Why F1 Engines Won’t Work Upside Down (for our stunt) 

You need your engine mounted on a lazy Susan so it's always pointed up.

i love this approach. it's almost like you guys try to approach car physics that resemble the ones in trackmania, but in reallife. only thing missing now is cars jumping half a kilometer and then landing smoothly without any springs :D

even if the stunt never happens this will still have been an interesting series with its realistic assessment of a fairly fantastical idea

this is the most ambitious project I think I've ever seen a youtuber undertake, I can't wait for the finale.

I have to say... You're crazy. But in a good way. If people like you wouldn't exist we would have nothing. You're putting the paper to test with dedication. I really hope this all works. Good luck, we belive in you!!!

As a Formula Student engineer, I love to see our stuff get applied elsewhere. It makes it all worth it

This is the best series in all of automotive youtube, I can not wait to see it come to furition!! Bigups to all the team involved

I called this in the very first video. Electric is by far the most sensible for this kind of project. You could also fed power for the track as there is only one place you are driving.

It's good that you changed the title. It isn't anymore F1-cars driving upside down like has always been the assumption (not speaking about your project), but F1 car would work for few seconds before it would die.. This has kind of changed now to "car with wing and crazy camber on wheels with electric motor doing what F1-engineers have told for years. Still huge respect to you Scott and all involved in making this propably reality! Hope it all succeeds as planned!

The thumbnail seems to show the normal operation of a Ferrari engine even while in the correct orientation!

One thing I would suggest is to build an RC scale model (and a crash proof one at that) and use it to test the aerodynamics in the real world and to verify the computer modelling data. I think Scott should only attempt this stunt in person if he can successfully drive an RC model upside down in a tunnel first.

litterally my bro sitting right beside said "cant they turn the engines upside down" like tf thats gonna change

Have you guys considered a 2-cycle, like a snow mobile engine? I would think they would be able to run upside down as no pool of oil is necessary. Cooling is all enclosed and not gravity fed really as long as it's full

Watching this project progress has been nothing short of fascinating.Can't wait to see the results of all this engineering.

This project is really interesting. Can't wait for you guys to finally nail all the technical details and do it for real!

The V12 in an Messerschmitt Bf 109 was mounted in an inverted position. Just needed some clever engineering to deal with the oil situation.

This project is so incredibly cool! I cant wait to see it unfold.

I think you should just use the Trackmania car, it does loopings all the time and should be very well suited!

Great project! Merry Christmas 🎄

As an engineering student in a Formula Student team, I was literally thinking until 8:10 that this sounds exactly like something that Formula Student technology is suited for. Also hearing you talk about torque vectoring with a FS powertrain sounds very familiar since that's literally my job this year haha

The Original RollsRoys Merlins used in the Spitfire Before being replaced by the Rolls Roys Griffons, suffered from a floating Carborator design, which meant that the Messerschimdt BF109 and the Fokerwolf FW-190's had an advantage during negative G maneuvers. This resulted in the german pilots trying to bait and evade the pursuing spitfires by going into inverted dives where the spitfire wouldn't be able to follow in a same maneuver chase. The engine would stall as the carborator's floater would disrupt the fuel flow into the the enginge. The Spitfire pilots learned to work around this disadvantage by utilizing the spitfires strengths such as turn radius in a maneuvering sequence where rolls would displace the directing of lift compared to gravity and direction of travel, to pitch into a downward spin turn losing as little air speed as possible(this is a trade off), while reconecting with German planes. Its comparable to chosing a different racing line or driving style to compensate for a style that a racing car cannot do, such as angle towards apex and entry and exit speeds. It's easy to run into debates and myths about which plane was better because it was faster or had better turn time, or even climb rates or weapon capabilities, but just as with formula 1 and indycar certain designs are good at different things, and the same goes for the pilot of a racing car as well as a fighter plane. Looking at confirmed kills also is grossly oversimplified. Enough of the history lesson, let me get to my point: Understanding what limitations keeps a standard spec F1 car in 2023 from being used in the stunt is important. But it also comes to a point where a question has to be asked: At which point is it no longer a F1 car? To which degree must the challenge be completed through the driver's use of the vehicle and when is it okay to make the modifications. Its a tough balance, but there is a limit. Otherwise, we can just lose the wheels give it wings, basically greate an airplane fly it inverted, and then claim to have driven an f1 car upside down, as long as the gears touched a tunnel ceiling. At some point you can argue if you really did drive an F1 Car upside down or not. Please don't misunderstand me, I think its a great project, and I don't whish to take anything away from you, or discourage anyone. But while some problems like an engine upside down working or not is not a first time in history thing, and its interesting history facts and all, I think its important you don't forget the mission, and when its all over are honest about the solution, when evaluating if you succeeded or not, regardless of driving a machine, upside down using speed and downforce. Which is a great project regardless of anything else. I am very excited to see how it all ends! Please don't take this as hating criticism, but just a few words for reflection. I am fully supporting the project no matter which decisions are made, I think it's awsome! If you want to know more about the spitfires engine weakness I would have reccomended a Documentary that I unfortunately cannot recall the name of, the closest and most accurate of them you can find here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qqIKzdlHQfo.html.

