- For lots of production cars as horsepower increases,
so does the size of the wheels.
But if we look at an F1 car, it doesn't fit that trend.
They make close to a thousand horsepower,
but used 13 inch wheels.
The Formula One, they're not the only one using tiny wheels.
Oh no, NASCAR, IndyCar,
they both use relatively small wheels at just 15 inches.
But when it comes to wheels, bigger isn't always better.
So why in 2022 is F1 ditching their small boys
for some dups. Well, today we're gonna look
at why the most high performance race cars in the world
have itty bitty wheels and why Formula One,
are making their cars slower by sizing those wheels up.
Let's go.
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and now let's get back to some B2B.
You know, it's a good day at B2B, when we got beakers
in the mix. Hello, we're science-y around here. Ohh!
(laughs)
As we've established a big change coming to Formula One
in 2022, are the larger wheels. No big deal, right?
Wrong!
James Allison, the Technical Director
of the Mercedes F1 Team says, those larger wheels
will make the cars, two seconds slower per lap.
That's roughly what you expect from a car
that lost 125 horsepower. That's huge.
He then said that if you like those bigger wheels,
it's because you're a 13 year old boy
or fan of Fast and Furious films.
Yes, I am both of those. Then he calls your mama,
(loud bickering bass)
That guy, the FIA who respects your mother
for being a strong independent woman says,
larger wheels are gonna lead to better racing.
So who should we believe, Allison or the FIA?
Car enthusiasts tend to associate larger wheels
with increased performance.
Is that because we're all 13 year old fan boys
or fans of the Fast and Furious franchise?
Well, no, there really is a correlation
between a car's performance and wheel size partially,
that's because in a road car or a race car,
weight is the enemy of speed.
Put your car on a diet and performance increases,
add mass and performance decreases.
Even a one inch increase in wheel size
can add a significant amount of mass to a car.
On average 17 inch wheels, they weigh about 9.4 kilograms,
it's 20.7 pounds. 18 inch wheels,
they weigh about 10.7 kilograms.
That's 1.3 kgs, more weight per wheel,
or about as much as an adult Prairie dog.
Now you put four of those on a car
and that's an increase in total mass of 5.2 kilograms
or an Allen Swamp Monkey.
Now based on power to weight ratio that additional mass
in a Formula One car is equivalent to losing 5.7 horsepower.
F1 is a tight competition and losing five horsepower
is the difference between winning a race and losing a race.
But F1 wheels, aren't increasing by one inch,
they're increasing by five inches, from 13 inches
to 18 inches. F1 wheel weights are a closely guarded secret.
So we can only estimate what difference that size change
will make to the total weight of the cars.
I was able to find the weight of one 13 inch F1 wheel
from the 2001 season. And sure enough,
it was just four kilograms.
An 18 inch wheel made from the same material using
the same construction, would weigh nearly twice that,
7.9 kilograms for a total increase in the car's mass
of 15.7 kgs. That change in power to weight ratio
is equivalent to losing 17 horsepower,
but 17 horsepower shouldn't produce
a two second per lap deficit like Allison suggests.
There's rumored to be a formula for calculating
how horsepower loss will affect lap time.
Every horsepower lost increases lap time
by roughly 0.016 seconds. If that formula is correct,
17 horsepower should only add about a quarter
of a second per lap, not a full two seconds.
The reason for Allison's pessimism is because wheels
and tires, aren't just linear mass, their rotational mass.
Usually when we talk about weight or mass,
we're talking about linear mass.
That's just a measure of how difficult it is
to set an object in motion or bring it to a stop
in a straight line.
Greater mass requires more force to get moving.
For car, adding linear mass is the equivalent
to taking away horsepower because it alters the power
to weight ratio.
If you wanna learn more about power to weight ratios,
why don't you go click this feeder right here.
Now rotational mass on the other hand,
is how difficult it is to get an object like a wheel
to rotate. Rotational mass is different because
it just doesn't depend on the weight of the object,
but where that weight is positioned relative to its center
or axis of rotation. The further from that axis,
the weight is positioned, the harder it is
to make that object increase or decrease
its rate of rotation.
