So How Did F1 Cars Get This Big? A look at 73 Years of Car Evolution
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- Опубликовано: 22 июл 2023
- F1 cars are massive and heavy now. Computers, sensors, safety, it all adds up. But it would be interesting to see how things got to where they are now, and why they started bloating up how they did, when they did.
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If anyone does know how that Williams is shorter than the 98T, I'm all ears. Like Andrew Marr.
To be fair, when Senna crashed, his Williams was shorter
I’d suspect fuel tank size, but that’s just a hunch 🤷🏼♂️
It's just good you didn't mention His Royal Highness - or you'd go to The Tower.
It’s weird to think Aidan, but the ‘97 cars had really thin cockpits compared to that Lotus. Best way to check is on F1 2013 where both the ‘96 Williams & ‘86 Lotus are playable (or any Rfactor footage) Also, as a fellow early 90s lad, we think back to the 90s with the default mindset of “Everything was bigger back then” (with crisps/chocolate, that was true)
@@davidaugustofc2574 No it was narrower!
It's amazing those small cars could hold the enormous balls the drivers had during the early days of F1
Insanity and having balls is a fine line to draw XD
They couldn't, that's why the drivers flew out of the cars in the case of a crash
The massive balls you needed to drive those coffins just had way too much inertia for no seat belts
@@heylolp9 Bandini died because he WASN'T thrown free of his car. Drivers feared fire, being eight inches from lots and lots of mag-alloy, and when many circuits were long and sparsely serviced, being loose in the car was the lesser of two evils. And don't refer to the finest four- wheeled engineering as "'coffins"...buyers at Bonhams certainly don't have those hangups.
This comment made my day
@@stephenscholes4758 14 drivers were killed in an F1 car during the 60s, more F1-centred drives (like Clark, Spence) were killed at other events to bring the total up to 29 or something.
They were coffins XD
I guess this trend is not restricted to F1, given how road cars today are also bloated and heavier than their 80's counterparts, also for safety purposes
I can't imagine 20 Chevrolet Suburbans racing around Monaco, but that's the outer dimensions of a modern F1 car. Will someone please turn back time?
House real big, F1 cars real big, factories real big, but some of the F1 tracks real tight and twisty.
I could and it would be a blast because the cars could actually make contact with eachother. Slow car fast is more fun than fast car fast anyways.
They would actually be able to pass.
Big performance kinda warrants big cars unfortunately.
40 inches tall Chevy Surbubans
The dimensions of the cars from the late 90s - 2000s were so perfect. Just wish they'd take out the hybrid guff, save weight and space.
Nah, 1989-1992 had the most beautiful cars IMO. Complete with being 2.15m wide -- wide and mean coming through!
smaller, lighter cars with less downforce and less power could produce much better racing but F1 has painted itself into a corner regarding having to have ever faster cars and ever quicker lap times and having to be the fastest race series.
The series you are describing sounds like FE
smaller, lighter, less aero dependant, less power but better racing, granted they have spec aero
The FIA has tried to bring laptimes *up* a bunch of times, mostly in the name of safety. The sizes of the wings? Regulated in order to keep speeds down in the corners. Ground effect? Banned originally for the same reason. Brought back because the wing vortices that maximized wing effectiveness were inducing unsafe conditions behind. Engine formula changes? Many of them were specifically aimed at reducing the amount of horsepower available to make the cars slower - and the Hybrid stuff was IIRC one of the key pieces that allowed the elimination of refueling (which was always a serious fire hazard, which is why it has been banned a few times) without increasing the amount of fuel in the cars. The grooved tires we had for a while? There to reduce grip so that drivers would take it easier in the corners.
It's just that enough money is poured into technical development of the components that the cars keep getting faster *anyway*.
And most of the size and weight increases were related to safety improvements, which have resulted in a drastic reduction in track-related fatalities. F1 has had one driver fatality in the last two decades. Three in the last four decades. In the single decade before that, there were *eight*.
@@Winchester1979 it would be very easy to have smaller, lighter, less powerful F1 cars and they could be safe too.
@@NonFlyiingDutchman No. If it's smaller and lighter it's no longer F1, unless you also change all of the lower classes to make them even lighter. And your idea of "very easy" is skewed, I think.
@@Winchester1979Breaking news: F1 found to not exist between 1961 and 1965!
The wide front wings that showed up for the 2009 season, are one of the worst changes in F1 history. Combine that with the suspension & tyres getting bigger… everything is just massive for no reason.
