serve as a model for the record.

Gear box: gearbox transmits power with a certain speed or the gearbox reduction ratio, F1 prohibit the use of automatic continuous transmission, and must be forced to be equipped with a reverse gear. Currently, the number of gear for F1 is the seven-speed gearbox.

Head and Neck Support (HANS): head and neck protection system which is introduced since 2003 is used to give the driver's head and neck to provide additional protection. Following the head and neck protection system to prevent the driver's spine back strain, but also to prevent rejection before the riders head hit the steering wheel.

Tires: Tires used in F1 are currently provided by Bridgestone tires, in accordance with the technical rules, the width of the front tires is not more than 355 mm, rear tires are not more than 380 mm and the tire edge diameter is no greater than 330 mm. To improve the performance of the tires, the tire manufacturers provide specific recipes for almost every race tires, the hardness of tires is mainly determined by the track and racing characteristics.

Slicks: slicks are a kind of tire without tire tread grooves. FIA announced to abandon the use of slicks in 1997, but they are re-enabled in 2010. Due to the large slicks ground area, so the grip ability of slicks is very strong so that the car speed in the corners is very high.

Intermediate Tires: intermediate tires, located between the dry tires and rain tires, intermediate tires have more grooves than dry tires, rain tires have more than the ground area. It is used when the track is wet or drizzle.

Wet-Weather Tires: rain tires, rain tires are used in racing when it is raining with high drainage performance preventing the wheels and the ground to form a film of water to ensure that the tires stick to the ground.

Nose: the nose, known as the "nose." The first half of the F1 car, for safety requirements, it must meet the front and side crash tests. Nose cone also has the function of protecting single shell in the crash.

On-Board Camera: car camera locating on the car body is a mini TV camera, it can be installed on the car's gas tank, mirrors and front and rear wings in order to provide real-time dynamic screen when in practice, qualifying and the race.

Petrol: fuel, only the super unleaded gasoline can be used for F1, although it is largely the same with No. 98 unleaded petrol which can be get in an ordinary gas station, but the F1 fuel added additive to ensure the faster and better combustion. In addition, it is lighter than ordinary commercial gasoline. Each motorcade are allowed to choose fuel suppliers and must submit to the FIA fuel sample was used for testing before the start of the season.

Rear Light: taillights, it is used to reduce the risk of rear-end security device. When the racing use rain tires, taillights must continue to light up. Taillight is composed by 30 light-emitting diodes, the size is not smaller than 6x6 cm and is required to the installation of at least 35 cm away from the reference position of bottom part of the car.

Rear Wing: tail which is also called a swept-wing is mainly to create down-force for the rear axle, the design of rear wing must adapt to the track, and the steeper the flap, the greater down-force and also, the rear wing design and the surface angle can be further improved as a part of the design of a car.

Video: F1 2012-Awesome Race at Malysia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X9NEZ7plFQ

REFERENCE http://www.baike.com/wiki/F1

Motocade/Racer

Motorcade

Motorcades are definitely critical in the car racing, here listed the information about ten motorcades which are from different countries including the first & second racer and motorcade standings rank.

Racers

When mentioned racer, it had to say Michael Schumacher, he was Born in Hürth, Germany and a Formula One racing driver. Schumacher is one of the greatest Formula One (F1) drivers and almost refreshed every record in his first 16 years of his career. He achieved seven-time Formula One (F1) World Champion and was the only driver to win the championship in Germany.

However, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg are also well-known racers and have obtained awesome performance. The following is the latest racer standings rank.

Video: Drag Race:Mclaren MP4-12C VS. Ferrari 458 Italia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYDqHPl5jU

REFERENCE: http://sports.sina.com.cn/f1/team/McLaren/
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1