Filed under: Motorsports
Traction control banned in F1 beginning in 2008
Back in 1994, the FIA banned the use of traction control systems on Formula One cars in an effort to put more emphasis on driver skill rather than technological prowess. By 2001, there was considerable hue and cry from some of the participants that certain teams were using advanced engine management software to work around the regulations, so the ban was lifted.
Next year, however, a standard ECU will be employed on all new F1 cars, allowing the FIA to keep a watchful eye on how each team uses their engine controls. Because of this standardization, a decision was reached yesterday that will totally eliminate the use of traction controls systems beginning during next year's season.
The exact text of the new rule can be viewed by following the "Read" link below, but the short and sweet is simple: the driver cannot be informed if a drive wheel is spinning. Period.
According to Autosport.com, the ban was not only supported by the FIA, but also by the majority of the participating teams. We're looking forward to seeing how this new regulation will affect the 2008 season, but considering the talent of most F1 drivers, we doubt they'll be any substantial shuffling at the top of the board.
[Source: Autosport.com via Axis of Oversteer]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Dan 9:54AM (3/31/2007)
This is not going to make much of an impact, except at the start of the race. F1 cars put very little torque at the wheels (about as much as a mid size sedan) and have very wide tires and a lot of downforce. It is nearly impossible to make the F1 car wheels spin during the race.
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Proud Japanese 9:59AM (3/31/2007)
@Dan : you talk like you've driven an F1 car. *rolls eyes*
F1 cars extensively use TC from what I've seen during the telemetry shown during the race. Some drivers use it more than others.
The biggest winner will probably be Button. Everyone comments on his smooth driving style and how little TC he uses.
Biggest loser will be Barichello, his driving style seems to be on or off the throttle without any modulation letting the TC do all the work.
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Galley 10:02AM (3/31/2007)
What they need to do is ban all those ugly-ass winglets stuck all over the car.
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Dan 10:28AM (3/31/2007)
@Proud Japanese
Sure, F1 being a sport where positions are separated by fractions of a second, this is going to make some impact, but only at the beginning. I'm sure pilots will have no problem to adapt to the new regulation regardless of their previous use of TC, because it affected the current cars very little (this is not the case with other generations of F1 cars, particularly those from the turbo era). Here's why.
I've never driven a F1 car, but I have a pretty good idea of how much torque it puts at the (rear) wheels, which is slightly more than 2800 lbf ft (this is measured after the final drive, not at the engine). Mazda 6 3.0l, my previous car, used to put at the (front) wheels just as much torque. And I know that, with the TC off, except from stand still, it was nearly impossible to spin the wheels with the throttle pedal fully pressed.
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Dan 10:35AM (3/31/2007)
@Galley
I absolutely agree! They should ban any other (negative) lift generating device on top of the car, other than the front and rear wings, and replace them with ground effect devices. The ban on ground effect makes no sense today. The use of ground effect will not disturb the airflow for other cars and will make passing easier.
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Proud Japanese 10:48AM (3/31/2007)
@Dan: Have you tried flooring it while turning? I am pretty sure that would result in a whole lot of understeer.
Similarly the oversteer in RWD cars like F1 needs to be kept in check. Altough you are probably right about it not having an impact on the long run.
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Dr. Greenthumb 10:59AM (3/31/2007)
I don't get these guys. They work really hard a keeping this "sport" uncompetitive. The constant changing of the regs helps to keep the lower budget teams at the back of the grid.
Another thing, F1 being at the leading edge of the automotive world, I've been waiting on a more 21st. century design in the cars. Instead of gluing aerodynamic bits onto a vintage design from the early 1970s. Think of how much ground the automobile has covered since the 70s.
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Tagg 10:59AM (3/31/2007)
While they are at it I feel they should get rid of the Playstation shifter paddles. Everyone says "Schumacher is the best ever" but I wonder what a driver like Lauda, Stewart, or what Senna could have acomplished driving these cars. Imagine what these guys could have done in say a Ferrari against what I regard as a weak field of cars with only three teams (maybe 6 cars) having a chance to win. Schumacher wsa great no doubt but he was the best during his era not the best ever.
