Formula 1 talk.

[sk47]

Hello; Saw the Miami GP Friday evening. Makes sense no one has posted about it. There was one very interesting & entertaining moment. That was when Max did a 360 spin and kept racing. Made me think of the spin an Indy car driver did years ago. Was that Danny Sullivan?

Watching the races five days later on Roku has an advantage. There is technical information included. The more recent seen was about the new renewable (sustainable) fuel. Made from carbon, municipal waste and non-food biomass. Not sure what these are exactly but did know of such years ago.
Switchgrass has a decent oil content and there were trials of making biodiesel using it.
I saw a video more than 20 years ago of farmers filling large rubber bladders with pig manure then sealing the bladders. After a while the bladders swell up like balloons from the methane formed in anerobic conditions.
Not clear to me the process of using carbon to make a liquid race fuel. Petroleum based fuels are long molecules of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Breaking the bonds between the atoms yields energy. My unverified guess being some source of energy is used to create the bonds between Hydrogen & carbon. Would be of interest to learn if the energy invested to create the H+C bonds is greater than the energy yielded when the fuel is burned as race fuel.

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[Yorkshire_OH]

Yeah, I don't profess to know the technical side of these sustainable fuels but a lot of work is going on in the background away from F1 to make something work. Sebastian Vettel has an old Williams Renault V10 that Nigel Mansell used to drive and it did demonstration laps at Silverstone a few years ago on sustainable fuels performance is on par with when the car was winning races and championships so the performance doesn't take much of a hit. The new cars do seem lively and potentially nicer/more fun to drive than the ground effect cars so if they can get rid of the hybrid system it would be a simpler and arguably cheaper formula for racing in my view. But what do i know. Plenty of rumours about moving to a V8 engine in 2030s but we'll see.

 

[sk47]

Hello; Getting the F1 races a few days late has some pros & cons. The con being i cannot avoid knowing who won. At least the pop-up headlines only mention the winner. At first, I considered this to be a bit of a disappointment. Now not so much.
With the rejiggering of the "power units" not seeing the race in real time is not such a big loss. There were long duels between cars thru much of the race. More notable between the MB driver and later between Max & LH. That these pass & repass are orchestrated takes away some of the charm. Not that the drivers are purposely slowing down after a pass. My take is it is the 50% electric power + 50% gas power and the control setup. Gives the appearance of close racing and such may what the FIA desired. Seems to be contrived entertainment a bit more than a competition to make the best racing cars.
Maybe like having a Toyota Camry V8 racer in NASCAR. I recall the days when o race a car model they had to sell at least 500 to the public. The same Camry cassis can become a Mustang or a Camaro next season.

I will continue to watch the next races since I can get them free on th Roku box a week late. So glad i did not pay extra. Same for NASCAR's last race. Had to watch a days later replay. Look s like only INDY car are left on my Direct TV live.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hello; Getting the F1 races a few days late has some pros & cons. The con being i cannot avoid knowing who won. At least the pop-up headlines only mention the winner. At first, I considered this to be a bit of a disappointment. Now not so much.
With the rejiggering of the "power units" not seeing the race in real time is not such a big loss. There were long duels between cars thru much of the race. More notable between the MB driver and later between Max & LH. That these pass & repass are orchestrated takes away some of the charm. Not that the drivers are purposely slowing down after a pass. My take is it is the 50% electric power + 50% gas power and the control setup. Gives the appearance of close racing and such may what the FIA desired. Seems to be contrived entertainment a bit more than a competition to make the best racing cars.
Maybe like having a Toyota Camry V8 racer in NASCAR. I recall the days when o race a car model they had to sell at least 500 to the public. The same Camry cassis can become a Mustang or a Camaro next season.

I will continue to watch the next races since I can get them free on th Roku box a week late. So glad i did not pay extra. Same for NASCAR's last race. Had to watch a days later replay. Look s like only INDY car are left on my Direct TV live.

I watch the official race recaps on Youtube just hours after the actual races then the full races on Roku the following Friday. Not a fan of having to set alarms to remind me when to tune in. Not a fan or no pause or rewind BUT you actually get to see the full race. Previous year live coverage usually just cut away for commercials; I assume because they can't stop the cars on track and wait for the commercials to be over to continue. Not a fan of things I mentioned but still prefer them over subscribing to a streaming service I would use a few hours a month only part of the year.

The free delayed coverage by Roku takes advantage of the delay to stop the original race recording to play commercials and resume after the commercials. FWIW, commercial breaks seem to always be exactly 2 minutes long so easy to predict if you can get the john or fridge, etc. without missing anything.

 

[sk47]

FIA closes Mercedes engine loophole ahead of Monaco GP
Hello; Afraid i have not been following the technical aspects of F1 very much this year. Ran across the above link today. May or may not be a factor of the MB dominance so far under the 2026 rules.
Made me think of the exotic fuel mixes Ferrari were creating back a few decades before the rules changed to a more standardized sort for all. At least I think the fuel is the same for all now.

I get the potential to squeeze more power from higher compression than the competition. I wonder how such is done? I also wonder what the octane rating might be for the fuels used???

Let me take an opportunity to rag on the 50/50 electric power to liquid power output of the engines again. This time less about the artificial close competition (more passing) and more about the basic thinking behind electric drive motors and battery packs. In the everyday consumer world, a hybrid is largely about fuel economy.
(I get there are some high performance/luxury models made. Again, confusing reasoning to brag on slightly increased MPGs in a car costing hundreds of thousands of $$$.)
There already is a e formula race series which offers the full electric experience so the halfway measure in F1 is baffling.

