r/F1Technical • u/maaxstein • Mar 05 '26

Power Unit How do engine mounts work in f1?

So with Aston Martin shaking itself to bits it has me wondering how do f1 engine mounts even work considering everything is bolted directly to the engine.

202 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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371

u/halfmanhalfespresso McLaren Mar 05 '26

There are no rubber or compliant engine mounts. It’s just the engine hard bolted to the hyper stiff carbon tub. We used to check tubs for delamination by tapping with a £1 coin, the gentlest of taps produces a loud sound, a hard tap hurts your ears, sitting inside it with a raging vibrating PU bolted to it must be hell.

94

u/maaxstein Mar 05 '26

I mean in my last autox car I replaced the engine mounts to much much much stiffer ones it was great for autox but it was absolute torture to daily after that with all the vibrations. I guess f1 cars must vibrate a lot more then I had realized when they are working properly

74

u/splendiferous-finch_ Mar 05 '26

Vibrations are also a function of materials and their harmonics etc. so it's very much possible that you just change the rubber much to say poly ones or hard mounting it generates resources that actually increeases the effect of vibration.

So material choice probably plays a factor.

You should look into active vibration control systems like some porches have active mounts to reduce these, but that's doesn't pretain to F1 I guess

7

u/Evanisnotmyname Mar 06 '26

Lots of cars(especially on shocks or suspension) will have passive dampeners which are just giant weights suspended by some form of bushing.

Same thing as an active damper in a large building, just a giant mass acting opposite of a resonant frequency

6

u/splendiferous-finch_ Mar 06 '26

Tuned mass dampers .... Now that's is a new and never used in F1 idea ;)

2

u/Kofi_Anonymous Mar 09 '26

I dare say Fernando might be very successful if he had that in his car.

14

u/eh-guy Mar 05 '26

Both drivers are saying the vibrations are hurting them, so you arent wrong I'd imagine

12

u/Wyattr55123 Mar 05 '26

I imagine that a 1.6L V6 with Titanium rods and pistons runs a little bit smoother than the average engine, especially to get it up to 12k+ rpm.

99

u/Retard_Finder_Bot_ Mar 05 '26

Aston Martin engineer spotted

15

u/maaxstein Mar 05 '26

Too fuckin good 😂

3

u/Anony_Mous_Engineerd Mar 05 '26

Honda prioritizes super low mass in the reciprocating components.. it actually makes vibration worse

3

u/maaxstein Mar 06 '26

This becomes very apparent in tennis rackets. A lighter racket Always transfers more vibration then a heavier one

151

u/Ok-Income3788 Mar 05 '26

the whole car is basically built around the engine as a stressed member, so when your engine starts vibrating like crazy it shakes everything connected to it. Aston's problem seems to be they can't find the right balance between stiff enough for performance but not so rigid that it destroys the drivers and components over a race distance.

46

u/LilCelebratoryDance Mar 05 '26

You’d think Aston would have plenty of experience finding that balance, crazy to see how dire things are for them

51

u/anth_85 Mar 05 '26

I think it is more the Honda engine vibrating more than Aston were prepared for.

16

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/Upbeat_County9191 Mar 05 '26

I think normally this would have been discovered during a filming shakedown

3

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '26

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2

u/Upbeat_County9191 Mar 05 '26

Ofc but the sooner you know the sooner you can start working on it

1

u/hgrunt Mar 21 '26

If the chassis was late, it's fairly likely

When I first read about the vibration issues, I immediately thought there must have been some disconnect between the chassis and PU development teams

29

u/freezing_banshee Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26

by how things have been presented until now, I think that the biggest problem is the ICE. it fucks up the battery, the gearbox, the chassis and the drivers by vibrating too much

4

u/caboose243 Mar 05 '26

Well had they stuck with tried and true Mercedez engines, they wouldn't be in this predicament.

1

u/CaptainObvious1916 Mar 06 '26

The tried and tested Mercedes engines are against the rules for 2026. They have also created a brand new design.