I am loving this series and hope this actually happens!

There are only a few people out there who do things nobody else ever would try.. people like you are what made us humans so special..

this series is absolutely SICKKKK

I noticed you removed the "former" bits in terms of motorsport from the form. I did some motorport stuff at uni but then went into aviation-related aerodynamics from grad school onwards, your project sounds fun though!

Wow, the complexicity of just driving upside down... your project is so cool. You gonna make it and i,m defenetly gonna watch it, cheers.

Has a 2 stroke engine been considered? They have an extremely good power to weight ratio and pretty much solves the oil problem.

Really like how this is coming along! 👍💪✌

I can't believe this might actually to happen. it's unbelievable. I really hope it all works out. this will be a monumental feat of automotive engineering. edit: forgot to mention, you're all insane, and I absolutely love it!

I haven't seen all the previous videos about this clip. But I'd approach this topic first by putting the car in a rotate-able drum in a wind tunnel and see how it goes when you rotate it in every sort of orientation. You could even tether the car so it can not fall far or be damaged.

I keep thinking of R/P Flip the "boat" or Research Platform that sinks partially and flips 90°. Everything on it is mounted to rotate. I am excited to see this project progress, so good luck and thank you for sharing it.

amazing job!

Electric seems like a fine idea, however I'm not convinced that you couldn't modify the oil scavenging in a gas powered engine to make this work.

Mr. Mansell, I hope your effort is successful. Watching from the sidelines, Ehud in Tucson, Arizona, US.

The video clip at 10:00 had me wondering if you are also going to be not only driving upside down but driving along the wall at 90 degress to the ground in a second run. Since you're going to all the expense and effort it would be great to see a car drive along the side of a wall where gravity is trying to make it slide down the wall. The time on its side could be even longer than the upside driving as you do not need so much length for the full 180 degree rotation of the car for upside driving.

So the general answer to the original question "can you drive a Formula One care upside down?" is - a big fat NO! You have to build an entirely new car and an extra tunnel....who would have thought ... You could have considered a good old two-stroke engines with oil-fuel mixture - they aren't orientation sensitive. But there is still that issue with the differential, that can trow you out of yaw control. And the need for the grip is very critical here, so an all-wheel drive is almost obligatory. Those two reasons are strongly advocating towards electric propulsion. Anyhow. Without differentials between wheels and axles, and with steering of the whole axles instead of single wheels, it might have worked with a two-stroke engine within a manageable development budget.

OH yess! Keep them coming

What about a snowmobile 2 stroke engine and no differential at all. The 2 stroke is relatively light, small and pack a punch for its size. It doesn't require complex lubrication systems due to the fact that it burn its oil and there's no head to lubricate. Modern engine are now injection so that systems can work upside down to. You can also use the cvt transmission of a snowmobile there's not much part to it, it's light weight, compact and effective. As for the differential you're not gonna turn all that much, therefore you would probably be better with just a 90° gearbox or a chain drivetrain like a kart. It would eliminate the risk of having wheels spin if one tire get less grip than the other and you would still be able to steer with negligeable slip of the tire

This is the coolest project on the Internet right now

My first thought was a two stroke. Two strokes don't care about being upside down as long as you can supply the fuel, which isn't actually a big challenge with todays FI two strokes. So a couple of snowmobile two strokes and your 200kw need should easily be met.

very cool! was expecting you to choose electric as with a very low battery size requirement most of the downsides are nullified. but DAMN, i wasn't expecting ypu to go for 4 in-wheel motors. can't wait to see the next update

Good luck with your project and may God be with you

Have worked on robotics a fair bit. Remote controll lipo could be a good solution. You should be able to get away with 20kg not 50kg total battery weight for the stunt. Have several and swap them to allow for charging. Very sensibly, split a pack into 4, where 2 or 3 sections can deliver safe power and use big diodes to link them together. Greatly reduces statistical failure rate. Happy to help if there's opportunity.

