As seen in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
October 25, 2014 11:00 AM   Subscribe

Ever woken up on a Saturday morning wondering how a modern wind tunnel works? (Rhetorical question; I know you haven't.) The Sauber F1 team has posted a 44 minute video explaining the ins and outs of using a wind tunnel. The video covers everything from wind tunnel design to how F1 cars are tested.
posted by daniel_charms (26 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ever woken up on a Saturday morning wondering how a modern wind tunnel works?

Only every race weekend! This is amazing, thanks for the post.
posted by Dysk at 11:10 AM on October 25, 2014


Ever woken up on a Saturday morning wondering how a modern wind tunnel works?

Well it's definitely not working for Sauber this year, that's for sure.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:53 AM on October 25, 2014


I never expected to be so fascinated by wind tunnel technology! Shame about the annoying "Coming up next" graphics, but the video's intriguing even so.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:13 PM on October 25, 2014


This is exactly what I needed today. Thanks!
posted by cthuljew at 12:15 PM on October 25, 2014


Excellent.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 12:19 PM on October 25, 2014


Absolutely fascinating. This guy is wonderful as an engineer, a scientist and a communicator. The only thing that remains unexplained is what the box of Russian vanilla ice cream is doing on a conveyor belt at 21:21.
posted by hat_eater at 12:29 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The only thing that remains unexplained is what the box of Russian vanilla ice cream is doing on a conveyor belt at 21:21.

DOLGOPRUDNY, RUSSIA — MARCH 30, 2014: Carton box moving away on the belt at the factory. Walking workers in the background.
posted by effbot at 12:38 PM on October 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


There is nothing MetaFilter can't do.
posted by hat_eater at 12:46 PM on October 25, 2014


Willem is a really, really nice bloke. I had the pleasure of crossing paths with him when he was involved with an (ultimately stillborn) fledgling F1 project more than 20 years ago at the company I was working at. He was just as perky, quick to laugh and terrifyingly intelligent as he appears in that video. I didn't realise he was at Sauber, right now.

When I knew him he was one of the most enthusiastic and passionate guys you could imagine - he had a very heavily tuned Peugeot 205 GTi that was indecently fast. He used to drive to work every day on barely street legal tyres because he was also taking it to hill climbs at weekends and competing. Racing is like a disease - you do it all week at work and when you get some time off inevitably some element of racing creeps in.
posted by Brockles at 1:31 PM on October 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Yes. Yes, I have. Eventually I even used a couple. Good times. Thanks for the post.
posted by Rob Rockets at 2:01 PM on October 25, 2014


I'm guessing they have some way to create dirty air to test their designs' performance under conditions that Sauber's cars are going to spend more time in? Or is that sort of thing easier to deal with by applying math to tests in the cleanest air possible?

Toet was certainly charming; I really liked his barely-contained pride in the bits of wind-tunnel tech that migrated from motorsport to aerospace.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:10 PM on October 25, 2014


Well I looked, but I couldn't find any video of people floating on surface tables on air bearings.
posted by zinon at 2:14 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


That was great. Does anybody know if Lockheed or Boeing or Airbus have an equivalent youtube for jets?
posted by bukvich at 3:58 PM on October 25, 2014


Very cool. My mind was blown a bit when they showed the two technicians working on the model in the wind tunnel, I didn't realize they used scale models.
posted by inparticularity at 4:39 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


This is fantastic. I used to have as my desktop a picture of the McLaren wind tunnel in hygienic white. Sad news to hear today that Caterham and Marussia won't make the next race.
posted by arcticseal at 9:16 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is fantastic. I love when Willem cracks himself up with some technological bit of information. Thanks Brockles for confirmation that he is a nice bloke. Sure seems it.
posted by 724A at 11:10 PM on October 25, 2014


What an interesting video. Thanks.

arcticseal: Sad news to hear today that Caterham and Marussia won't make the next race.
Jeez. If Kobayashi didn't have bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:30 AM on October 26, 2014


With Marussia and Caterham out, and Vettel skipping qualifying, I don't even know what are they going to do with Q1. Probably going to change it to 4+4+10? Otherwise there would be no point in even going out for Q1 for anyone.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:11 AM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Indiana Jones? Pshaw. There's a terrific wind tunnel sequence in Armour of God 2: Operation Condor (which is sort of Jackie Chan doing Indy).
posted by dhartung at 2:16 AM on October 26, 2014


Sad news to hear today that Caterham and Marussia won't make the next race.

There are increasing murmurings that this is directly linked to the confusion over the logic of some of the driver signings next year. The writing was on the wall, and the only way some of the more... odd rumours (like Alonso to McLaren but Button and Magnussen seeming settled) can only be explained by teams running three cars next year. The struggles of Caterham in particular have been obvious for about 4 months, Marussia likewise quite clearly have no cash so this will have been anticipated.

The FIA have expressly stated that they won't expect teams to run 3 cars to make up grid numbers i'in 2014'. Kind of a 'well, don't worry about that this year, guys' thing that is a little telling.

