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Atom I really should write blog entries more often. I promised myself I'd write when Force India made its mind up who it was having, but I should have known from past experience that Vijay Mallya and his lieutenants have more patience than me!
One question I was asked in response to my previous entry on The Ecology of Wind Tunnels v Track Testing was from Robf1ction:
Could we scrap both and make the weekends 4 days long?
This struck me as an interesting thought, so I attempted to do some sums. From the previous entry, I dragged over the following:
- 8.280 kg per night to travel to a hotel
- 1.376 kg per component
- 11854.683 components used per day.
To make a four-day weekend work, it will be necessary for the teams to stay a night longer at each race. Assuming that the example used for Spanish testing is a sensible average for distance between track and hotel, we can use the same 8.280 kg figure for each race - 45 is the maximum number of people a team can have in the paddock. There are 20 races in the 2011 schedule, so:
8.280 kg x 20 = 165.6 kg
The other two figures are to provide a component cost for the extra days. Since the fourth day is designed to substitute both wind tunnel and track testing, I will assume it will be run to the same sort of schedule as a test. This is done by multiplying the carbon cost of a component with the number of components used in a day and then multiply the result by the number of races/extra days:
1.376 kg x 11854.683 = 16312.044 kg or 16.312 tonnes
16312.044 * 20 = 326240.87616 kg or 326.241 tonnes.
Now 326.214 tonnes may sound a lot. However, the question was whether it would be worth doing this instead of track and wind tunnel testing. So let's grab the relevant figures and compare:
1 year of wind tunnel testing = 182.706 tonnes
4-day "local" track test = 16.341 tonnes
4-day "long-range" track test = 69.201 tonnes
All these figures are lower than the figure for the 4-day weekend. However, seeing the amount of each that could be fitted into the carbon needed to do 4-day weekends would indicate whether this represents a better path than the one robf1ction proposed or a mere illusion:
326.214 / 182.706 = 1.785 years (representing 24/7 running of one 60% tunnel, a 2-shift pattern on another and 7 days in a 100% tunnel - more than current limits but not as much as big teams used to do a decade ago)
326.214 / 16.341 = 19.963 "local" 4-day tests (this would nearly, but not quite, be one after every race. Would suit Ferrari, but probably not Sauber due to them having no suitably "local" track)
326.214 / 69.201 = 4.714 "long-range" 4-day tests. No contest, having 4-day weekends is better in terms of car mileage efficiency than carting cars to Spain for standalone testing. Unless it's Hispania, of course (being based in Spain, a test there would be "local" for them)
From a carbon perspective, a 4-day weekend scheme is better for F1 than testing abroad. Of that there is no question. It is about equal to a 4-day "local" testing method, except that mandating "local" testing would lead to large and intractable inequalities in the field due to varying access to a "local" circuit.
It is debatable whether the wind tunnel is more efficient than a 4-day weekend; a wind tunnel with no testing at all would be less use to a team than one under the current scheme (where straight-line testing can help triangulate the data). I'd go so far as to say it would struggle to be effective. If it could be made effective, it would be more ecologically sound than the 4-day weekend, but there is a compromise that would allow the best of both.
Right now, we are awaiting four "long-range" winter tests. What if these were replaced with 4-day weekends? Place a 4-day non-championship race in the winter to a) give the teams a little testing to sort out major issues b) stop everyone from getting too bored and c) let one of the Spanish circuits be moved to prevent race event fatigue in Spain.
Back-to-back races wouldn't have 4-day weekends because the 3 days left to travel between races would be asking for cargo or people not to be in place when everything gets going again and also risks people getting over-stressed from having to spend so much time in "work" mode without a proper break. There are 4 such weekends in 2011 (meaning 8 races wouldn't have a fourth day for testing).
It would be an extra 16 race weekend days but 16 test days would be lost, so the carbon used in components would be neutralised. A small amount of extra carbon would be used for the race:
Race fuel carbon usage: (62.5* - 16.221**) / 170 = 0.2722294 tonnes or 272.229 kg
Hotel carbon usage: 8.280 kg
Total: 272.229 + 8.280 = 380.509 kg
I would compare this to the amount of carbon used in the four winter tests and the alternative paths previously explored, but given that they were all in tonnes and this one's in kilogrammes, only pedants and mathematically-minded people are likely to care. I think we can live with the extra race producing a fraction of the carbon of a local test. It would certainly be more carbon-conserving than the modes of testing currently in use.
Thank you for the great idea, robf1ction. Hopefully one day the F1 team bosses will agree to this sort of thing and thank you too :)