© Getty ImagesBulls’ Guide To: LubricantsToday’s F1 technology feature comes from the genre of science friction.
When it stops, fans are fitted into the sidepods, brake ducts and airbox to counteract overheating; conversely, tyres are instantly wrapped in their heated blankets to prevent excessive cooling.
Meanwhile, other eyes are looking at front wings, the leading and trailing edges of the floor and the diffuser for any signs of damage. These are all time-critical jobs – but everyone always makes a space for the fluids specialist, who armed with a syringe, gets priority for the vital task of withdrawing lubricant samples from the car.
Max Leads The Way On Friday© Getty Images
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Lubricants have a strong and long-standing connection with Formula One – but sometimes that connection hides their relevance and value. Lubricant suppliers have been sponsoring motorsports since motorsports began, but this ubiquity of brand names on hoardings, overalls and bodywork is so familiar, people overlook the high-tech chemistry and high-level technical partnership between team, engine manufacturer and lubricant supplier that goes into making the car faster.
Indeed, the concept of lube – or, in the case of an F1 car, many different grades of lube – as a component to deliver lap-time doesn’t particularly resonate with many people buying a litre in the petrol station or supermarket.
Oil – synthetic or mineral – exists in the automotive world for the purposes of protection and performance. It is the same in motorsport. It’s also one of the technologies with the greatest potential for development. While many areas of research in F1 are constrained by the technical and sporting regulations, tribology – the science of friction and wear – has a relatively free hand.
The primary purpose of a lubricant – whether that’s an oil or grease– is to allow components to move easily while protecting them from wear. In this respect, the fluids that go into an F1 car are not so different to those used in a road car. They are doing the same job just in a more extreme environment. An F1 engine or gearbox has a lifespan calculated in months and a service interval measured in minutes – they don’t need fluids that are going to see them through a 15-year lifespan or a service interval of 20,000 miles. What they do need, however, is performance that minimises viscous drag, cools the components but works extremely well in a very hot environment, and weighs as little as possible.
Viscous drag is a big ticket item. Moving, interacting items are coated in a lubricant for their protection, without it components would literally weld themselves together and seize, but that layer of protection inevitably causes a certain amount of drag itself. Minimising the amount of drag with clever molecular chemistry is key to ensuring an F1 powertrain gets maximum bang for its buck, with the greatest amount of energy from the fuel translated into power on the road.
“It’s about protection and efficiency,” says David Tsurusaki, ExxonMobil’s global motorsports technology manager. “We are going to protect components, but the first thing is to make the car more powerful, give it more (wheel) horsepower. We design the molecules in the oil to ensure the components aren’t dragging through the oil but instead have a nice, smooth transition.”
Complicating that task is the desire to have lubricants that weigh as little as possible. F1’s mania for weight-saving does not give the fluids poured into the car a free pass and making lubricants as light as possible is always the goal with new compositions.
The lubricants used in F1 tend to be tailored to the car and engine package in which they are used, and it is common for lubricants to be developed in tandem with engines and even with fuels – because if a new fuel alters the performance of an engine, then the engine oil needs to be reengineered to best serve those new operating parameters.
Sean In The ExxonMobil TrackLab At Winter Testing© Getty Images
It is important to ensure the lubricant is compatible with all the components, especially as it interacts with so many different materials, temperatures and pressures. If the engine oil chemistry isn’t compatible or reacts with any part of the engine a failure can occur. It’s the sort of attention to detail that adds up in the final analysis: for us, Mobil 1’s chemists are like a top-class chef, infinitesimally adjusting their ingredients throughout the season in pursuit of perfection.
Thus, the information flow in the development of new grades of lubricant have to be two-way, particularly for engine oils. While a gearbox is a sealed unit, the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is a much more interactive space. For all of its bespoke nature, engine oil has to be a good allrounder: capable of dealing with very different demands at the top and bottom of the engine, each part of which may be developing at a different pace. In this regard, oil has to have a chameleon-like ability to change according to need – or be able to cope with a diverse range of circumstances.
“Engine oil is unique,” says David. “A lot of people don’t think about it but if you walk through the different components you have a lot of unique demands. Unlike, for instance, a gearbox where there are only gears and bearings, in an engine you have combustion, and you have to do a lot of different things simultaneously with the same lubricant.
“There are some tricks to the way the molecules work under different pressures and temperatures and that is why engine oil does what it does. Some of the chemistry is designed to react at temperature, or react at pressure, that you don’t necessarily use in some other areas of the engine. It is a very special product.”
The lubricants used within the engine do not just come into contact with the components they are protecting, but also any number of seals, gaskets and various other perishable items. It’s important to ensure that new grades of lubricant are not harmful to these components – and equally that new components function properly with an existing lubricant, hence the need for the effort between the parties to be as open as possible.
Max Checks Out The Oil At The ExxonMobil TrackLab During Winter Testing© Getty Images
The oil in an F1 car even has the ability to protect the car after it has been used. This is why ExxonMobil’s Technical Advisor is one of the first to the car when it returns to the garage. The samples gathered will be taken to the ExxonMobil TrackLab at the back of the garage and analysed by Rotating Disc Electrode Optical Emission Spectrometer (RDEOES) to look at the wear in the oil and a Fourier Transform Infa Red Spectrometer (FTIR) to look for chemical changes and a particle size analyser to look at the normality of the wear.
Impurities in oil samples are often the first sign of an impending failure. If the concentration of metal particles in a gear oil sample, for instance, becomes significantly higher than expected, this is considered a sign of excessive wear – and the type of metal in the sample is usually enough to determine which part is in danger of failing. Skilled analysis is often the difference between playing it safe, swapping a gearbox or power unit component, or being able to proceed with confidence.
At first glance you may not see the similarity between the RB16B and the oil used in your road car – but there is a surprising amount of technology transfer and the fundamentals are the same, fuel efficiency, protection and performance.
While the exact blends used for F1 are unlikely to find their way into your local shop, service station, or onto the Esso forecourt, at the molecular level, many of the ingredients from those blends will. As road engines reach higher levels of performance and efficiency, so the synergy between track and road gets stronger – though you’ll probably be doing more than fifty high-speed kilometres before topping up the oil.