I don't understand why so many motorsports are following the trend of giving cars massive hulking tires. It just makes it the cars harder to upset and thus a lot more forgiving. It's why you have all these guys basically cram the throttle though an entire corner without second thought. The amount of skill needed has been drastically reduced.
@@Dat-Mudkipcause people think they look cool
The rear tyres in 2017 just went back to the *"correct" size^* that they were before, between 1972 and 1992. It just happened that the front tyres had never been made smaller (having been taken up to the maximum permitted 660mm diameter by Bridgestone in1997), but were then scaled up by the same percentage to avoid changing the weight distribution. Hence proper sized rear tyres but comically wide front tyres.
^ OK in 2017 they increased to 670mm total diameter rather than 660mm, but this was negligible.
Don't forget F1 cars between 1972 and 1992 were also 2.15m wide (the rule being set at the width ofthe widest McLaren in 1972), which is still 15cm wider than the 2.0m wide which they are now or between 1993 & 1997. Those wide cars looked GREAT IMO. Very mean looking with their super widetrack.
IMO, the squashed looking 1998-2016 1.8m-wide cars looked ridiculous.
@@Dat-Mudkip "I don't understand why so many motorsports are following the trend of giving cars massive hulking tires. It just makes it the cars harder to upset and thus a lot more forgiving. " The idea of adding grooves to the (by then) already narrowed tyres in1998 to reduce mechanical grip ultimately turned out to be demonstrably wrong. Sure those grooved & narrow tyres made F1 cars twitchy, but it did NOT make racing better. Yes, a historic car on narrow crossply tyres is easier to control and goes sideways everywhere, but I'm not sure that's what the FIA is after. The wide radials on F1 cars offer very high grip levels -- their snappy characteristic where it's "fine, fine, all of a sudden leaving the track backwards" is quite exciting in it's own way! The contrast between being so planted and then snapping violently with little ability to recover the car is rather amusing really!
"The wide front wings" Adrian Newey wanted narrow front wings but with the little spats that ran back from the endplates to between the front wheels to control the tyre wake like on the1992 regulations and on the FW14B. The netural zone and Y250 vortex was the bigger mistake. Having a wide front wing to reduce the drag of the front tyres (by deflecting air over the front tyres) is not necessarily a bad idea. All Dallaras ( F2 , Super Formula & Indycar) use that design, and they can race just fine.
1.8m width arrived in 1998 and that era is super-compact, very light agile cars. Right up until 2008 almost no growth in size, infact after some growth in the early 2000s wheelbases started coming back down and the 2008 cars are no larger than 1998. Then 2009 with the regulations change still relatively compact, bigger wings but the title winning Brawn BGP 001 has a 3.16m wheelbase.
That was very short lived, almost overnight teams realized long wheelbase = more downforce. 2010 VJM03 has a 3.48m wheelbase and the Sauber C29 is 3.5m. And that isn't even due to the 2010 refueling ban, Mercedes W01 kept the same 3.16m wheelbase as it's predecessor while the title winning 2010 RB6 was 3.27m and even the 2011 RB7 only grew to 3.33m, however the rival 2011 McLaren MP4-26 hit 3.55m. 2014 hybrid era kept similar wheelbases, the title winning W05 is 3.46m which is smaller than some of the V8 era and that was pretty static through 2016, the VJM09 for example drops down to 3.44m.
Surprisingly even the 2017 onwards 2m wide cars still don't get that much longer wheelbase, Max Verstappen's title winning RB16B is 3.57m wheelbase which is only fractionally longer than the largest V8 car I could find, the 3.55m 2011 McLaren. However the 2017 regulations did extend front/rear overhangs with larger wings so the overall length grew by about 0.5m.
2022 keeps the wheelbase from the 2017 era (about 3.6m) but the overall length is a staggering 5.6m, up from a 5m overall length in 2014 with the same engine regulations.
2008 = 3.11m wheelbase, 1.8m wide, 4.77m overall length
2009 = 3.16m wheelbase, 1.8m wide, 4.8m overall length
2010 = 3.48m wheelbase, 1.8m wide, 5.1m overall length
2014 = 3.46m wheelbase, 1.8m wide, 5m overall length
2017 = 3.6m wheelbase, 2m wide, 5.5m overall length
2022 = 3.6m wheelbase, 2m wide, 5.6m overall length
*2014 Marussia MR03 is a notable outlier, with a 3.7m wheelbase looked like an absolute barge back in 2014 but still about 40cm shorter overall than a 2022/23 F1 car.