A car's engine has to make all the parts attached
to the drive line rotate.
That includes things like the flywheel and the clutch,
the gears in the gearbox, the drive shaft,
the axles and brake disc, and the wheels.
All that rotating mass is one reason why crank horsepower
in wheel horsepower, differ.
That difference is the cars drivetrain power loss,
and the heavier all those items are,
the more power is lost making them spin up to speed,
which means less power available to accelerate the mass
of the rest of the car forward.
Increasing or decreasing the weight of something
like a drive shaft, will have minimal effect
on drivetrain loss, because most of the mass
of the drive shaft is close to the axis of rotation.
But wheels are different.
Most of their mass is in the rim as far as possible
from the axis of rotation.
Increasing wheel size adds extra weight,
almost all of which is further away from the center
of the wheel creating an even greater increase
in the rotational mass.
The more rotational mass you have,
the more power you need to overcome that mass
and the less power you get to apply to forward movement
of your race car.
So is larger wheels increased linear and rotational mass
enough for a two second deficit in a Formula One?
Not quiet.
There's actually one more problem that Allison has in mind
and that's because new wheels means, new tires.
You know what they say about a race car
with big wheels, right?
Freaking big tires.
(bell dinging)
And the new F1 tires are bigger just in ways
that will slow the cars.
They're also smaller in other ways
that will also slow the cars. Let me explain.
Current F1 tires have a diameter of 670 millimeters
in a 13 inch wheel.
That means the tire sidewall is about 170 millimeters.
That's a whole lot of sidewall,
but that just means more cushion for the push-in
because that tall sidewall is part of the car suspension.
It absorbs impacts and vibrations from the road surface
to help control the movement and the balance
of the car's weight and to maintain its grip.
That absorption mostly happens through deformation
of the sidewall and the taller sidewall is
the more it can deform.
Because the tires are the first point of contact
with the road surface, any shocks or vibrations they absorb
don't have to be managed by the rest of the suspension.
If the tires they can do a lot of that work,
the springs and dampers can be made lighter, simpler,
cheaper, and more compact.
Tires are such an integral part of F1 suspension
that teams invented the J Damper
to stabilize tire oscillations
for even better tire suspension performance.
We made the most difficult to understand B2B ever
on the J Damper.
If you really wanna nerd out click, click right here.
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The new formula one tires for 2022 are bigger
than the current ones.
The sizes haven't been finalized yet,
but they will be wider and they'll have a total diameter
of 725 millimeters versus the current,
which is 670 millimeters.
And just like having larger wheels,
larger tires means an increased in tire weight
and it moves that weight further from the center
of the wheel, increasing rotational mass as well.
That slows the car down for all the same reasons
that bigger wheels slow the car down.
But because of those bigger wheels,
the new tires have a smaller sidewall, just 135 millimeters.
That means the cars will need new suspension
with larger springs and dampers because they now have
to manage more of the shocks and vibrations
the cars encounter.
The larger shocks and suspension components needed
to make up for that loss, accounts for yet
another weight increase that's going to slow the cars down.
So the reason why Formula One, NASCAR and IndyCar
all use relatively small wheels is because they're light,
they're easy to get spinning and they can fit tires
with large sidewalls, which are an important part
of the suspension. Like it or not,
this dude Allison is right.
Changing to larger wheels is going to slow the cars down
that makes the change a bit of a mystery.
And Formula One is once again, not alone.
NASCAR, they're switching to 18 inch wheels in 2022
and IndyCars expected to change in 2023.
Each series claims that one reason to go big
is so the wheels will be more like those found
on performance road cars.
So if they know the cars are going to be slower,
and if we can throw away their reasoning for using wheels
that much more resemble production cars,
why make the switch?
The old taller tire sidewalls
that do so much suspension work actually creates
some problems.
Squishy tires, they're imprecise,
and the teams can't adjust that part of the suspension
for the specific track or the conditions,
the way they can tune springs and dampers.
