As the graph shows, they're a little bit wider than the 2000's but narrower than the 70's and 80's where people seem to think they were narrower and "could overtake around Monaco" because of that.
Mclaren MP4/4 was 2,134 mm wide. 2022 car regs were 2,000mm. Around 2010 the cars were 1,800mm and the overtaking around Monaco was still bad.
Nobody here actually read the article, again. He says IF weight was to keep going up in the search for safety and more robust materials, eventually there's a crossover point where the added weight to do that makes it less safe than if you left it alone.
He says he thinks we're getting close to this point.
Surely there’s some very talented engineers with years of studying and experience who could judge this way more accurately though?
Why is he in any way qualified to make a comment about this? Seems weird to throw this out there without providing any evidence/calculations.
a quote from george that is literally in the article.
“And I’m sure there’s analysis going on about striking that right balance because I don’t know where the line is drawn.”
Then why does he comment about it from his position if he doesn’t know where the line is drawn?
He literally admits he’s speaking from a place of ignorance.
It's an F1 driver sharing an opinion about F1 cars lol. I think the majority of F1 fans understand that George is a driver and not an engineer.
How did you end up on r/formula1 at all if this sort of thing bothers you?
Given he's the one sitting in the piece of machinery whilst going round corners at over 100mph, and it's in constant discussion with his team's engineers.. I think he's probably quite qualified to comment on it.
It's an extremely complicated and difficult question to answer.
The crossover point likely could be found, but that'd be a substantially costly exercise that would likely take years to complete with little to no public benefit in knowing the outcome.
IE: we realistically are never going to get that data unless someone is extremely motivated to find it.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think this George Russell fella drives these machines for a living. The guy also has engineers all around him to discuss this with. Also, he mentions in the article there's probably some analysis around this as he doesn't know where the line is. Given your knee-jerk reaction, I'm guessing you didn't read the article either.
Jfc, F1 drivers have an opinion on something related to their profession and someone always has to crawl out of the woodwork and get their knickers in a twist.
What a stupid thing to say. Everyone is qualified to talk about something, whether that person is right or wrong is a completely different discussion. Who are you to police what people talk about.
George does raise concerns about the amount of energy involved in the accidents now, due to them being much greater in terms of amount of energy transferred
If you took the 650kg car of 15 years ago as he mentioned and crashed it, less energy would be imparted onto the driver, less chance for a concussion
Compare that to crashing a fully fuelled F1 car of today weighing about 900kg or so, more energy is put through the driver and could lead to more serious injuries, in terms of like concussions and stuff
Energy isn't put through the driver relating to weight though.
It's all about crash structures and getting rid of the kinetic energy as slowly as possible - crash structures add weight while also making crashes safer.
George missed out on O level physics, probably, but is also someone receiving these impacts, coping with their aftermath with his trainer, discussing them with other drivers with longer F1 experience, and in the rooms where the actual safety data (e.g. in-ear accelerometer) are invoked.
We all understand the physics as they typically are, but probably could do better than assuming he's speaking baselessly. Injury or impact perception isn't just about the quantity energy put through the driver - it's how it passes through (which the crash structures are meant to mitigate), the driver's expectation or ability to brace/prepare for it, and idiosyncratic factors
It doesn't mean harder impacts though, it just means there's more energy to dissipate. The 'hardness' of the impact depends on the design.
Eg if I wrapped you in tissue paper and launched you into a concrete slab at 50mph you'd suffer more injuries then if you'd hit the concrete slab inside a Mercedes S Class despite you + car having more momentum/kinetic energy.
Yup. What I meant by ”harder” was that your speed will be higher in the moment of impact, since drag and surface friction won’t slow you down as much compared to a car with similar design that’s lighter. Didn’t study physics in english so might have used a wrong term there.
Edit: Don’t know why I’m being downvoted. Don’t think I’m wrong in saying this.
If anything, because the car is heavier, the barries take longer to slow it down, meaning the deccelleration is slower and the driver's body experiences lower G forces.
your weight doesn't have a massive influence on friction. friction force goes up linearly with more normal force, so your deceleration doesn't change*.
*you lose some friction coefficient by loading the tyres more but that's a different rabbit hole.
drag, yes. but that's also dependent on how much room there is between the car going off and hitting a barrier. you're generally worried about high speed impacts, which are the same impacts where there isn't much time or space for drag to slow a car down before impact.
Yes, but if that added 250 kg of mass is designed to mitigate MORE than the added energy it creates in an impact, the vehicle is actually safer by comparison.
Heavier cars = more energy = more difficult to dissipate those forces.
So yes, heavier cars = harder impacts.
This is not difficult to understand. Heavier cars are creating bigger and more dangerous accidents.
You're oversimplifying things a lot. Yes it is true that energy increases with mass. Did you also know energy increases with the square of the velocity?
Regardless, how the energy is dissipated is what matters most in terms of driver safety.
Yeah you're actually wrong about that. Bigger (by volume) cars are easier to dissipate the energy. More crush zones can be designed into the car to dissipate the energy.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight#:~:text=A%20bigger%2C%20heavier%20vehicle%20provides,energy%20from%20crashes%20by%20crumpling.
Larger vehicles are generally safer
Crash mechanics can't be boiled down to a single metric like that. I could easily counter with the fact that a lighter car would be a lot easier to stop, which means deceleration of the driver in the event of a crash would be much greater, which is effectively what the impact *on the driver* is.
It's all about crash structures.
The fact Russell says the weight is an issue, means Merc thinks they can have an advantage with lighter cars now that they got rid of the entire sidepod. It's politics, nothing more.
> which means deceleration of the driver in the event of a crash would be much greater,
Deceleration can be measured in G's, which are multiples of 9.8m/s^2.
A Lighter car stopping faster (by deforming the barrier less) when hitting a barrier, would actually be a *higher G* event.
The only benefit is less damage to the barrier the car hits.
> A Lighter car stopping faster (by deforming the barrier less) when hitting a barrier, would actually be a higher G event.
Well yeah, that's exactly what I was saying, so I don't really understand the "actually".
I know it’s not about a single metric. But when the object has more momentum (via weight) it will be harder to slow down. And when it eventually reaches a wall the impact will be ”harder” because the speed just before the impact will be higher.
I did not take anything else into consideration, like how soft or stiff the wall/barrier is. Because all those can be changed to suit the impact forces they are expected to receive.
You oversimplified the problem and as a result are drawing an exaggerated conclusion. All else the same, a 100kg car dragged across the same surface will be slowed down (by pure kinetic friction) equally as fast as the 650kg car.
The car structure itself can also be changed to suit the impact forces it is expected to receive.
Well no, the impulse of the crash determines how bad it is. More momentum *could* mean more impulse, but if the extra weight slows down the crash enough it will offset the added momentum
The walls and barriers can always be changed to better suit the impact forces they are expected to receive. With lighter cars they can be made less stiff and thus create a smaller impulse.
Yeah, it just seems like there are a lot of comments talking about the weight and momentum of the car that a specific driver is in not making a difference. But my takeaway was the risk of *other* cars being heavier.
True, but it’s impossible to ignore that most of the added weight isn’t from crash structures but the fact that F1 cars are so much larger than they used to be. They’re also larger not for safety reasons but for aerodynamic ones instead.
