The Formula 1 Car with INFINITE GEARS | The Blueprint

This 1993 Williams has one of the most unusual gearboxes ever in F1. Rather than 8 gears like modern F1 cars, it had an ingenious mechanism that could smoothly change through an infinite number of gear ratios.

It promised to make the car easier to drive, more efficient and much, much faster.

It's called a Continuously Variable Transmission, a CVT. It’s not a new thing but was new to something as powerful as a 90s F1 car.

It meant the car was always in the right gear and could make the best use of the engine's power, delivering all 850 horsepower, all the time.

Photo provided by Tristen Krijgsman

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So how do they work?

There are many different types of CVT - with more clever ones being trialled in cars all the time. They’re not new though and are often used on anything from a Pillar Drill to a Scooter.

But this is the one that was used in the Williams car, it’s essentially two pulleys, with a belt connecting them. One pulley is connected to the engine, the other to the wheels.

Each pulley has one side fixed in place, whilst the other side can move.

When the pulley is squeezed together, it forces the belt up the cone, the same as shifting to the largest cog on the back of your bike.

The same happens in reverse, pull the two sides apart and the belt moves to the bottom, similar to the smallest cog on a bike.

If you were to hold the pulley somewhere in the middle, you can have any gear ratio you like, as the belt can deliver power anywhere on the surface of the pulleys.

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[Driver]

Some of you may have seen this one, but most of our subscribers haven't. So here is a remix of an old upload, with some new bits in there!

Do you wish this car had run for at least a race or so? Or is the noise too bad?

[ragerancher]

Teams: Hey we got this new idea!
FIA: Oh that's nice, banned.
Teams: But we've barely even
FIA: BANNED!
Teams: What's your reason?
FIA: B-A-N-N-E-D!

[affe]

I can just imagine how much better todays CVT gearboxes would have been if F1 had developed them for 25 years or so...

[WillyWilson]

During a tour at the DAF museum where the car is on display, I was told it was banned because a maximum of 8(?) forward gears was allowed at the time. While Williams argued it had 1 forward gear, the FIA argued it had infinite forward gears, and thus too many.

[megapet]

I wonder if that system could be made reliable enough for 1-2 races nowadays? Would be very interesting. I can only imagine how weird would be to slow down to corner and still be at nearly max rpm constantly :D

[jiveturkey]

My speculation on why they banned it was they just couldn't stand the sound of it.

[opperbuil]

Reliability has changed quite a bit. The Japanese self-defense force run the Mitsubishi type 10 tank of 40 tonnes and 1200 hp on a CVT. While the high revs of a formula 1 car is its own challenge, so is 40 tonnes of box bouncing on terrain that's impossible to drive over with wheeled vehicles. The mostly guaranteed reliability distance of a modern tank is closer to the full formula 1 race season than a single GP.

[hr_pedersen]

A fun quirk of some of these gearboxes is that it can go just as fast in reverse as it can go forward.

[Noukz]

I'm one of the few car enthusiasts that actually like CVTs, for daily driving. But it's a shame there was no usage of this in a full length championship, to test it, develop it and prove it's application in motorsport.

[MonsterPumpkin]

It is a huge shame it was banned especially without reason but to be fair, the more things drivers have to keep in check and have to do the more entertaining it is to watch, because it becomes a race of skill more than equipment and of course can't forget about the iconic sound

[gbraadnl]

7:35 I guess it was a Dutch company. Most likely DAF as they are known for the Variomatic system. The earliest CVT on a production car. But I could be wrong.

[micahkiyimba]

Would have loved to see at least 1 GP with the CVT Williams

[emi]

Well explained, but I think there is a little misconception at 5:50. If you want to maximize acceleration, you want to maximize the wheel torque. In order to achieve that, the engine must be at its maximum power regime, not at its maximum torque regime. The reason is that power =torque*rotational speed. This equation can be applied to the engine, but also to the wheel. So, for a given wheel speed, the more power, the more torque at the wheel, and this is achieved with the engine at the maximum power regime and a shorter gear, instead of the engine at the maximum torque regime and a longer gear.

[patrickrodriguez]

I sometimes feel like the FIA is purposefully hindering technological advances. Imagine if F1 teams were given a chance to use and perfect the CVT and their advancement would trickle down to us consumers.

[balazsbelavari]

If cvt’s were a thing in f1, a lot more aero engineers would have come to participate.
By the late ww2 most aircraft engines were designed to practically have spring adjusted cvt’s in them and they would work with enormous boost for hours. Tho not many revved above 3k rpm, because they were anywhere between 25-45 liters of displacement. Those engines were wild

[Conservator.]

I remember driving my grandmother’s DAF 66 in 1983. It was considered anything but a sporty car and yet I was first away at a traffic light, every time.

Edit: it had the original CVT transmission.

[jackvearncombe]

Love that you got DC in this for a quick chat!
I was just thinking about the little clip of the fw15c running with the cvt and what his thoughts on it would be, and he pops up! Awesome vid.

[RyanPerrella]

How rad is it that we have a community where we can learn about F1 from Nigel Mansell’s son who has actual experience in an F1 car and has the enthusiasm to make short films to tell us all about his favorite topics?
Thanks Scott, you’ve exposed me to so many aspects of F1 that are just inaccessible to someone who’s only experience with F1 cars came from models, books and the friday-sat-sun weekend tv broadcasts. Thanks friend.

[mrsiersciu]

I don't to think you're right about picking the top torque of the engine for best acceleration - you always want to maximize engine power.

Here is why: at any given speed you want to maximize the torque at the wheels, which means that you want to maximize the engine torque multiplied by the gearing ratio. When you do the maths, you'll see that this is essentially engine power divided by rpm at the wheels, so if you want this number to be maximal you need to pick such a gearing that the engine is at its power peak, not torque.

To put it differently, if you make your gear longer so that you can have peak torque in the engine (instead of peak power), the extra torque will be consumed by less aggressive gearing, yielding lower torque at the wheels.

[gaomn_]

Wouldn't it be amazing, fitting last year's Mercedes W11 with a CVT, active suspension, advanced traction control and all those bells and whistles, and putting it to the test?

It would be absolutely nuts.

Not for actual official racing though.