Innehållsförteckning för October 2015 från Racecar Engineering

New aero kits introduced to give competing engine manufacturers Honda and Chevrolet greater identity at IndyCar circuits, have proven to be costly and controversial this season. Both manufacturers have invested a rumoured $25m in aero development, matching the estimated cost of engine development. There have also been some much-publicised flights for cars of both manufacturers at the Indianapolis 500 and at Fontana, and aero development for the remainder of the 2015 season, and into 2016, is concentrating on further increasing the speed at which the cars take-off, a study that may have a wider single-seat application. The manufacturer-developed kits were limited to the amount of downforce generated compared to the standard Dallara aero kit, and car performance in 2015 has improved as expected – at Mid-Ohio in August Scott Dixon’s…

Pirelli’s new endurance GT tyre was developed with the aim of giving the teams more reliability as the loads are spread better across the tyre, yet not all of the teams got to grips with the new construction immediately, as was shown at Spa in the summer. This year’s Spa 24 Hour race started wet, then dried out slightly in the mid-afternoon, was wet again in the evening and only stopped raining as darkness fell, leaving a wet track and a dry line. On Sunday morning the track dried out properly, by which time BMW was pretty much established at the front of the field with its Z4 and it increased with well-timed pit stops during safety car periods. However, many expected that Audi’s new R8 LMS would challenge strongly…

The FIA has said that there will be no other new teams to join F1 newcomer Haas on the Formula 1 grid next year after bids to become a part the championship by two organisations were unsuccessful. Motorsport’s governing body called for teams to join Formula 1 back in May, with a deadline of June – later extended until the end of July – for applications. It has now said that two companies expressed an interest, but neither of them could meet the FIA’s criteria. American outfit Haas F1 will now be the only new team to join F1 in 2016, becoming Formula 1’s 11th team. Who the F1 hopefuls were has not been revealed by the FIA, although there was conjecture that crack French GP2 outfit Art Grand Prix…

The FIA has homologated the eight Formula E powertrains to be used in the championship’s second season. From the start of the 2015/16 season, which kicks off in China on October 17, the series will allow manufacturers to pursue some of their own in-house innovations, beginning with the development of bespoke powertrains. Of the 10 teams, eight will utilise their own powertrains, while Dragon Racing will partner with Venturi to run the French manufacturer’s unit. The re-named Team Aguri will remain with season one’s spec SRT_01E package. The manufacturers’ scope for innovation is initially limited to the powertrain – specifically the e-motor, the inverter, the gearbox and the cooling system. All other parts on the cars will remain as they are. Meanwhile, mainstream manufacturer involvement has now been attracted to…

Two British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) teams have each had one of their TOCA BTCC Licences (TBL) taken away from them for failing to enter one of their cars in rounds of the championship. The TBL was introduced at the start of last year in an effort to make sure that cars contested each and every round, and that teams enter consistent driver line-ups with only one change allowed per season – except in cases of force majeure. The teams concerned are Welch Motorsport and the Support Our Paras outfit, the latter of which also recently lost its works support from Infiniti. One of the two Welch Protons missed the Snetterton and Knockhill events, while Support Our Paras was unable to field one of its pair of entries at Snetterton.…

The future of the British round of the World Rally Championship has been secured thanks to a new deal with the Welsh government. Questions had been raised about the long-term prospects for Wales Rally GB but now the Welsh Government has announced that it will continue to back the event until 2018. The UK’s round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) has been branded Wales Rally GB since the Welsh Government became its main sponsor in 2003. Ben Taylor, managing director of IMS (international Motor Sport, the commercial arm of the MSA which runs the event), said: ‘We are delighted to have agreed a new deal with the Welsh Government whose support has been critical to the long standing success of Wales Rally GB. Their forward thinking strategy allows…

UK manufacturing brand SamcoSport has now joined the Bloodhound Land Speed Record project as the official silicone hose supplier. SamcoSport supplies silicone hose to the world’s top race teams including F1, BTCC and World Rally, and was approached by Bloodhound to help with its custom hose requirements, making use of SamcoSport’s in-house fabrication and laboratory facilities at its headquaters in south Wales. The Bloodhound Supersonic Car, with a weight of 7.5 tonnes fully fuelled, comprises of a 5-litre 550bhp supercharged V8 Jaguar engine (for the fuel pump), complete with custom designed SamcoSport hoses, making the heart of the car a formidable force, driving the rocket’s oxidiser pump, which supplies 800 litres of high test peroxide (HTP) to the rocket in just 20 seconds. A Eurofighter jet engine and three Nammo…

