Engines: the basics

The heart of any car is its engine. Before discussing what makes F1 engines special, its important to understand the engine in general. Nearly all cars use what's called an Otto-cycle engine. The engine has four things it needs to do: suck, squish, bang, and blow.

Suck (intake): The engine works by taking in air, mixing fuel into the air, and then burning this mixture. The first step is to get the mixture into the cylinder. A cam pushes the intake valves open while at the same time the piston is moving down in the cylinder. This sucks air into the cylinder. Fuel injectors spray a fine mist of fuel into the air that is being sucked in.

Squish (compression): The intake valves close, trapping the mixture in the cylinder. The piston now moves up, compressing the mixture.

Bang (ignition): At the top of the cylinder is the spark plug. The plug has two metal electrodes that are separated by a tiny gap. When electricity is applied to both of these electrodes, it jumps across the gap, creating a spark. This spark ignites the fuel-air mixture, which then burns, creating heat and pressure, and pushing the piston down. This is where the engine is actually doing work and creating power.

Blow (exhaust): Once the cylinder has been pushed all the way down, the mixture is completely burned and what remains are by-products of the combustion. The cam now opens the exhaust valves and the piston moves back up, pushing the spent gases out of the cylinder. Then the cycle starts all over again.

To make more sense of this, take a look at the animation on this page.