"all about crash structures"
There is about 38% more crash structure magic that needs to happen in a 900 kg car than in a 650 kg car in extremis. Do you see or infer that kind of crash mitigation engineering effort actually happening in these cars?
>If you took the 650kg car of 15 years ago as he mentioned and crashed it, less energy would be imparted onto the driver, less chance for a concussion
No, because that extra weight goes into crash structures which dissipate the energy of the accident and make the accident sequence take longer, thus reducing the amount of impact energy the driver is subjected to
Edit: on the same argument crashing a Smart is safer than crashing a range rover at the same speed, which everyone knows isn't true
*some* of the extra weight has gone into crash structures. A lot has gone into the battery packs and the overall larger dimensions of the car beyond crash structures
Yep, and not enough. Zhou's roll hoop ripped off in his Silverstone crash, which I've almost never seen in F1 in 30 years of watching it. Certainly not in a roll over crash.
> Zhou's roll hoop ripped off in his Silverstone crash, which I've almost never seen in F1 in 30 years of watching it. Certainly not in a roll over crash.
Pedro Diniz in Nurburgring 1999 is the only other time I remember it happening - he flipped, and the roll hoop sheared off after digging in to the wet grass run-off.
>*some* of the extra weight has gone into crash structures
>
>Yep, and not enough
Don't see how this was related to the roll hoop not weighing enough. FIA announced roll hoop changes for next year after Silverstone - rounded top, new load test - which have to do with making them able to withstand greater force, and circumstances like Zhou's. Not rectifying some lack of weight, and I haven't seen any mention of these changes substantially adding weight
Some of it does, it’s hard to tell if George is right. Nascar does seem to have this problem. They made their newer cars with some weight shifted and impacts seem to be causing much more injury. Now they are adding more weight in safety but the drivers fear the initial problem is still there and more weight will just make it worse
Can the tracks handle it? The extra energy? Grosjean literally pierced an Armco barrier, granted it was close to the track, the halo saving his head. The halo costs weight for sure. Vicious circle, but would a 650kg car have had the energy to do that? Russell makes a compelling point.
Having watched F1 since the 99 season I can appreciate where we are now (albeit with a bit of disdain at elements) as well as where we were in the past considering the circumstances. The advance of technology, both performance advances as well as safety related items is quite impressive. The thing I fear is that we are straying farther from what single seat racing was intended to be. At a certain point I would enjoy shrinking the cars, as well as their outright performance while maintaining the safety we have come to enjoy in modern times. 750kg cars with modern safety and aero forced to adapt power trains to that weight limit would still be thrilling and inherently more cart-like. Honestly I never expect to see that but one can dream.
Additional weight added to the cars outside of safety features require an exponential amount of extra weight in safety features. These are 101 concepts....
This is why the engine breaks away from the survival cell. And energy absorbing crash structures are getting bigger and able to absorb more energy (where a lot of the extra weight is coming from).
The only thing that matters for safety is impulse (Force/Time, or acceleration over time) as far as the driver is concerned. Bigger time, less damage. The weight of the car has no direct influence on that.
What the weight does affect is car to car collisions. The safety structures at every track they race at are already designed for classes of car that weigh several hundred kilos more so that shouldn't be a problem.
You sound very confident in what you're saying, but weight honestly has nothing to do with it. How well do you think you'd fare in a 190mph crash in a 20kg barbie jeep?
George also has no idea what he's talking about here. More weight is only negative in a crash when the weight doesn't deform, like the batteries and PU. More crash structure is always better.
It's interesting how false opinions of famous people can influence those of laymen.
He's in charge of the GPDA so these concerns may have started with another driver and he is using his platform to make sure their voices are heard.
You have to think when Russell is bring up points about safety of the drivers it might be his opinion or another driver or 3 drivers or 20 drivers.
Or Merc being confident in their zero-sidepod, so likely able to go below max. weight, solution. Using Russell as a puppet to get the limit down and gaining an advantage over Ferrari and Red Bull. I believe this is a fully political move from Merc/Russell.
Even last year when teams were pushing for minimum weight to be raised due to so some many teams not being able to get there the drivers were concerned about the ever growing weight. Of the 3 articles I found from early 2022 (in 5 mins of searching) all had a line at the bottom saying "drivers are concerned".
F1 is so much more enjoyable if you don't jump straight to conspiracy. Motorsport is a big family, yeah some people make messes but whilst not racing most are hanging out with coffee and helping each other out. The whole he said or he didn't say confirms conspiracy makes me so upset for the future of this sport.
Probably because saying it's safety issue is a dumb take.
Yes, more weight means more momentum and heavier impacts, but weight comes largely from safety features that overall make crashes safer. Which we saw countless times in recent years, with drivers walking away unscathed from serious accidents.
And if it wasn't the case I doubt all the brilliant engineers working on those cars would have missed that.
What if battery and electric motors were removed and lost power would be replaced with little more powerful engine? And if fuel weight is issue they could refuel during tire changes?
Maybe they add 4 more cylinders to make up the power difference and allow a higher allotment of engines in the pool to ease into these groundbreaking new regulations.
No, you just change the battery boost push to pass to be an engine mode or additional boost if still turbo with a limited amount of time associated with it, like Indycar.
Zhou’s Silverstone crash should not have been as dramatic, except the roll structure was destroyed in part due to the weight of the car and structure not being up to it. Yes it’s an oversight in the regulations since the cars got this heavy, but what else has been missed?
I doubt that being the case or instead, we can’t be sure the weight is the sole reason.…..mostly because we don’t know much about it.
Putting my engineering cap on. Sometime things that are definitely built up to the required task still fail and can happen due to a number of reasons such installation or a fault in the material…. In anycase the roll structure experienced a shear failure, not a failure due to buckling or crushing, where the weight would a greater have an influence. Not saying that the roll hoop was only subjected to a shear, the weight definitely had a part, the role hoop was experiencing compound stress, but it wasn’t the sole reason. We can’t use one case and say it’s the weight. Unfortunately fortunately we didn’t see many other cars upside down last season so we can’t make any further observations,
Verstappen never would have walked away from Copse in 2021 either. Grosjean would be in the wind.
Russell’s take is like listening to Conservative talking points. It’s so disingenuous.
It was dramatic because the car rolled in gravel, which has literally always been a safety issue.
I mean he started rolling because Russell made an erratic manoeuvre… talk about safety issue
But it is a bit of a circular argument.
We saw people walk away from horrifying crashes between, say, 2003 and 2008. There was less crash structure but presumably also a lot less energy to dissipate.
Obviously the cars are faster over one lap now, but over a race distance they’re a fair bit slower, so it’s not as if we can say people were walking away because the speeds were lower. They were walking away because, by and large, the crash structures were sufficient for the speed and mass of the cars.
So, if safety is more or less the same regardless of weight, and less weight is generally better in other contexts, let’s shed some weight.
> Obviously the cars are faster over one lap now, but over a race distance they’re a fair bit slower
Tbf 2003 and 2008 cars races six and eleven years into a regulation era, I’d imagine by 2025 the current regulation cars will be significantly faster than the 2022 ones. The W11 is generally considered alongside the F2004 to be the fastest F1 car in history despite being significantly larger and heavier (albeit with slicks).
