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We know F1 is expensive - but did you know a simple wheel nut costs nearly £1000?
And that one F1 team can spend upwards of £50 thousand pounds a weekend on WHEEL NUTS?
Let me explain
Now, F1 wheel nuts haven’t always been that expensive, there has been a long history of steady development to get them where they are now. And actually, in the early days of F1, they used to hammer the wheel nuts on!
Yep, this was because impact guns weren’t a thing. And the other option was using several studs - which take a long time to change.
So F1 cars used these single centrelock nuts - with these wings on the side. Some had 2 and some had three - and the pit crews would carry a mallet to the pitlane to hammer off the nut, change the wheel and hammer on a new one.
📹 All source footage can be found here 👉 bit.ly/3MXabEj
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#F1 #Formula1 #WheelNuts
“after all the effort, it was banned next season” sums up f1 so well
“Peak innovation” yeah, that’s why endurance racing teams are literally “prototyping” engine tech. F1 is a little confusing when you start thinking about what the intent of certain rules are
I really wish they'd stop doing that tbh. Force teams to adapt, stop catering to the whiners!
Deepen your level of understanding to begin to comprehend the reasons why such features are banned.
@@procatprocat9647 why is multi-spray direct injection banned?
just like the rotary engine and the turban engine race cars of the past as soon as they won a race they got banned not because they where wasteful on fuel or dangerous that was just an excuse to tell the public, But because they worked better and lasted longer than the bigger companies that funded the events and angered them. You can those companies for not allowing us to have cars that run on other kinds of engines, sadly the only recent fuel powered engine in History to be mass produced and sold to the public was the wanker rotary and it is the ONLY none reciprocating piston engine to win at le mans.
6:02 ah yes, the mythical 8 sided hex nut
Scrolling with no other purpose than to find this comment. 😂
I was confused, skimming around looking for an 8 sided hex nut equivalent, then I finally heard it. Missed that the first time i watched the video.
Yes, the octonut is rare but the uninut is, fortunately, even less common but was used to great success by lance armstrong.
for some reason I always think 8 for hex at first. Something to do with the X maybe. It cost me points on university challenge when i thought hexapods must mean spiders :(
youtubers make mistakes like these on purpose to drive up engagement.
Don't you think the video should have the title "why F1 wheel nuts cost 1000£" instead of 50.000£?
It's clickbait
I was originally thinking the same thing. The thing is, when you factor in the R&D his number might not be that far off.
What is it with this new habit of putting the £/$ sign AFTER the number?
@@christopherdean1326 this is very common depending on the country you live in
@@xtianeskay5166 Maybe, but not in the UK or the US, both of which I have seen many times...
Not a big Mercedes fan but still felt terrible for Bottas when he had to sit and watch the great drive he put on get nullified by bad luck.
If bottas didnt have bad luck, he would have no luck at all. Poor guy
Pretty sure Bottas wouldn't call himself a Mercedes fan either.
Was nullified by his error. His personal, no one else error.
@@stayoffthemarbles6790 he was born under bad sign.
Should of gone to KwikFit
I can only imagine how buff 1950's pit crews would be....
I just watched the Penske cheating history on a small channel, they said the full refill valve had enough force to knock a person down when you switch it shut it off. The refueler was terrified just to refuel the car. Imagine how strong he had to be to handle that.
More buff than Gigachad
And weere likely smoking while smacking a hammer.
@@adamb2619 The only way to do it
@@DroneStrike1776 The Penske file
That's just....nuts!
Rim shot at the ready
this is pretty cool, I was involved in designing the wheel nuts (and hubs) for my school's FSAE car and it's neat to see how the pros do it. We also machine centerlock nuts out of aluminum, but pit stop times aren't particularly important for us so we use a simple clip for retention
Thats pretty awesome!
With the wheel guns being spec I honestly thought the wheel nuts were also a shared part just like the tyres, I had no idea so much innovation went in to wheel nuts, it’s nuts 🥜 😂
I've actually got a Caterham one from 2014 when they were auctioning off old bits to get to the last race of the season. (cost me a lot less than £1000 though! ). Now I know why it has a green plastic ring on it :)
And to think a whole pro bike in the Tour de France, wheels 'n all, costs just shy of £ 20K.
