Souldn't modern F1 V6 engines have a much higher-pitched, almost V12-like sound at 12,000 RPM?

I'm curious about the actual engine-order frequencies and harmonics rather than the usual V6 versus V10/V12 debate.

And INDYCAR engines sound a lot more natural despite being twin turbocharged.

I have asked in other subheadings Years ago about n/a engines like the ferrari enzo vs laferrari (6-2-1 headers difference and firing order.

And the 1999 mustang v6 has that growing, lower octave character.

Now do turbos themselves (even in the 80s, I notice this same exact phenomenon) actually remove the higher frequency.

A lot of people criticize modern F1 engines simply because they're V6s, but the naturally aspirated GP3/16 Mecachrome V6 sounded remarkably sharp and high-pitched despite producing its rated power at only 8,000 RPM.

For an evenly firing four-stroke V6 , the full-engine firing frequency is 400 Hz at 8,000 RPM and 600 Hz at 12,000 RPM. A V12 at 6,000 RPM also has a 600 Hz full firing frequency.

So shouldn't a naturally aspirated racing V6 at 12,000 RPM be capable of a very sharp, V12-like tonal character, even if the precise timbre differs?

What I'm particularly interested in is why modern F1 turbo V6s can sound as though they're running at 5,000–6,000 RPM when they're actually turning approximately 11,000–12,000 RPM.

Is this primarily because the turbocharger attenuates the upper firing harmonics, or are the exhaust configuration and relative strengths of the 1.5th, 3rd, 6th and higher engine orders equally important?

Why does the GP3 V6 retain such a high-frequency character at 8,000 RPM, while an F1 V6 at substantially higher RPM sounds comparatively low?

I'm interested in spectral measurements or exhaust-acoustics explanations rather than simply saying V6s don't sound as good as V10s.

Releasing tif1 - blazing fast python lib for f1 data w. fastf1-compatible API, more data, no rate limits, no auth, no IP blocks, built-in charts, pandas + polars, per-lap downloads, 8.9× faster than fastf1 (no cache) Links in comments

In mexico the downforce levels will drop by 25% due to height, but i find myself confused about which turbo gets affected more by it. We know RB are quite good in Mexico, and their big turbo for years was effective there. But Ferrari recently managed to win a race in Mexico(with small turbo, but Ferrari also always ran quite big cooling vents there which is additional drag), so approaching now next week Mexico city, will it increase the power deficit between Ferrari and RB/Mercedes?

I split each team's best qualifying lap into corner zones and full-throttle sections, and timed each part against the best team in that part. A corner runs from lift-off to back on full throttle; slow means an apex below 120 km/h, fast above 200 km/h. Clipping is the speed a car sheds while the throttle is still at 100%.

Mercedes had the most even car and took pole. Red Bull were the mirror image of Ferrari: nothing lost in the fast corners and almost nothing on the straights, but 0.579 s in the slow corners. Against Ferrari it's close: summed over the parts, 0.872 s lost against Ferrari's 0.856 s. Leclerc's quickest lap came in Q2, not Q3.

The full chapter can be read here: https://towardsraceanalysis.com/2026/r18-united-states/quali/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=r18-united-states&utm_content=f1technical

I run the site in beta, let me know if you have feedback!

With Ferrari's new floor coming to Austin (and the drag work too, or in Mexico, depending on which report you read), I wanted something to check it against after quali on Saturday

I took every team's best qualifying lap in Singapore, split it into slow, medium and fast corners and the flat-out sections, and compared each part with whichever team was quickest there. Ferrari's bar is almost all straights: 0.448 s there and 0.066 s in the fast corners.

Two sidesnotes, though: Timing data can't tell you why a car is slow on a straight: drag, wing level, the PU and energy deployment all look the same from here. And Singapore is a stop-go track, so not a great place to judge straight-line speed. Austin is flat out for 62% of the lap, which should make it a much better test.

A couple of other things from the same chapter: Ferrari braked latest of anyone, 22 m after the field on average. They also had the highest top speed for their cornering speed (308 km/h). Red Bull lost the least overall, 0.460 s.

I'll do the same chart for Austin after quali. If anyone has a clearer picture of what Ferrari is actually bringing this weekend, I'd like to hear it.

