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Born slippy: How F1 lubricates itself
There’s a key set of ingredients in every F1 car that are relatively unregulated, can bring significant power advantages and yet are almost never talked about.
Take these ingredients away and every Formula 1 car would, literally, grind to a halt.
These are lubricants – modest, almost invisible and yet in a state of constant innovation: getting the lubricants and fuel just right can be worth 20-30hp to a car.
What’s so magic about lubricants?
In the thick (and thin) of it
Ideally, you want your engine and gearbox lubrication to be as watery as possible.
The more viscous a lubricant, the more effort it takes for engine parts to move through the substance – think of the difference between stirring a cup of tea and a cup of honey.
A properly lubricated F1 engine running flat-out will use 80-90hp overcoming its own friction.
According to 2013 figures from Habot Synthetic Lubricants, 46 per cent of this friction is from the piston assembly, 38 per cent from the bearings and 16 per cent from the valvetrain.
But there’s a problem with making lubricants thinner – they don’t offer as much protection.
So, for example, Shell supplies Ferrari with thicker oils for engines that are getting near the end of their working lives. These thicker lubricants do bleed power from the engine, but they also prevent it blowing up – the trick is making the lubricants just thick enough to do the job.
The engine oils have to be low-drag, durable enough to last race distance (oil changes happen rather more frequently on F1 cars than on your family hatchback) and survive high pressures and temperatures.
This last requirement is crucial, as lubricants also cool F1 components. For example, oil jets cool the undersides of pistons, which can reach 300C.
To add further complication to a lubrication engineer’s job, oils break down and get thinner at high temperatures… offering less protection to components as a result.
So what’s in F1 lubricants?
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble
The basic ingredients of F1’s synthetic engine oils are the same as for the oil in your car – indeed, Mobil says that half of the six such products it supplies to McLaren are identical to products you can buy at your garage.
But balancing the need for power, engine protection and other factors means a cocktail of ingredients can be used in engine lubricants, and oil companies have dozens of staff working on the formulas every season.
Here are some of the things you might find in the lubricants:
Anti-foaming elements – very important because of the high RPMs that F1 engines have to survive
Friction modifiers and anti-wear additives – to stop engine parts grinding each other away
Active cleaning agents – any deposits in the engine will impede its efficiency
Viscosity index improvers – to control ‘thickness’ when things heat up
Detergent – to clean engine parts. F1 lubricant doesn’t have much of this, as a race lasts no more than 305km
Dispersing agents – to keep foreign bodies in suspension and prevent the formation of ‘sludge’
Esters – these lubricants work well from -50C to 200C and, as an added bonus, are ‘polar’… they stick to metal surfaces thanks to electromagnetic forces, forming a protective layer that stays in place even when an engine is turned off
Synthetic hydrocarbons – these have several uses, including being used as solvents
Pour-point depressants – not so common in F1, as they lower the freezing point of oil to help it cope with cold conditions
Oxidation inhibitors – to help keep the oil stable over its working lifetime
Corrosion and rust inhibitors – do what it says on the tin
As well as using different oils as an engine gets older, different formulations are used at different circuits – for example, high-speed circuits such as Monza or Silverstone generate extra heat in the engines, as cars travel flat-out for extended periods, and the lubricants must be able to both survive the heat and help cool car parts.
And, because F1 engines from different suppliers can have very different lubrication needs, the oil companies work closely with engine manufacturers to develop custom oils for each power unit.
Testing times
One of the innovations that oil companies have brought to F1 is the ability to test oil and fuel samples to check for mechanical problems.
The most comprehensive testing in the pitlane is done by Shell, as part of their partnership with Ferrari.
After each track session, Shell technicians electronically check a sample of car oil for the presence of 15 metals – yes, 15 – to identify any unplanned wear issues.
Other teams also have similar testing, and it can take less than 30seconds for a sample to be analysed.
For example, Mercedes analyses not only its own engines but those of its customer teams such as Williams.
Mercedes’ partners Petronas take 24 engine oil and nine transmission oil samples from each car every race weekend, as well as running other spot checks.
This adds up to about 350 oil tests every weekend across all the cars – as well as being useful for the customer teams, this provides Mercedes with invaluable engine wear data.
Raising the bar
For a case study in how innovative oil companies have to be in F1, look no further than the sport’s decision to replace 2.4l V8s with 1.6l V6s in 2014.
The engine units themselves were smaller and producing more power per litre, and so they created more heat.
Remember that hot oil thins and so a thicker lubricant was required. But the extra heat being generated meant the oil needed to cool the engines more efficiently – what was needed was thinner oil that flowed faster from the engine to the oil radiators.
And, because of fuel flow restrictions, it was critical that lubricants minimised friction in the engine to get maximum benefit from the restricted fuel allowances – again, thin oil was needed.
And so, looking at just three parameters, we can see that the oil companies had to produce an oil that functioned as both a thicker and thinner substance.
Tough call.
Petronas put together a lubricant using a mixture of advanced, thinner synthetic base oils (to reduce friction and help with cooling) and polymer viscosity boosters, which activated at higher temperatures and thickened the oil to maintain its protective qualities.
To improve fuel economy, friction-reducing substances were added to the mix to help metal surfaces slide past each other smoothly.
And, to stop the oil decomposing as the temperature rose, high-performance additives were included.
A separate oil was developed to protect the Mercedes gearboxes, again minimising friction as well as offering protection.
And, once those basic formulas were established, Petronas had to start thinking about variations for the Mercedes customer teams and for Mercedes themselves at different-style tracks.
It may look like the lubricants in F1 are just simple ‘slippy stuff’ but they’re anything but – they’re complex test-beds for consumer products and the ultimate performance challenge for the lubricant teams. And they are a fabulous showcase for innovation in F1.