I'm surprised Redbull hasn't got wind of this yet and given them a ridiculous budget to pull it off

You guys make me believe it could actually be done

we are getting closer and closer to speed racer and i love it. next we need to work on the wierd orb safety mechanism

Three stage dry sump with a suction at the bottom and top would work too. Along with a weighted pickup for the fuel tank, doesn't need to be excessively complicated.

A lot of trouble to go to show that F1 cars can't invert. But will they succeed before the F1 rule change mandating that all teams must drive inverted ?

Would there be any benefit in altering the shape of the tunnel so that, instead of driving up the left side of a tunnel, until you are driving upside down, you drive up a pitch that increases until you are upside down? I'm thinking of the Hotwheels loop, but the top portion (when the car is upside down) is elongated. That way, you don't need to worry about wheel spin / oversteer / understeer. I figure you would only need 2 - 3 seconds of upside down track to "prove" the car is driving upside down.

Hey man, maybe you could test this with a fairly large small scale model and an electric rc car locked horizontally into a groove on the track but not vertically locked in so that it will fall if gravity turns out to be the winner I love all of your videos and I'm so excited to see how this plays out. Be safe man!

I kind of feel like this is a stepping stone to the sort of racing we saw in the speed racer movie lol.

There are busses and bonds that uses a whire direct onto the eletric grid. You dont need a battery if you have a eletric motor and a wire in the middle axis of the tunnel.

This would make an excellent book, which might also help with the funding.

You may try in wheel motor hubs like Protean or Elaphe. They have enough power, power vectoring, and an easy upgrade. And maybe they will be interested in giving you their solution for promotion.

Love the project. Unfortunately it only proves that a F1 car couldn’t go upside down. But is going to be epic regardless!

As someone who was involved in formula student AWD powertrain and torque vectoring I really like it. I think you can get the power and speed needed and the weight (depends mainly on battery) can go to like 64 kg for whole powertrain. (18kg motors + gearboxes, 40kg Accumulator , MCU 6kg). The main problem I see here is reliability of formula student solutions and the fact that typical torque vectoring systems are not programmed for a 3D driving so the GNSS and IMU data might get incorrectly fused. So I think you would have to design a different -> more simple Torque vectoring system solely for this job to remain straight and with the desired slip levels.

Try looking into the engineering of old aircraft engines, they have a snorkel like intake for fuel that allows then to fly upside down forca short time

I felt this whole project was a bit...... clickbait initially, but its getting interesting now. Even if it remains as a thought experiment, itll have been worthwhile 🤞

Electric motors powered by super-capacitors and/or a pantograph (current collector) on powerlines inside the tunnel walls. Basically like a Carrera car.

This reminds me of the powertrain and PID controller of Quadcopters, but power output at wheels, instead of propellers.

I truly believe you guys can pull this off. My mind immediately went to New race class - R.U.D.E. Racing upside down electric. Maybe there could be a speed boost for passing if you are bold enough to go upside down. Maybe the track could vertical around certain corners, well kind of like nascar bowl shape but more

As someone who grew up in Telford, I totally get the dislike for Telford Services 😂can't wait to see how this project plays out in the end, loving the updates and explanations so far

My initial thought was a 2 stroke engine. It solves the oil problem as it's simply a part of the fuel, and some fuel injectors solve the fuel gravity issues. However electric simply seems a better option. I'd assume even Lithium batteries to be safer than fuel in this instance, then simpler weight and R&D makes electric the better option even before torque vectoring is considered. It's easily enough of an advantage to get past my prejudice against electric propulsion for cars.

I'm excited to see this happen but worried at the same time.

Would a real world scaled down model be useful for your project, or do computer simulations encompass everything you'll run into?

Great videos! But, isn't your goal of driving an F1 car upside down moot if you're not driving an F1 or anything that even resembles one? Perhaps the goal should be renamed "Designing an E-Car I can drive upside down in a tunnel."

I feel like you guys are unintentionally creating the greatest hill climb machine of all time

This is sooo cool.