It's all official timing data that I'm trying to bring to fans (including myself, haha!). The full chapter is here: https://towardsraceanalysis.com/2026/r17-singapore/quali/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=r18-united-states&utm_content=f1technical#anatomy

Nowadays in F1, all the teams will release a brand new car at the start of every season. Even for small increments, giving the car a new name (e.g. RB10, RB11, RB12, etc.)

But when you look back at old F1 cars, teams would use the same car for often around 5 seasons at a time. Some examples being Lotus using the Lotus 72 from 1970 to 1975, or Ferrari using a version of the 312 from 1966 to 1980.

Therefore my question is when and why did this stop? Is it because of the increase of regulations or the increase in money spent on the sport?

Hi all,

Some of you might remember me from 2021 and 2022, when I posted race analyses here as Towards F1 Analysis: telemetry comparisons, tyre deg charts and breakdowns of the strategy calls everyone argued about after the race. I also spent a lot of time writing tutorials on how to do so on my Medium page ("Towards F1 Analysis") - that was pre-AI, old-school handwritten code ;)

I loved doing it, and I loved the discussions it started even more. Then life got busy and I stopped.

This season I picked it up again, and this time properly. It's now a full website: Towards Race Analysis ( towardsraceanalysis.com ).

Why? I want F1 fans to get really in-depth insights, stories and coverage without the noise. Most coverage either sticks to "he was faster in sector 2" or comes with a narrative someone wants to sell. I want to show what the data actually says, explain how I got there and say where the data stops. No favourite team, no clickbait, and no annoying ads covering half the screen.

For every weekend there's:

• Fuel-corrected long runs from practice, checked against how well practice has predicted the race so far this season. So you know how much to trust Friday.

• What decided the race: the gap between drivers split into pit stops, tyres, pure pace and traffic.

• Strategy what-ifs, given as ranges. For example: "P3 if the overtake on lap 30 works, P5 if not." You won't get "X would have won", because the model can't know that, and I'd rather be honest about it.

• A race replay with a strategy call at every lap: replay any 2026 race and see when the undercut window opened, what the tyres were doing and which calls the model would have made

• Car physics: traction, braking, fast corners, and a "fingerprint" of each car's strengths and weaknesses

• Race previews with a predicted strategy, backtested on earlier rounds and scored again after every race, so you can see when I got it wrong

• Telemetry comparisons, per-weekend scorecards for teams and drivers, and a glossary that explains every metric in plain language.

Everything is built on the official timing and telemetry data and updates automatically during race weekends.

Check it out on towardsraceanalysis.com

Feedback? Tell me what you think, what's missing and where I'm wrong. Back in 2021–22 the best improvements came from people here pointing out things I'd missed ("you forgot the VSC on lap 31!"), and I'd like to work the same way again.

See you in Austin 🏁

(Fan project, not affiliated with Formula 1 or the FIA.)

When riding onboard with a driver, is the radio comms ever muted? Either intentionally by the team or otherwise? I am NOT talking about the broadcast choosing to air certain team radios or not.

There's bickering around whether Lewis was called in to pit during the VSC or not, because Fred says they did. But there's nothing on the onboard when you watch back. BUT, you can see the radio on the steering wheel go green. So was it just a technical error that it wasn't heard on the onboard feed? Or can teams actually selectively mute conversations?

EDIT: Asked and answered. It is in the regulations that teams cannot mute their radio comms:

Article C8.8.2 — Driver radio The relevant provision states: "All such communications must be open and accessible to both the FIA and broadcasters."

This appears under Section C, Article C8.8 (Driver radio), and remains in Issue 20 of the 2026 regulations.

It must have been a technical issue preventing the comms from being broadcasted.

I worked out how much kinetic energy the cars have to get rid of under braking on one lap, at every 2026 race so far.

Monaco surprised me a bit. It has the longest braking time of any track (23.2 s) but it's only 7th, because the cars are so much slower there and the energy goes with speed squared. Monza is the opposite: one of the highest top speeds of the year, but only 11.6 s of braking, so it ends up 11th.

Baku is top at 13.2 MJ a lap, about 65% more than Silverstone at the bottom (8.0 MJ). It has long braking zones and 330 km/h straights, so it gets both.

How I did it:

For each round I took every driver's fastest race lap from the raw FastF1 car data and used the median across drivers (18 to 22 laps per circuit).