22 years ago I saw Schumachers -98 Ferrari. Blows my mind to this day how tiny it was in person. One of my fondest memories.
Saw this with my own eyes at Festival of Speed walking around the paddock. Williams had a current regulations car on display next to their old cars. It’s massive.
There's a lot of this tbf. At the Silverstone Museum it had Hakkinen's championship winning McLaren next to a 2014 Red Bull and it is noticeable how much the modern chassis is beefed up
Mansel back in the 90s compared F1 to Cart indycars of that time and said the Cart cars are physically bigger and heavier than F1 to deal with oval impacts. I'm surprised that nearly 30 years later its now flipped and current Indycars are the smaller & lighter cars.
Could be wrong, but I think Dallara IndyCar is still heavier than the current F1 car, but physically smaller.
@@danielhenderson8316 heres a fun vid for weight comparison.
ruclips.net/video/kE378Hd6wUk/видео.html
The current F1 cars are 50kg heavier than the current Dallara Indycars, which is nuts.
That is nuts considering that the current IndyCar has been upgraded since 2012 while the current F1 cars are clean sheet designs. To get more wild, the supercapacitor they're adding to the car next year is only 30kg max with some weight savings going towards an updated aeroscreen.
@@izzdin6228 F1 tub weight has gone from 60kg in 2005 to about 140kg in 2022. This includes the 20kg halo assembly and mounting points and ~20kg of extra reinforcements & minimum cockpit size which came in on the 2022 regulations. The difference is that Indy tubs were always built tough and "indestructible" whereas F1 ones have only adopted such a design relatively recently.The rest of the weight difference is the more complex hybrid powertrain in F1 (and a little bit for 18"wheels instead of 15" wheels).
The spider frame spacer that F1 cars have between the engine and gearbox (and extra bodywork length) probably only accounts for 15-20kg or so.
@@danielhenderson8316 HRC and Ilmor-Chevy with Mahle (i think) have done a great job reducing weight in their supercapacitor while still aiming to produce 100hp in electric boost. And kudos to Indycar for weight reduction in their aeroscreen. I just wish we get a new chassis sooner, one that is lighter but just as safe & strong as the current DW12.
When I first saw the infamous six-wheel Tyrrell-Ford P34 in a German museum I would have sworn it was half-sized miniature of the real thing 😮
the new regs will apparently take out an entire 30cm/1ft out of the wheelbase for 2026. That should help things, no word on the overhangs though, and I still think theres another 30cm that could be taken out in the regs following it to bring the cars size down. Should have some knock on effects on aero, maybe tyre wear, and certainly how stable they are in the corners, might see come regular sliding in the dry again soon.
While a shortening of the wheelbase will certainly aid in making overtaking easier. I think the real aim should be to reduce the track. The wider the car is the more you need to veer off of the racing line and often into a dirty part of the racing track to try and overtake.
The fact motorcycles are so narrow is likely why you see significantly more overtaking in the modern MotoGP than you do in Formula 1.
Also motorcycles have very minimaal aero. And certainly not enough to hinder the rider behind.
@@Taurevanime Width is only a minor factor. A wide track is FREE roll stiffness. This is why all the F1 cars used the maximum permitted 2.15m track width between 1972 and 1992. Despite being 35cm wider, they produced BETTER racing than the 1.8m wide cars from 1998 to 2016 too.
@@1barnet1 "Also motorcycles have very minimaal aero. And certainly not enough to hinder the rider behind." Eh, tell that to the modern day MotoGP rider...Aero in MotoGP is quite the controversy and plenty of riders complain about aero wash. That the vehicles are narrow is of little relevance, they still follow the same optimal racing line around the track.
@@TassieLorenzo Because they are narrow they only need to deviate a little in order to pass. MotoGP aero is made to keep the front wheel on the ground when accelerating. Not to take corners at 5G. So the effect behind is a lot slimmer. That said, you really don't want to lose your balance because of the turbulence. With an F1 car you just tend to lose front end grip and get understeer.
An aspect I've noticed about the size of the 1960s F1 cars is that the size of the driver's helmet changes the perspective of the *_size_* of the car when seen in photos or videos; in that nowadays the 1960s cars looks smaller, in photos/videos, with the drivers using the full-face modern helmets when those vintage cars are driven in modern exhibitions.
Modern helmets are a lot larger than the open-face ones used in the 1960s. The modern helmets also seem to make the drivers look, nowadays, to be sitting taller in the car than they were in the 1960s.
