Automatic Gearboxes in F1 - Its real !

[Super Tourer]

Front page news on M News.

"Fully Automatic gearboxes will be allowed in F1 from April's Spanish Grand Prix"

Apparently the cars will have a computer software maps of the circuit installed in the car that will change gears automatically at the correct points around the track.

Traction control will also be introduced at the same time, leaving the driver to only steer and brake...

I guess this means that F1 drivers will now graduate straight from Playstaion 2 to F1.....

[Valve Bounce]

Is this for real? And how does it work? (in simple terms please)

[massifheed]

How come this is the first we have heard of this? This is more of a hot potato than traction control, if it is true then I would have thought that there would be more coverage of it. I remain sceptical.

[Super Tourer]

There is quite a bit of coverage in Motoring News with comment by Frank Williams so it looks true. I agree it lloks out of the blue. Apparently it was approved last week at a meeting between the FIA and F1 team owners, along with a raft of other changes to regulations relating to electronics. The trade off is that active suspension will not be permitted.

Not much info on how it works. It seems that a computer installs an electronic map of the circuit into the car, that changes gear automatically as the car circulates the track. I guess this was fairly easy to do as all the paddle system only electronically changed the gears anyway, and the driver had the lights display to tell him when to change up the gears.

From this info it was probably a small step to take the driver out of the equation and change gear automatically.

It looks like a step backwards to me, but technological advances often produce a backward practical step.

Sure the driver will still have to drive the car and be able to control it at speed, but one can't help feeling that a lot of driver skill is being lost.

[massifheed]

I agree, I thought the reason that they originally banned electronic driver aids was that it was becoming "fly by wire" racing. Now they seem to be re-introducing things all of a sudden. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that F1 want's to remain the "pinnacle" of motorsport, I guess by making it even more hi-tech they reckon that they can claim that they are at the cutting edge.

Or it could be that Max realises that his changes over the last few years have damaged the sport from an entertainment point of view, and now he accepts that they need something to make the racing closer again. But whether or not it would do that is another thing.

[Bononi]

From that we can understand that all drivers will be some kind leveled, as there will be no errors for changing gears or delays...
I guess some drivers will be delighted.

[Dino IV]

Originally posted by Super Tourer
Apparently the cars will have a computer software maps of the circuit installed in the car that will change gears automatically at the correct points around the track.

Traction control will also be introduced at the same time, leaving the driver to only steer and brake...

I guess this means that F1 drivers will now graduate straight from Playstation 2 to F1.....

The kind of 'maps' you mention, ST, are already used by the topteams for the past seasons. They activated the correct engine and diff mappings at the correct points on the tracks thus providing traction control. One could call this a 'passive' form as it isn't triggered by a sensor detecting more than desired wheel spin which would be the 'active' form. It just 'knows' the car is in i.e. a hairpin and adjusts the powersupply accordingly.

It demands a lot of research and advanced programming to get that right (to 'know' where the car is exactly) and a calibration at S/F won't do. The car has to be recalibrated at numerous points of the track and that's not that simple. The past seasons we've seen cars behaving very weird at some point in a race, being unexplainable slow and seemingly undrivable for part of a lap until the moment the system could be resetted ann recalibrate itself and the driver could pick up the pace again.

Never underestimate the power of Playstation ...

[Ralf's Girl]

The rate things are going with F1 at the moment (first traction control coming back, now this), anyone will be able to drive an F1 car. If the driver just has to brake and steer, they clearly aren't going to need to be anything special to get a drive in the first place. In recent years, we've seen some distinctly dodgy drivers in F1 (to name one, Ricardo Rosset...), but so-called 'technological advances' are taking more and more emphasis off the driver himself.

I wonder if I'll be able to take an A-level course in driving an F1 car...oh, come on! If I don't have to change gear, it can't be that hard!!!