I said weeks ago, develope a cradle that will hold the car upside down on the tunnel, the car and cradle move along the top of the tunnel and the car is released when the speed needed is attained, mount the engine upside down in the car. This will get rid of the issues of climbing up walls of the tunnel (although not down) the issues with the engine and will shorten the tunnel needed

Technically the McMurtry Spéirling is the perfect car for the job. It just needs the right ride hight for suspension travel when the car is climbing up the side of the tunnel.

Would it be possible to use a metal to metal connection? Much like those track racer toys that use a copper brush at the bottom to contact the metal strip of the track for power? I'm curious how well that kind of power system could scale. That would completely solve the issue of weight from the battery.

Oh wow no way, it’s electric? I can’t believe I totally didn’t expect that. Man it was so cool you getting my hopes up at the beginning of the video only to completely “surprise” me

Formula student is also focused on self driving capabilities of there cars(testing first remotely), so teaming up with one would be go idea ;). British have good ones but the best you can find in central Europe (the biggest budgets, Germany XD) or this year record braking Swiss team. Personally I can help with Polish teams ;)

If you had slightly curved ends of tunnel you could ride car straight trough whole stunt and you would had centrifugal force to assist you wile you are climbing the wall, while you would have straight section for upside down ride.

That alien tech they're talking about now a days might be up to the challenge.

Looking less likely that it will be a F1 Car driving upside down BUT specifically engineering a car to do so is enthralling viewing.

Scott, please get a rollcage/halo safety system installed. Having you around is worth the extra weight!

"Understeering like a pig" is my favourite sentence now

Double fuel pickups with a check ball system could solve your inverted fuel pickups problem. Combining that with a rotary

Seems like an RC on BLDCs. You'll be able to try it out without a skeleton inside :D

Upside road should be like Dragstrip so it will be more stickey so that u can minimize some gravity

I wasn't very much excited about this project yet until now. This could be really cool and if there was a way to scale this up into a production vehicle would make a great electric car.

If this project is supposed to inspire future engineers, I can definitely say it'll fulfill that goal.

for testing purposes, maybe start by driving at 90 degrees instead of 180. i bet you could find a long dry storm canal and put a couple ramps in it to go on and off the wall

Is there a reason why the McMurtry Speirling can’t do this? Maybe with some modifications?

Unless u use oil catch can with another secondary pump or oil check valve

Your videos are non-stop info... no fluff. Always top notch. Don't stop! :)

I was one of the people recommending an aerobatic boxer engine from an airplane. I don't think it is that heavy and they are very reliable. The biggest downside is throttle reaction which is none, as airplanes keep RPMs as constant as possible. But I didn't know that Formula Student motors weigh 3kgs each! I mean I know some crazy motors that are ~30kgs and output 300hp, but 67hp for 3kg is something else. Go with it!

Turboshaft engines would be great for this

How about a rotating F1 engine that keeps its orientation while the car flips?

The animation at 10:42 is really interesting, never saw that before.

Never even thought about it about but yeah how do you make an engine work upside down

While I appreciate stretching this into a whole episode of a cool project, did anyone honestly think anything but electric made any sense when going upside-down?

My suggestion is a 2 stroke engine, like in chainsaws or in motocross bikes, it doesn't need a sump of oil, has less moving parts than a 4 stroke, weight less, and you dont need batteries

F1 raced in Australia and it was fine all the time!

this is nuts... but crazy projects like this bring innovation in whole automotive industry, somewhat like a butterfly effect, some crazy dude on youtube wants to drive car upside down and in few years we have lighter batteries, more reliable engines, safer cars... my respect sir for you and your craziness

Very jealous, this is summat I'd love to do but didn't realise just how much involved it would be, lol

A 2 stroke engine, like the etec from Evinrude will fit perfectly for that task

How would a boxer motor work in this, im assuming the systems used to move fluids around might be the problem but idk, maybe it could work

IIRC lot of the German planes in WWII had inverted V-12 engines, where the engine's basically installed upside down. I think the oiling issues are solvable, but if sponsors & young people are more inspired by electric cars than gas & it's an easier design to validate, then it makes sense. Personally, I'd like to see it w/ an IC engine just b/c aesthetically that's closer to the original dream of driving an F1 car upside down & the sound of electric drive makes me think of quadcopters or the McMurtry fan car, but it will still be really cool either way