Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Cutaway F1 Race Car - The Original Video - Sauber F1 Team

>> Matthew Morris, Chief Designer, Sauber F1 Team As we all know, Formula One is the pinnacle of technology and motorsport.

As I’m sure you’ve all seen on tv and in magazines, there are lots of pictures of Formula One cars.

But wouldn’t it be really cool, if we took a Formula One car and split it and opened it just like an apple?

Here at the Sauber F1 Team that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We’ve cut a car straight down the center line. It’s taken us two years, and here it is.

One of the challenging points of designing a Formula One car is positioning and packaging all the different components that make a Formula One car work.

Here you can see all these components and how they’re positioned on the car.

Starting at the rear we’ve got the gearbox, we’ve got the clutch, we’ve got the engine, we’ve got the oil tank, we’ve got the fuel system.

Here we’ve got all the electronic boxes, and then moving up to the front we’ve got all the pedals and the steering system.

Now, it’s very important in a Formula One car that we keep all the weight very low. This reduces the center of gravity of the car and brings us performance.

This is the car’s steering system. We start with the steering wheel.

Clearly, it’s not just a steering wheel. It also doubles up as the driver’s interface to the rest of the car and also to the pits.

[radio comm: Boost now a bit]

On the back of the steering wheel we have the gear shift pedals and also the pedal to lift the clutch.

On the front there are many buttons: to talk to the guys in the pit lane, to change engine settings, to safe fuel, more power…

And in the middle there’s a little computer screen which tells him if there are any problems with the car. It’s split times, all sorts of really useful data for him

From the steering wheel we come down the steering column, the thin-wall carbon tube which has quite a torturous route as it comes down through the car:

It has to come through the pedals, turn an angle and then come down to the steering system.

The steering system is actually a very simple steering system, due to the regulations, and very similar to the one that you have on a road car.

Obviously a lot smaller and lighter.

Here we have the driver’s seat, obviously were the driver sits.

Then immediately behind him, probably 50 millimetres away, is where we store the highly flammable fuel in the fuel cell.

This is a Kevlar fuel system and as you can see we have lots of horizontal baffles in there.

Now if we didn’t have these horizontal baffles, the fuel would surge around, particularly under braking with the high g levels and in cornering.

In each of the baffles there are a lot of flap valves which allow the fuel to go down but not up. So as the fuel drains,

the fuel could never come above one of these horizontal baffles

By doing this, we always keep the center of gravity as low as possible.

There are also a lot of pumps and pipes in here.

These are positioned strategically to feed the engine, plus also allowing the fuel cell to “breathe”.

So we’ve spoken about all the technical components on the car and how we position them and package them.

I guess the final piece of the jigsaw now is to position the driver.

Some say he’s the most important part of the car, so let’s get him in.

>> Sergio Pérez, driver: It’s important to be fit. You are not in a normal position.

You have a lot of forces, especially in a crash.

I had a big accident last year in Monaco. So we know that it’s a safe car.

>> Matthew Morris: Shall we get you in then?

>> Sergio Pérez: Of course.

>>Matthew Morris: Are you sitting comfy?

>>Sergio Pérez: Uhm... I’ll think about it…

This is how it looks. So I told you, not a very comfortable position to be sitting in for two hours.

>>Matthew Morris: We’ve spoken about getting all the components as low down in the car as possible.

Obviously, you’re just another component to us.

As you can see your sort of backside is 10 millimeters away from the tarmac…

>>Sergio Pérez: From the floor…

>>Matthew Morris: …which obviously you feel when you’re racing in the car.

It’s usually a good gage to tell us if the car is too low because his backside maybe gets a little bit warm.

>>Sergio Pérez: You feel like you have a small torch back there…

Matthew Morris: Yeah…

Safety is obviously paramount in Formula One.

Obviously, if anything does happen, we have a fire extinguisher system on the car which sits here, which can either be activated by the driver or the marshals at the track.

The actual chassis is one big safe haven for the driver.

We build the chassis from carbon honeycomb so it’s very strong and very light.

There are many other safety features on the car such as the head padding to stop the driver’s head from getting injured.

We have crash structures above the driver’s head and in front of the driver.

And then, as we move down the car, we have a crash zone at the front.

All this packaging that we’ve spoken about makes it very difficult to try and find anywhere for my apple to fit…

…other than this huge void at the front which has to be reserved for the frontal crash test.

So anyway…

I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of a cutaway Sauber F1 Team car.

Thank you very much!