With my eyes being accustomed to seeing the F1 cars, in photos, from the 1960s, with the drivers using smaller helmets; those [now vintage] cars nowadays being driven with drivers with modern helmets makes, at least to my eyes, the 1960s F1 cars looking smaller than they were in the 1960s.
The Ferrari 2004 is the ideal and most beautiful F1 car. Ever.
Its definitely up there. This century 100%. Id argue the mp4/4 was just as beautiful.
Ligier js11.
Maserati 250f.
Nah, Ferrari 640 is the one! Wide and mean with a V12. Arguably, all the squashed narrow track regulation cars look wrong.The F2004 is narrow and has silly grooved tyres for no other reason than FIA regulation. The F2004 could have looked so much better with the wide track and wide slicks like the 640, IMO that is such a shame.
Lotus 98T gets my vote. That black and gold JPS livery is sublime, and with Senna's iconic yellow helmet it just looks about as right as an F1 car ever could.
As a Ferrari fan from childhood, I'm disagree. What about MP4/4? What about Lotus 98T? Lotus 79? Jordan 191? Even between Ferrari I think F2002 is the most beautiful one.
Did an MTC tour yesterday because my brother works there: you can really tell the size change of the cars.
A 2012 McLaren next to the 2019 car for example was a massive difference in width. Then looking at the 2022+ cars they're huge.
Then you look at 98 car they're so much more narrow. I know the refuelling bam in 2010 has contributed a lot with the length of the cars.
Yes, but don't forget that cars like the MP4/4 are still 15cm widerthan the 2023 cars. The carsonly became narrow (and ended up with silly narrow grooved tyres on 13" rims) because of misguided FIA regulations (reducing the width of the cars twice). F1 cars in the 1960's had 15" rims (with low profile front tyres), the same as Indycar used then and up to the present day. They only went down to13" because of the rules.
As for drivers being exposed, some of the cars in the 80s and 90s you see you can read the sponsor patches on the driver's chest from a side shot. It's always blow my mind as an American, where Indy car drivers were fully encased in their cockpits, that F1 cars of the same time had drivers so exposed. Even just from an aero view that couldn't be a good idea.
Indy racing was typically aheadof F1 in safety. Though the 1950's & 1960's F1 cars did have perspex aero screens of sorts, so I'm not sure why those disappeared. Supposedly the driving position became more upright in F1 after outboard fuel tanks were banned in the early 70's.
@@TassieLorenzo That's certainly true, like Indy car was mandating not only the presence of safety crews, but where they had to be on the track years before F1 did.
Modern cars are long by design choice. A longer floor/venturi tunnels means potentially more downforce.
Or like redbull did, add rake and you wont need a longer floor to compensate
@@michaelironsights8347 Red Bull did both!
Wow, it's startling how much the cars have changed over the years, excellent video!!
IMO, the 1.8m narrow track and grooved tyre rules were dumb and counterproductive. We could have had good looking wide cars on fat slicks for the whole time (a la MP4/4, Ferrari 640), if not for misguided FIA rule changes. :(
Bloody hell they got Phat
Been waiting for a video like this for a long time and demonstrates the biggest issue. Overtaking is no longer possible on so many corners purely due to the size and it all becomes very predictable. It is conflicting because I think the latest generation do generally race better, plus the field spread is infinitely closer than pretty much all other generations. But the cars are so cumbersome that the overtaking is predictably rhythmic (especially given DRS), and gives vibes more of big beefy bombers wallowing around in the air as opposed to fast speedy dogfights that we had with the smaller, lighter cars. 2026 was supposed to be focussing on reducing weight but saw an interview recently with Verstappen criticising the direction they are going which suggested they may get heavier still. Sigh. Anyway I am done now.
P.s. good luck with the move!
The wide cars around from 1991 to 1997 remain my absolute favorite cars in Formula 1. No just in the looks department but also in the way they drove and raced. The cars moved around and were quite a handful not to mention the really stiff suspension.
I've recently been watching highlights from the late 90's
I miss how unstable the cars seemed, drivers constantly fighting the wheel whilst trying to get the power down
Cars today just seem too planted
Seems like one of the FIA's priorities is to make the cars faster through the turns. But a faster parade is still a parade.
I have two big interests in the engineering world, early and early-ish aviation, especially around WW1 and F1, especially in the 60s. And it's weird how the more I think of it, the closer those specific things seem to each other. At least some parts of it.
