Photo: Screenshot from Facebook
With them flying around - most of the times in pieces - whenever a mosquito touches the front end of the car, you'd be excused if you thought the nose and the attached wing on the Formula One cars were more fragile than a cracked piece of porcelain.
If you're anything like us, you probably imagined the technicians handling these things behave as if they were holding atom bombs, careful not to drop them or hit them against anything denser than air. What am I talking about? They're probably only fitting them on the car in vacuum chambers where even the air is pumped out.
Jumping to another idea, let's talk about Lewis Hamilton a little, and, more to the point, about his frame. All Formula One pilots are about the same size, but they're not as tiny as a Russian tank driver. He's 174 centimeters tall - that's 5'7" - which certainly doesn't recommend him as a Basketball center player, but is maybe just a tiny bit below average.
And while they aren't allowed to have one ounce of fat on them, they do have plenty of muscle, so he weighs about 68 kilograms - 150 pounds. He's not the most massive guy, OK, but he doesn't have the constitution of a ten-year-old, as you may think.
Back to the front wing of the car, like all other body panels of a Formula One car, it's made out of carbon fiber. The thing with this lightweight material is that it's super strong, but its strength can be modeled based on the way the weave is laid.
In the case of a Formula One car's front wing, it's supposed to withstand huge amounts of downforce caused by the air friction, so 68 kilos jumping on top of it is like a kitten jumping on your lap: it's almost nothing, but only as long as it keeps a certain angle and doesn't end up where it shouldn't.
As Hamilton puts it while talking to the Sky Sports F1 interviewer, "It's crazy: you can stand on this, and it won't bloody move, but as soon as you touch one wheel, the whole thing flies off." Yup, that's crazy alright, but not even half as crazy as how much the thing costs, I bet.
Jumping to another idea, let's talk about Lewis Hamilton a little, and, more to the point, about his frame. All Formula One pilots are about the same size, but they're not as tiny as a Russian tank driver. He's 174 centimeters tall - that's 5'7" - which certainly doesn't recommend him as a Basketball center player, but is maybe just a tiny bit below average.
And while they aren't allowed to have one ounce of fat on them, they do have plenty of muscle, so he weighs about 68 kilograms - 150 pounds. He's not the most massive guy, OK, but he doesn't have the constitution of a ten-year-old, as you may think.
Back to the front wing of the car, like all other body panels of a Formula One car, it's made out of carbon fiber. The thing with this lightweight material is that it's super strong, but its strength can be modeled based on the way the weave is laid.
In the case of a Formula One car's front wing, it's supposed to withstand huge amounts of downforce caused by the air friction, so 68 kilos jumping on top of it is like a kitten jumping on your lap: it's almost nothing, but only as long as it keeps a certain angle and doesn't end up where it shouldn't.
As Hamilton puts it while talking to the Sky Sports F1 interviewer, "It's crazy: you can stand on this, and it won't bloody move, but as soon as you touch one wheel, the whole thing flies off." Yup, that's crazy alright, but not even half as crazy as how much the thing costs, I bet.
WATCH: Front wings fragile? Not a chance https://t.co/9C0GZe8MxM https://t.co/pXXt10hmBA #SkyF1
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) April 20, 2016
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