Oh, hi there!
This is Eau Rouge, a small river in Belgium.
It's known for its red color due to iron oxide deposits on the riverbed.
Now obviously that's not what this video is about, it's about what's above this river.
Eau Rouge.
Together with Raidillon, it's one of the most thrilling corners on Formula 1 calendar and,
according to the drivers, a challenging one, requiring both skill and commitment.
I've been following F1 for the last couple of years, and I decided to dig into the hardware
and software that is being used by the teams.
If you know something about motorsport or F1, then you know that there are rules about
everything, and that includes the hardware and software the teams can use.
By far, the most interesting piece of hardware is the ECU or Electronic Control Unit.
It was standardized by the FIA to reduce the ever-increasing costs of competing in Formula
1.
The FIA chose an ECU developed by McLaren Applied because several F1 teams were already
using it.
It's even used in other competitions such as the World Endurance Championship, IndyCar,
NASCAR, and even Formula E.
The ECU is basically the brain of the car.
It's a small but powerful computer that monitors over 300 sensors on the car and controls various
systems like the engine, throttle, clutch, gearbox, hybrid systems, and so on.
Throughout a Grand Prix, the ECU processes over 750 million data points, which is about
1.5GB of raw data.
All of this is transmitted to the teams and race control via telemetry.
Having a standardized ECU does not mean that all teams use the same code.
McLaren only provides the hardware and a software framework that follows the rules set out by
the FIA.
It's then up to the individual teams to write code on top of this framework to control things
like the gearbox, engine, and hybrid systems.
Let's move towards software and start with the pit wall.
During a weekend, engineers analyze data coming from the car with ATLAS, another tool developed
by McLaren.
It stands for Advanced Telemetry Acquisition System, and teams use it to visualize data
so they can spot improvements or issues.
It can also overlay historical data to spot trends that might influence the performance
or strategy.
Once again, the tool is not only used in F1 but other racing series as well.
You can even use ATLAS in combination with iRacing to analyze your own laps.
Software also plays a vital role off-track.
At the factories, teams use CAD software to design hundreds of components that make up
their cars.
Examples of this include CATIA and Siemens NX Unigraphics (found on jobs site of Alpha
Tauri).
But, CAD software is not required to make a great car.
Adrien Newey is famous for still using his drawing table.
But back to CAD systems, in which you can design components, but you can't test them.
In F1, teams use wind tunnels to test and improve various aerodynamic concepts.
Here, teams blow air over a real object and measure the aerodynamic forces on it.
The biggest downside, however, is that you need to build real objects to test in your
wind tunnel, and this takes a lot of time.
Now in recent years, computers have become fast enough to simulate the flow of air using
CFD or Computational Fluid Dynamics.
It's mostly a bunch of computers that work together to simulate how the air flows, interacts
and affects the surfaces of the car.
Examples of CFD software are PowerFLOW and OpenFOAM, and the last one is open source
and free if you don't need commercial support.
Engineers can use it to virtually test their changes without having to go to the wind tunnel.
This reduces costs and increases the speed at which you can iterate your designs.
But there are downsides as well.
For starters, CFD is not cheap and requires a lot of computing power.
To prevent an arms race, the FIA even limits the use of CFD simulations, so that bigger
teams can't gain a significant advantage over smaller ones.
And secondly, while CFD is highly effective, it can't completely replace the wind tunnel
just yet.
Sometimes the simulation doesn't match real-world performance, but as software gets better,
wind tunnels will become less important.
And then there are sponsorships.
Many teams have partners that help and support them on various levels.
Ferrari partnered with chipmaker AMD to build custom chips to run CFD simulations.
More recently, Mercedes also partnered with AMD and will use their latest Ryzen chips
in workstations and servers to up the performance.
They also partner with Pure Storage, who provide them with super-fast storage to analyze all
of their data in real-time.
Other examples include Renault, which has a partnership with Microsoft and uses Dynamics
365 to manage operations and various Azure services to run simulations.
And more recently, F1 itself turned to AWS to develop a new chassis for the 2022 season
and to simulate its effectiveness.
AWS also provides live insights that are shown during broadcasts.
Undoubtedly there are many more exciting pieces of hardware and software in use throughout
Formula 1, but that's it for this video.
Let me know in the comments below if you know other great examples.
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Thanks for watching and till next time!