Early F1 drivers and WW1 aviators had pretty similar things to worry about, and except for the shooting stuff the needed sort of similar skills, both groups needed fast reflexes, quick decission making, G-force endurance, patients, risk assesment on the go, coping with death of friends on a regular basis, living in the fear of burning to death and with the lack of safty gear (no seat belts, vs no parachutes), it seems like you need the exact same mad lad to do those things.
That makes me wonder how guys like Albert Ball, von Richthofen, Georges Guynemer an Co would have faired in F1 and Clarke, Hill etc vise versa. Eddy Rickenbacher even was a racing driver and owned the Indianapolis speedway for a while (!), besides also being the top scoring US WW1 ace in between.
Yhea, weird how two seemingly pretty unrelated things like fighting in wooden airplanes in the 1910s and racing bathtubs of death in the 1960s share so many similarities in their requirements.
And it's also quiet funny to imagine, that in a parallel universe "The Manfred" may come into mind, when thinking of German F1 drivers in red cars, dominating the sport for years. :D
You can see how Monaco used to work, and now how it doesn't. Imagine telling the heroes of the early days that future generations would need a little flap to open up so they could overtake. The one other things that has changed of course is the Privateers are all but gone. Cars are now designed to keep the big manufacturers happy.
Looking at the top down just validates many peoples view that the early 2000's were peak car.
It's like 10% engine, 10% fuel, 10% safety, and 70% aero. They could fix it if they wanted to, they just don't.
Theres a MK5 Golf outside my window as I watch this. To try and visualise an F1 car next to it it would need to be a full meter longer and half a meter wider, for a single seat racecar, that is absurd.
It would be interesting to see the scale comparison for cars within the same team. And Ferrari, obviously, is the perfect subject for this.
The early 2010s cars were so comically long and narrow it was ridiculous
the biggest jump in size was definitely the hybrid era
nice video, will be interesting to see if the 2026 cars are smaller, and given that F1 is the pinnicale of technology in motorsport if anybody ever comes up with a way to make the cars smaller and lighter but also safer and how that can be integrated into F1
I like the way this piece was written and narrated. Honest, brutal assessment of the Enstone team. Bravo.
Modern F1 is about 1 meter longer than the old LMP1s.
Really interesting, thank you! I love stuff like this :)
I have a vague memory of McLaren building a special short wheel base version of their car to specifically use at Monaco in the late 80's or early 90's. This might be a mis-memory, would love to know if it was true and I didn't imagine it!
Wonderful video- I knew they where bigger- just didn't realize how MUCH bigger...
The comparison image looks like someone showing their F1 model collection, only on the left they're 1:24 and on the right they're 1:18.
Hahaha, yeah.
I do love using showroom view for this sort of thing though.
2020 were faster than v10s over a lap, but over the course of a race the grooved tire f1 cars could go more flat out over a full race distance due to not having to worry about fuel and the tires not being made of glass, and not starting with a full race distance worth of fuel on board.
also the v10s didn't have a hybrid system, so they ran full power at all times
When they narrowed the cars in 1998 it was to raise the center of gravity to try to bring the speed of the cars down, but it just made them slither though the chicanes faster because the cars didn't have to turn as much to thread that needle.
Something seems a bit off if the Maserati at the start is 2 metres wide, the same as the Lotus 98T & the modern cars, despite it having narrow tyres
Hello Aidan: Thank you very much for the graphic illustration of how big the current F1 cars are. Have a good day.
My biggest wish for the new rules, is that they would go back to the size of the 2010-2013 cars, not to big and wold be safe enough, even with all the new form of safety equipment
One thing I don't like about the bigger cars is they don't look fast watch a car go though swimming pool vs car from 10 years ago and old and old they look faster
I was just thinking that today while watching. They look slow on TV with the size and camera angles, and they sound slow with the engine note. Shrink the size a bit, reduce the weight, bring back refueling (but do it safe and separate the refueler from the tire changing), and bring back THE SOUND.
Whilst the track width of the Lotus 98T was 1.8 metres, this is not measured to the outside edge of the tyre for some reason, but to the wheel hub. The maximum permitted width was actually 2.15 metres from 1976, reducing to 2.0 metres in 1993, and 1.8 metres in 1998.
A current Nascar Cup car is 4912mm L x 1996mm W , wheelbase 2794mm 1451kg weight, for comparison
Its kind of unbelievable that a nascar that can fit 4 people with seats is smaller in dimensions than a single seater
You neglected to say the 312 was the best sounding till the 812 came out. Not the same but you fallow. Dope vid
Thank you!