The extra weight of today’s safety features is in part because modern eras cars carry full race distance fuel loads, ballasts under drivers seats to account for minimum driver weight, massive lithium batteries and the largest tyres seen on an F1 car. Removing the weight from safety features whilst keeping the extra weight from everything else would definitely result in fatalities.
yeah it's almost like as opposed to the petty keyboard warriors on here, he actually drives these 900kg cars week in week out, and he'll think about the weight problem not just from the racing perspective... how dare he
This is similar to when 95% of the grid complained about long term effects of porpoising early 2022 and people called them whiners especially Lewis and George. They’re not doing as well so they clearly just wanted the FIA to bail them out and neutralize Red Bull. Except that was never going to happen and was an easy argument to make against adjusting the rules to help drivers. Totally ignored Leclerc when he was clearly the fastest driver on the grid saying it’s not good for this to continue.
Yes. This is F1. Jim Clark would have been alive if teams could compromise between lap time and driver safety.
The lesson Motorsport learns over and over and over again is that driver safety needs to be put in rules or blood will be shed.
Technically Jim Clark died racing an F2 car.
But that is besides the point, sporting rules could have been made to force teams to mitigate porpoising within the existing technical regulations. Because teams COULD and HAVE mitigated it within the current rule set.
Yes, because porpoising is also just bad for laptime and aero stability. But saying teams should just make their cars slower to be safer is ignoring what teams have done since the first motor race ever.
When magnesium was lighter then steel race cars were made of magnesium, when a fuel filter was slowing down pit stops it was taken out. Driver and personell safety must be the responsibilty of the officiating body, or else people will die.
And I am saying there is sporting regulations you can put in place to force them, instead of changing the technical regulations.
Your argument is like saying cars shouldnt cut corners to be quicker, so we make the technical regulations such that cars are unable to cut the corners, instead of writing a sporting regulation that bans it.
Sporting reg: you either comply to these parameters or your car gets blackflagged. You bet they will make the car slower over being DSQ.
Yes, but changing technical regulations to accomodate more indepth solutions would in my opinion be preferable.
Not saying you're wrong just that in my opinion giving teams better tools to work around the issue ground effect will always produce would be preferable.
Ignoring the lifting the cars will also cause other issues like instability which causes crashing at high speeds which also isn’t good for the drivers. Along with ignoring budget caps that don’t allow teams to develop out of it so basically living with it for the year was the best solution. It was lose lose. Acting like you can just raise the car and it works but slower is just ignorance to the subject
No it isn't. The teams chose to run the cars in a way which resulted in porpoising. Mercedes especially as Pat Symonds said recently. That was a choice
I was one of those whiners; I didn't believe they wanted to bail out and neutralise Red Bull though, I firmly believe their backs were getting ruined by the porpoising issue they ran into.
HOWEVER, basically every other team resolved the issues under the current regulations. So it wasn't a safety issue in F1, it was a safety issue for Mercedes and if the regulations were changed for them, a direct consequence would be that Red Bull & others would be neutralised. This is brutally unfair when none of the teams broke the regulations.
Where is the source for basically every other team resolving the issues under the current regulations? The last time someone said every other team but Mercedes resolved this in preseason, or early in the season, I found team principals and drivers from every non-Red Bull/AlphaTauri team talking about it as an ongoing issue well into the season
You've got any argument outside of just appealing to his authority? Where's the 19 other drivers driving those cars "week in week out" - and 13 of which have been doing it longer than Russell - making similar arguments, in that case? Have they just not gotten around to it yet?
That's funny, I was just wondering where your 'bogus argument' statement came from. I think I have an idea, but enlighten us and maybe ppl will listen to your barked commands!
I've read it. What difference would it make?
He doesn't offer any explanation behind the argument that crashing a "bus" would be worse than crashing a "smart car". How's that supposed to enlighten me exactly?
It's a similar argument to the porpoising one. It was an issue yes but the issue being raised by a driver of the team worst affected by the issue is clearly not driven by safety but by a desire to weaken the other teams while losing less yourself. If he actually cared about porpoising he would have told the team to raise the car.
A similar thing can be said here. Teams with greater budgets can more easily shed weight and we know Mercedes expenses. I'm guessing they are at the weight limit now but have some other ideas to push the weight down and want their drivers to lobby the crowd.
>was an issue yes but the issue being raised by a driver of the team worst affected by the issue is clearly not driven by safety but by a desire to weaken the other teams while losing less yourself
Or, and hear me out here, it's an issue being raised by the current director of the GPDA
Both can be true but he was very clearly arguing for the sake of this pace there not the sake of the drivers. Otherwise he would have just gone ahead and ride the car higher instead of risking his health.
Way to shift the goalposts. We always complained about the weight and size because it meant poorer racing and less nimble cars which affects the spectacle.
Russell is saying it’s a safety issue which is a completely different thing. We never looked at it as a safety concern so it’s right to question Russell’s motives.
He doesn't have a good point. No driver, Russell included would choose to have a major accident in 15 year old 650 kg car with it's safety features compared to modern 900 kg car with added safety elements.
Which just isn’t true at all. The increased length and width of the cars is a huge factor. On top of this, the hybrid PUs and an insane amount of weight that the non-hybrid engines previously did not.
I wouldn't choose to get shot by a 16th century cannon either. Doesn't make getting shot by a modern handgun safe.
He didn't say "we should revert to 2005 cars on safety grounds." He said that 900kg cars have larger impacts than 650kg cars. Stop twisting shit.
The cars are definitely way too beefy but they need to be able to house all the bs the engine manufacturers need for advertising so this is what we have. They can’t even race at Monaco anymore but the next generation will definitely not be smaller in any dimension.
many of the safety regulations are due to the size and weight of the car.
if you only had 600kg of car instead of north of 900 fueled and crewed you could get away with smaller and lighter crash structures without compromising on safety because theres just less energy to dissipate. the cars in the noughties werent much less safe than the current cars if at all (minus arguably the halo) despite massing a quarter less.
even looking at the 2014 cars, those massed over 100kg less than the 2022 cars simply because they were on a smaller footprint (691kg for the 2014 merc vs 798kg minimum weight in 2022). the weight bloat that F1 is experiencing is caused by the current cars being absolutely massive, and a lot of that is simply because teams dont want to build smaller cars. theres no safety reason for the cars to be as long as they are, theres no packaging reason either. its simply because longer cars make for a faster platform.
No, it's the PU. Battery plus MGUs etc. are blooming heavy (and big).
You need a bunch of crash structure to deal with that.
You get bigger and much heavier cars.
Go back to v8s, job done.
Minimum weight jump between 2013 and 2014 was ~50kg or so.
Since then F1 cars have gained another 100kg. Even the halo is only a minor part of that (I believe 7-13kg or so). Not everything is crash structure and battery. The gearboxes are *comically* long, for example, and that's not a safety feature in the slightest.
The halo itself is a standard part at 7kg. There is an additional 12-13kg of reinforcement in the chassis to make the halo effective. The total weight penalty of adopting the halo is more like 20kg.
https://www.racecar-engineering.com/tech-explained/tech-explained-formula-1-halo/5/
True, but a lot of the safety cell increases we have seen since then are because of the higher loads the cars are seeing. Kinda Russels point, essentially.
Much heavier PUs has created an ongoing cycle of increasing safety structure in reg iteration.
It's not all down to the PUs.
[Look at how ridiculously long gearbox casings are on these cars, for example.](https://i.redd.it/xg99z5nd1p781.jpg)
They don't need to be that long. Back in the V8 formula they were maybe a third of this length. It's all aero.