By taking some of the silly winglets off, the traction control and changing the shifters I think it would change the complection of a Grand Prix and maybe allow one of those other teams (Red Bull, Toyota, etc.) steal a win once in a while.
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why not the LS2LS7? 11:00AM (3/31/2007)
Dan, that comment is incorrect. Torque at the wheels is what accelerates a car, and since an F1 accelerates very quickly, it must be putting a lot of torque down at the wheels.
You're making the same mistake a lot of people do, the same one that makes them thing Diesels put a lot of torque down.
An F1 car may only have 250ft/lbs of torque, but since it is at 18,000rpm, it is employing a gearing 4x lower than that of this family sedan, and thus it is putting 4x as much torque down at the wheels than that family sedan.
Remember, when it comes to accelerating (and thus putting torque down at the wheels), for a motor, HP ratings are what matter, because they encompass both the torque present at the shaft and the speed of rotation, which determines your gearing.
Anyway, back to F1. This is a very welcome change. You can hear that traction control is employed in every acceleration zone in F1. They're powering out of corners that they would have to be careful of without TC. TC turned Eau Rouge from a very challenging corner, difficult to go flat in, to one where you just flatten the pedal and only have to concern yourself with the steering.
I welcome this change, and would love to see gearboxes replaced with manual select levers next. And then down to metal brakes, ones that you have to be a bit careful to conserve, and will lengthen the braking zones 2-3x so you can use them as passing zones again. Right now the window to outbrake someone is so small it almost never happens.
That would good to see all those winglets gone. Ground effects would be a great idea too, because as Dan says, ground effects are not effected nearly as much by running directly behind another car as wings are, and that will make it easier to get a pass going.
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Quattrofan 11:13AM (3/31/2007)
No.1 (Dan), do us all a favor and quit talking out of your ass.
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ik 11:20AM (3/31/2007)
i don't care about the drivers at all
I'm more interested in what technologies companies can develop from F1. Isn't that what they are there for anyways?
if they ban traction control, the success of the teams will be based more on the driver's skill, which is a bad thing. it should be based on the car's performance. also, wouldn't the rate of accidents increase?
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Richard 11:36AM (3/31/2007)
It would be nice to see a Ferrari "slideways" at the crest of the hill in Monaco again!
Rain will be even more fun!
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Proud Japanese 11:39AM (3/31/2007)
@LS2/LS7? : Ground effects is effective but then the max speed of the cars would go up drastically since ground effects don't have much drag penalty. Safety of the drivers should also be considered.
Drafting with F1 cars seem to be a problem since the engine is dumping so much heat that any car running behind it will be forced out of the way anyway cos the engine can't breathe in the hot and dirty air.
Getting rid of the TC is a step forward in increasing passing. I would love to see much of the aero gone as well.
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Brooks Talley 11:41AM (3/31/2007)
ik, you have it exactly backwards. What F1 is attempting to do (and what most people want) is to bring racing back to driver skill. As it stands, the driver is more and more a passenger just managing the electronic systems. The car used to be a tool; now the drivers are increasingly tools.
FYI, traction control is *already* banned. At least the kind of traction control we're used to on street cars, where ABS (or similar) sensors detect when one wheel is moving faster than the others.
What they're talking about now is eliminating passive traction control, which is itself fairly clever: since you know the car's aerodynamics so well, and you've got airflow sensors, known engine RPM and gearing, you can tell if there's wheelspin by comparing air velocity to wheel velocity.
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Ford Mustang 11:45AM (3/31/2007)
I actually think this is a good idea. It'll show which drivers can really drive, and which ones are relying on technical features of the car.
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Dan 12:01PM (3/31/2007)
@LS2/LS7?