I am so happy that i discovered this YT channel, i learn a LOT and it is so much fun to understand how things work behind the scenes. Thank you or all your hard work and for explaining random things that are sooo interesting ❤
I wouldn't trust this grabage, £50,000 is somehow equal to $16,1950
The spline drive wheel nut / socket was developed in 1994 by a small company named “Metalore” (who are still involved in F1, Prototype and Sports Car Racing) Newman / Haas was their test team in 1995 and Metalore was also the 1st distributor of Paoli Pit Guns in North America. By 1996 every team in the CART paddock ran that design and it became the norm world wide.
Kenny at Metalore had long been friends with John Barnard and we used them to make all our axles and CV joints etc (anything out of 330M) at Ferrari and later at TWR and Prost. Those splined features were on the JB Ferraris around that time and so I wouldn't be surprised if they were a result of collaboration between Kenny and JB.
@@GPRaceSimulation Yes - Kenny and JB were good friends. And still best mates up until Kenny's passing in 2022. It was actually Gordon Kimball who came up with the spline drive socket / nut solution for us to complement our drive line components we developed for Newman Haas (I work for Metalore as their track side support rep in North America). Kenny would also smile saying the only time F1 learned something from CART. We still use 300m + various other materials for today's modern driveline systems.
I never thought THAT much efford went into designing and making the weel nuts. It's easy enough to see why the engine or the bodywork is so expensive (only to constantly see cars that lost bits of the later doing the exact same times as before), but the attention to detail that goes into the small parts gets overlooked so easily.
It's a spinning object, so every gram it has gets magnified when the car gets up to speed. Excess weight in the wheels affects acceleration, braking, and cornering at all speeds whereas a lot of the bodywork only starts to work at higher speeds.
@@washellwash1802and also it's a part that comes off and goes on the car every Grand Prix. With the minuscule time spent on doing that it makes it pretty easy to see that effort is needed in designing it.
With NASCAR's introduction last year of the single nut, we saw a lot of evolution, growth. Wheels were flying off everywhere. They still don't have it down perfect getting those drive pins seated. The F1 guys do it so fast you have to watch in slow motion to see them actually do it where it looks like they get em lined up perfectly every time.
To be fair, f1 has a person who’s only job is to use the wheel gun for one wheel while NASCAR has to get the whole stop done with 5 people and one guy is fueling the car and one is usually operating the jack.
@@Hal9023 Very true - Organized chaos for sure. I was with a photographer friend of mine during a nascar race at MIS, down on the pit wall during the race - about shit my pants to see that 5 feet away. On the same note, the precision of an F1 stop is also art in motion. So much pressure
@@radamus210 it’s true, if a guy messes up in a NASCAR stop, depending on where he messes up it may cost a bit of time but in f1 if one guy messes up it’s a 10 second stop.
Really miss seeing the well tuned NASCAR pit crews. Only a few people over the wall doing everything and watching them tighten 5 lug nuts per wheel in seconds. F1 would benefit from this kind of pitting.
that was Nascars dumbest Idea ever people barley come to the tracks cause the tickets are so expensive then they remake all the cars with crap. If Nascar want to get a fan base growing again they should follow Cleetus Mcfarland's lead and put real stock cars from the dealerships in the race's like they use to, Id love to see a bunch of pedestrian cars race on a track it would be way more entertaining to see those go around the track that those "stock" cars
You're making me feel much better about the $12,000 I'm spending on a set of forged magnesium monoblock wheels for my sports car.
Lets go back to reality, my whole car is worth 1500$
@@ALENGLEDJAyeah, mines 1700, im trying to come up with 200 to build a new exhuast. Not for performance, it all rusted and fell off
I'm over here contemplating on spending $1900 on rotary forge Konig wheels with some Conti tires for my 2019 Mazda 3 hatchback.