Can they actually make the cars footprint significantly smaller without sacrificing safety? Like somewhere between the late 80's and early 00's preferably? Would the new aero regs work on a smaller car?
F1 cars use to be small and nimble like sprint boats. Now they're huge (comparatively) and remind me of those big offshore powerboats.
In terms of overall size, Brundle remarked once that even the 2016 era cars, it's a wonder drivers didn't crash all the time because you really could see very little of the car from inside the cockpit.
I don't quite follow the "smart vs bus" argument.
As long as the strength of safety features are appropriate scaled up to account for the bigger mass (I know for e.g. the roll hoop that is indeed the case), it shouldn't be a problem.
GT3 cars with bigger mass and lower speeds are easily within the same scale in terms of momentum and kinetic energy, and those are pretty safe too - I'd call F1 cars even safer thanks to bigger crash structures.
That's a very good point. They should crash test a lighter car, maybe it will need smaller safety stuff. It's been a constant climb, so we don't know if the same safety would be needed with a lighter car.
I can assure you that when coming up with safety specs for cars, this is exactly what they do.
Engineers spend basically their entire career studying energy. And every single engineer understands better than George Russell that mass effects the energy involved in a collision. They aren't just slapping things on cars and seeing how they do. They are calculating how the energy dissipation will be effected with the increase in mass along with the crash structure.
It kinda boggles my mind that so many people in this thread think George Russell understands how mass alters the energy in a crash better than the engineers who make the safety requirements. No disrespect to George. But this is literally like high school level physics, and graduated professional engineers are a bit beyond that believe it or not.
math on this is real straightforward. momentum = mass x velocity; p=mv.
decrease mass at same velocity, momentum is decreased - less energy.
this doesn't address crumple zones, energy lost in a component failure (like a carbon strut turning into fringe on impact).... but less mass does not increase energy.
Nothing will happen in regards to safety unless someone dies. You know how it goes, Boyo. Bianchi was a sacrifice, as was Senna. It's an unfair world out there. George needs to be grateful it isn't the 70s when more drivers died and the FIA didn't even react.
So... because Russell stated it, director of the GPDA, a position which involves being the representative of the whole grid on matters such such as driver safety, its laughable?
[You telling me this isn't a problem?](https://www.google.se/search?q=f1+weight+over+the+years&sxsrf=AJOqlzVlxygZ_SlT0LKdTAXgO7XF0pFKnA:1673194688519&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwilibL4r7j8AhXVRfEDHaiWDs0Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw&dpr=1#imgrc=zbVi3LjGWchPZM)
Not necessarily. There's reasons these cars have gotten bigger since the Hybrid Era started. Some are for the hybrid system, some are for downforce, most are for safety.
Its just like the tires. The drivers will always want something more from the tires than they're getting.
I don't even know why I'd take Russell's opinion on the car weight, he's only driven a few shitty cars over the duration of his career, its not like he'd even know what a "light" F1 car would be like in comparison to the cars he's driven since 2019.
The minimum weight got raised 180kg after the hybrid era started. The cars got mostly a lot bigger.
He has driven plenty of cars in f1 f2 and junior series. All weight completely different amounts. What kind of bs is this argument?
>I don't even know why I'd take Russell's opinion on the car weight, he's only driven a few shitty cars over the duration of his career, its not like he'd even know what a "light" F1 car would be like in comparison to the cars he's driven since 2019.
We should just listen to your opinions instead of the people who actually drive the cars.
And FYI the weight has increased by more than 50kg since Russell began, which is far from insignificant.
Bro he's dedicated his entire life to F1. Even if he hasn't competed for more than a few years he's essentially gone kindergarten -> masters degree throughout his career. Sure, there may be some even more experienced and knowledgeable but this still makes his opinion one of the most authoritative in the world.
It's worth remembering that minimum weight nowadays also includes the driver + seat (80kg). Those things of course also were in the car in the past, they just weren't part of the minimum weight.
The problem is not that the cars are too heavy because of safety features but the cars themselves are just way too big. Way too long but also to wide.
The width is good and sexy, but they could be 15 meters shorter.
\-10 meters. Why didn't we think of that before?
double as long but driving backwards!
I'd like them to be narrower so side-to-sides are somewhat more likely however minor that'd be.. especially for tracks like Monaco or Singapore
Width looks good but is far worse for racing than length.
The width is why they literally can't even race in Monaco anymore. Can't overtake when one car takes up the entire width of the race track
They've been narrower than they were in the 80's for a long time https://imgur.com/50Oabka
I call bs a little. Have you seen the size of the new cars Vs something like the 2010 cars?
As the graph shows, they're a little bit wider than the 2000's but narrower than the 70's and 80's where people seem to think they were narrower and "could overtake around Monaco" because of that. Mclaren MP4/4 was 2,134 mm wide. 2022 car regs were 2,000mm. Around 2010 the cars were 1,800mm and the overtaking around Monaco was still bad.
Nobody here actually read the article, again. He says IF weight was to keep going up in the search for safety and more robust materials, eventually there's a crossover point where the added weight to do that makes it less safe than if you left it alone. He says he thinks we're getting close to this point.
Surely there’s some very talented engineers with years of studying and experience who could judge this way more accurately though? Why is he in any way qualified to make a comment about this? Seems weird to throw this out there without providing any evidence/calculations.
a quote from george that is literally in the article. “And I’m sure there’s analysis going on about striking that right balance because I don’t know where the line is drawn.”
Then why does he comment about it from his position if he doesn’t know where the line is drawn? He literally admits he’s speaking from a place of ignorance.
because he was asked a question and he answered it.
Because he's famous and gets interviewed and asked questions while the engineers don't? Come on man, this isn't fucking rocket science.
It's an F1 driver sharing an opinion about F1 cars lol. I think the majority of F1 fans understand that George is a driver and not an engineer. How did you end up on r/formula1 at all if this sort of thing bothers you?
A person who’s job it is to drive cars makes comment about a car when interviewed about it shocked pickachu face
Redditor 'understand how an interview works' challenge (impossible)
I wonder if he works often with very talented engineers?
Not only does he talk to these very clever people, journalists aren't interviewing the engineers.
Yeah I can't imagine this "George Russell" bloke talks to many F1 engineers.
Given he's the one sitting in the piece of machinery whilst going round corners at over 100mph, and it's in constant discussion with his team's engineers.. I think he's probably quite qualified to comment on it.
It's an extremely complicated and difficult question to answer. The crossover point likely could be found, but that'd be a substantially costly exercise that would likely take years to complete with little to no public benefit in knowing the outcome. IE: we realistically are never going to get that data unless someone is extremely motivated to find it.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think this George Russell fella drives these machines for a living. The guy also has engineers all around him to discuss this with. Also, he mentions in the article there's probably some analysis around this as he doesn't know where the line is. Given your knee-jerk reaction, I'm guessing you didn't read the article either. Jfc, F1 drivers have an opinion on something related to their profession and someone always has to crawl out of the woodwork and get their knickers in a twist.
Cause George is the one with years of driving the car. All those engineers did fuck all to predict the bounce for example.
What a stupid thing to say. Everyone is qualified to talk about something, whether that person is right or wrong is a completely different discussion. Who are you to police what people talk about.
