Q: I loved the throwback Adrian Fernandez picture in last week’s Mailbag. The Tecate/Quaker State car was one of my favorites as a kid, but I never understood how Adrian was always surrounded by beautiful women in advertisements when rocking that haircut — the same one my church school teacher, a middle-aged woman, was sporting around the same time. He had some swagger to pull off that look!
Joking aside, I wanted to ask about some technical stuff. Is my understanding correct that the current turbo boost pressure is regulated by electronic wastegate valves? Historically, when we talk about “pop-off” valves, were these more accurately defined as blowoff valves relieving pressure from the airbox/intake, or is the term used broadly to cover wastegate valves relieving exhaust pressure to slow the compressor rotation?
In reading stories and rumors of teams manipulating turbochargers and boost pressures in the past, it’s tough to distinguish which designs were used in different eras, especially as layers of embellishment and outright fabrication obscure the truth. Do you have any favorite stories of extracting more than the maximum from a turbocharger over the years?
Pete, Rochester, NY
MP: When you’re paid to stand next to someone, the quality of their haircut doesn’t really matter, does it?
Not hard to tell in the current twin-turbo V6 formula, but it was during the CART/Champ Car era where placing the single turbo inside the bellhousing made it all but impossible to clearly see what was being used (unless you caught an engine change taking place and got a spy shot of either the turbo being swapped or the exposed turbines through the port hole in the sides of the bellhousing).
The “pop-off” valve, which just became “popoff” because who wants to use hyphens, was a fairly literal thing. The intake plenums had holes drilled or cast into them, and a round blanking plate the same diameter of the hole was held in place by a canister bolted on top of the hole that used a spring captured inside the can to push down on the plate to seal the plenum.
The springs were rated to whatever force was needed to keep the plate in place and the plenum sealed right up to the point where the pressure of the compressed air from the turbo was below whatever the maximum boost pressure setting was stipulated by USAC or CART. If the turbo was set to make more than the allowable boost pressure — which would make more power — that excess pressure would overpower the spring and cause the blanking plate to unseat itself and pop open, which vented the boost to the atmosphere and robbed huge amounts of power. The popping open, or causing the plate to “pop off” the plenum, is where you get the “popoff valve” terminology.
In the beginning, it was purely mechanical. As engine electronics and controls started to take off in the 1980s, we began to see popoff valves — in the 1990s, as I think I recall — go electric.
Q: In the last five IndyCar races we didn’t see any Ganassi cars with Ridgeline livery. Is that a sign that Simpson won’t race with the team in the future?
Norbi, Hungary
MP: It is not. Kyffin will be driving for the team for many, many years. He’ll be piloting the No. 8 Honda next year.
Q: Here is what confuses me: Williams was not allowed to invest a lot in its facilities because there is also a cost cap on infrastructure improvements. However, Stroll was allowed to build a brand spanking new factory, a new wind tunnel and pay Newey a huge sum of money and somehow cost caps are not an issue?
John Wayne Jr.
CHRIS MEDLAND: Anyone could have paid Adrian Newey a huge some of money because the top three earners of each team are cost cap exempt, usually relating to the team principal and key leadership personnel. Driver salaries aren’t included in it, either.
In terms of the factory, that was signed off back in 2019, although the COVID-19 pandemic did impact the timings of the project. Investments in new property are excluded from the cost cap, but other CapEx spend needs to be approved by the FIA.
The CapEx limits are tiered and the three divisions set by the championship positions from 2020-22. So that means there are differences in what can be spent between the existing top teams — Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari — the middle three of McLaren, Aston Martin and Alpine, and the remaining four who get the highest.
This is done on a four-year rolling average that is currently at $58m for Aston Martin, although that will drop to $49m in future years.
James Vowles was making the point that if he wanted to invest in machinery and existing projects at Grove, it had to come in under the CapEx limits, and prevented his team catching up with the top teams. A new factory would have been available to Williams with many costs not under the cap, but that wasn’t an efficient route for the team given its existing infrastructure.
Q: I have been doing some reading about why it seems that this year’s F1 cars are reverting to porpoising and how it’s becoming more and more difficult to balance the handling. It seems like the teams have figured out how to increase downforce from the floor, and the knock-on effect of this is to force the teams to compromise on their setups, either by raising ride heights or going to stiffer springs to keep the belly of the car from grinding itself to pieces at the end of the long straights when the downforce generated by the floor is highest.
Why would the teams not opt for a “third spring” suspension arrangement? Is it against the rules, or does the keel design used by today’s cars prevent that from happening due to packaging considerations, or is it something else? It seems like an obvious solution to me, so there must be something I am missing!
Richard Siler, Flower Mound, TX
CM: You’re testing my technical understanding here now, Richard! But from speaking to those who are far more knowledgeable about the regulations than me, I believe the answer to your solution is found in the fact that inerters are banned, but they do still have heave springs already that must be mechanical (previously hydraulic was allowed).
The current rules also really force the front and rear suspensions to work more independently of each other (hence complaints about balance and disconnected cars), so dampers mounted somewhere away from the front or rear mechanisms are also banned.