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F1 noise: It’s Coldplay v the Pistols


The debate about noise levels in F1 has raged since the sport went all ‘quiet’ with its turbo V6 rules in 2014.

Indeed, the debate has sometimes seemed a whole lot noisier than the cars themselves.

So, what’s the truth about the noise F1 cars make?

How much noisier were the old V8 engines?


The simple answer is ‘lots’ but the figures can be misleading. Sound signals attenuate – degrade – as you get farther from the source. So, measurements taken by your geeky friend with a cheap sound meter are of limited use.

By some measurements, the old V8s reached between 140 and 147dB (decibels – more on those in a moment); by others (FIA noise specialists, for example) they reached 129.5dB.

Differences occur for several reasons – some measurements are taken with the car hooked up to a dyno machine (to replicate the effects of real-world driving in a garage), while others are taken track-side. Some are taken with other cars around, others not.

Some are taken from directly behind the engine, others as cars pass.

And, of course, some cars are louder than others.


OK, how noisy are the present F1 cars?


In 2014, motorsport’s governing body, the FIA, said the difference in sound pressure levels between new and old-era cars was 11dB – 134dB compared with 145dB.

(These figures illustrate perfectly how inconsistent noise readings are in F1 – as we saw above, previous FIA figures put old V8s at 129.5dB, which is quieter than the 134dB quoted for the new engines in 2014. Anyone who has followed F1 for any time knows that the new cars are certainly not noisier than the old V8s. Still, let’s put that to one side and assume that the 2014 figures are based on a consistent method of measuring sound, so that the 11dB figure is a valid one.)

An 11dB difference is a lot, because of the way we record sound intensity…


What’s this talk of decibels?


Decibels, used (among other things) to record sound intensity, are logarithmic. So, for example, if we say 0dB is near-absolute silence, then a 10dB noise would be ten times more powerful.

But a 20dB sound would be 100 times more powerful than 0dB, and 30dB would be 1,000 times more powerful.

If this is all way too complicated, then there’s a rule of thumb which equates a 10dB change to a halving (or doubling) of loudness.

So, if the 2014 engines were 11dB quieter than the 2013 models, that’s half as loud. I said it was a lot.


How do F1 cars compare with other noisy things?


Here are some examples to show how comparatively noisy F1 cars are – they’re approximations (how loud is a rock concert?) but you’ll get the idea.

  • 10dB Silence

  • 15dB A pin dropping

  • 40dB A whisper

  • 60dB Everyday conversation

  • 85dB This level can damage hearing

  • 100dB Your music system, cranked up to the max

  • 115dB Sensitive souls may experience ear discomfort

  • 120dB Hanging over the barriers at a rock concert

  • 124-128dB New-era F1 cars

  • 127dB Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) is triggered

  • 133dB Gunshot

  • 134dB New era F1 cars (alternative measure)

  • 140dB Pain threshold for most of us

  • 141dB You may start to feel ill after a few minutes

  • 147dB An old-school F1 screamer zips by

  • 150dB In front of speaker stack at a rock concert

  • 154dB The compression can burst a balloon

  • 158dB You’re daft enough to hide in a rock concert 5,000W speaker bin

  • 163dB Top Fuel dragsters eclipse the noise of the noisiest F1 car

  • 165dB Passenger jet takes off

  • 180dB Someone detonated 0.5kg of TNT 5metres from you

  • 195dB Your eardrums just ruptured

  • 215dB Space Shuttle is taking off

  • 248dB Hiroshima, Nagasaki, very approximate levels for atomic blast

  • 310dB Krakatoa erupts. You have more to worry about than the noise

It’s all about the bass (well, the mix…)



Now here’s a thing. The pleasure and pain we derive from the noise an F1 engine makes is not down only to the volume.

That’s one reason why, when F1 cars got new exhaust plumbing for the 2016 season which, apparently, increased the volume by 4dB, we all shrugged our shoulders and said the engines sounded the same.

(As an aside, there’s a theory that if you want someone to notice a difference in volume, you’re going to have to double it – 4dB won’t cut it.)

The thing is, the engines did sound the same – perhaps a little louder, but the same.

When you turn up the volume on Abba Gold, it still sounds like Abba, only louder.

The quality of the sound we get from an F1 car is crucial to how it affects us, and old-school engines sound very different to the new-era turbo hybrids.

The old V8s pumped out a proper racket in the 500-2,500Hz frequency range.

This is significant, because humans are particularly sensitive to noise in this range; the high end is where you’ll find human screams, so we’re programmed to pay attention.

The 1.6litre lumps in modern F1 sing a whole octave lower. Whereas old F1 cars sounded, to humans, like they were literally screaming by, the new ones hum a very different tune.

It’s as if in 2013 we were listening to the Sex Pistols through concert speakers and then, in 2014, Coldplay rocked up with a ghetto-blaster – you can argue til you’re blue in the face which you prefer, but there’s no doubting it was a huge change.

Prof Trevor Cox, who enthuses about acoustic engineering at Salford University, published the above graph which illustrates how much the noise coming off cars changed between 2013 (blue trace) and 2014.

You don’t have to be a sound engineer to see that the noise was very, very different indeed.

As well as engine capacity and exhaust mapping, rev limits have a huge effect on the noise an F1 car makes; the banshee scream of an F1 engine from ten years ago, pushing through 19,000rpm and more, is unforgettable once heard.


What don’t we hear?


The noise of an F1 engine drowns out a lot of other acoustic material.

Strip away the exhaust note and there’s not a great deal of mechanical noise from an F1 engine – these things run with the minimum of friction – but there’s plenty of other stuff that goes into the acoustic mix.

If you go to a Formula E race (pictured), for example, you’ll get a good idea of the other sounds a car gives off as it races by – and you’ll appreciate how much noise vanishes when the internal combustion engine is removed.

Tyre squeal is something we don’t hear much on TV coverage of F1 but it’s there all the time in Formula E.

Likewise, stand near a chicane and you’ll hear the relentless clatter and thud of cars hitting kerbs; it can sound a little like a fairground ride but it does give more of an impression of the sort of impacts taking place.


What about the drivers?

Their hearing can get wrecked. Jenson Button (pictured) talked about how he had to endure 140-147dB noise levels day after day in an F1 cockpit, and David Coulthard often comments on how his hearing has been affected by a career at the top of motorsport.

Of course, drivers wear ear protectors but, at the volume levels we’ve been talking about, you can actually feel the noise in your bones.

Standing by the start line at Monza, for example, with 22 V8s revving as the lights went to green, was an unforgettable sonic experience.

If you were in the pit lane, in particular, the noise from the cars was amplified as it bounced back from the scruffy concrete main stand, blending with and dominating the cheers of the tifosi.

The noise, even with ear defenders on, was unbelievable; you could feel the vibrations in your forearms.

These days, earplugs are far less common at F1 races, although they’re still a good idea, particularly if you’ve got young, sensitive ears.

The irony of this is that, with quieter cars, crowds are actually hearing more because they don’t wear ear protection.

Oh, if you’re a recent convert to F1 and don’t know what an old-school F1 rocket sounded like, search for 1995 Ferrari F1 412 T2 EPIC V12 Sound! – you won’t be disappointed… but you may need earplugs.