RE: GMA reveals 725hp T.50s 'Niki Lauda'
Discussion
fblm said:
919 Evo...
Which would have been much faster if it wasn't a hybrid. Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
DMC2 said:
Terminator X said:
andyj007 said:
This shows up Mclaren as just wanabees. This is how you do it lads.. take note....
Do Mac sell a lot of £3.1m cars?TX.
DMC2 said:
Terminator X said:
andyj007 said:
This shows up Mclaren as just wanabees. This is how you do it lads.. take note....
Do Mac sell a lot of £3.1m cars?TX.
Considering the design of this car and the fact there are only 25 I don't think the price seems too bad.
Isebac said:
Which would have been much faster if it wasn't a hybrid.
Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
The evo was free of any regulations so they could have dumped the hybrid systems if they thought if would make it faster. Power to weight isn't the only thing that determines lap times; that e-motor allows lightening fast torque distribution and yaw control that you can't achieve with ICE alone. The outright lap record at the Nordschleife is held by the 919 hybrid and just about every other major lap record is held by F1 hybrids, Pikes peak is held by an EV... you can jump up and down about ICE alone being faster but until they take those records back... I know, I share your pain.Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Isebac said:
fblm said:
919 Evo...
Which would have been much faster if it wasn't a hybrid. Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
There's always a limit to how much power you can extract from a turbocharged engine before things go pop, so if you get it to that level and then stick an MGU-H and MGU-K combo on top, you can extra more power. With a weight impact of ~20-25kg.
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
What's acting got to do with the car?Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
He is a car designer, not an engine specialist.Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
I'd also add that even much bigger companies like McLaren outsource the design of the engine and gearbox to experts in the field.
Isebac said:
Which would have been much faster if it wasn't a hybrid.
Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
In F1 terms, around a regular length circuit, 5kg ranges between 0.15 and 0.2s per lap. Porsche doesn't say how much the electric motor and the battery weighed, but back of the hand calculation says about 70kg (and that's being really generous). If you instead chose to enlarge the engine on the car, you could get double the displacement for about extra 30kg, including the weight for extra cooling. So, to recap, the car would go from 1160hp (that is only available sometimes), to 1440hp that is available always and became 40kg lighter. Admittedly, there is not much you could do with all the extra power, but you could just run a lot more aero this way and not worry about the drag penalty.
Honestly, I don't even understand how this is up to a debate. How much is every 5kg worth in F1? Like extra 0.1s per lap?
I agree that a non-hybrid car would be faster around a flowing circuit. Where the hybrid LMP1 cars really perform is coming medium speed corners because of the traction and stability provided by the electric motors at the front. There used to be a minimum speed before the front wheels could be driven but I can't remember what it was. At Le Mans and probably Spa too I suspect a factory built non-hybrid LMP1 would probably be faster, certainly over a single lap. Over a full stint it's a bit more difficult because the non-hybrids are naturally carrying more fuel throughout, which reduces their weight advantage.
Back to the subject of the article. I think the T.50s is absolutely bloody wonderful and I don't care if anyone thinks I'm a beardy, cable-knit jumper sporting, paid up CAMRA member (I'm not, by the way). The McLaren F1 was the zenith of conventional supercar design, when weight was considered to be more important than simply throwing horsepower at the problem (by whichever means - turbos, batteries etc). 852kg is utterly astonishing, however you look at it. It's just over half the weight of a LaFerrari and well under half the weight of the 1 million horsepower Rimac thing - the Rimac or the Chiron are effectively carrying a VW Polo in the boot compared to this.
Of course it's an updated F1 and there has been no attempt to disguise this but I don't care. It's something completely different in a world where all hypercars are moving in the same lardy, dragstrip-only performance direction.