I'm glad more and more people are questioning the size of modern F1 cars. I've been saying they've been too big since 2010. In my opinion, the 1993-1997 dimensions are the sweet spot; they've got the right track-width-to-wheelbase ratio to accommodate various driving styles and can even be slid around slightly whilst still having decent enough space for driver protection. As much as I love V10s, a modern turbo-hybrid setup powering a mid-90s style chassis and H-pattern gearboxes is my realistic dream setup for modern F1. Maybe cut the formula down to 1.4L and a high-compression/low-boost turbo setup to let the engines rev at 20k again, with any cylinder formation aloud.
Timely video mate.
I was just wondering the other day when someone was going to do this.
They really have porked out over the years.
But I guess at least we arent having a driver funeral every couple of months.
It's quite nice something to see the evolution of F1 cars from its inception. I do like the ground effect era on the whole. What would like to to see is cars get lighter and smaller. This should make them more responsive and require smaller engines to achieve the same power to weight ratio.
"Im using metric in this video its easier"
Also
" It's good for 10 miles before you can throw it in the bin"
Yeah England is weird. Almost entirely metric, yet the road speeds and distances are still in miles. Go figure.
Modern F1 cars follow the modern car-fad, so we're basically looking at F1-SUVs every Sunday... everything was indeed better back in the days.
That’s not the actual reason
@@rexthewolf3149 I know - I was somewhat joking. But it is interesting to see how both everyday cars and F1 cars have become bigger and bigger... And no, safety is not the answer to that.
The Lotus 25 can cut the McLaren open and hide inside from the cold.
I know two eras of Formula One where the cars were surprisingly big. The mid-1970s, when you consider the overhang, and now.
What do they have in common? No refuelling, large tires, wings, and arguably ground effect.
I think the solution is the FIA need to came back to a methodology of doing thing simpler. That car is bulky because a lot of parts are not integrated in the design. For instance, the halo is half a roll cage and attach to a roll hoop structure which is also half a roll cage. The halo works very well, it's crazy effective for some issue. However, it gets into some bulky patch work of non-integrated parts: IndyCar and sprint cars do a better job at integrated their "roll cage" (be it traditional or not).
The FIA kind of took a part by part philosophy. Which works, after all cars are made of a lot of parts. They need to start considering the gestalt, a car is more than the sum of the parts sometime. I am not saying it's easy.
If the cars maintained 2020 size but weighed 600kgs that would be the dream. Less weight also means less reliance on aero, less stresses on wear-limited parts meaning better reliability (although nowadays its already great).
Main aim for 2026 should be reducing the cars size, both width & length. Will reduce dirty air as well as less downforce will be generated because the floors will be smaller. All with the introduction of synthetic fuels, surely they can bin the hybrid system & go back to V8/V10’s. Would save a lot of weight
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Might be interesting to do a similar comparison to the “height of F1” (say, 80’s or 90’s) the CART cars of the same time (2.65 turbos from 3 or more manufacturers, probably the best they looked, but always a little bigger and heavier than the F1 cars of that era) and compare all that to the current F1 and Indy cars. … you know, assuming the models are available in showroom mode.
F1 tyre diameter (720mm) is now about the same as CART/USAC rear tyres. Car weight is now about the same between current F1 (if a little more) and 90's Indycar/CART too. Fun fact: BOTH F1 and USAC racing used 15" tyres in the 1960's. USAC stuck with 15" to the present day, wherea sF1 mandated13" maximum rears in 1973 and 13" maximum fronts in 1983. So people who think high profile tyres are "right" for F1 are mistaken, they need only look at 15" F1 fronts from the1960's to see that the profile percentage is about the same as current F1 tyres!
1:50 I have to say an F1 car with a supercharger would be pretty cool, especially at Monza down the straight.
/pedant F1 cars currently have superchargers, they have turbosuperchargers which are a subset of supercharger. /pedant Sorry I couldn't help myself! This is obviously the interpretation that Renault used from 1977 onwards, and it is correct.
To paraphrase the Mannie Fresh song "Real Big," the main soundtrack of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition - "Pockets real big, F1 cars real big, but some tracks ain't big enough for these Range Rover sized cars."
I don't mind the size creep so much because Romain Grosjean. He likely would not have survived in a smaller car.
He survived due to the safety shell and Halo.
I don’t see why those things can’t be a part of a smaller car.
That said i was an halo critic. I was wrong. If the critic’s including myself got what we wanted we would have lost several phenomenal drivers. Including Charles.