@@everettstormy I just spend $700+ doing the all the brakes for my e90. 17 year old car, the rear calipers was rusted AF due to New England snow. Day 4 and still not finished. Just have to bleed it.
I spent 600 euro on a set of BBS CH rims included with Pirelli tires, absolutely amazing deal
Super piece Scott! WOW! I had no idea of this throwaway expense - incredible. On Bottas nut in Monaco the gun man basically made the gun a stump grinder. Do some of the teams use a gun with a safety button on the inside for positive engagement to prevent this? Thought I'd picked that up somewhere.
That's my thinking too, it would make sense to have pressure operated switch inside the wrench socket and the wrench only activates when enough pressure is detected (say, 20N). This would require the wrench operator to just hold the trigger while pressing the gun towards the nut and when pressed hard enough, it takes off the nut. And if the slots do not engage, you couldn't apply the 20N pressure no matter how much you press.
I imagine downside would be more parts means more failures. And maybe adds a tiny amount of time too to register and activate. For how rare that happens not worth it. @@MikkoRantalainen
@@simonwadd4038 Yeah, and I've later found out that the wheel guns are standardized / regulated, too, so if the gun doesn't have such feature it cannot be added by the team either.
You also have to think of the machines they use to make these parts. A Yasda or Doosan multi axis multi spindle machining center can cost over 1 million dollars. The cam software to program and design costs tons of money. The tooling for the CNC machines costs tons of money. The inspection tools to measure the parts after machining cost tons of money. All these tools require calibration and certification. The level of knowledge to operate and efficiently use these systems to make these parts require highly skilled, and sometimes highly paid professionals to run. As an application engineer I always look at these parts from a production standpoint and can clearly see why it has the price it does. Believe it or not, if another shop were to set up and try to make the same parts from scratch at $1000 per part, I bet it would be hard to break even.
There's no guy like Musk in F1, this is the only reason it's so expensive, they don't care about the costs because the sponsors pay
I like how Scott compared the USB cable connection with the wheel nut. I hate the USB and never get it right at the first try.
Impressive and informative content, keep it up, Driver61, I love your videos. ❤
50 000 per race? THAT IS NUTS!
No! 50'000 per race! I don't have any idea what that means!
Lots of nuts
If they fail that's when they cost way more...
Replacing an F1 car after it gets totaled in a racing accident is around 16 million dollars.
The right side nuts are red and the left are green? Apparently none of the engineers are sailors.
Actually the drawing does show red is left and right is green like a boat. He said it the wrong way round. I rewound and checked as it sounded wrong to me as a sailor!!
Yes, because if they were sailors they would be unable to distinguish from what situation they are in... A sailboat or an F1 pit - they are soooo similar😂 I know he said it wrong in the video, but why the heck should a sailing interested engineer have trouble distinguishing racing cars from sailing, they can't be that daft?😂 Pre så crew are helped by the fact the heating covers are marked with text so if they just can depart front from back and left from right the wheels will be delivered to the correct corner of the car😊
Hammer on and off wheel nuts were common place on British “sports cars” with wire spoked wheels up until the early 1970’s. Cars that had the optional wire spoked wheels with “spinner” wheel nuts (hammer on and off style as opposed to hex nuts) came with a short handled 2&1/2 pound “hard”:lead hammer in there tool kit along with the cars jack in the boot of the car. Also available with spoked wire wheels was a large hex nut which also came a hand use only socket and a bar to loosed/tightened the wheel nut. Both wheel nuts were stamped with a L if they were left handed thread. Additionally Wire spoked wheels and hammer on and off wheel nuts were an option on some Alpha Romeo’s as well.
Had a 1962 MGA 1600 MK II Deluxe. Knock offs with pinned steel wheels; it was a Twin Cam 4-disc brakes. REALLY miss that car!
That's right, this video is a little misleading in only talking about racing after WW2.. Centre lock wire wheels were common on British cars before the war and also were left and right threaded for the reasons stated in this video. For anyone who has had a classic English sportscar this stuff is nothing new.