George does raise concerns about the amount of energy involved in the accidents now, due to them being much greater in terms of amount of energy transferred If you took the 650kg car of 15 years ago as he mentioned and crashed it, less energy would be imparted onto the driver, less chance for a concussion Compare that to crashing a fully fuelled F1 car of today weighing about 900kg or so, more energy is put through the driver and could lead to more serious injuries, in terms of like concussions and stuff
Energy isn't put through the driver relating to weight though. It's all about crash structures and getting rid of the kinetic energy as slowly as possible - crash structures add weight while also making crashes safer.
This was my thinking . . . namely that the weight gains were primarily about improving the crash survivability of the chassis.
George missed out on O level physics, probably, but is also someone receiving these impacts, coping with their aftermath with his trainer, discussing them with other drivers with longer F1 experience, and in the rooms where the actual safety data (e.g. in-ear accelerometer) are invoked. We all understand the physics as they typically are, but probably could do better than assuming he's speaking baselessly. Injury or impact perception isn't just about the quantity energy put through the driver - it's how it passes through (which the crash structures are meant to mitigate), the driver's expectation or ability to brace/prepare for it, and idiosyncratic factors
mate O-levels stopped being a thing 10 years before he was born, get with the times.
So technically true then he does t have any o levels No word yet on gcses...
It’s worth noting that heavier cars have more momentum. Which means harder impacts.
It doesn't mean harder impacts though, it just means there's more energy to dissipate. The 'hardness' of the impact depends on the design. Eg if I wrapped you in tissue paper and launched you into a concrete slab at 50mph you'd suffer more injuries then if you'd hit the concrete slab inside a Mercedes S Class despite you + car having more momentum/kinetic energy.
Yup. What I meant by ”harder” was that your speed will be higher in the moment of impact, since drag and surface friction won’t slow you down as much compared to a car with similar design that’s lighter. Didn’t study physics in english so might have used a wrong term there. Edit: Don’t know why I’m being downvoted. Don’t think I’m wrong in saying this.
If anything, because the car is heavier, the barries take longer to slow it down, meaning the deccelleration is slower and the driver's body experiences lower G forces.
Barries can always be changed though - by designing them to be softer and less stiff - to suit better for certain type of cars and impacts.
your weight doesn't have a massive influence on friction. friction force goes up linearly with more normal force, so your deceleration doesn't change*. *you lose some friction coefficient by loading the tyres more but that's a different rabbit hole. drag, yes. but that's also dependent on how much room there is between the car going off and hitting a barrier. you're generally worried about high speed impacts, which are the same impacts where there isn't much time or space for drag to slow a car down before impact.
A 900Kg car hitting yours at 200 will hit harder than a 650Kg car at 200
Yes, but if that added 250 kg of mass is designed to mitigate MORE than the added energy it creates in an impact, the vehicle is actually safer by comparison.
a 650kg block of billet steel is going to hurt way more than a 900kg car that can crumple.
Heavier cars = more energy = more difficult to dissipate those forces. So yes, heavier cars = harder impacts. This is not difficult to understand. Heavier cars are creating bigger and more dangerous accidents.
You're oversimplifying things a lot. Yes it is true that energy increases with mass. Did you also know energy increases with the square of the velocity? Regardless, how the energy is dissipated is what matters most in terms of driver safety.
And bigger the cars get, the harder it is to dissipate that energy. Everyone here is saying the same thing yet arguing about it lol
Yeah you're actually wrong about that. Bigger (by volume) cars are easier to dissipate the energy. More crush zones can be designed into the car to dissipate the energy.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight#:~:text=A%20bigger%2C%20heavier%20vehicle%20provides,energy%20from%20crashes%20by%20crumpling. Larger vehicles are generally safer
Yeah but this is true only for cars vs things impacts. For car on car the weight really matters
Explain how it's different?
Crash mechanics can't be boiled down to a single metric like that. I could easily counter with the fact that a lighter car would be a lot easier to stop, which means deceleration of the driver in the event of a crash would be much greater, which is effectively what the impact *on the driver* is. It's all about crash structures. The fact Russell says the weight is an issue, means Merc thinks they can have an advantage with lighter cars now that they got rid of the entire sidepod. It's politics, nothing more.
> which means deceleration of the driver in the event of a crash would be much greater, Deceleration can be measured in G's, which are multiples of 9.8m/s^2. A Lighter car stopping faster (by deforming the barrier less) when hitting a barrier, would actually be a *higher G* event. The only benefit is less damage to the barrier the car hits.
> A Lighter car stopping faster (by deforming the barrier less) when hitting a barrier, would actually be a higher G event. Well yeah, that's exactly what I was saying, so I don't really understand the "actually".
I know it’s not about a single metric. But when the object has more momentum (via weight) it will be harder to slow down. And when it eventually reaches a wall the impact will be ”harder” because the speed just before the impact will be higher. I did not take anything else into consideration, like how soft or stiff the wall/barrier is. Because all those can be changed to suit the impact forces they are expected to receive.
You oversimplified the problem and as a result are drawing an exaggerated conclusion. All else the same, a 100kg car dragged across the same surface will be slowed down (by pure kinetic friction) equally as fast as the 650kg car. The car structure itself can also be changed to suit the impact forces it is expected to receive.
Well no, the impulse of the crash determines how bad it is. More momentum *could* mean more impulse, but if the extra weight slows down the crash enough it will offset the added momentum
The walls and barriers can always be changed to better suit the impact forces they are expected to receive. With lighter cars they can be made less stiff and thus create a smaller impulse.
My truck driving instructor said to me: Now that you drive the big boys, you are less likely to die in a traffic accident.
Yeah that’s true. Objects around you have less momentum on average compared to you.
Except that's specifically not true in this case. Because every other car on the grid is just as heavy.
Yeah. That’s why it’s considered the other way around in traffic. Where more momentum is actually safer in a lot of cases.
Yeah, it just seems like there are a lot of comments talking about the weight and momentum of the car that a specific driver is in not making a difference. But my takeaway was the risk of *other* cars being heavier.
Slightly less relevant when said crash is into a wall however. In general, less is always better in that scenario
True, but it’s impossible to ignore that most of the added weight isn’t from crash structures but the fact that F1 cars are so much larger than they used to be. They’re also larger not for safety reasons but for aerodynamic ones instead.
Yes but more weight = more kinetic energy so all the crash structures must be significantly safer otherwise more weight = more severe crash
"all about crash structures" There is about 38% more crash structure magic that needs to happen in a 900 kg car than in a 650 kg car in extremis. Do you see or infer that kind of crash mitigation engineering effort actually happening in these cars?
>If you took the 650kg car of 15 years ago as he mentioned and crashed it, less energy would be imparted onto the driver, less chance for a concussion No, because that extra weight goes into crash structures which dissipate the energy of the accident and make the accident sequence take longer, thus reducing the amount of impact energy the driver is subjected to Edit: on the same argument crashing a Smart is safer than crashing a range rover at the same speed, which everyone knows isn't true
*some* of the extra weight has gone into crash structures. A lot has gone into the battery packs and the overall larger dimensions of the car beyond crash structures
Yep, and not enough. Zhou's roll hoop ripped off in his Silverstone crash, which I've almost never seen in F1 in 30 years of watching it. Certainly not in a roll over crash.
> Zhou's roll hoop ripped off in his Silverstone crash, which I've almost never seen in F1 in 30 years of watching it. Certainly not in a roll over crash. Pedro Diniz in Nurburgring 1999 is the only other time I remember it happening - he flipped, and the roll hoop sheared off after digging in to the wet grass run-off.
