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      Cadillac wants to enter Formula 1 with Andretti Global

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 5 January, 2023 - 17:37 · 1 minute

    Andretti Global and Cadillac logos on a black background

    Enlarge (credit: Cadillac)

    The world of Formula 1 got a shock on Thursday morning when General Motors announced it has plans to enter the championship. GM wants to go F1 racing with its Cadillac brand, partnering with a new Andretti Global team, assuming the sport's organizing body accepts the entry.

    F1 has been fixed at 10 teams since Haas joined the sport in 2016. Since then, the series has introduced a new budget cap that has reined in some of the crazier budgets and made the prospect of operating an F1 team much less of a financial black hole. The exact amount of the cost cap is adjusted depending on how many races are planned for a year— for 2023, that should be $138.6 million —and even finishing in 10th place earns a team enough money to cover about 70 percent of those costs.

    As a result, the sport is now a much more attractive proposition for new entrants than it was the last time we gained new teams in 2010, none of which survived. But there's a snag: You can't just turn up at the start of a season with a couple of cars and expect to go racing. The sport's organizing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), requires that any new team "buy in" to the franchise with a $200 million "non-dilution fee" meant to ensure a new competitor doesn't cost the existing 10 teams any of their income.

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      Formula E’s most successful racer shares his ideas on racing technology

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 5 August, 2022 - 18:59 · 1 minute

    A black formula e car is followed by a red formula e car

    Enlarge / Lucas Di Grassi leads Jake Dennis in the 2022 London ePrix. (credit: Sam Bloxham/Formula E)

    Formula E will close out its season this weekend with its first visit to Seoul, South Korea. It's not just the end of season eight and the last race for the Gen2 electric race cars but also marks the series' 100th race. The sport has come a long way since its first ePrix in Beijing in 2014, with more powerful cars, bigger batteries, and an ability to put on an exciting race at Monaco, something that Formula 1 hasn't been able to say for several decades.

    Lucas di Grassi was the winner of that first ePrix and has raced in every ePrix since. He's still visiting victory lane, most recently in last Sunday's London ePrix, and this weekend may score his 1,000th career point in the series. With a background in Formula 1 and then Audi's mighty R18 e-tron Le Mans program , di Grassi knows his way around a race car. So he's usually a good person to talk to about the future direction of the sport.

    Next season the sport gets a new car, one that's much more powerful—and lighter, too. But it's not quite as bold, technology-wise, as the concept di Grassi lobbied for . Although that car has yet to even race in anger, the various minds that contribute to Formula E's R&D road map are already thinking about Gen4 . Since we had the chance to speak with the driver ahead of this week's Seoul ePrix, I wanted to know his thoughts on where the sport should go next. As I hoped, he had plenty of them.

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      Formula 1 wants to stop its cars from porpoising, and this is how

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 16 June, 2022 - 18:10 · 1 minute

    A Ferrari F1 car on track at Baku in Azerbaijan

    Enlarge / Charles Leclerc of Monaco driving the (16) Ferrari F1-75 on track during the F1 Grand Prix of Azerbaijan at Baku City Circuit on June 12, 2022, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

    The sport of Formula 1 racing went through a massive change at the beginning of this season as it introduced new cars that harness aerodynamic ground effects to push them down onto the track. The aerodynamic approach was last used in F1 in the late 1970s and early 1980s before being banned on safety grounds.

    One issue, then, that perhaps should have been anticipated this time was a condition called porpoising, where the cars oscillate vertically at a rather high frequency while traveling at high speed, violently shaking the driver in the process. As this season has progressed, the Grand Prix Drivers' Association has become more and more vocal about the potential health risk this poses for these athletes. And on Thursday, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (or FIA, the sport's governing body) announced it has a plan to do something about it.

    What’s porpoising?

    As the air travels underneath the body of an F1 car, it expands as it reaches the venturis at the rear of the car. The faster the car goes, the more downforce it generates via this expansion, until at a certain point the airflow detaches from the floor and stalls. This wipes out all the downforce immediately, and without that effect sucking the car to the ground, it raises up on its suspension.

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