Aerodynamics have pushed the capabilities of modern racecars vastly beyond what might have ever been imagined before the science was understood and harnessed to the level it is today. Of course, whether that’s a good thing for actual racing – for our sport as a spectacle – is another matter entirely. For most major motorsport series the world over, fans do not pay to simply see a single car lap a track as quickly as possible, for while many enjoy qualifying, the main event has always been multiple cars on track. Yet while the track surface itself is the same for every car, the air those cars move through is constantly influenced by the passage of the high speed objects going through it. A car behind needs to run in…

The new generation of GT cars will be presented to the FIA at Michelin’s Ladoux test facility in France in September. Ferrari’s 488 featuring a turbocharged engine, Ford’s GT, also fitted with a turbo and Corvette’s C7R will all undergo analysis in preparation for the Balance of Performance testing based on aero efficiency and power. The biggest change to the regulations for 2016 is to the aero (see REV25 N8), but teams that have adapted their cars to the new rules have also had to change the roll cages to accommodate an area in the roof for a hatch to help with driver extraction after an accident. ‘The changes fall into two categories, one is mandatory changes, the other is voluntary,’ says Corvette’s programme manager, Doug Fehan. ‘The mandatory changes…

Andersen Promotions, the company behind the three series on the US single seater ladder leading to IndyCar, has issued a request for proposals from racecar constructors wishing to build replacement chassis for its ageing USF2000 and Pro Mazda championship cars. The company requires a common chassis for both championships, though there will be differences in power and aerodynamics to separate the two in terms of looks and performance – USF2000 is the lower rung of the two in terms of the ladder. The new car will come into use in USF2000 in 2017 and in Pro Mazda in 2018. Andersen’s other formula, Indy Lights, introduced a well-received new car – the Dallara IL15 – for this year. USF2000 is currently running a spaceframe chassis originally built by Van Diemen almost…

Opel is the latest manufacturer to commit to TCR, which has taken the customer racing approach proven in GT3 with sportscars into the touring car arena. Opel Motorsport has announced its new Astra OPC is being developed in line with the TCR technical regulations and the racecar, based on the new Astra K, was set to be debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September. The Astra TCR is powered by a 2-litre turbocharged engine with an output of 330bhp and a maximum torque of 410Nm. Opel Group chief marketing officer Tina Muller said: ‘Touring car racing has always been an important part of Opel. The philosophy of the new TCR series corresponds to our idea of customer racing. We want to give ambitious privately owned teams a platform for…

NASCAR outfit Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) will not race the full Sprint Cup schedule next season, a decision that’s been made in the wake of co-owner Rob Kauffman’s acquisition of a stake in rival team Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates (CGR). Kauffman originally said that the two teams would be integrated, though he had not been clear about the extent of this tie-up, but now Kauffmann and MWR founder Michael Waltrip have announced that the team is to go part time with one car in 2016, but will see out this season: ‘MWR will race hard and compete with its two entries for the remainder of the 2015 season,’ said Kauffman. ‘This decision was made after weighing several different options and scenarios.’ Waltrip said: ‘From where MWR started behind…

A US company has raised the funds to build an innovative tyre testing facility, which is to include a half-mile oval indoor track for single tyre running, deep in the heart of NASCAR country. The new test centre, which is to be called Camber Ridge and built with the help of $60m of backing from Teton Capital, is being constructed with the aim of offering all the advantages of testing real tyres on real surfaces, but with the precision, environmental control and repeatability of a laboratory environment. It is to be located in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the midst of the region’s growing automotive research and manufacturing cluster, and also the heartland of the US motorsport industry. It will be opened in 2016. Camber Ridge tells us: ‘Unlike traditional tyre…

Transmissions Beefed up ’box Californian company Weddle has launched a new range of competition transaxles. The firm took the lessons of its well proven HV1 and ‘beefed it up’ to meet the demands of bigger tyres, bigger engines, and better suspension. In addition to wider gears and larger bearings, the new-HV2 gearboxes-feature-a completely redesigned shift mechanism, extra bearing supports, and a larger input shaft/mainshaft combination. The HV2s come in both 4- and 5-speed versions. Both feature 27mm wide forward gears, a heavy duty synchronised reverse gear, Weddle Racing 10in Klingelnberg palloid ring and pinion, torsional 300M input shaft, tapered roller bearings on mainshaft to handle end thrust, heat-treated and precision ground shift rails and shift shaft, billet shift forks, a shift shaft more centrally located for ease of installation, and…