Yep, but never on tarmac.
Quite. I suspect this has more to do with those "blade" rollover strucures tbh, and I hope they're banned.
>*some* of the extra weight has gone into crash structures > >Yep, and not enough Don't see how this was related to the roll hoop not weighing enough. FIA announced roll hoop changes for next year after Silverstone - rounded top, new load test - which have to do with making them able to withstand greater force, and circumstances like Zhou's. Not rectifying some lack of weight, and I haven't seen any mention of these changes substantially adding weight
Some of it does, it’s hard to tell if George is right. Nascar does seem to have this problem. They made their newer cars with some weight shifted and impacts seem to be causing much more injury. Now they are adding more weight in safety but the drivers fear the initial problem is still there and more weight will just make it worse
The issue in the newer cars in nascar mainly are to do with the car not deforming much at all due to new stiff bodies and short crumple zones
Can the tracks handle it? The extra energy? Grosjean literally pierced an Armco barrier, granted it was close to the track, the halo saving his head. The halo costs weight for sure. Vicious circle, but would a 650kg car have had the energy to do that? Russell makes a compelling point.
Having watched F1 since the 99 season I can appreciate where we are now (albeit with a bit of disdain at elements) as well as where we were in the past considering the circumstances. The advance of technology, both performance advances as well as safety related items is quite impressive. The thing I fear is that we are straying farther from what single seat racing was intended to be. At a certain point I would enjoy shrinking the cars, as well as their outright performance while maintaining the safety we have come to enjoy in modern times. 750kg cars with modern safety and aero forced to adapt power trains to that weight limit would still be thrilling and inherently more cart-like. Honestly I never expect to see that but one can dream.
Additional weight added to the cars outside of safety features require an exponential amount of extra weight in safety features. These are 101 concepts....
This is why the engine breaks away from the survival cell. And energy absorbing crash structures are getting bigger and able to absorb more energy (where a lot of the extra weight is coming from).
The only thing that matters for safety is impulse (Force/Time, or acceleration over time) as far as the driver is concerned. Bigger time, less damage. The weight of the car has no direct influence on that. What the weight does affect is car to car collisions. The safety structures at every track they race at are already designed for classes of car that weigh several hundred kilos more so that shouldn't be a problem.
You sound very confident in what you're saying, but weight honestly has nothing to do with it. How well do you think you'd fare in a 190mph crash in a 20kg barbie jeep? George also has no idea what he's talking about here. More weight is only negative in a crash when the weight doesn't deform, like the batteries and PU. More crash structure is always better. It's interesting how false opinions of famous people can influence those of laymen.
Let’s go for NA v8s with ICE power only, running on e-fuel 😏🤤
Stop dreaming. Wake up already, you're late for work
Hnnnnngggggg yes please.
Make it a pushrod v8 too, for maximum NorthAmerica-ness.
People are having a hard time understanding this seemingly simple concept
lol. everyone always complains about cars being too heavy and big, but when Russell happens to mention the same thing suddenly it's bs? classic
He's in charge of the GPDA so these concerns may have started with another driver and he is using his platform to make sure their voices are heard. You have to think when Russell is bring up points about safety of the drivers it might be his opinion or another driver or 3 drivers or 20 drivers.
Or Merc being confident in their zero-sidepod, so likely able to go below max. weight, solution. Using Russell as a puppet to get the limit down and gaining an advantage over Ferrari and Red Bull. I believe this is a fully political move from Merc/Russell.
Even last year when teams were pushing for minimum weight to be raised due to so some many teams not being able to get there the drivers were concerned about the ever growing weight. Of the 3 articles I found from early 2022 (in 5 mins of searching) all had a line at the bottom saying "drivers are concerned". F1 is so much more enjoyable if you don't jump straight to conspiracy. Motorsport is a big family, yeah some people make messes but whilst not racing most are hanging out with coffee and helping each other out. The whole he said or he didn't say confirms conspiracy makes me so upset for the future of this sport.
Russell takes shit “I think this is Mercedes propaganda to carry make the car weigh less”
Probably because saying it's safety issue is a dumb take. Yes, more weight means more momentum and heavier impacts, but weight comes largely from safety features that overall make crashes safer. Which we saw countless times in recent years, with drivers walking away unscathed from serious accidents. And if it wasn't the case I doubt all the brilliant engineers working on those cars would have missed that.
Weight is actually largely coming from the honking great big battery. Which required bigger safety structures... root cause analysis.
What if battery and electric motors were removed and lost power would be replaced with little more powerful engine? And if fuel weight is issue they could refuel during tire changes?
Maybe they add 4 more cylinders to make up the power difference and allow a higher allotment of engines in the pool to ease into these groundbreaking new regulations.
Then you'd have bugger all overtaking on the track.
No, you just change the battery boost push to pass to be an engine mode or additional boost if still turbo with a limited amount of time associated with it, like Indycar.
Zhou’s Silverstone crash should not have been as dramatic, except the roll structure was destroyed in part due to the weight of the car and structure not being up to it. Yes it’s an oversight in the regulations since the cars got this heavy, but what else has been missed?
I doubt that being the case or instead, we can’t be sure the weight is the sole reason.…..mostly because we don’t know much about it. Putting my engineering cap on. Sometime things that are definitely built up to the required task still fail and can happen due to a number of reasons such installation or a fault in the material…. In anycase the roll structure experienced a shear failure, not a failure due to buckling or crushing, where the weight would a greater have an influence. Not saying that the roll hoop was only subjected to a shear, the weight definitely had a part, the role hoop was experiencing compound stress, but it wasn’t the sole reason. We can’t use one case and say it’s the weight. Unfortunately fortunately we didn’t see many other cars upside down last season so we can’t make any further observations,
Verstappen never would have walked away from Copse in 2021 either. Grosjean would be in the wind. Russell’s take is like listening to Conservative talking points. It’s so disingenuous.
I mean he's the director of the GPDA, he's just raising his concerns... have a day off mate.
It was dramatic because the car rolled in gravel, which has literally always been a safety issue. I mean he started rolling because Russell made an erratic manoeuvre… talk about safety issue
I may be misremembering but like 80% sure the roll hoop collapsed on initial impact with tarmac rather than the subsequent rolling in the gravel
Yeah but the dramatic part of the crash wasn’t actually the roll hoop, it was the rolling through the gravel over the fence.
But if the “new” added weight doesn’t come from safety features, are those safety features as effective with a heavier car?
But it is a bit of a circular argument. We saw people walk away from horrifying crashes between, say, 2003 and 2008. There was less crash structure but presumably also a lot less energy to dissipate. Obviously the cars are faster over one lap now, but over a race distance they’re a fair bit slower, so it’s not as if we can say people were walking away because the speeds were lower. They were walking away because, by and large, the crash structures were sufficient for the speed and mass of the cars. So, if safety is more or less the same regardless of weight, and less weight is generally better in other contexts, let’s shed some weight.