I understand very well what you are saying, I know that engine torque, gearing and wheel diameter influence the acceleration of the car. I also agree with you on the diesel, a week ago I was arguing against the use of diesels in racing. Nevertheless, here you are making a mistake.
First of all, I'm not making those figures up. 11,84:1 was the overall ratio for the first gear of a 2000 Jordan F1 car (V10):
Final drive ratio 3.83:1
Transfer gear ratio 1.35:1
First gear ratio 2.29:1
Mazda 6 3.0 V6 has 13.03:1 overall ratio in the first gear from:
Final drive ratio 4.133:1
First gear ratio 3.153
You can see that by no means F1 cars employ a (4x) shorter gearing than family sedans. In reality family sedans use slightly shorter ratios (because they are not interested in high speeds).
So probably you are asking, if the torque is the same how come F1 cars accelerate 3 times faster to 60mph than Mazda 6 3.0? There are two major reasons for this. First reason is weight, Mazda 6 weights 2 times more than a F1 car. The second reason is the gearing again: in a Mazda 6 you are in 3 gear by the time you get to 60mph, whereas F1 car do not change from the 1st gear until they reach almost 100mph.
So in the first gear F1 cars accelerate twice as fast compared to family sedan, but when the driver in the family sedan changes into second gear, his car already accelerates almost 4 times slower than F1 car. There are other reasons too, like the time to change gears, launch time and so on.
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Maxzillian 12:28PM (3/31/2007)
Some of you guys are making a big mistake in thinking that torque is the only thing to worry about when it comes to wheel spin.
Something to consider is the age old Traction Circle of a tire. Meaning that every tire has a fairly set limit of traction available. When you're using most of that traction to corner a car, you have less traction to use for accelerating.
You can take a Yugo and get it to wheel spin by just cutting a hard corner and flooring the throttle.
The point is, while in a straight line the cars may not need traction control (especially at speed) they can use it quite a bit while trying to accelerate out of corners.
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pd 12:36PM (3/31/2007)
Nice to see DRIVER SKILL involved instead of electronic nannies. I remember KEKE ROSBERG flat trackin his way around corners what a sight!
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Yago Bal 12:47PM (3/31/2007)
Sooo... Now I understand why the Mazda 6 and the F1 are almost identical! :) The only differences are that the Mazda seats 5, is less interested in speed and what was the other? It was heavier?
hehehe I'm joking :)
You can make the F1 wheels spin at any speed.
You can't rely on the torque figure all the time. Maybe the Mazda and the F1 show similar values for the torque (even if the F1 shows it at 17000 rpm, and the Mazda at 4200).
So, if you put the F1 engine on the Mazda, keeping Mazda's transmission, they would accelerate more or less at the same rate... But the Mazda would be dead at 4200 and the F1 would continue to accelerate untill 600 km/h :p theoretically and in vacuum.
If you put a different transmission (with a shorter gear ratio) on you new Mazda with an F1 engine :) so that it reaches a more natural 200km/h, then the car would accelerate 3 times faster than the normal Mazda... putting 3 times more torque to the wheels.
See were you made the mistake?
The F1 is incredibly lighter than the Mazda, so the difference is even more important!
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Dan 1:02PM (3/31/2007)
@Yago Bal
I guess you haven't read my previous post. I have never said that a F1 car and Mazda 6 accelerate at the same rate. That is ridiculous. What I said is that in first gear they put the same torque to the wheels. And this is important because in first gear is where most of the wheel spin occurs (I'm talking here about wheel spin under power - of course you can slide at any speed depending of how tight the corner is).
At higher speeds F1 cars do put more torque than regular family sedans to the wheels, because they can stay in a lower gear to a much higher speed (because the engine redlines at much higher rpm), and because the gears are very close (in a regular 6 speed transmission found in a familiy sedan the gear spread is 6:1, in a 6 or 7 speed F1 gearbox the gear spread is only 2:1).
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