Originally Posted by Richard C
First, I want to say that I think my comment above has been misunderstood. I am not saying "F1 IS bush league" but rather that how peebee2 describes the process would be "bush league" IMHO. My point being that it is extremely unlikely it works as he says. Hence, IMHO F1 is NOT bush league.
My entire comments hinge upon the above statement. Which effectively says that teams bring a solution that they know it is less than sufficient and then build it stronger until it passes. I will not repeat my arguments as to why that approach makes little sense.
I 100% agree. And maybe I was explaining my position badly. As I mentioned, the simulations can get you close, but are likely to not fully match reality. So if you are looking to get right to that 1.0x safety factor you must do testing.
Fair point in response to my comment about teams sacrificing safety. Bad argument on my part. I don't think they are heartless, but they are going to provide the minimal required. Anything above and beyond minimal would only happen if it doesn't degrade performance.
I am sorry, it can't be that simple. But lets say it is. Sure, why not. I mean, why not strap a nose to his back and drive it over on a motorbike? I am not talking about transport of test items as being the hard part. I am talking about all of the rest. The building of the new test article, the scheduling of test time, the test prep on site, post test analysis, etc. You talk as if you just load up an item and show up and it's done within minutes or hours. What happens when you show up and they are busy testing someone else's items? Does the facility not have a schedule they work against? You might say.. "Of course they do" well then... factor that into your "it's just this simple" explanations that you casually toss out. Pop out a new nose, toss it in the boot and show up in 15 minutes!
Thank you. This actually fully supports my comments. As they say at about 2:18...
This is completely the opposite of what peebee2 said. They are starting with a test article that they feel WILL work. And they working backwards. You get much more data from an article that does work vs. one that you know will not work and is completely destroyed. One that does work, you can see it's full capability. One that is destroyed during the test, it should be much harder to know what it's actual limit is.
As to frequency of testing and the ability to "teams can crash test as much as they want". What is unsaid is they also want to crash test as little as possible. Maybe three might be optimal? Three designs that are nearly the same and all expected to be right at the 1.0x safety margin. Each tested in order of progressively weaker designs. The first passes, the second passes, the third fails. You go with the second design. Any additional refinement might be diminishing returns in a cost cap F1 world.
I can imagine that they might bring a few test structures (such as multiple noses) to a test (see my "three item" example above), but agree at some point it is wasteful to have a bunch that they expect to eventually find one that eventually doesn't pass so they use the prior version for final homologation.
As to failing the FIA homologation test (which might be what is occasionally reported in the news) might be something like the output of the "three item" test I hypothesize above. Let say they picked item #2 as it passed earlier testing. They use the exact same design for the FIA test. But it fails. Maybe it was really right on the edge of the 1.0x safety margin. So it passes sometimes and sometimes not.
I think you are on the right path. What is the entire lay up time, and curing plus test time? What other layup and curing work might be happening at the factory that might cause internal scheduling challenges? Probably enough that you don't test in the morning, build a revised item mid-day and then retest in the afternoon after they cart the item over in someone's car. But who knows maybe I am wrong.
I am sorry, this is where I just call BS on how you explain stuff here. It would be lovely if you just raised your hand and said you got it wrong the first time. Because you started out with them starting with a weak test article and then building up, now you have fully embraced that they start with a strong article and reduce it. I love how you just go with the flow, change your position and you are never wrong. You know it's OK to admit when you got it wrong. Maybe you just made a mistake and got it backwards initially. It happens. That they start weak and build strong vs. the opposite. If so, then just say... "I got that wrong".
As is with many things you post, you speak with absolute authority, but at the same time lots of details just don't pass the smell test. I have no doubt you work inside the sport and know things. But you probably know a bit about a number of things and speak beyond your knowledge at times. It also doesn't help when things such as that YouTube video which interviews those in question show it works the opposite as you say.
Me? I am not in the sport. But I have an engineering background and much of how you describe things (from a process flow and many times an engineering perspective) just doesn't make sense. Not that F1 might have their own way of doing things, but they still would operate logically.
Richard
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