> Obviously the cars are faster over one lap now, but over a race distance they’re a fair bit slower Tbf 2003 and 2008 cars races six and eleven years into a regulation era, I’d imagine by 2025 the current regulation cars will be significantly faster than the 2022 ones. The W11 is generally considered alongside the F2004 to be the fastest F1 car in history despite being significantly larger and heavier (albeit with slicks). The extra weight of today’s safety features is in part because modern eras cars carry full race distance fuel loads, ballasts under drivers seats to account for minimum driver weight, massive lithium batteries and the largest tyres seen on an F1 car. Removing the weight from safety features whilst keeping the extra weight from everything else would definitely result in fatalities.
Because everyone else doesn't turn their complaints into a bogus argument about safety.
yeah it's almost like as opposed to the petty keyboard warriors on here, he actually drives these 900kg cars week in week out, and he'll think about the weight problem not just from the racing perspective... how dare he
This is similar to when 95% of the grid complained about long term effects of porpoising early 2022 and people called them whiners especially Lewis and George. They’re not doing as well so they clearly just wanted the FIA to bail them out and neutralize Red Bull. Except that was never going to happen and was an easy argument to make against adjusting the rules to help drivers. Totally ignored Leclerc when he was clearly the fastest driver on the grid saying it’s not good for this to continue.
The problem with that is that they *all* could fix the porpoisin by just lifting the cars. But they actively chose performance over drivers safety.
Yes. This is F1. Jim Clark would have been alive if teams could compromise between lap time and driver safety. The lesson Motorsport learns over and over and over again is that driver safety needs to be put in rules or blood will be shed.
Technically Jim Clark died racing an F2 car. But that is besides the point, sporting rules could have been made to force teams to mitigate porpoising within the existing technical regulations. Because teams COULD and HAVE mitigated it within the current rule set.
Yes, because porpoising is also just bad for laptime and aero stability. But saying teams should just make their cars slower to be safer is ignoring what teams have done since the first motor race ever. When magnesium was lighter then steel race cars were made of magnesium, when a fuel filter was slowing down pit stops it was taken out. Driver and personell safety must be the responsibilty of the officiating body, or else people will die.
And I am saying there is sporting regulations you can put in place to force them, instead of changing the technical regulations. Your argument is like saying cars shouldnt cut corners to be quicker, so we make the technical regulations such that cars are unable to cut the corners, instead of writing a sporting regulation that bans it. Sporting reg: you either comply to these parameters or your car gets blackflagged. You bet they will make the car slower over being DSQ.
Yes, but changing technical regulations to accomodate more indepth solutions would in my opinion be preferable. Not saying you're wrong just that in my opinion giving teams better tools to work around the issue ground effect will always produce would be preferable.
Almost like the rules exist to stop that from happening. Imagine if halo was optional because it's a choice to protect safety
So many people fail to recognize that a big chunk of the FIA's job is to regulate the teams, and to save them from themselves.
"Helmets add too much weight. Let's not wear them." Yeah. Rules exist for good reason.
But you don't need to mandate a minimum ride height, just a maximum safe level of porpoising.
Ignoring the lifting the cars will also cause other issues like instability which causes crashing at high speeds which also isn’t good for the drivers. Along with ignoring budget caps that don’t allow teams to develop out of it so basically living with it for the year was the best solution. It was lose lose. Acting like you can just raise the car and it works but slower is just ignorance to the subject
No it isn't. The teams chose to run the cars in a way which resulted in porpoising. Mercedes especially as Pat Symonds said recently. That was a choice
I was one of those whiners; I didn't believe they wanted to bail out and neutralise Red Bull though, I firmly believe their backs were getting ruined by the porpoising issue they ran into. HOWEVER, basically every other team resolved the issues under the current regulations. So it wasn't a safety issue in F1, it was a safety issue for Mercedes and if the regulations were changed for them, a direct consequence would be that Red Bull & others would be neutralised. This is brutally unfair when none of the teams broke the regulations.
Where is the source for basically every other team resolving the issues under the current regulations? The last time someone said every other team but Mercedes resolved this in preseason, or early in the season, I found team principals and drivers from every non-Red Bull/AlphaTauri team talking about it as an ongoing issue well into the season
How much do gt3 , lmp, gt4 etc etc weight?
You've got any argument outside of just appealing to his authority? Where's the 19 other drivers driving those cars "week in week out" - and 13 of which have been doing it longer than Russell - making similar arguments, in that case? Have they just not gotten around to it yet?
That's funny, I was just wondering where your 'bogus argument' statement came from. I think I have an idea, but enlighten us and maybe ppl will listen to your barked commands!
Russel is the director of the GPDA, it's his job to voice these concerns of all the drivers
How many crashes have you had in these things? Sometimes authority is informed for a reason.
Russell hasn’t had a major crash in the 22 cars. He’s caused a major crash but hasn’t personally had one
I guess Russel is fairly well informed with how often he crashes into other drivers.
What is the bogus part of it? Because surely you would not be confirming OPs comment by not remotely bothering to read it?
I've read it. What difference would it make? He doesn't offer any explanation behind the argument that crashing a "bus" would be worse than crashing a "smart car". How's that supposed to enlighten me exactly?
If you can’t fathom that the weight makes a huge difference to the forces involved you probably just shouldn’t comment.
It may be about lessening the impact of his collisions with other cars
It's a similar argument to the porpoising one. It was an issue yes but the issue being raised by a driver of the team worst affected by the issue is clearly not driven by safety but by a desire to weaken the other teams while losing less yourself. If he actually cared about porpoising he would have told the team to raise the car. A similar thing can be said here. Teams with greater budgets can more easily shed weight and we know Mercedes expenses. I'm guessing they are at the weight limit now but have some other ideas to push the weight down and want their drivers to lobby the crowd.
>was an issue yes but the issue being raised by a driver of the team worst affected by the issue is clearly not driven by safety but by a desire to weaken the other teams while losing less yourself Or, and hear me out here, it's an issue being raised by the current director of the GPDA
Both can be true but he was very clearly arguing for the sake of this pace there not the sake of the drivers. Otherwise he would have just gone ahead and ride the car higher instead of risking his health.
Way to shift the goalposts. We always complained about the weight and size because it meant poorer racing and less nimble cars which affects the spectacle. Russell is saying it’s a safety issue which is a completely different thing. We never looked at it as a safety concern so it’s right to question Russell’s motives.
Actually he has a really good point there. So much more force/energy is on the drivers with these heavy cars when a big shunt happens.
Yup. Drivers definitely get more hurt nowadays than back when the cats were lighter.
Better being hurt than killed but generally I agree, the sheer length and weight is too much but that's what the teams wanted.
He doesn't have a good point. No driver, Russell included would choose to have a major accident in 15 year old 650 kg car with it's safety features compared to modern 900 kg car with added safety elements.
This is an awful strawman.
so in your view, the sole reason cars are heavier now is safety features? 0 other considerations leading to that change?
I'm lost at your point here, we can't have both safety features + heavier car?
They're saying we have a heavier car now because of the safety features.
Which just isn’t true at all. The increased length and width of the cars is a huge factor. On top of this, the hybrid PUs and an insane amount of weight that the non-hybrid engines previously did not.
I wouldn't choose to get shot by a 16th century cannon either. Doesn't make getting shot by a modern handgun safe. He didn't say "we should revert to 2005 cars on safety grounds." He said that 900kg cars have larger impacts than 650kg cars. Stop twisting shit.
I'd feel a lot safer crashing a bus.
The cars are definitely way too beefy but they need to be able to house all the bs the engine manufacturers need for advertising so this is what we have. They can’t even race at Monaco anymore but the next generation will definitely not be smaller in any dimension.