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
This seems like an incredibly bizarre comment. The price is irrelevant because the engine is designed from scratch anyway, so those design and build costs have to come from somewhere, I fail to see the relevance of where they come from, providing the end product is good. Secondly, something you aren't sure about, Cosworth don't MAKE all of the engine. I know this because my old man owns an aerospace engineering firm, and Cosworth have got them to make some parts for this engine. Finally, do you think that if GM did the whole thing himself it would be a better engine? I very much doubt it. Even he seems surprised at how good it's come out. Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
So, I guess the question is, to what benefit would it be if the engine was done by GM, and would that be a better product? Almost certainly no.
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
What a silly thing to say. On the gearbox point do you have the same feelings about every F1 team, every LMP manufacturer, every GTE manufacturer and every GT3 manufacturer? You know, the big ones like Porsche, Audi and Ferrari who go directly to gearbox manufacturers and just write cheques. How do you feel about BMW using a ZF automatic gearbox? If there's a specialist out there who can design and make the product why wouldn't you use them? Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
TVR decided to make their own engines. That went well...
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
What a very odd comment.Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Almost everything on every supercar you see is "outsourced". Gearboxes, brakes, lights, wheels, you name it. Cars are very complicated it would impossible to have your own factory to produce every piece of the car. Like, imagine you want to make a windshield. A simple, easy part. Except, do you have your own glass smelting operation embedded somewhere within the company that can make a product that is rivaling dedicated suppliers? Obviously not. And even the guys that do make your windshield, they also don't go and mine the silica themselves, they buy it. That's how the world works.Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
The engine and the gearbox in the T.50 are both bespoke parts made according to GMA's wishes. It's not something they grabbed off the shelf - which would the easy out. Quite to the contrary, having complex parts like the engine or the gearbox made for you is extremely expensive and basically unheard of. You could count on the finger of your hand how many engines were made for only one car and only used in that car in the last 20 years. The V10 in the LFA and then the V10 and the V8 in the Carrera GT and the 918. That's pretty much it. On top of that, the bill for the Lexus engine was footed by one the biggest car companies in the world, and the engines in the Porsche cars were developed from an already existing motorsport variant, so I am not sure that even counts. The fact that the T.50 is getting its own engine and gearbox is NUTS.
Edited by Isebac on Wednesday 24th February 12:49
Isebac said:
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
Almost everything on every supercar you see is "outsourced". Gearboxes, brakes, lights, wheels, you name it. Cars are very complicated it would impossible to have your own factory to produce every piece of the car. Like, imagine you want to make a windshield. A simple, easy part. Except, do you have your own glass smelting operation embedded somewhere within the company that can make a product that is rivaling dedicated suppliers? Obviously not. And even the guys that do make your windshield, they also don't go and mine the silica themselves, they buy it. That's how the world works.Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
The engine and the gearbox in the T.50 are both bespoke parts made according to GMA's wishes. It's not something they grabbed off the shelf - which would the easy out. Quite to the contrary, having complex parts like the engine or the gearbox made for you is extremely expensive and basically unheard of. You could count on the finger of your hand how many engines were made for only one car and only used in that car in the last 20 years. The V10 in the LFA and then the V10 and the V8 in the Carrera GT and the 918. That's pretty much it. On top of that, the bill for the Lexus engine was footed by one the biggest car companies in the world, and the engines in the Porsche cars were developed from an already existing motorsport variant, so I am not sure that even counts. The fact that the T.50 is getting its own engine and gearbox is NUTS.
Edited by Isebac on Wednesday 24th February 12:49
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rational_Optimis...
Penguinracer said:
It's a bit disappointing that for the purchase price GMA are not designing and building their own transmission & engine.
Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
...and spend even more money on tooling and head hunting people etc just to get (perhaps) an inferior product?Outsourcing to someone else & writing a cheque is an easy out.
I can't ever imagine Gordon Murray casting blocks himself like John Britton - I doubt he's ever cast anything in his life.
No thanks.
Everyone has their own skill set and should recognise their own limits.
GMA did the right thing.
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