I used these on my lowrider I kept a mallet in the trunk and once a week or whenever I was thinking it I would take out the mallet and give each wheel a good couple wacks. Totally makes people nervous when you're talking with them and you just pull out a 4 pound dead blow with a defeated dead pan look.
My 1960's Trumphs, MGs and Sunbeams with wire wheels also had a winged, center nut, and all came with a lead mallet with wooden handle to secure and remove them. Even though the lead was soft, it still dented the chrome plated nut wings a bit.
Those prices are nuts!
Something I've always wondered is how F1 teams manage fuel pre-race. They obviously have a set quantity of fuel to use but they have drive the car to the grid, do a parade lap etc. It doesn't look like any F1 team tries to save fuel pre-race and they all drive to park ferme after the race. How do they know exactly how much fuel was used?
They gather a lot of data on fuel consumption during the practice sessions, sending the cars out with varying fuel loads etc
Wow. This video was so interesting. Thanks. I know you said the impact guns can go to 4000nm but how much torque is applied to the F1 cars?
I was so pumped after Monaco quali, that I installed my new long cranks. And I used an orange 2lbs urethane mallet
Pure aluminium is soft yes. But that's not what is used. Aluminium alloys can be both hard and strong. And as a machinist that have worked with materials from basic aluminium alloys (it's never used pure) to heat resistant superalloys like Inconel I know that machinable aluminium alloys are among the easiest to work with. However I'm sure the alloys in these are very specific, perhaps custom made. I wouldn't be surprised if several teams use secret alloys, thus the in-house manufacturing (otherwise they would save a lot by buying from one external shop, it ain't a difficult part with unusual requirements)
They are not permitted to use the more exotic alloys. All the teams are mandated to use the same alloy. The entire materials list for braking systems must be published openly. No exceptions. So, no, none of the teams are using secret intergalactic alien space metals.
They probably used forged wheel nuts with machining
AFAIK in motorsport they usually use EN-AW-7075 alloy for parts like these.
@@martinbrandmuller8272 7075 T6 to be precise, it’s a tempered (and thus hardened) version. But as it isn’t really heat resistant due to dispersion of the carbide molecules, alloys of the 2XXX range are used for higher temp applications
Sorry this is probably a stupid question instead of aluminum alloy why don't teams use titanium nuts. Because if I'm not mistaken titanium is light but strong. So there is less chance of stripping the nut.
Sauber seems to have a cheaper version💀
Came here for this.
0:09 didn't know there was 4 numbers after the 16 for sixteen thousand
Thanks for these interesting and information dense videos. Feel like I can digest years of experience and knowledge in a few KZhead minutes. Not for actual use but for trivia 😊
I never thought I'd be interested in wheel nuts but as usual this channel always surprises me with this type of educational content.
They're now my obsession. O_O
@@SelectCircle That's nuts......
Hex has 8 ways? Are you counting 2 of the 6 flats twice?
It's a mythical 8-sided hex nut. As rare as unicorn....
Your site is the best for INFO on Formula 1 ...thank you for all the effort :)
Lotus Elans also used the 3 winged nuts and a mallet was part of the tool kit.
What a Quali😳
As a mechanic who services and works on cars every day this has been one of the most interesting parts of motorsports to me, particularly how why try to avoid cross threading of the nuts on the spline whilst not having to hand thread them first
The machining is better, but worst case, the nuts are softer than the stub, so it would only happen that one time then be taken off and changed out for a new nut.
Yeah every time I see them blast the nuts on all I can think of is a cross threading!
New title, why several wheel nuts cost 50,000. Interesting video despite the misleading title.
Should probably mention that the hammer on/off nuts are called knock offs 🍻
WOW! i had no idea the reason old wheel lugs had those wings on them! I thought it was for looks or aerodynamics! They actually hammered the nut on with them :D
My 61 Austin Healey 3000 came with a brass hammer to get the wheels off and on.
They are called Knock-off nuts...
