Formula 1 engines can go bang occasionally, sometimes just by grinding to a halt with some smoke. And sometimes pretty spectacularly, with a fair bit of fire, just as we saw last weekend with the F1-75 car of Carlos Sainz at the Red Bull Ring. But what causes these failures?
Fi experts Craig Scarborough and Scott Mansell wrap up the three most common failures – and explain how you can spot the tell-tale signs in a race. So you can know have a good idea about what’s gone wrong, before everyone else does. Firstly, they cover purely the mechanical bits about the combustion engine. And because they are so insanely complex, there are probably hundreds of different components that could fail. So they are simplifying it down to the three main areas, and they are:
Bottom-end failures, top-end failures and turbo failure. So the bottom end is things like the crankshaft, rods, bearings and sometimes even the crankcase. Think of it like anything below this line. Then there is the top end, and that is the stuff above that line. Pistons, valves, gaskets, the head of the engine itself. Then the turbo, we know what that is…
But what’s most interesting about this is that the all show different signs after they fail, you can often get a good idea of which it is by hearing the failure, or even looking at the smoke coming from the back of the engine.
— see video above —
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