The Open University offers distance learning for undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications. To support courses, a number of educational resources are made available for free via Apple's iTunesU mobile learning solution. This month an engineering and technology podcast relating to Formula 1 has become available.
The course in question is the catchily titled T884 - An Introduction to Finite Element Analysis which relates to a computational modelling and analysis technique known as Finite Element Analysis, or FEA to its friends. FEA is used by F1 teams in a number of design areas in order to optimise the performance of various elements of a racing car, thus the OU descended on the Red Bull Racing factory in Milton Keynes to help explain how these techniques enable them to reach the front of the grid.
Whilst this iTunesU content is primarily offered as supplemental learning material, the course does amount to 17 videos. Included is insight from Lewis Butler who's the senior structural analyst for the team and who offers a detailed look into how a part such as a wheel hub might first be modelled virtually, in order to predict weaknesses or suggest improvements in the design before manufacture.
Much of the footage appears to have been filmed in the teams factory, and a real chassis is used to demonstrate the finer points of the talk, although the sight of Michelin tyres belies its true age. The short video's are provided in both low and high resolution format, and are backed up by PDF transcripts.
I will admit to being considerably out of my depth 10 minutes into the course, but you will get some fantastic insight into what goes on behind the scenes of a Formula 1 team, and you likely won't be so quick to judge a team the next time a loose wheel comes flying from its hub in Hungary.
Computer Aided Design at this level is an incredibly complex subject to cover, but the series is well produced and presented. That a Formula 1 team can see the benefit in putting effort into such a programme speaks volumes and Red Bull should be congratulated for making a largely inaccessible topic more available.
If you haven't taken a look at iTunesU before, it's a recommended destination, and there's no place better to start than the free Finite Element Analysis course from Red Bull and the Open University.
If you caught the latest episode of An Aside with Joe, you likely would have heard Joe talk about GrandPrix+ magazine reaching the milestone of its 50th released issue. We thought we'd mark the occasion with a quick plug for the original F1 e-magazine.
If you ever spend anytime in the Sidepodcast comments, you'll know we like to plug things, be it blogs, podcasts, published books or certain brands of energy drink. GP+ deserves a very special plug from us though, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, as we have detailed many times in the past, we're not exactly fans of regular paper-based publishing, and GP+ offers everything that print cannot - instantaneous worldwide delivery, portability, indexable content and it gets released a few hours after a race is complete. One day all magazines will be delivered like this.
Additionally though, we like to plug Joe's work because he has given so much of his time to the Aside series this year.
Any sensible professional journalist would insist on being paid handsomely for the effort that goes into recording podcasts from all corners of the world - including manually rewiring the hotel's Internet access in Spain, jumping through firewall hoops in China and getting up at all hours to speak from Malaysia.
If you've enjoyed listening to any of the podcasts, like the idea of being a forerunner in the rapidly changing world of media publishing, or frankly just like to learn about Formula One faster than anyone else, go subscribe to Grand Prix+ magazine now. There may only be three races remaining this year, but you'll grab yourself all 50 back issues in the process. It's only £25 GBP and it would mean a lot to us if you did.
As a quick reminder, below are links to all of the Aside shows recorded thus far - 13 in total. Both Amy and Rachel have been doing a fabulous job of transcribing these recordings, so we've added links to the PDF files too. Just like issues of GP+, text transcripts can be downloaded and searched from your computer should the need ever arise. We are eternally grateful for the efforts put in by anyone in the community who help lighten the transcription workload, and help make the podcasts even more useful.
The Aside So Far...
Don't forget, we're always open to more questions for Joe in future shows, please add them to the wiki page and we'll get to them when we can.
Formula 1 is set for one last hurrah in Europe, before departing for the four long haul races that will see the 2008 championship out. The destination for this last stand also happens to be the fastest track on the calendar.
This week Inside Track catches up with Jarno Trulli to get his thoughts on racing in his home country. We take a flying lap around Autodromo Nazionale Monza and also refresh our memories of how exactly the championship tables stack up post Spa Francorchamps.
Special thanks to Allianz SE, Toyota Motorsports GmbH, Red Bull Racing, Daimler, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes and RTV GmbH for the use of their video footage.
The perfect antidote for a Valencian procession has to be a blast through the Ardennes Forest, and Formula One delivers this and more as the teams arrive at the Circuit de Spa Francorchamps for the Belgium Grand Prix.
This week Inside Track takes a look at the circuit and catches up with the thoughts of Christian Danner and Sébastien Bourdais. We also look back on the controversial events that unfolded last year and see how the championship stands before the drivers come face-to-face with one of the most daunting tracks of year.
Special thanks to Allianz SE, Toyota Motorsports GmbH, Red Bull Racing, Daimler, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes and RTV GmbH for the use of their video footage.
Remember back in September, when the FIA mistakenly distributed the McLaren hearing transcripts without properly removing any of the confidential information beforehand?
Sure you do. Remember also, the total wall of silence that followed, where nobody dared acknowledge what had happened - not the FIA, the teams, or any commercial media outlet?
Again, I'm sure you do. Well earlier this month all that changed.
Racecar Engineering magazine, the bona fide print publication that's available in all good newsagents, has delved deep into the gory details the FIA failed to obfuscate. In their December 2007 issue, Racecar break down some of Ferrari's F2007 secrets, including:
- The special type of gas that Ferrari use to inflate their tyres
- How the double-rear master cylinder variable braking system worked
- The significance of a buckling stay
It really is an enlightening read, and I encourage anyone with even a passing interest in the subject to run out and grab yourself a copy immediately. Speed TV have the first part of the article online, but it's worth reading the entire text if you can.