@@1barnet1a smaller car is an IndyCar. The aero shield is just a halo with a screen in the end. It is funny how fans are getting used to that halo now too
@@marklittle8805 Indycars are the same width as F1 cars: 200cm. Up to the Panoz, they were 2.05m wide too. Indycars have always had big 730mm outer diameter rear tyres also. The same size that people complain about on current F1 cars...
@@TassieLorenzo the width isn't the big deal entirely, it is the length is an issue as well. But I find Indy cars don't have the issues with their size like F1 does
@@marklittle8805 Still not used to the flip flop look. But after it saved several drivers their life or prevent severe probably lasting injury.
I just can't fault it anymore.
What about a video comparing the evolution of the junior formulas?
The 2023 cars looked ridiculous on the Hungaroring
It’s like a bunch of lorrys on a highway merging into one lane
Early 2000s size is the best in my opinion while allowing for necessary safety features. Current sizes are just too big for decent racing on a lot of circuits.
I do like the idea of making the cars a bit narrower again. It doesn't have to be back to 180cm, but maybe by just 10 cm compared to now. it should in theory help a little with overtaking, since that'd be 20 cm extra room between 2 cars side by side, which I don't think would be that insignificant
I think a plan to go to F2 car dimensions (1.9mx5.2m) is on the cards. However the 1.8m F1 cars raced WORSE than 2.15m F1 cars from 1972-1992, so it's likely narrower cars do NOT produce better races in and of themselves. Modern Tilke circuits like Abu Dhabi are far wider than any 1970's circuit, yet do not produce better racing so it doesn't seem to be as simple as a matter of the space to fit side by side (or three or four wide).
1:25: Those cars were DeathMobiles.
I really thought all the "cars are too big" moaning was coming from gammons who remember the 1960s, but it turns out that the big gains happened between today and the distant past of 2004! I had no idea that a Ferrari F2004 was so much smaller.
For my fellow Americans unfamiliar with the Metric system I think I can shed some light on the conversion. Many controlled substances are sold in Kilos over here in United States and that's 2.2 pounds according to "Miami Vice". As far as the meter it's just a bit longer than the yard of 3 feet we Yankees love so much, so "6 feet under" would be 1.83 meters under in UK
To be fair, in the UK we use both metric and imperial. It's a mixture of context and personal preference as to which is used where. For instance when driving on the road we use miles and yards but when measuring most smaller distances we tend to use centimetres, metres etc. I guess it's a legacy of the country trying to go full metric but the public never fully accepted it, so we compromised. I imagine it's a bit of a generational thing as well.
One thing I don't quite get is why the UK and US have different measurements for a gallon! In Britain a gallon is around 4.5 litres, while in the US I think it's less?
@@dominicbarden4436 US gallon is 3.78L
Now I know why model cars got so expensive
the Maserati width must be way less than 2m
It’s the W11 in 2020
I actually dig the larger cars
I don't mind how big the cars are in some ways. Drivers need 1 meter of frontal crash structure and at least half that for side impact protection (if not more). The reinforcements for the survival cell and the halo are necessary. But the weight is the annoying part. Low-density, experimental, high strength composite materials should be tried.
Jesus, for a carbon fibre open wheeler 798kg is stupidly heavy. Years ago I had a Holden Gemini club car that only weighed 20kg more than that, and that was a steel bodied 4 door sedan with a cast iron engine block and a steel roll cage. And it was one of the heavier cars. The guys running Minis and early Mazdas and so on were in the 500-600kg weight range. There's just no way a steel body sedan should weigh less than an F1 car. Crazy.
Current F1 cars are longer and wider than the current gen NASCAR Cup car.
It isn't just F1 cars that are getting bigger, though. The VW Golf Mk8 is 58cm longer, 18cm wider and 280-675kg heavier (depending on spec) than the Mk1
Honda Civic is probably the best example of that. They used to be tiny 650kg things about the size of a Mini, now they're a mid sized family car that weighs 1500kgs.
Toyota Corolla is similar, first gen was 700kg, now they weigh 1400kg.
My first car was a Holden Gemini, which weighed about the same as a current F1 car. A steel body 4 door sedan with an iron block engine and a hulking great live axle. Crazy.
On the other hand, I'm sure Romain Grosjean is glad of the extra foot of car around him on all sides when he went exploring the armco at Bahrain a couple of years ago. How small could we realistically get a modern F1 car, while still being fast and not a deathtrap?
The idea that they're too big for some tracks is nonsense. Except for Monaco the tracks have evolved with the cars, and they aren't actually all that much larger. Extra length doesn't make it harder to overtake, and the width is basically the same.
