Why F1 Pistons Cost £50,000!

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This single piston costs £50,000. And for good reason. It has to withstand over 200G when moving up and down in the engine at over 80mph.

F1 engines cost over £7 Million each and these pistons are one of the key components that help them produce over 1000hp.

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But why does it cost 1000 times more than the piston out of your road car? It turns out there are many very good reasons for insane costs.

If you’re into F1, then you’ll know that you can’t start an F1 engine like you can with a normal road car.

The incredible tolerances mean that the pistons are seized in the cylinders until the car is warmed up, so the engineers have to take at least 30 minutes to warm the coolant and oil before they can start the engine.

So how come you don't need to do this in your road car?

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[Driver]

Did you know so much goes into these Pistons?

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[mgcharoudin]

First time I didn't skip the sponsored message for its smoothness

[michaels.ramsey]

I built BMW V10 F1 engines in the early 2000s for a Williams chassis team out of Dallas. We machined our own pistons from forged billet bar stock. Then we hardened them by a process of heat treating and cryo cycles. Less than .001% expansion from 0-280°C. F1 tech has made leaps and bounds since then, but what we were doing was pretty cutting edge back then.

[TheCarPassionChannel]

I was today years old when I learned that F1 engines seize at room temperature.

[Bob-jekx]

Actually the materials are not allowed to be more expensive. F1 regulation really hammers down that they don’t want exotic materials used. Mercedes complains about that all the time, they say that their F1 engines are built out of the same alu and steel as their road cars.

[Welcometofacsistube]

As a professional machinist who deals with .0001 thousands tolerances, this is just everyday for me

[philup]

The company I work for makes F1 pistons and I can assure you we get nowhere near £50, 000 folr a piston not even £1, 000 think you have pulled numbers out from where the sun does not shine.

[tomte]

As a cnc programer and machinist I call BS on £50, 000 unless the raw material cost is £49, 000.
The tolerances you mentioned are tight, but not something a regular industrial cnc machine can't handle.

[dylanmcghee]

Never seen someone put in sponsors so seamlessly it doesn’t bother u at all as they normally do!! Great work

[DIOSpeedDemon]

I would love to see the spare part price sheets for these motors, especially when they tear them down for routine maintenance. The engines alone are works of art to me. I love the V-12 motors personally.

[DIOSpeedDemon]

I watched a commentator do a series on these engines and the one thing he said, which blew me away, is THERE ARE NO GASKETS..!! Each component part is blue printed to tolerances so close, they parts meet perfectly and dont need gaskets. Amazing! Also Nikki Lauda interview, he laughed when asked where the key was on an F-1 to start it???? (there is no key, just a start button ) . Amazing engine and video, thanks, RH DS D KING DIO

[HydraulicPressChannel]

You might want to check the statement that piston experiences more force from direction change than the combustion pressure. I couldn't find the exact number for piston diameter or peak cylinder pressure but max bore is 80 mm, so lets use 75 mm on calculation and then lets use relatively low peak pressure of 150 bars. That generates already 6 tons of force against the piston.

[PedroDelgado]

Damn and I'm over here crying about paying $180 for every piston ring

[WarpedYT]

Thank you for giving me credit! Awesome Video

[tonythemadbrit]

The problem with cost of parts in F1, Indycar, WRC and other expensive series is that if the cars could be built much cheaper, the sponsors wouldn't accept paying multimillion dollar deals. These teams are out to make a profit, so cheaper cars means less money from sponsors, and therefore less profit for the team. I rallied when it was possible to build a competitive WRC car for about the price of this (alleged) £50, 000 piston. If I'd asked my sponsor for £1, 000, 000 for the season he'd probably still be laughing today.

[overstack]

5:40
a 300g piston subjected to 200g force will effectively "weight" 300*200=60, 000g or 60kg, not 600kg !
If you multiply the result by 9.81, you get the force necessary to accelerate the piston in newtons not kg

[daneholt]

The key thing that wasn't touched on in this video was production volume. You could spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the design/tooling/production planning of a piston, but if you manufacture millions of them, the cost of each piston decreases closer and closer towards its variable raw material cost.

If you spend only $2 million dollars in the design/tooling/production of a piston which will only be manufactured less than 100 times, your per-piston cost is much higher than just the materials, since each piston is absorbing massive amounts of the research/design costs.

Long and short, it's not the materials or design that's extraordinarily expensive compared to consumer vehicles, it's the fact that there are only a handful made compared to the millions that are produced for commercial applications.

[sr]

Good video but you forgot the biggest cause of costs. The reason why the pistons are so expensive is the low quantity. Designing and planning those pistons is extremely expensive due to the wage for the engineers. You basically have dozens of people work for one product so this product has to “carry” their wage. Normally a high quantity would spread those costs over thousands of components.

[hlxshady]

300 gram at 1G weighs ~= 3N ~= 0.3kg at 1G
300 gram at 200G weighs ~= 600N ~= 60kg at 1G

Right? If so, then it's 60kg instead of 600kg.

[JB-znkx]

"This is why the engine block seizes when it cold... the cylinder block expands more than the cylinder when it's cold" I guess you didn't realize this was total rubbish till someone called you out