A formula 1 car in numbers everything about costs and technology
What does a formula 1 car cost?? How many sensors are installed? How long does it take to paint the world’s fastest cars and accelerate them from a standstill to 100 km/h?? We got the numbers.
The abu dhabi 2021 GP marked the end of an era. The well-known racing cars have outdated and migrate into the museum. They are making way for a new generation of cars that will make the champions league of motorsport even more attractive from this season onward. But before we open the new chapter, we would like to pay tribute to the discontinued models once again. We got the numbers on the most aerodynamically complex cars in grand prix history.
6.500 this is how many parts the mercedes W12 consisted of, if you include the engine as just one component. Only a few of them are actually visible. 93 percent of the parts are hidden under the fairing. For comparison: the first silver arrow of formula 1, the W196, was made from about 3.500 share assembled.
10.000 this is roughly the sum of the parts that make up the power unit. In 2022, formula 1 will continue to race with 1.6-liter turbocharged engines, a battery and two electric motors (MGU-H and MGU-K). According to the regulations, the power unit must not weigh less than 150 kilograms.
1.200 this is how many individual parts make up the gearbox. After the engine, it is the heaviest component in a formula 1 car.
220.000 euro. This is roughly how much the eight-speed transmission costs in a formula 1 car, as one of the smaller teams has revealed to us.
This is how much a chassis costs
350.000 euros are budgeted for a chassis (monocoque).
4 it takes about weeks to build a chassis. 12 hours go by for the "lego box on the front. another 20 hours or so for each of the rear halves. Then the front part is glued to the rear and married together. By the way, a formula 1 car is made up of so many metals that, according to the engineers, there are too many to list them all.
100.000 euro the teams estimate for the front wing. The underbody costs about the same.
65.000 euro the rear wing costs.
15.000 euro the teams pay for the halo cockpit protection. Excluding the attachments, which you mount yourself for aerodynamic reasons.
293.000 euros are quoted as the price for a whole set of triangular wishbones all round.
25.000 euro. This is how high the material costs are for a set of brakes all round.
6.000 euro is the price of an impact wrench. But like everything else, this can vary from team to team. The bigger, the more sophisticated, the more expensive.
25 control units under the fairing
400 sensors do their job in a car according to mercedes. Two-thirds of them look after the chassis, one-third records data on the power unit.
48.000 data channels. That’s how many there are for the power unit alone. In the days of the V8 vacuum cleaner, there were just 5.600. This illustrates just how complex hybrid engines are. The low failure rate is proof of the excellence of Formula 1 engineers’ work. Not all channels are purely focused on the power unit. There is also interaction with the chassis. For example, between the MGU-K electric machine, which gains energy in drag mode, and the brake-by-wire system. The right balance is needed here to avoid overbraking the rear axle.
2x2x1 A temperature sensor is only a millimeter thick. It weighs less than a gram. Ten years ago, teams were still using large infrared cameras to measure tire temperature. Nowadays, the sensors are fully integrated and give the driver access to multiple, different tire temperature information at any given time. A temperature sensor is one of the most common in a car. There are also sensors that measure force, acceleration (longitudinal, transverse), distance and pressure. A pressure sensor weighs 3.6 grams.
1 monitoring system exists per tire. It sends information on pressure and temperature to the central data logger – similar to a road car.
25 control units are located under the fairing. Which assemblies are you responsible for?? For example: power unit, transmission control, sensor logging (different types and rates, with and without live telemetry, wired or wireless outsourcing, etc).), accident data recording, steering wheel, radio traffic, gps, telemetry antenna.