Anyone who has ever driven a tractor will find this article strangely familiar. Tractors generally have two brake pedals, one for each wheel. When driving over roads or hard surfaces those pedals are locked together to keep the vehicle from swerving off the road due to a carelessly applied foot. Off-road these separate brakes are used both to turn tighter corners as well as a poor man's substitute for a differential lock - with diff lock applied the driver has to remember not to rely on differential braking as that just wears out the brakes without achieving anything useful.<p>I have a few tractors around the farm, all of them have two brake pedals/levers. This even goes for the smallest of them all, an Irus U1200 two-wheel tractor with an 8 hp Hatz diesel.
Presumably due to licensing considerations, the article didn't include actual photo Darren Heath captured at the time of Hakkinen's setup: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/rBJpPrX.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/rBJpPrX.jpg</a><p>It's worth noting that the present driver-adjusted differential locking systems they have effectively replicate much of this behavior, but without nearly as much mid-corner control inputs from the driver. When something that works gets banned, the teams always find another (and often better) way of replicating the effect.<p><a href="https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13671" rel="nofollow">https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13671</a><p>The MP4/13 (McLaren's F1 car in 1998) also tested an early version of what we now call KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System):<p><a href="https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/september-2008/58/spin-doctors" rel="nofollow">https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/september...</a><p><a href="https://www.f1technical.net/f1db/cars/810/mclaren-mp4-13" rel="nofollow">https://www.f1technical.net/f1db/cars/810/mclaren-mp4-13</a>
It would be great to make this legal again today. With the current fuel restrictions, you couldn't use it a lot or you'd run out of fuel, so you'd have to save it for when you really needed it. Anything that allows a bit more driver-controlled variability between the cars would make for better racing.
Clever. Perhaps unappreciated is the athleticism of the drivers:<p>> It was more work for the drivers, but Coulthard says he adapted quickly: “It was a switch to choose left and right, and an additional pedal,” DC recalls. “Racing drivers, if they have to sing the Russian national anthem backwards while juggling grenades, and it gives them a tenth, they would do it! The competitive animal that you are, nobody would say something is too difficult if it gave you performance.”<p>I’m a decent stick shift driver and I can’t imagine dealing with four pedals. I’m sorta surprised they didn’t do it with a pair of handbrakes, like in the XC trial cars mentioned but maybe taking your hand off the wheel is too much of a disadvantage in F1?
That's fascinating. You don't see old-school imaginative solutions like that in F1 anymore. Now, it's all about tiny bits of aerodynamics at great cost.
Airplanes have differential braking (in some models there's no other way to steer on the ground, in most the nose or tail wheel is turned by the rudder pedals), and the brakes are controlled by pressing rudder pedals by toes (rather than pushing them in by heels which moves rudder). This reduces the need for pedals from 4 to 2.<p>Never mind that in a performance landing (such as short field) you use not only brakes but also yoke/stick (2 degrees of freedom) for one hand and throttle for another. The exam standard for commercial pilot is to be able to touch down on a designated 100ft stretch of runway with centerline between main wheels). Add to that your usual wind, turbulence, and thermals on the approach path which make every landing different, and you'd realize that what ground drivers do isn't very exceptional, and that one could train to get proficient in juggling a lot more controls at once:)
As the ERS uses motors to regenerate power and assist braking this would probably just be a few lines of code these days. Although ABS not allowed, I think they can use ERS for yaw control under braking (if not someone can correct me?)
I thought I read that all wheel drive systems often have something like this today. The expensive ones can control the power ratio to the outside wheels coming from the differential, while some of the cheap ones just apply the brakes.<p>This is just a manual precursor to those systems. No?
Why not have the brakes actuated with paddles? It'd be more complex and expensive but you wouldn't have to think about your second brake too hard and during turn in you can just squeeze on whatever side works best for maximum grip.