F1
Former F1 star David Coulthard looks under the hood of this season’s cars to see how a turbo works.
It’s generally understood that the more cylinders you have in your engine, the faster your car will be. However, this concept hasn't really been true since turbochargers were introduced in the early 20th century.
The turbocharger, commonly known as the turbo, is used to obtain more power output from a given engine. As the technology has progressed, turbos have reached a stage where a six-cylinder turbocharged engine can produce as much, if not more, power as a non-turbo eight-cylinder equivalent.
The turbocharger first appeared in Formula One in 1977 in the Renault RS01. This era of turbo lasted for more than a decade until the FIA decided to ban the component at the start of 1989 season.
But in an attempt to make the sport more environmentally friendly, and to make the sport more relevant to the road-car industry, turbos were reintroduced in 2014 when 2.4l normally aspirated (non-turbo) V8 engines gave way to the much smaller 1.6l turbocharged V6 engines.
With new rules coming into effect in 2017, the cars are getting much faster and lap records have started to tumble. Now if only they could fix the engine noise.
Watch the video above and learn about turbochargers from those who know Formula One cars inside-out: former driver David Coulthard, legendary Formula One designer Adrian Newey and Red Bull Racing’s ace driver Daniel Ricciardo.
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