The foundation of weight saving in F1 is material choice. Each individual component starts with design engineers performing calculations and tests to figure out what material yields the best strength-to-weight ratios. The monocoque is a prime example of this. It uses pre-preg carbon fibre, a carbon fabric that is pre-impregnated with resin, which is laid up in certain orientat...

Spending upwards of £10 million on an F1 car might seem logical if the money went towards the engine. Guess again. It's the high price of Titanium and Carbon FIbres that make building an F1 car so costly. To better understand why they would spend so much money on materials we have to understand the importance of margins in F1 In a race consisting of 50 laps, if a car comes ...

Being part of an amateur motorsport team means you tackle the same engineering problems as the big dogs like Formula 1, but with a measly 0.1% of the budgets. This means making some very tough decisions regarding what materials can be used. Carbon fibre monocoques are not within the realm of possibility, nor are Inconel exhaust systems. This means being smart with the budget w...