I recall some years ago he F1 cars had active suspension and active brake management controlled by more primitive computers & some less sophisticated sensors. Such was banned so we now do not have anti-lock brakes on the F1 cars. if my recall suffices the argument was, we will have the person driving the cars rather than a computer. Why does not the same thinking apply to this years boneheaded 50-50 electric-gas rule. Do we not have computers managing the hybrid power harvesting and deployment???

But I imagine those in authority have me and others like me on IGNORE so they only hear what they want to hear. The emperor has no clothes sort of thing.

 

[sk47]

Not a fan of having to set alarms to remind me when to tune in. Not a fan or no pause or rewind BUT you actually get to see the full race.

Hello; As I have aged it is very easy o fall asleep. So far, I have managed to stay awake each Friday evening for the 7:00 PM race replay except this past Friday. I dosed off for a few minutes, maybe ten laps. Caught another replay later.
On of the reasons I like DTV is I can record football, races and such to watch at more convenient times or even replay when I doze off. On the Roku and other streaming apps I can pause, rewind, and ff some shows but as you say not live TV. I have several apps I can use such as TUBI, SLING, & others. I have noted they all seem to show what is called "live TV" in the same time slots & the same programs. If i am watching Modern Marvels on one and switch over to another APP the same Modern Marvels episode can be found at what seems the exact same point in the program. Applied to Highway Thru Hell and other "live" stuff. I wonder how that works?
Anyway, the F1 CHANNEL is one of the "live" channels.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hello; As I have aged it is very easy o fall asleep. So far, I have managed to stay awake each Friday evening for the 7:00 PM race replay except this past Friday. I dosed off for a few minutes, maybe ten laps. Caught another replay later.
On of the reasons I like DTV is I can record football, races and such to watch at more convenient times or even replay when I doze off. On the Roku and other streaming apps I can pause, rewind, and ff some shows but as you say not live TV. I have several apps I can use such as TUBI, SLING, & others. I have noted they all seem to show what is called "live TV" in the same time slots & the same programs. If i am watching Modern Marvels on one and switch over to another APP the same Modern Marvels episode can be found at what seems the exact same point in the program. Applied to Highway Thru Hell and other "live" stuff. I wonder how that works?
Anyway, the F1 CHANNEL is one of the "live" channels.

You can record them. For me its too much hassle despite having the relatively cheap hardware needed.

Unless you have a Roku TV you have a Roku device connected to the TV via HDMI. And even if you have a Roku TV you can add a Roku device for ~$20 to achieve that HDMI output.

Unless something changed, HDMI splitters exist that have no encryption on one leg. There are devices that will directly record that or convert it to a PC input for recording by the PC. I had that as far back as 2002. The target customers were gamers who wanted to record their game play.

But for me the trouble of setting up for each "race" is way more trouble than its worth since I don't drowse off. Maybe because I watch the early Friday sprints and noon races.

For anyone imagining other uses for recording HDMI this way, be aware that the HDMI has little or no compression. The resulting files are massive. I'm thinking post compression is maybe trivial now days but in 2002, even with the fastest PCs it was a major PIA to compress or expensive as hell to store if you wanted to keep uncompressed.

 

[sk47]

Will 2026's 'yo-yo racing' mean overtaking in Monaco?
Hello; no need to read the link. I picked it because a name is given to the new racing. Yo-Yo racings. That fits.

 

[sk47]

HDMI splitters exist that have no encryption on one leg. There are devices that will directly record that or convert it to a PC input for recording by the PC. I had that as far back as 2002. The target customers were gamers who wanted to record their game play.

Hello; A while back I bought a device which has an HDMI on one end and old school type RCA ends on the other end. After looking it over discovered it is meant to send the signals from the RCA ends into the HDMI end. There is an arrow on the device. It is a Composite AV to HDMI Converter. I presume so an old DVD or tape player can play on a newer TV with only HDMI.

I have two or three old CD burners which still function. I had wanted to send the signal from the HDMI port into the DVD recorder but figured such would not work.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hello; A while back I bought a device which has an HDMI on one end and old school type RCA ends on the other end. After looking it over discovered it is meant to send the signals from the RCA ends into the HDMI end. There is an arrow on the device. It is a Composite AV to HDMI Converter. I presume so an old DVD or tape player can play on a newer TV with only HDMI.

I have two or three old CD burners which still function. I had wanted to send the signal from the HDMI port into the DVD recorder but figured such would not work.

The problem is that sources that are designed to play copyrighted content via HDMI are required to use HDCP. The P stands for protection. i.e. encryption.

HDMI splitters are not a source for anything. It was the norm for many years and I wouldn't be surprised if still is for the 2nd HDMI output from the splitter to NOT have HDCP encryption. That opens the door for devices that just convert HDMI to another form which is not possible if the HDMI input is HDCPed. With a dirt cheap splitter and a PC HDMI capture device or discreet capture device, you can record anything that leaves your Roku device via HDMI. But remember, that signal has little if any compression and the files will be massive before steps to compress them.

There may be quasi legal devices to defeat HDCP these days but I don't see how they could be cheaper than a dumb splitter. But if they also compress on the fly may be worth it.

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