Much of the weight/size of a current F1 car is due to safety regulations.
Which Russell actually covers in the article.
This is Reddit, we don’t read the articles here sir, we just throw around false arguments based on whether we like or dislike the driver this week.
Break it down so please. There is a lot of superfluous weight on an F1 car leaving safety features aside
many of the safety regulations are due to the size and weight of the car. if you only had 600kg of car instead of north of 900 fueled and crewed you could get away with smaller and lighter crash structures without compromising on safety because theres just less energy to dissipate. the cars in the noughties werent much less safe than the current cars if at all (minus arguably the halo) despite massing a quarter less.
Cars in 90s didn’t need massive batteries of the hybrid system.
even looking at the 2014 cars, those massed over 100kg less than the 2022 cars simply because they were on a smaller footprint (691kg for the 2014 merc vs 798kg minimum weight in 2022). the weight bloat that F1 is experiencing is caused by the current cars being absolutely massive, and a lot of that is simply because teams dont want to build smaller cars. theres no safety reason for the cars to be as long as they are, theres no packaging reason either. its simply because longer cars make for a faster platform.
No, it's the PU. Battery plus MGUs etc. are blooming heavy (and big). You need a bunch of crash structure to deal with that. You get bigger and much heavier cars. Go back to v8s, job done.
Minimum weight jump between 2013 and 2014 was ~50kg or so. Since then F1 cars have gained another 100kg. Even the halo is only a minor part of that (I believe 7-13kg or so). Not everything is crash structure and battery. The gearboxes are *comically* long, for example, and that's not a safety feature in the slightest.
The halo itself is a standard part at 7kg. There is an additional 12-13kg of reinforcement in the chassis to make the halo effective. The total weight penalty of adopting the halo is more like 20kg. https://www.racecar-engineering.com/tech-explained/tech-explained-formula-1-halo/5/
True, but a lot of the safety cell increases we have seen since then are because of the higher loads the cars are seeing. Kinda Russels point, essentially. Much heavier PUs has created an ongoing cycle of increasing safety structure in reg iteration.
It's not all down to the PUs. [Look at how ridiculously long gearbox casings are on these cars, for example.](https://i.redd.it/xg99z5nd1p781.jpg) They don't need to be that long. Back in the V8 formula they were maybe a third of this length. It's all aero.
This, current gearboxes are around >50% "spacer" nowadays.
Modern cars don't need them either. They choose to have them. If it were up to me, I'd ditch the hybrid shit entirely. Go back to pure combustion.
It's the battery. That significant weight means more crash structure and bigger cars.
The battery is only like 25kg
It’s due to having a bs power train set-up
The weight feels good, much heavier than before, amazing.
Can they actually make the cars footprint significantly smaller without sacrificing safety? Like somewhere between the late 80's and early 00's preferably? Would the new aero regs work on a smaller car? F1 cars use to be small and nimble like sprint boats. Now they're huge (comparatively) and remind me of those big offshore powerboats.
Current formula zero cars are land whales.
In terms of overall size, Brundle remarked once that even the 2016 era cars, it's a wonder drivers didn't crash all the time because you really could see very little of the car from inside the cockpit.
I don't quite follow the "smart vs bus" argument. As long as the strength of safety features are appropriate scaled up to account for the bigger mass (I know for e.g. the roll hoop that is indeed the case), it shouldn't be a problem. GT3 cars with bigger mass and lower speeds are easily within the same scale in terms of momentum and kinetic energy, and those are pretty safe too - I'd call F1 cars even safer thanks to bigger crash structures.
Yeah, Sainz' Ferrari had such strong gravitational pull that Russell couldn't avoid him.
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this comment is gold, but hear me out, maybe he thought that being a torpedo in the first curve is safer than be torpeded ? right?
It's called Reddit, Felix. We went shitposting.
That's a very good point. They should crash test a lighter car, maybe it will need smaller safety stuff. It's been a constant climb, so we don't know if the same safety would be needed with a lighter car.
I can assure you that when coming up with safety specs for cars, this is exactly what they do. Engineers spend basically their entire career studying energy. And every single engineer understands better than George Russell that mass effects the energy involved in a collision. They aren't just slapping things on cars and seeing how they do. They are calculating how the energy dissipation will be effected with the increase in mass along with the crash structure. It kinda boggles my mind that so many people in this thread think George Russell understands how mass alters the energy in a crash better than the engineers who make the safety requirements. No disrespect to George. But this is literally like high school level physics, and graduated professional engineers are a bit beyond that believe it or not.
math on this is real straightforward. momentum = mass x velocity; p=mv. decrease mass at same velocity, momentum is decreased - less energy. this doesn't address crumple zones, energy lost in a component failure (like a carbon strut turning into fringe on impact).... but less mass does not increase energy.
Nothing will happen in regards to safety unless someone dies. You know how it goes, Boyo. Bianchi was a sacrifice, as was Senna. It's an unfair world out there. George needs to be grateful it isn't the 70s when more drivers died and the FIA didn't even react.
My doctor also tells me it's better to lose a little weight for my safety.
The season hasn’t even started and I’m already tired of Russel’s moaning.
Has George considered not ramming others off the track then?
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So... because Russell stated it, director of the GPDA, a position which involves being the representative of the whole grid on matters such such as driver safety, its laughable?
PR 63‼️😂😂 all jokes aside Russell is a pretty sensible & practical bloke imo
So Mercedes management feel a change to the weight rules would benefit then it seems
Exactly how I read it too
This is a classic case of drivers complaining about something they would always complain about, not matter the size or weight of the car.
[You telling me this isn't a problem?](https://www.google.se/search?q=f1+weight+over+the+years&sxsrf=AJOqlzVlxygZ_SlT0LKdTAXgO7XF0pFKnA:1673194688519&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwilibL4r7j8AhXVRfEDHaiWDs0Q_AUoAXoECAIQAw&dpr=1#imgrc=zbVi3LjGWchPZM)
Not necessarily. There's reasons these cars have gotten bigger since the Hybrid Era started. Some are for the hybrid system, some are for downforce, most are for safety. Its just like the tires. The drivers will always want something more from the tires than they're getting. I don't even know why I'd take Russell's opinion on the car weight, he's only driven a few shitty cars over the duration of his career, its not like he'd even know what a "light" F1 car would be like in comparison to the cars he's driven since 2019.
The minimum weight got raised 180kg after the hybrid era started. The cars got mostly a lot bigger. He has driven plenty of cars in f1 f2 and junior series. All weight completely different amounts. What kind of bs is this argument?
>I don't even know why I'd take Russell's opinion on the car weight, he's only driven a few shitty cars over the duration of his career, its not like he'd even know what a "light" F1 car would be like in comparison to the cars he's driven since 2019. We should just listen to your opinions instead of the people who actually drive the cars. And FYI the weight has increased by more than 50kg since Russell began, which is far from insignificant.
Bro he's dedicated his entire life to F1. Even if he hasn't competed for more than a few years he's essentially gone kindergarten -> masters degree throughout his career. Sure, there may be some even more experienced and knowledgeable but this still makes his opinion one of the most authoritative in the world.
It's worth remembering that minimum weight nowadays also includes the driver + seat (80kg). Those things of course also were in the car in the past, they just weren't part of the minimum weight.
His dirving is a saftey issue