Gene Haas has always done things a little differently, rarely following a path just because it is the one most trodden. He built up his eponymous machine tool business exactly this way, looking at his competition and working out what not to do, and as a result he created a range of lower cost, easy to use designs. Now Haas has decided to bring this ethos to grand prix racing, gaining an entry into the Formula 1 World Championship with an all-new American-based team. It is, of course, not the Californian’s first foray into motor racing. His NASCAR team (co-owned with Tony Stewart) has won the Sprint Cup twice and is one of only four teams to have won all of the three major NASCAR championships. In 2010 discussions started…

Continuing our foray into the details of Formula 1 aerodynamics, Dynamic Flow Solutions and its director Miqdad Ali have once again been running OpenFOAM CFD simulations on a highly realistic F1 model to provide Racecar Engineering readers with more unique and exclusive insights. In this instalment we look at major and minor modifications that have significant – and ‘global’ – effects, while we also visualise and quantify some of the side effects of deploying the Drag Reduction System (DRS). In our first instalment of this exciting occasional series (RE V25N7) we examined our 2013 regulations baseline model to see where downforce and drag were generated, and looked at how the generation and management of vortices was (and still is) an important means of generating downforce with regulation-restricted underbodies. Then we…

One of the ingredients that spiced up anticipation for the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours was the participation of Nissan’s GT-R LMP1 car. Much was written about this car going into the event, and some of it was optimistic. Some believed the car would do well and I for one was very enthused by the potential of its design. But the results did not live up to the promise. With a qualifying time of 3:36.995s Nissan was trounced by the other LMP1 cars. The race results where no better, either, with just one car making it to the end of the race, finishing last in LMP1. What we’ll be discussing in this article is my take on what went wrong and, perhaps more importantly, how it can be fixed. Before…

How many articles in the past have been penned bemoaning the F1 aerodynamicist? It must be increasingly frustrating for them to do the best job they can within an increasingly restrictive set of regulations, yet be blamed for most of Formula 1’s ills. I am an F1 fan and I have been since the early 1990s. I am also an engineer, and my experience as a fan has led me to undertake a PhD at Durham University, investigating the effect of wakes on F1 cars – so it’s safe to say I spend more time than most thinking about the effect of wakes on racecars. As a scientist I am required to base my opinions on evidence, either from published data, or my own. Bursting bubbles In this piece I…

Ferrari’s parent company has filed an initial public offering (IPO) to list shares of the fabled sportscar car brand on the New York Stock Exchange. Fiat Chrysler (FCA) said in a statement that the proposed offering was not expected to exceed 10 per cent of Ferrari’s shares. According to the company’s required filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, submitted at the end of July this year) Fiat Chrysler itself expects to retain about 80 per cent of Ferrari stock, while the remaining 10 per cent will be kept by Piero Ferrari, son of Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder. The sale is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year and the shares will be sold under the title of ‘Ferrari NV.’ Fiat, which took full…

US sportscar series the UnitedSportscar Championship (USC) is to go into its third season with a brand new sponsor and a new name. USC, which came into being at the start of last year with the amalgamation of GrandAm and the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), will from 2016 include the name of its sanctioning body, IMSA, in its title, while watchmaker Tudor will be replaced as naming sponsor by WeatherTech, an automotive accessory company. The renamed series will be known as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from the end of the current season. WeatherTech already has a presence in USC, its founder and CEO David MacNeil sponsors the Porsche of his son Cooper. MacNeil senior said of the deal: ‘This is an exciting time for sportscar racing in America…

Nissan’s LMP1 World Endurance Championship campaign has been put on hold as the company has decided to focus on testing as it works to resolve issues with its recalcitrant GT-R LM. The Japanese manufacturer has said that it will delay the return of the car to the World Endurance Championship and will now instead focus on sorting out the problems with the car (for more on which turn to page 62). Nissan stated that: ‘The bespoke Nissan V6 3-litre twin turbo petrol engine and the unique aerodynamics of the GT-R LM NISMO proved to be the main strengths of the car at Le Mans but without a fully working ERS, many of the car’s other systems were compromised.’ Shoichi Miyatani, president of NISMO, said: ‘We know people will be disappointed…

The race to 1000mph, Britain’s engineering feat that is the Bloodhound project, is ramping up nicely with the first tests of the car scheduled to take place in Newquay in the UK early in the new year, 2016. As those first, crucial tests are underway, engineers are increasingly looking at the detail design challenges. These include the issues of cooling the tightly-packaged rocket engine together with ensuring the volatile HTP (High Test Peroxide) doesn’t decompose before it reaches the rocket chamber and, in effect, becomes a bomb. ‘We’ve got approximately 1000 litres of HTP that has the equivalent explosive force of one stick of dynamite per litre if it reaches 40degC, and starts to decompose,’ says Tony Parraman of Bloodhound’s sponsorship liaison team. ‘Packaging dictates that our supercharged Jaguar engine,…