A couple of things came to mind as I was reading through, so I thought I'd jot them down here.
Tyres
Racecar have discovered that the special gas used by Ferrari was based on the common refrigerant HFC R404 A, that it was co-developed by an Italian company called Gruppo Sapio, and that the gas helped increase tyre longevity but transferring heat to the wheel rim. Of note Racecar suggest using the gas helps prevent chunking... oh the irony.
One thing that Racecar appear to have missed, is that the transfer of heat to the wheel rim may explain why Ferrari see a cooling benefit from their front and rear wheel bins, while Toyota don't. If Ferrari's special gas enables the rim to act as a radiator, then the greater the surface area, the better the heat expulsion. Toyota on the other hand claim they had to increase brake cooling as a result of adding wheel bins.
Brakes
Moving onto the variable braking system. Racecar suggest a layout of a cylinder and spring, coupled with an adjustable wedge that sits between the two and is controlled using a lever in the cockpit. What strikes me though is, no-one has ever fully explained Kimi's accident during free practice in Monza. Could an out-of-position (or incorrectly set) wedge, cause Kimi to violently spear to one side when he stood on the brake pedal?
The Other Bits
More details are explained relating to the mass-dampening-movable-floor used in Australia as well as what benefit a buckling stay might have relative to modern-day ground effects.
One key piece of information I did learn from the article, that wasn't specifically related to the FIA hearings, is Formula 1 cars appear to be designed to produce maximum downforce below 200km/h before losing as much as possible above that speed. For some reason I'd always assumed that the amount of downforce would continually increase as the speed of the car does.
The best £5 I ever did spend.
The announcement from the FIA on Friday told us very little about what went on during Thursday's Court of Appeal hearing. In fact, it would be fair to say that the FIA did pretty much everything in their power to withhold information.
Rather than revealing any detail, the official press release announced the result and then stated:
The full text of the International Court of Appeal’s decision is available, on request, from the secretariat of the FIA International Court of Appeal in Paris.
Compare if you will, how the FIA handled the McLaren spy hearing, where it was so keen for the world to hear about the penalty imposed upon McLaren, it went as far as rushing out the PDF transcripts before they'd been properly checked.
Thankfully, grandprix.com went to the trouble of playing along with the FIA's silly little games, and published the full decision text on their site.
Reading through the document, the main thing we learn is the reason why the appeal was deemed inadmissible:
Article 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the International Court of Appeal indicates that the International Court of Appeal may hear "Appeals from decisions of the stewards of the meeting, lodged by at least one of the parties concerned".
The International Court of Appeal finds that the term "parties concerned" in the Rules of Procedure of the International Court of Appeal does not cover all parties whose interests may be affected by the decision in question.
Basically, the stewards findings relating to the cars of Williams and BMW was none of McLaren's business. There is however provision within the rules to allow for McLaren to protest:
The International Sporting Code has foreseen in a formal fashion that in cases such as these the only recourse would be that set out in Article 174 d of the International Sporting Code which foresees that "Protests... referring to the non-compliance of vehicles with the regulations and concerning the classification established at the end of the event shall... be made within thirty minutes of the official publication of the results."
So McLaren made a mistake in appealing the stewards descision, when they should have, in fact, been protesting the results of the race. A minor technicality you might suggest, but an important one in the grand scheme of things. How the team managed to make such a mistake will probably be revealed soon, but no doubt at the time they believed it was the correct thing to do.
What the text doesn't go into is the discussions that went on regarding fuel rigs and ambient temperature sensors, as discussed yesterday by Sam Michael.
The last thing to note is the costs of the appeal will be paid by McLaren. As if it hasn't been an expensive enough year already.
I would like to take up a moment of your time if I may. Betwixt you catching up with F1 news and having a life. It's only for a bit of shameless promotion, but I wanted to give a shout out for the huge amount of hard work Christine has been putting into our podcast transcripts recently.
If you're new here, or if you've been around awhile but haven't been paying attention, you might be interested to learn that Sidepodcast produces text transcripts for every single podcast we produce. That includes the weekly show, the videos, and each and every episode of F1 Minute.
You've almost certainly seen the transcripts for F1 Minute audio, because the words spoken form the body of each post. But tucked away at the bottom of every other video / audio page, is a link to a PDF file containing all that's been said.
We also list the transcripts next to each episode on the archives page, in both HTML and PDF format, and provide a dedicated transcript feed, should you not want to miss a single word.
Creating these texts is a laborious task, and Christine has spent more than her fair share of hours listening to her own voice. It's all worth it though, here are just a few examples of what makes these things so fabulous:
- You can find specific topics mentioned, using the search box on this site. Transcripts can be searched like any other post.
- If you're hard of hearing (or can't fathom our accents), then you can follow along with each episode.
- You can link to specific content within an episode, making sharing much more straightforward.
- Text can easily be translated into other languages.
As far as I know, we're the only Formula 1 podcast to provide transcriptions (if there are others please let us know), and if you've not had a peek already, feel free to look around. If, for no other reason, than to marvel at the sheer dedication involved in creating them all.
12th century monks have nothing on Ms. Blachford.
