Thermal Camera on F1 Car

First use by the FIA, and it's oh-so-sexay.

This is why on-car IR sensors always trump pit-lane pyrometers. Temperatures are incredibly transient.

Not sure how long this video will stay up, the FOM is pretty good about killing their footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt_uFFU6Npo

Wow

It was using tire-mounted pyrometer arrays in simulators that made me want that setup on my car. Hugely powerful for suspension tuning, it makes after-the-fact readings look like crap.

Very cool. I shared it on the Turn Left facebook page. Thanks. www.facebook.com/turnlefttalkstl

If you want to do this in a GRM manner, look closely at 10 year old Cadillacs in the yard, some had a NTSC output B&W thermal camera where the Cadillac emblem in the grill usually is.

That's cool! Very interesting to see how much of the tire is "active" in a straight line.

Very neat. I'm surprised none of the hub/brake components show up under braking. That's some very nice heat shielding/ducting work.

I'm sure they applied a spot-mask on the video feed to just show the tires. There should be a lot more color everywhere, and there wouldn't be a hard edge like that on the tire's inner summits.

What surprised me was how fast the tire heated up/cooled off. It would be better if there were a temp legend to tell what the colors meant, but they aren't gonna release that.

Warren v wrote: I'm sure they applied a spot-mask on the video feed to just show the tires. There should be a lot more color everywhere, and there wouldn't be a hard edge like that on the tire's inner summits.

I thought the same thing. I would also guess that this camera is set to output only within a fairly narrow range.

The thermal sights we used downrange would give a full spectrum from cold to hot in different shades, this only seems to show when it's really hot.

All i can say is a well known team has had super small (think pencil eraser sized unit) for the past 3-4 years. Company i left last year made the lenses. I have no idea if there the wining team or not as i don't realy follow it closely. No even if you PM i will not / can not say who.

A couple questions:

1.) What do you suppose the temp difference is from cold to hot through the spectrum shown there? Are we talking about ~10 or ~100 temperature difference?

2.) I've always read that tread temperature isn't nearly as important as core temperature. Is that really true? If so, how much good does a setup like this really do?

Warren v wrote: I'm sure they applied a spot-mask on the video feed to just show the tires. There should be a lot more color everywhere, and there wouldn't be a hard edge like that on the tire's inner summits.

This occurred to me before i posted, but I don't think there's a spot mask on the video,. The tires move around too much for that to not include the hubs when turning. I think they just have the camera set to a very narrow range of temps like ShadowSix said.

The tires are probably between 200 and 300F and it's possible that nothing else in those images is that hot.

In reply to 44Dwarf:

This kinda stuff has been going on for a while, and IR spot sensors have been common at the higher levels since the late 80s. Not illegal tech or anything.

In reply to petegossett:

1) Probably 95C - 120C for the medium compound. Pirelli recommends 105-115 to the teams.

2) Meh, depends on the tire and situation. If the core of the tire is up to operating temp, you'll get all sorts of nice cushioning properties at the contact patch. The tread temp is what generates that nice adhesion. The tread will flow into every little pit in the road (on the micro and macro scale), and more surface area means more Van der Waals force and mechanical adhesion, which means more grip.

In reply to JohnyHachi6:

I think it's just a tracked mask (they could reference the wheel/tire contrast), or else we'd see a nicer edge on the inside of the summit and various parts on the hub/brake shroud. Maybe a combination of the two?

petegossett wrote: 2.) I've always read that tread temperature isn't nearly as important as core temperature. Is that really true? If so, how much good does a setup like this really do?

That's probably an artifact of having to wait until you stop to check tire temps. As the video so plainly shows, tread temp changes very quickly, probably from a combination of airflow and heat transfer to the ground, while core temp would have a bit more lag-time.

Glow in the dark tires! Neat idea....

Honestly though, I feel what this shows is how smooth that driver was driving, the way it just faded in and out. If that was me it probably show all cooked.

I was hoping that they would show this when the car was overtaking a slower car so you could see the exhaust and rear tire heat profiles.

BBC warmup this morning said the tires are going from ~60-125C in the video