USF1 Updates - By Flood1

Part 1 - Staff

USF1 has been in the news mostly because no news has come out of Charlotte. Bernie famously said that he didn't think USF1 would be ready for the first race at Bahrain. "I think one or two might not turn up," he told the BBC in Singapore. "That's what I'm being told; possibly USF1 are a doubt." 

Following that, the new FIA Senate President Nick Craw said that he had a different view. He said that the team had paid their entry fee, that he had inspected their facility twice, and that "I am impressed with the progress made by the organisation since the Concorde Agreement was signed in late July."

The next news about USF1 did not come from Charlotte, but came from far away, and originated with Ross Brawn. He said, "We have been crash testing for the new car for the past two months, to be ready for the official tests. A new team should be doing the same if it wants to be ready for the beginning of the season." Brawn somehow knew what was going on in Charlotte and his comments fueled further rumours that USF1 was in serious trouble.

OK, so let's gather up what we do know from Charlotte. The questions have mostly concerned who will drive for the team. That is an important factor, but I consider a more important factor to be who works for the team. We have some new information on that.

Steve Brown, the former R & D (research and development) officer at Brawn GP, joined USF1 earlier this year after being released from his contract on his request. I don't know his exact responsibilities, but he does have current F1 experience and will help the team in whatever role he is assigned. Ken Anderson said this, "We have some really good guys with current F1 knowledge. One of the guys we have (Steve Brown) was the head of R&D at Brawn and he got to touch every part of the car. It's not like we've been doing this in a vacuum." Perhaps Brawn knows about USF1 because of his relationship with Brown. But, Brawn knows Anderson from their association at Williams in the early eighties.

Dr. Eric Warren joined USF1 as chief aerodynamicist. He is the founder of Corvid Technologies http://www.corvidtec.com  and owns the computers being used to crunch the numbers necessary to do the CFD calculations. His compay has US defense contracts including some dealing with the Aegis missle defense system. His racing experience comes from the Corvette La Mans effort.

Note: The following paragraph is in error. Below this paragraph is a re-write that contains the corrections.

Phil Morse has been named as vehicle dynamacist. He is President of Morse Measurements a company that specializes in kenetics and compliance measurements. K & C deals with maximizing suspension performance. They use precise 7 post rigs that measure the relationship between all of the fixed points on a car vis a vis the suspension points.

The current President of Morse Measurements http://www.morsemeasurements.com/index.html is co-founder Bob Simons. Mr.Morse has not been with the company since 2007. The involvement of Mr. Morse with USF1 has not been confirmed by this blog, and the involvement of Morse Measurements has not been confirmed by this blog either. Inquiries have been made and I will let you know when we have any new info.

I was contacted by Mr. Simons and he pointed out that his company does not use 7 post rigs or pull down rigs. Here is a description of the differences from the Morse Measurement website:

K&C and 7-post:  What's the difference - http://www.morsemeasurements.com/kc7post.html Also: Pull Down Rigs - http://www.morsemeasurements.com/kcpulldown.html

Thanks Mr. Simons and I apologize for the misinformation.

Bernard Fergusion, former Motorsport Director at Cosworth (2007) has joined the USF1 team to coordinate efforts between chassis design and engine supply. He was in charge at Cosworth when they built their last Formula 1 engine.

The other news is that the team has been flooded with CVs from Toyota and BMW employees. The important positions of race team manager and race crew have yet to be determined, but apparently there are many qualified applicants.

Part 2 - Technical

Ken Anderson is primarily depending of CFD to design thecar. There is not enough time to go through all of the possible combinations, mould he parts, and run them through the wind tunnel. He also thinks this wil not be a bid disadvantage compared to the establsihed teams. Ken says, "Next year is going to be a paradigm shift to narrow fron tires and no re-fueling. We've got an 1100 pound car and we're starting with 350 pounds of fuel. Thats the biggest change since '94. I think there's going to be a lot of people caught out. We've concentrated on the things we can control." Anderson seems to think that data gathered in 2009 may be useless.

Note: His figures indicate that the chassis weighs 500kg, the driver 68kg, the ballast 52kg, for a combined weight of 620kg. Combine that with 160kg of fuel, the total package at the start line would weigh 780kg.

