Formula 1

[LP]

I recently saw an interesting F1 trivia item.

The South African army has a remote control mine detection vehicle that uses wheels and tyres left over from the South African Grand Prix.  Apparently, the wide, smooth tyres distribute the weight of the vehicle so that it doesn’t detonate mines or IEDs.

Can you imagine our armed forces, or those of our allies, making use of second hand kit, let alone in such an innovative way?

That’s about the extent of my interest in F1 ????

I suspect it's not just the rubber but the carbon fibre rims, many modern IEDs targetting vehicles require both pressure and magnetic, they won't go off if your neighbours donkey steps on them! F1 would be a good source of cheap hardware for the researchers, because they make them so light a as a result relatively fragile they basically throw away the rims after a race due to the risk of fatigue failure.

I've worked in a group that did some of the R&D with Deakin Uni for a Geelong company called Carbon Evolution, and I know they have blast tested ruggidised versions for light transport vehicles like Troupies and the Hawkei / Bushmaster / Marauder type armoured trucks. You can read a bit here, http://www.carbonrev.com/motorsports