A shorter sidewall means more variety and team choices
about suspension setup.
Another reason for the new wheels is major changes
to aerodynamics coming for 2022.
These are partially intended to increase safety
by reducing speed.
Decreasing the load created by downforce reduces stress
on the tires and this is supposed to prevent
the sort of blowouts that have plagued
the British Grand Prix,
and also took out Lance Stroll and race leader,
Max for stopping at Baku, a couple of weeks ago.
Less aerodynamic load means less sidewall is necessary
to support that load and less sidewall, means tires
can be run at lower pressure and they will flex less
both of which should reduce the incidents of blowout.
But the big reason for aerodynamic changes
is to reduce dirty air.
That's the low pressure area and turbulence behind
an F1 car created by all its aerodynamic parts.
That low pressure area is how F1 car slipstream
or get a tow on straight sections.
The following car has 40 to 50% less downforce
than what the front car has, which reduces drag increasing
their speed. Now, while that's great in a straight line,
dirty air, and that lack of downforce creates a problem
in corners where less downforce means less grip,
and less grip means lower speeds.
Dirty air makes it incredibly difficult to pass
because the follower can't keep up with the car in front
through a corner.
Aerodynamic changes are being introduced
to smooth the surface of the cars to clean up that air.
And it turns out, a lot of dirty air is created
by the wheels and tires.
F1 tires with tall sidewalls deflect during racing,
they literally changed shape and oscillate.
That ever changing shape creates turbulence
as the tire passes through the air.
A lower profile tire deflects less,
creating less turbulence.
To help further reduce all of that dirty air in 2022,
there'll be winglets that sit above
the tires called cleaning blades that slow
the turbulent air coming off the tires
and reduce the low pressure area behind them.
Like a spoiler on the trunk of your car.
That's exactly why every dude who has a civic hatchback
has a spoiler, they're just trying to clean up
all their dirty air, man.
Next time you see a civic with a frigging big spoiler,
just give them a high five.
Big thanks for cleaning up the dirty air,
they'll know exactly what you're talking about.
Scream it loud, loudly, and aggressively.
As loud and aggressive as you can.
- Hey, sweet (beep) spoiler dude!
Then they'll love you (chuckles).
The spinning wheels also create turbulence
because of their irregular surface shape.
So to prevent this, F1 will be introducing smooth covers
that seal the outside surface of the wheels.
The ones that they were seen in testing
all the way back in 2019, they looked a little goofy.
They painted to look like fake wheels.
Those are what they are,
but supposedly, these will have integrated LEDs
to display information to fans like tire wear
or pressure, or if we're lucky, a GIF of my face doing this.
(loud alarm buzzing)
(heavy metal music)
Changing wheel size might seem like a minor thing,
but it has so many knockdown effects
that we don't have enough time to talk about them
in one single episode, we're gonna need more episodes.
It increases unsprung mass.
That's the part of the car that's not supported
by the suspension.
And this has significant impacts on handling.
Bigger wheels means the interior volume
of the tires is smaller, which changes the pressure
there'll be running.
And that changes the way they heat up and cool down.
That change in the thermal properties of the tires
means, Pirelli, they got to come up
with new rubber compounds that work under those conditions.
And they won't be able to relax after that
because their exclusive F1 contract is up for 2023.
So things can get all crazy after them.
And there's yet another major rule change coming in 2024,
no more tire warmers.
That means Pirelli or whoever is making the tires has
to produce a race tire compound that sticks
from 10 degrees C, all the way up to 150 degrees C
and that's never been done before.
As if that wasn't enough, new engines are coming for 2025.
F1, they never freaking stop and neither do we, baby.
So we are gonna be doing a lot of B2B's
on all those F1 changes.
There's something that you wanna see,
leave a comment down below.
We'll try to see if we can do a episode on it.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
Follow us here on Instagram at Donut @donutmedia,
follow me on Instagram @JeremiahBurton.
Until next week, bye for now.