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Hi r/formula1 I’m a professor of Control Engineering, and I happen to know Prof. Smith. For those who do not know, Prof. Smith is the inventor of the inerter, a suspension device that had a huge impact on Formula 1 in the last 20 years. After its invention, the inerter was secretly used by McLaren since the Spanish Grand Prix in 2005. If you check the results of that year, the impact is quite astonishing. Renault won all the previous 4 Grands Prix. Once the inerter was deployed, McLaren went on to win 10 of the following 15 Grands Prix. But the inerter became famous only a couple of years after as the mysterious “J-damper” during the 2007 F1 Spygate. Only in 2008, journalist Craig Scarborough revealed that the J-damper was in fact a device called “inerter”, invented by Prof. Smith at the University of Cambridge. I had the opportunity of interviewing Prof. Smith and go deep into the story of the inerter and his involvement in Formula 1: from a chance call from Williams F1, all the way to the 2022 ban. The interview is a goldmine of information, some of which is quite technical, while some is more big-picture moments about F1 engineering, innovation, and industrial espionage. As the r/formula1 is a varied crowd, below I’ve timestamped the Formula 1 bits if you just want the racing side of the story, without the technical explanation. If instead you are into F1 tech and you want to know how he came up with such an idea, what an inerter does, and how it’s different from a tuned mass damper, then watch the whole thing! I’m happy to answer to some questions below. You can watch the full interview here. 📌 Formula 1-specific moments:
submitted by /u/Ok-Professor7130 |
