A Formula 1 power unit, built one station at a time
EngineWorks is an isometric factory where every machine is one step in building a modern Formula 1 power unit: the 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 plus the hybrid system that surrounds it. A carrier rides the main belt through fifteen stations. It leaves the raw stock bay as a pallet of ingots, comes out of the casting bay as a rough crankcase, is heat treated, machined, coated, measured, given its rotating assembly, heads, turbo and hybrid, built up in a clean room, run on a dyno, sealed and delivered — then rides the return line back to be stripped and rebuilt, because that is what really happens to a race engine between events.
Genuinely computed, live, in your browser: the swept volume from the regulated 80 mm bore and the 53 mm stroke that follows from it; mean piston speed and peak piston acceleration at whatever engine speed you dial in; combustion events per second; the fuel energy flow the rules allow and the thermal efficiency implied by it; and the combined output with the MGU-K deployment you choose. Those numbers move because they are being worked out, not looked up.
Regulation figures, quoted: 1.6 litres, six cylinders in a 90° V, a single turbocharger, an 80 mm bore, a 15,000 rpm limit, 100% sustainable fuel, and for 2026 a 350 kW MGU-K with the MGU-H deleted and a fuel energy flow limit of about 3,000 MJ/h.
Modelled, not measured: the internal combustion engine's output. Teams do not publish engine maps. This one assumes a flat 48% brake thermal efficiency and a fuel flow that rises with engine speed until it hits the regulation cap, which lands the ICE near 400 kW at the limiter — the figure the paddock generally assumes. It is a sanity-check model, not an engine map.
Indicative: the materials split, the part counts, the tolerances quoted in the station write-ups, and every dimension of the machinery on the floor. Real engine shops do not publish their process sheets. Treat the numbers on the panel as the lesson and the factory itself as an illustration.
The first time the carrier reaches a station it stops long enough to read that station's write-up, between 9 and 26 seconds depending on how much there is to say, with a progress bar under the panel text. Once every station has been explained the line runs at a watchable pace instead of a readable one. Space holds any stop indefinitely, S steps one station at a time, and the Speed slider scales everything, reading stops included. Reset (⟲) replays the slow tour from the beginning; Build keeps what you have already read.
A companion piece to TokenTown, which lays a language model out as a city. All code, art and copy here are original.