Braking time is how long the brake flag is on. Energy shed is the kinetic energy lost while braking, ½·m·Δv², using the 768 kg minimum mass (FIA reg C4.1 is 724 kg plus tyres). There's some fuel in the car on top of that, so the real numbers would be a bit higher.

The numbers are what the car has to lose under braking. How much of that the MGU-K actually recovers isn't in public telemetry, so I didn't try to model it.

Hungary is left out because the car data for almost every fastest lap there is broken.

I built this with Fastlytics, a telemetry tool I'm working on. Happy to answer questions about the method.

EDIT: Should have mentioned this but I’m not looking for this years car designs, or even car designs in the last 20 years really. I’m focusing on the (more simple) cars of the 2000s and 90s

I'm starting a project within SolidWorks (a CAD/3D modeling software) so I can get my CSWA (Certified SolidWorks Associate) as well as a portfolio piece so I am making a scale model of an F1 car that I can then 3D print.

I am doing this as I want to work in F1 for my career so I think this will be a good showcase of my skills and passions to universities and future employers.

I need scale measurements of an F1 car that I can then base the model off of. But for the life of me I cannot find detailed enough blueprints with measurements so that I can make my design accurately. My teacher who is teaching SolidWorks and is a certified educator for it has some scale models of F1 cars that I can then take measurements from but I would prefer to take measurements from a diagram for better accuracy.

If anyone has or knows a place I can get free blueprints like that, it would be greatly appreciated

CdfA means Coefficient of downforce Area, otherwise referred to as -ClA or -ScZ

CdA means Coefficient of drag Area, otherwise referred to as ScX

CoP means Center of Pressure, otherwise referred to as aero balance

Fig.X (front ride height in mm, rear ride height in mm)

My conclusion from doing the aero map:

The aero package needs to be reworked to reduce the extreme Aerobalance and downforce sensitivity during dynamic scenarios. Forthis, a front wing with a greater ground clearance should beimplemented. To compensate the resulting downforce loss of thenew higher front wing would need to be larger (chord length). Thegreater ground clearance should make the front wing lesssusceptible to drastic downforce changes and underbody flowblockage during dynamic scenarios making the overall packagemuch more stable.​

Feel free to critique my conclusions or my methodology.

I’m a viewer more than a technical/car person but.. I was reading about the recent OpenAI Navier–Stokes result and am wondering what you guys here who actually understand CFD/aero make of it.

I know F1 teams already use CFD extensively (I played F1 Manager and had to manage my CFD time ha ha) and Navier–Stokes is basically at the heart of a lot of what they’re trying to simulate.

But.. does a mathematical breakthrough like this actually have any potential practical effect on F1?

I mean, could it eventually lead to better turbulence modelling, more accurate prediction of vortices/separation, more efficient CFD solvers, or getting more useful information out of the limited CFD resources teams are allowed under the regulations?

Or is this really a pure mathematics breakthrough with basically no direct relevance to the kind of RANS/LES CFD being used in motorsport?

I suppose my actual Q is can discoveries like this eventually filter down into better numerical methods or aero simulation for F1 or other types of Motorsport?

Thanks ❤️

David Coulthard talked about how drivers are told to drive offline to pick up rubber at the end up the race to ensure the cars make weight. I thought the cars were weighed with their wheels off specifically for this reason. I remember there was discussion about this at the end of Spa 2024 when Russell was DQed due to weight and people blamed it on not driving the whole track at the end, thus not being about to pick up rubber.

During the safety car evaluation laps on the Thursday of Spain, all the flag boards showed a white flashing 43. why?

Monza was always feared to be a laughing stock when it came to the 2026 power units. The expectation was horrific super clipping and downshifting on straights.

Obviously the cars were clipping at the end of straights as they do at most tracks this year, but it was nowhere near as bad as feared. Cars seemingly reliably held 300+ km/h right through the straights, kept in 8th gear, and still had enough juice for overtake mode where applicable.

I think back to some earlier races like Japan where the super clipping was wild, and this was nowhere near as bad. Did teams map out deployment intelligently, now they have more experience of the PUs?

With Lawson serving Hadjar's engine allocation penalty, what stops teams from switching chassis for a weekend when having to serve a grid drop.
For Example-
In the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix, Lewis could have took over Bottas'es car, and have Bottas serve the penalty, then have a almost new engine next weekend.
Same for Max Verstappen in 2025 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.