The tri-winged center wheel nuts weren't just because there were no impact guns powerful enough at the time. It's because the racing regulations required only the driver (and navigator) to work on their own disabled car. No mechanic can help if they blew a tire on track. Thus a single mallet could be used by a driver to replace a wheel, and it was small enough to be stored onboard. A 2 meter long breaker bar and socket was much to big and heavy.
Excellent coverage, very detailed and comprehensive, thank you very much.
I've been fascinated with these specialized wheel nuts for a while now, always wondered how they were designed and how they stay locked to the wheel when removed from the car. I'm glad finally have a video talking about them, as they're never mentioned when talking about bigger things about the cars like engines and aero.
Dude, you should google the size of the torque wrench you would use if you owned a brand new porsche gt3 and manually were to tighten your centrenut on each rim 😂.
That was some "slick" editing on the word "Shrouds" lol. So if the wheels aren't able to be reused can they melt them down and re-cast or send them back to have them re-cast and recycle the wheel nuts bringing down costs?
I don't think there would be much saving in the raw materials its probably the machining and manufacturing of the part that puts the cost up so would be the same no matter if they used recycled metal or not.
The nuts aren't cast, but machined from a billet of aluminium, hence the massive costs. Casting isn't accurate enough to be used in that setting. Also the possibility of impurities or internal weaknesses makes it unsuitable for high performance parts.
@David Wilhelmsen They are very much machined from cast aluminium. At least, in mercedes' case they are
Who else is here after watching Monaco Qualifying?
Is alonso still pole
@@alkaragini5003 verstappen pole alonso p2
I am happy and also sad.
so close for alonso
Wtf is a monaco? Stop making shit up
Whenever I try to get a bolt into a nut, I must first cautiously line up the threads, before I strip it / destroy the thread for good. That is not the path to 2 second pitstops. How do F1 teams make that work?
thx for the footage sources
So its actually £1000 .🙄
50K? well that's just NUTS hehe.
man
I remember the old Australian touring car races. The wheel nuts were the same ones that went on a standard car and a pit stop could take two and a half minutes.
NASCAR was that way until recently (still is in lower divisions). Helmets are definitely necessary with cars peeling out spraying lug nuts
@@andrewahern3730 But in NASCAR, those pit stops were FAST. Sure, they weren't required to get all five nuts properly on after a stop, but still. Impressive to see how fast they got those 5 wheel nuts off each wheel and get the new ones on
Dad was an old school panel beater, and used to do lead-loading, instead of plastic putty on a gentlemans Maserati, and it had knock-on hubs with the very damaged hammer in the boot. Hi from Melbourne, Australia.
Who knew that the secret to making a million dollars in F1 was as simple as tightening a few nuts? I guess that's what they mean by 'turning a small fortune into a big one'!
£50'000? Damn, that's nuts
thx for clarifying why the wings used to be on the 60s cars.
honestly, if you can win your first race in a competitive series, thats pretty good. i dont know how cimpetitive that series is or how many cars there were. but on ovak track in the states, winning a race with 20 cars really is an accomplishment. and ive never seen a driver even be in the top 10 in their first ever real race
Got 2 race used ones from Mercedes at Bahrain 2013, very light for the size
Reads title: ok thats insane... 5 seconds into the video: did you know a simple wheel nut costs nearly 1k pounds... like wtf
Great video man, where could i find more F1 drawings?
Watching the history of Le Mans recently and seeing them change the tires by hammering them out was wild haha
Very early races they had a ride along mechanic. Had to change spark plugs during race (in pit), manually pump oil during race, spotted following cars for driver (no rear-view mirrors!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding_mechanic
Imagine you are a colorblind mechanic at the pitstop in 2014. "You can see that he right side wheel nuts were anodized red, and the left were green."
I have one of those Honda wheel nuts, didn't know the history behind them. Kinda neat!
Wow! Love the way that F1 innovates. Just wish we got to see more of these details analysed on TV.
Didn't know these nuts exists
i loved learning about these nuts
"These hex nuts have eight ways they can locate correctly." I think you just started spinning it a second time around counting those
6:50 the part drawing is fun to see. Rather basic GD@T but it is from back in 2014
Great explanation, can you or have done a video on F1 brake systems
Until recently, part of the standard Morgan owner's tool kit provided by the factory, included a hammer for undoing the centre wheel hub nut..
