What It Really Takes To Win On The Hardest F1 Tracks

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In my last piece, I explained that tire wear has been anongoing struggle for Mercedes for over a season. There's another aspect, however,of Formula 1, that can make or brake (sorry) a race: the gearbox. This articlewill explain why the gearbox is so essential to races like the one this past Sunday inMonaco.Three-time Formula 1 world champion NelsonPiquet once famously likened driving around Monaco to riding around your living room on abicycle. OK, so some people’s living rooms are larger than others, but the point hewas trying to make was that of all the circuits on the Formula 1 calendar, Monaco is thetightest, twistiest and most physically and mentally demanding of the lot -- the one wherethe slightest lapse in concentration can end with a car in the barriers.Therace is so special, it is regarded as part of the motorsport’s triple crown, alongwith the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 hours of Le Mans. But unlike the Indianapolis 500,won by Dario Franchitti only hours after Mark Webber took the checkered flag at MonteCarlo, the challenge couldn’t be more different. Seventy-eight laps covering 161.879miles with 62 gear changes per lap and over 4,000 during the course of a race means thatit’s not only an extreme examination of driver skill and concentration but also asevere examination of one of the most important parts of F1 tech, thegearbox. A Formula 1 car can acceleratefrom 0-100 mph in a little over two seconds and brake back to a standstill in half thetime, vital for the stop/start nature of the Monaco circuit. It’s all made possiblebecause of the “seamless” seven-speed gearbox. In a conventional manualgearbox, such as the one in your own car, the drive is briefly disconnected when thedriver selects a new gear by depressing the clutch. With an F1 gearbox, it is crucial thatnone of this drive is lost, so intricate mechanisms ensure that when an upshift is made,drive is taken up on the next gear at the exact moment that the previous gear isdisengaged. It means there is no loss of drive torque, and it’s precisely why thegearboxes in an F1 car are referred to as “seamless.”Unlike inyour own car, unless you happen to be lucky enough to own a sports supercar, the F1 gearsare operated by the driver by way of a paddle shift system behind the steering wheel. Whenthe driver flicks the gear paddle, it sends a signal to the Electronic Control Unit (ECU)that tells it that a gearshift is needed. The unit knows whether an upshift or downshiftis required and what gear the driver is currently in. The right paddle shifts up, the leftdown. And with electronic control, a clutch is not needed to assist in the process, whichcan be completed in as little as seven thousandths of a second per change.Teams can also experiment with the position of the gearbox, and this is something thatMercedes did togood effect around Monaco. The team qualified first and third fastest in Monaco, withMichael Schumacher on provisional pole before his fifth-place grid penalty meted out forhis crash with Bruno Senna in Spain. As it was, Nico Rosberg finished the race second andadmitted afterwards that he could easily have been first with a little more luck. Mercedescame into Monaco with a new, lighter gearbox, allowing them to adapt the rear suspensiongeometry and help combat the rear tire wear that hasplagued the team this season. It seemed to have the desired effect.Likeeverything in Formula 1, gearboxes don’t come cheap. Teams can spend as much as $5.5million on the development and production of the seven or eight gearboxes they will useover the course of a season, with additional gearboxes costing as much as $315,000each.For us mere mortals, the closest we’re going to get to experiencingthe unparalleled levels of acceleration and braking of a Formula 1 car aroundMonaco’s tight confines is via the on-board cameras during the television coverageor by playing a realistic video game. Alternatively, you could simply have a go at ridingyour bicycle around your own living room. Continue Reading

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