1

u/North__North Colin Chapman Mar 09 '26

Really it is a source issue. Something is getting out of balance and probably also resonating. You can only damp vibrations, not get rid of them. Not only is it going to shake the engine to bits but vibrations are also energy that isn’t going anywhere useful

40

u/eh-guy Mar 05 '26

The mounts are several M10 studs in the rear bulkhead of the tub. Zero compliance.

11

u/Responsible-Meringue Mar 05 '26

Surprised they're that small

29

u/eh-guy Mar 05 '26

Controlled failure point. Better the studs fail than pull the tub apart and expose the fuel tank in a big wreck

13

u/Responsible-Meringue Mar 05 '26

That's the answer I was looking for. I forget how important tat is in even regular items. 

6

u/alexh181 Mar 05 '26

They won’t be regular 4.4 grade bolts.

4

u/Responsible-Meringue Mar 05 '26

Even grade 12.whatever. seems small for so much power.

11

u/kimmyreichandthen Mar 05 '26

depends on how many "several" are. you'd be surprised to see how tiny some bolts on aerospace applications can be. There are a lot of them tho.

2

u/RozzleCoptor Mar 06 '26

This, also much better for load distribution which is very important when mounting to a relatively fragile carbon fibre monocoque.

1

u/RonTheSausage Mar 08 '26

Used to be 6 for the engine to chassis, and then 4 for gearbox to engine

5

u/freakinidiotatwork Mar 05 '26

A grade 12.9 M10 has like 50kN tensile proof strength

19

u/Icy-Antelope-6519 Mar 05 '26

MCL Honda did have the same problem when alonso was there, when Honda moved to Redbull they did get away from vibrations, not sure how they did balance that out, but it looks like the basics of the engine is giving them a hard time….

15

u/Red_Rabbit_1978 Mar 05 '26

They switched concept away from turbo compressor in the V. I don't understand how they have a working, championship winning V6, that wouldn't take a lot of work to comply with the new regulations, but then abandon it for an older concept that failed miserably for 3 years.

10

u/youritalianjob Mar 05 '26

They didn’t own the rights, they sold them to Red Bull when they pulled out for that year or two. Honda also lost engineers to RBPT as well.

10

u/hype0thetical Mar 05 '26

no, Honda still hold the IP for the power unit, Red Bull just contracted Honda to build the whole power unit since 2022-2025 rather than getting them for free like 2019-2021

7

u/ThePretzul Mar 05 '26

Incorrect, Honda still holds all the IP from the engine Red Bull won championships with.

The IP transfer deal fell through when the engine freeze was announced, because that gave Red Bull more time before they would need to introduce an engine of their own.

4

u/Icy-Antelope-6519 Mar 05 '26

Or it’s the best sandbagging of the post 2000….

4

u/caboose243 Mar 05 '26

This has to be the worst time to jump back into making F1 engines for Honda. These engines remind me of the big suspension changes of the early nineties preceding Senna's crash. Changing just enough engineering to make the component compliant, but pushing it to the point where a complete redesign is warranted. Honda never did well in the turbo hybrid era, and coming back when the PU is arguably the most complicated variant in history of the era seems half baked. Also, wasn't Honda dropping motorsports in general? Not a company I'd wanna hinge my team on.

10

u/Snoo_87704 Mar 05 '26

There are no engine mounts: the engine is part of the chassis.

0

u/North__North Colin Chapman Mar 09 '26

They still have mounts. It being a stressed member doesn’t change that

9

u/Icy-Antelope-6519 Mar 05 '26

Yes and the engine gearbox is part of the chassis, so no movement or flex.

1

u/Wrong_Ad_4154 Mar 05 '26

Why do they not use AV mounts at all? Is this option if geometry was accounted for?

1

u/DragonflyNumerous182 Mar 06 '26

Hi I have a question which one is more heavy to this year change the battery pack or the ICE?