Did you know: Every F1 car part costs about £50000, but teams and the FIA lie about the prices.
I'm adding this to my "videos with thumbnails that immediately ignite my psychotic rage" playlist
"takes a long time to change" nascar pit crews: faster than the rest at lemans
6:55 No, the right side are green and the left side are red (as it should be) and as the drawing details calls for.
F1 tech continues to be awesome. So much does trickle down to what we drive.
That was a smooth add transition though!
he regenerative system can completely replace the wheen nut, a quarter inch thick of metal has zero resistance to direct current. So the right hand rule expands outward, but through shells, eacj shell is crazy glued to the next shell, so th resistance remains close to zero and moves back and forth by reverse interference winding layers, then you can pay somebody a years salary for free 500HP wheel nuts. I thought about it making a go kart, its just the arcing, or power transmission that took a little tweaking, first idea was to use ball bearings to deliver the power betwean the shells, (inner and outer).
That was a smooth sponsor transition
6:54 "RIGTH HAND", nice to see I'm not the only one who makes spelling mistakes on drawings, hehe.
6:00 “these HEX nuts have eight ways they can locate correctly”. Urmmm, you sure about that? 😂🤦♂️
I thought the splined wheel nuts were used in Indy Car before F1.
They are made in house with a machine they already own by an employees already employed. Cost is very minimal. Especially when the make so many. Volume drives the costs down significantly. Recouping R&D and materials is where the price comes from. I have noticed a lot of F1 price estimates reuse a factor multiple times as well to inflate the numbers. Crude example, X part takes a CNC mill to make. The mill cost x amount, machine price / total x parts made = cost per part. But they don't tell you that machine also makes 10 other parts therefore reducing the total cost per part bast on the machine. I think Mercedes had a virtual F1 factory tour online that kind of indirectly pointed this out.
I was going to make this comment. Once the CAD and toolpaths are done, aside from the material those costs seem ridiculous. The metallurgy in a piston is a whole different ballgame of course.
What do you at F1 ? "-Me ? I am a Nutter, I remove and put nuts on"
How does £50,000 equal $16,195 in the intro?
Great info and breakdown into f1 wheel nuts. I started this video just find out why they are so expensive but in the end I was disappointed by your answer because 1 wheel nut doesn't cost over 50k. It's all the wheel nuts they use over a weekend of racing cost over 50k. 😑
Old VW *front* spindle nuts were reverse threaded on the right side too, same reason.
Not sure if I should say this or not. I want money if it becomes a thing. But what if you can develope a wheel nut that tightens automatically when you drive the car away? You only need the impact gun to take the old nut off. The new auto tightening wheel nut can be held in place with a pin that it ment to brake away once the nut is tight enough. Imagine the time it could save on the pits. You can use weak magnets to hold the tires in place until the car starts to roll away. Then the nut self tightens.
You're the smartest KZheadr I've ever encountered. O_O
And the extra weight of this design is...?😊
In the next decade, F1 teams will have more lawyers trying to find loopholes in F1 rules than engineers coming up with better designs.
50k for that? That's nuts!
Man this episode is nuts
Up to $50K...... That's just nuts.
i appreciate the timer at the bottom of your ad breaks
What a great topic and explanation 🏎🏁👏👏
I thought the left hand threads would be on the left (nearside) of the car so they would naturally tighten under braking? Or am I missing something here?
My whole net worth is less than a god damn wheel nut.
I love this vidéo, that show more and more the technologies about the f1, and show us how f1 is incredible.
The wheel nut guns have 4000 nm and 3000 rpm? I know these would only be peak numbers, but wouldn't that mean that for a split second, they'd be putting out 1600 hp?
Thanks for all the great video topics.
I didn't expect to learn so much about nuts.
I think the last f1 race I paid attention to was in the 90's, apparently the cars have evolved
Enlightening. Good work.