Great video explaining the changes!
It seems that most of the changes have been based on adding safety into the cars so I doubt we’ll ever get back to anything much smaller than an S class Mercedes
Some space can definitely be cut due to more car = more aero. If body panels and wheels were pulled in a lot closer to the crash cell and engine, cars should be a lot smaller, I don't think the crash cell is _that_ big. Though the weight will likely still be an issue.
If I may, I suggest the cars from 1994-2004 form the best decade of cars.
9:04 remember when in 07 they said "we're making the wings narrower and taller for better overtaking"
Then in 2023 body regs they said "we're making the winds wider and lower for better overtaking"?
*look how big the front wings are!* You can't go for an overtake if it means your massive ironing board of a wing can be taken off with the slightest clip of another car. Look at the 90's williams and 00's ferrari, That's what we need.
If they were serious about better overtaking the thing to do is remove the wings altogether. Look at Formula Ford, there's 37 lead changes on the first lap.
Always wonder if F1 will follow road racs down the long and heavy road of Moreland more electromechanical systems to conquer weight and size, think like rear
Big, bulky, and fat Formula One cars mean more surface area for sponsorship logos and livery. Now that driver's helmets are close to invisible hidden under protective structures (thank Goddess for them), and the helmet logos work for when the driver climbs out of the car, the increased area on the surface of cars is great for advertising buisiness.
They really need to make the cars smaller and lose some weight. The cars can't pass on some tracks anymore. Just going back to the early 2000's wheel base with smaller tread patch. Oh, and get rid of tire blankets.
I would be all for refueling to be brought back if the cars lost at least 50kg and were shortened. Also, I don't think that the increased size, namely wheelbase is just for more fuel, safety cells and the hybrid/batteries. Wheelbase also brings a more stable car in medium and high speed corners, improving overall lap time. So if you want lighter and nimbler cars for the twisty bits, you're going to slow down for the high speed, high G turns that make much of the current F1 laptime.
Suddenly makes me wonder how other Formula cars compare, namely the Super Formula and Polyphony's Formula Gran Turismo! 7 has this F1500/T, inspired by 80s F1! And of course their own rocket ships, the ripped straight out of the future Red Bull X series! Or even the Prototypes of Le Mans!
LIke most people I have 0 patience for people/teams/organizations who complain about problems that they themselves caused - and the teams and FIA and Pirelli are in this group. With today's tech in 90's - 2000's size cars the racing would be epic. But instead they switched the wheels to 18" to be more relevant to 4m wide interstate highway lanes and have made the cars the size of a F-150 pickup truck. Then they complain about the tracks. As if it's easy to demolish and enlarge every historic track by 150%. All they can do is remove chicanes and open up the tightest corners and hope for the best.
The 2017 rules were a mistake, the width shouldn't have gone back to 2m, should have remained at the perfectly good 1.8m and there should be further restrictions on length and wheelbase. This is all entirely possible as the 2014 cars had hybrid but were nowhere near as huge.
Are the rear wings not included in the dimensions?
Yeah, they've got HUGE !
Having a scale picture of one of the modern "Monster Truck" Range Rovers or BMW X5s next to them could be useful.
At the other end of the spectrum a scale picture of the original 1959 Morris Mini, and not the "Maxi" versions of the 21st century. (Yes I know Maxi was a car from BL in the mid 70s , I'm a middle aged old git !)
How about just mandating the cars be the same size as the 98 cars
I'd argue the wider track width is better for safety
It's free roll stiffness. I don't know if it makes the cars safer.
How the hell have the cars grown only 60-ish centimeters over 50 years, and then suddenly we needed to grow the cars a fuck ton? It's not saftey then innit
The size has grown because they have to carry a full race worth of fuel. If they had refuelling, the cars dimensions could change because you can drop the tank size
With current hybrid engines it’s only 130l of volume. Most teams have enough spare room in their oversized side pods to do 2 race distances.
In the 1950's f1 car was small and family car big, now f1 car is big and family car small😅
for the algorithm
That 1.5 L limit gave ne a dumb idea.
New racing series, maximum 1.5L and 130hp at the wheels. Minimum wight of 1000kg, cars have to be able to seat 5 people each at least 1.6M tall.
You only get 2 engines per car the whole season.
Other than that, do whatever you want.
We would get so many better economy cars.
I think the Williams in thr center of the line up is the perfect size. It should have stayed that size.
And people keep saying the cars need to be less wide. Width has never been the issue