Hamilton: I have no interest in the simulator

While the world sprints to virtual reality, Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton has admitted he is not keen on time doing seat time in Mercedes’ high-tech simulator.

This is not about the home-based rigs that set you back from a few hundred dollars to anything north of 20k, but rather the multi-million dollar state-of-the-art kit they at the Mercedes factory which is constantly in evolution.

Speaking on Sky F1, Hamilton admitted: “I hardly ever drive on the simulator. I maybe do 20 laps a year, maybe. I have no interest in the simulator.

“I used to walk the track when I was younger. But what I’ve discovered is that for me, it was a pointless exercise. It’s a lot different when you approach it at high speed. So what I found was that it was just wasting energy; my weekend’s all about keeping energy and maintaining it so I can do the job.

“You’re working towards it all the way through Thursday and Friday and on Friday and Saturday morning, you’re trying all these things and basically finding the pieces to the puzzle, but you haven’t yet quite put them all together.

“And then qualifying comes and you have no choice; whether you have all the pieces or not, you have to build the puzzle. So you’re looking at previous years’ laps, you’re looking at the laps you’ve done in the past, the laps some of your competitors have done. It’s just making sure you haven’t left anything on the table,” explained Hamilton.

High-tech sim rigs have been in development for over a decade, with Hamilton getting his first work-related ‘simming’ experience during his time at McLaren.

He recalled in a separate interview: “When I was at McLaren we did way too much. I could spend £100 on a PlayStation and learn the same amount. There’s a difference between driving a simulator and driving the real thing – you have no emotion.

“When you get into the simulator you have to adjust yourself to the simulator, and when you get in the car you don’t adjust to it, you drive. When you get in the simulator you have to adjust all your feelings – you don’t get the same movements, the same bumps.

“You drive the same track the day before and on Monday you drive the simulator and the bumps aren’t there, the kerbs are different, the speed is different. You don’t feel the speed, you don’t feel the physicality of it,” added the seven-time F1 World Champion.

The Briton raised his pole position record to 100 with his efforts at the Spanish Grand Prix, while his 100th victory is only 2 races away; winning the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday would be Hamilton’s 99th triumph at the pinnacle of the sport.

 

Formula 1’s Fantastic new fuels

 

Formula 1’s new fuels are yet to be defined in detail but it could go towards synthetic fuels that are being produced by a Canadian company called Carbon Engineering. This was established in 2009 by a David Keith, an experimental physicist, with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has worked on climate science and energy technology for more than 20 years. In addition to his role at Carbon Engineering, Keith is also a professor at Harvard.

Keith’s idea was to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using a technology called direct air capture (DAC). This captures CO2 from the air (below) and uses sodium hydroxide to create a stable sodium carbonate which is then heated to produce pure CO2. This can then be converted into a solid form, which can be stored underground. It can also be converted into synthetic fuel, using technology developed 100 years ago by Professor Franz Fischer and Dr Hans Tropsch at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Chemistry in Dahlem, a Berlin suburb close to the AVUS race track. The Fischer–Tropsch process helped to produce synthetic fuels in Germany during World War II and was later used in South Africa, where the oil company Sasol employed the technology.

Carbon Engineering has developed a system to convert CO2 into synthetic crude oil, a process it calls ‘Air to Fuel’, which then leads to more traditional refining into liquid fuels that can use existing fuel distribution and transportation infrastructure and is thus be much easier and more cost-effective to implement in the future.

 
Carbon Engineering markets the fuel as being a ‘negative emission’ product. The problem with this is the cost involved but drops in the prices of electrolysis and carbon neutral electricity, coupled with new regulatory incentives for low carbon fuels, mean that carbon neutral synthetic fuels can now be economically-viable and competitive with biofuels. The fuel has an energy density many times higher than any existing battery.

 

 

Source: JSBM