Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 i Racecar Engineering

For many years, the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship (STCC) followed a well-trodden path. Formed off the back of the hugely popular Super Touring era of the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC), it was a near carbon copy of its cousins across the North Sea. That was, until it reached a fork in the road. Having regularly used year-old machinery from the BTCC, and later S2000 cars from the European (ETCC) and World Touring Car Championships (WTCC), the series faced a real dilemma as the 2010s approached. Was the business capable of obtaining, and running, the Next Generation Touring Cars (NGTC) that the BTCC was adopting, or was an equally challenging move into the unknown the lesser of two evils? ‘We had to reflect the Scandinavian market, which is based a…

The automobile was pretty well defined over 140 years ago. The most successful examples were four-wheeled, pneumatic-tyred, petrol-fuelled, internal combustion-engined, multi-speed transmission and differential-driven, steering wheel-controlled vehicles. External combustion engines (steam) and electrical propulsion had not yet been discarded, at least for the time being in the case of electric, and shaft drive had not yet replaced chains. The First World War moved the development of the petrol piston engine forward, and the importance of streamlining to reduce drag was recognised. Circuits became the place to race these automobiles against each other, rather than the open road, to demonstrate the benefits of each concept and configuration. Competition then became less about proving concepts and more about demonstrating the ability of automobile companies, and indeed countries. Mercedes-Benz came out best, and…

The high mountain resorts of the Alps might to most people conjure up images of après ski and tranquil alpine landscapes but, for those who arrive at the right time of year, there is a far more frenetic treat in store when some of the most aggressive motor racing this side of a stock car arena comes to town. Welcome to the Trophée Andros ice racing championship. If you were wondering, Andros makes jam, and is owned by Frédéric Gervoson who, along with French Rallycross star, Maz Marmers, established the series in 1990. Its popularity grew rapidly, though beyond a one-off excursion to Canada and a single round held in Andorra, it has remained a strictly French affair. This hasn’t stopped the championship attracting drivers of the highest calibre, including…

Grove is a quiet village in south Oxfordshire with a handful of shops, innumerable cul-de-sacs and a major railway line running past it. Most things about the place are rather unassuming, except for the land at its northern extremity where a cutting-edge engineering facility is located. WAE Technologies was founded in 2010 as Williams Advanced Engineering, an offshoot of the Williams Formula 1 team. The two companies are still next-door neighbours, but they have been fully independent since early last year when Australian metals company, Fortescue, acquired WAE at the end of the Williams ownership licence. The WAE part of the name was retained, although the acronym no longer means anything, even though it’s still pronounced letter-by-letter. Post-acquisition, WAE continues to work on complex engineering projects, not just in motorsport,…

The 10-hour Petit Le Mans was the final round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar series, which saw the GTP prototype class contested by BMW, Acura, Porsche and Cadillac. The latter two also competed in the FIA World Endurance Championship, running dual programmes with the same teams, Porsche Penske Motorsport and Chip Ganassi Racing. While Cadillac won the IMSA title, it was hardly clear cut. Each of the manufacturers had at least one car in contention for the titles going into the final race and, while that might look like a success for the Balance of Performance system, it was in fact a series of mishaps that led to this close-run conclusion. Key among the challenges faced by the teams were learning their new cars, getting to grips with the hybrid…

In 1932, Alfa Romeo introduced its P3 Monoposto (also known as the Tipo B) to grand prix racing. The car is generally regarded as the first ever genuine single seater, which is what monoposto means in Italian. Racecars became more specialised from that point on, no longer simply sports cars with the mudguards (fenders) removed, and what subsequently became universally known as single-seater racing never looked back. Monoposto is, then, a title that has gravitas in the sport. It’s also a title that’s been kept alive and well for the past 65 years in the UK. The Monoposto Championship is often thought of as an arena for pensioned-off racecars, those that no longer have a championship in which to race, or are no longer competitive. This is true, to a…

That safety is non-negotiable is an accepted – make that crucial – element of modern motorsport. Yet, it is sobering to realise that just 50 years ago (now Sir) Jackie Stewart, who retired in 1973, tallied the number of drivers the sport had lost in the dozen years since starting his career. The triple Formula 1 World Champion and wife, Helen, stopped when they hit 50. Indeed, it is little wonder that Stewart, who spent much of his 1969-’73 heyday campaigning for improved safety standards, on the basis that drivers should not pay the ultimate price for a simple error, refers to that era not as the ‘good old days’, as do many veteran fans, but as ‘bad old days’. Worse, he was widely ridiculed at the time for his…