 

The Brawn criticism about their crash testing program struck a nerve with Anderson. He has this to say: “I do not expect to finish the remaining crash tests for the nosebox and rear of US F1's car until late December or early January, choosing instead to spend more time on design. The lateral test is complete.

 

Concerning crash tests, "It's actually quite easy to pass if you design the parts right. Whatever piece it is, if it weighs ten pounds it will easily pass. But if it weighs nine pounds, eight pounds…. Toyota had 800 people and they had entire departments trying to save an ounce here and an ounce there.

 

"If you try to save 10 ounces so you can put more tungsten in the bottom of the car, that's a good thing. We're not going to lose the world championship next year because our crash structures are four ounces more than Ferrari's. It doesn't behoove us to go to the last gram. "We're not going to spend six months crashing 50 noses."

“Anybody’s that’s telling you that they passed the crash test in October stopped development in August,” said Anderson. “I would say it’s pretty normal for a team to be crash testing a month before the first race. That’s because you want to be in the wind tunnel to see if the development and the shape is working. Once you sign off on the crash test, that’s it. You’re locked in.”

So, I would say they have a plan whether Ross Brawn agrees with it or not.

Comments

[sportsman]

Excellent news.I am pleased to see Steve Brown join them.
Bernard Ferguson will be a very valuable information source.They certainly appear to be puting a very knowledgeable team together.
These guys combined the CFD technology available to them from Covid looks good.Did find their allocated driver weight a bit on he light side. 68kg equates to just under 150lbs which seems a touch light to me.Most drivers are around this weight Button is 69kg Aonso 68 but Alonso if you recall suffered from blackouts due to weightloss to accomadate KERS

[Paul_Murtagh]

The rumours of the signing of Jose Maria Lopez should help put to bed the stories that USF1 won't make it, and as Sportsman says the signing of Steve Brown and also Dr. Eric Warren could prove to be shrewd moves.

The driver weight are interesting. As sportsman also stated, some drivers such as Alonso were trying to shed weight last year to help with ballast and KERS and this was causing health issues. Obviously with each pound saved it gives you more ballast to play with, but hopefully not at the expense of a driver's health

[flood1]

Maybe Jose Lopez weights 68 kilos?

[flood1]

Kamui Kobayashi 126
Luca Badoer 128
Nick Heidfeld 130
Felipe Massa 130
Kazuki Nakajima 136
Sebastien Buemi 136
Sebastian Vettel 141
Jaime Alguersuari 143
Heikki Kovalainen 145
Fernando Alonso 149
Jenson Button 150
Lewis Hamilton 150
Romain Grosjean 150
Kimi Raikkonen 154
Nico Rosberg 155
Nelson Piquet Jr. 155
Sebastien Bourdais 159
David Coulthard 165
Giancarlo Fisichella 165
Mark Webber 165
Adrian Sutil 165
Jarno Trulli 167
Rubens Barrichello 169
Robert Kubica 180

These numbers average 150.54 pounds or 68.42 kilos. So, the numbers used by USF1 are an average of the entire grid. I guess in some way that could be a design criteria and a target weight in driver selection. It would be like horse racing.

[flood1]

Here is a link to a one month old Peter Windsor article in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/sports/autoracing/26iht-SRWINDSOR.html?_r=1&hpw

[Bob Simons]

I have two fact corrections for you. 1) Phil Morse is no longer president of Morse Measurements and has not been in that role since 2007. Phil and I founded Morse Measurements together in 2005. He sold his interest in the company in 2007 and is no longer actively involved. 2) Kinematics & Compliance (K&C) testing is not 7-post testing, nor is it a pull-down rig. The K&C test machine is capable of applying realistic cornering, braking, and tractive loads to the car while measuring both chassis position and wheel orientations. Other test rigs, such as the 7-post shaker and the various pull-down rigs and "K-rigs" are incapable of applying these loads.

[flood1]

Mr. Simons, I certainly appreciate this info. The guys that write this blog are long time fans. We all have engineering experience and a little racing experience, but none of us have any race engineering experience. Sportsman is a structural engineer and I am electrical.

Thanks for setting the record straight. Can you recommend a source of information about K & C so that we can better inform ourselves of the technology?

Any help would be appreciated.

John Flood

[sportsman]

Very interesting websites.I had a very informative hour or so going through it.

I hope that we get similair comments from other knowledgable sources.

Thanks for your time Mr.Simons.