Personally I wish Bernie would stop being an arsehole (which is never going to happen) and just give teams a far more fair share of the earnings from F1. This practice of only giving money to the top 10 teams means the 11th and down teams will always be struggling, which seems silly. I'd be all for giving all teams equal money with a % bonus equal to their position in the championship - 25% bonus to 1st, 18% to second and so on down to 10th with everyone else getting the 'base' sum. Seems much more fair then the team with the least money getting nothing at all. I'd rather see bigger grids from more teams.
posted by Brockles at 6:46 AM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


There will be no three car teams next year at least, I'm pretty sure. No team actually wants to do it, the idea came from a random tweet by a former Williams CEO, then Bernie jumped on the idea - but his idea, thus far voiced only in random interviews, is something different. It is that top tier teams would give their third car to the backmarkers. This, however, would violate the Concorde Agreement. So I'm pretty sure not even Bernie can manage to force teams to build cars for other teams and change the Concorde in just the next couple months (and the revisions would have to be major). And with Concorde being a contract between FIA and FOTA... so, no.

Here's an article that discusses this, among other things.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:01 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anyway, the entire situation is bad so here's a hilarious article on the greatest F1 team of all time, Life!
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:13 PM on October 26, 2014


It doesn't matter if the teams want to do it or not, it is written into the Concord agreement that teams *must* supply a third car to maintain a minimum grid level (16 cars is the guarantee to the circuit promoter's requirements, 20 cars for the Concord agreement). Third cars/20 cars is a requirement of the teams complying with the Concord agreement, which in turn is the only way they will be allowed to compete and get prize money. It just isn't necessarily written *how* those cars are supplied, which is what is the issue now it is rearing it's head as a likely scenario.

So the third car idea did not come from Adam Parr, but is part of the (mostly secret) Concord agreement and has been for some time. The things that Bernie says now needs to be considered a poker hand - Bernie says what he thinks he needs to say to get the result he wants, not in any way as a prediction of what will happen. He may be throwing the cat amongst the pigeons by making it clear to teams that if third cars DO happen - which may well be the case - that if they don't run them themselves they will have to 'give them to someone else'. This is classic Bernie scare tactics. He's making it clear that if they don't toe the line, then the secrecy of their brand new design could be blown out of the water. What team would willingly give their current tech to another team?

Even with the issues around customer cars violating the Concord agreement (which could be argued that Bernie's suggested 'plan' would also do) then if the grids fall, the pressure is still on the remaining teams to fix the issue by providing more cars. The teams who are committed to the championship are forced to maintain a minimum grid level. So the dialogue needs to start now.

The violation of the Concord agreement is kind of golden handcuffs, or a golden bullet that Bernie can use to get what he wants. The current F1 teams have set a deposit with the FI and committed to the series until 2020. The Concord agreement both allows them to compete and dictated the way they must compete (and hence get prize money). So if they refuse to run 3 cars, they're in violation of their commitment to the series (the show much go on) and so a new Concord agreement must be agreed. Or a modification to it.

I'm pretty sure not even Bernie can manage to force teams to build cars for other teams and change the Concorde in just the next couple months

The series isn't healthy enough for them to threaten (yet again) a break away series so it's a little bit of chess/poker/money-carrot between the teams and Bernie. They also cannot compete without a Concord agreement. So if Marussia bail (they gave intent to file bankruptcy already) and Caterham are done (which.. they are) then the teams are kind of up against it. The Concord agreement is either already broken (teams refuse to supply cars) or they *have* to supply cars (and they just have to agree how to supply them).

Without supplying cars or making a new Concord agreement, there is no Formula 1 below a 20 car grid. It's already done. The teams have to compete and they need the money that the Concord agreement allows them - they don't get that money (millions of dollars) without FOM (Bernie) having an agreement as to how to distribute it. So I really don't think modifying the Concord agreement will be too much of an issue. It's survival time, rather than negotiating time, so I suspect a sub-agreement for 2015 may be relatively easy to get to, because with Haas entering in 2016 the issue goes away. A 12 month agreement shouldn't be too hard as the teams could agree to something without long term penalties for themselves.
posted by Brockles at 2:37 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anyway, the entire situation is bad so here's a hilarious article on the greatest F1 team of all time, Life!

Oh god, Life. I remember them. They mention their finest moment - the engine taking a crap on track despite going so slow it may as well have been pushed by a following wind, then they dragged that horrible car back to the pits, eventually got a new one of those stupid paperweight 'engine' in only for it to take a shit before it even got out of the pit lane (which I think is the incident they refer to with no oil in it).

There have been some terrible F1 teams (Larrouse, I am looking at you) but Life were a whole extra level of Suck.
posted by Brockles at 2:45 PM on October 26, 2014


So basically, the current situation sucks not to the style of Life, but rather F1 has become Andrea Moda.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:49 PM on October 26, 2014


Oooh, that's harsh. Possibly entirely fair, but harsh nonetheless!
posted by Brockles at 4:59 PM on October 26, 2014


« Older RIP Jack Bruce, 1943-2014   |   Nicki Minaj, Cheeky Genius Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments