Innehållsförteckning för January 2017 från Racecar Engineering

A team of three fabricators took two months to make the conversion, with progress stopping and starting around their usual workload as part of the race team For those who already think Aussies are slightly bonkers, this story’s for you. It’s the tale of a race team that decided to take a Supercar, one which contributed to Jamie Whincup’s 2013 championship win, no less, and recreate a 1970s icon. The team in question is Roland Dane’s category-leading squad Triple Eight Race Engineering, and the icon is the quintessentially Australian Holden Sandman. This was the ultimate expression of the panel van craze of the ‘60s and ‘70s ,which brought together the load carrying capacity of a ute (or pickup) and the enclosed protection of a wagon (or estate). An ability to…

The sense that the FIA Formula E Championship had properly arrived was palpable at the inaugural Hong Kong ePrix as season three of the all-electric championship whirred in to life in October. Quite apart from the phalanx of manufacturers joining the show, the imposing high-rise edifices of Hong Kong and the impression that the series is now making it on the global stage, FE has fast-tracked itself into setting out and finalising its technical roadmap until season eight, which will be in 2021/22. This technical road map, which was seen for the first time in Hong Kong, details a plan which embraces high-end development within a generous time-frame. A new spec chassis and spec race battery from season five will pave the way for an eventual marketing race for the…

What impact would dimples or irregular surfaces have on the aerodynamic performance of a competition car? It is a question which will inevitably crop up among motorsport engineers when chatting, but it has never really progressed much beyond that stage. Matthew R Thomas, a Motorsport Engineering and Management MSc student at Cranfield University, decided to try to answer that question with his thesis: The Use of Dimples to Improve the Aerodynamic Performance of Aerofoils used in Motorsport. This thesis is thought to be the first serious work of its type, and the article which follows is based on it. Flow attachment and separation The objectives of the research were to validate the hypothesis that dimples can reduce drag on aerofoils used in motorsport applications, and investigate the effect on lift,…

It has emerged that the planned acquisition of Formula 1 by Liberty Media could be the subject of an investigation by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Liberty Media has agreed to become F1’s biggest shareholder through the purchase of shares from Formula 1’s current owners, chiefly majority shareholder CVC Capital Partners. Liberty intends to initially acquire 100 per cent of the shares of Delta Topco, the parent company of F1, and completed an acquisition of an 18.7 per cent minority stake for $746m (£560m) in September. This was followed up with a further $13m in late October, which secured an extra 0.4 per cent, increasing Liberty’s share in Delta Topco to 19.1 per cent, with the remainder of the buy-out scheduled for the first quarter of 2017. Liberty…

Porsche has unveiled its new GT racer for 2017, which head of Porsche Motorsport Dr Frank-Steffen Walliser says is ‘the biggest evolution in the history of the top GT model’. It will compete in the WEC and IMSA. The new 911 RSR features the flat-six engine positioned in front of the rear axle. The car is said to be a completely new development: the suspension, body structure, aerodynamic concept, engine and transmission have all been designed from scratch, we’re told. The engine concept has enabled the designers to install a larger rear diffuser, while there is also a top-mounted rear wing adopted from Porsche’s LMP1 prototype racecar, the 919 Hybrid, which should raise the level of downforce and improve aerodynamic efficiency. ‘For the 911 RSR, we deliberately focused on a…

Despite the short sharp shock nature of Gymkhana videos, and rallycross racing, aerodynamics still play a decisive role For Derek Dauncey, team director of Ken Block’s Hoonigan Racing Division, getting the Ford Focus RS RX prepared for filming Gymkhana Nine, the latest in Block’s hugely popular stunt driving internet films – which at the time of writing has accumulated 14.5 million views – was a fairly straightforward job. Following Block’s participation in the FIA World Rallycross Championship in Canada, the team made straight for the outskirts of New York, where the video was to be filmed and immediately began preparation. ‘We left Canada and went straight down to Buffalo, did the livery change, did some repairs and we changed the settings and that was it; we went and did the…

On the evidence of the Hong Kong round, probably three-quarters of the grid are in with a chance of winning a race this season The amusement always runs high among members of the media at the Donington tests every year as each team so valiantly attempts to pull down a veil of secrecy on its motors, inverters and transmission options for its new models. This year, though, there is little in the way of change in the regulations for season three, but some teams have opted to subtly alter things, in particular Renault, Audi and Venturi, while others have gone for more wide-ranging set-ups, such as DS and NextEV. With the regs staying stable, the grid has closed up, and on the evidence of the Hong Kong opening round, probably…

‘It is, after all, a 1960s passenger car; over 20psi of boost puts a fair amount of load onto a small engine’ The Project ’64 team was founded in Nelson, New Zealand, in 2010 with the object of taking a 1964 Mk1 Mini Cooper 970 S to Bonneville Speed Week. Bonneville was a bucket list thing for Guy Griffith and Garry Orton, and they decided that competing was so much better than spectating. So things wouldn’t get too serious, they also decided, over a couple of beers, that they should compete in something a little ridiculous, which is how the Project ’64 Mini was born. Griffith and Orton are the owners of Victory Motorsport, which runs international and local drivers in the NZ Toyota Racing series, as well as building…

‘The stress engineers are probably the most stressed engineers of all’ Recent moves towards the seemingly inevitable adoption of cockpit protection into F1 chassis design have highlighted an aspect that has not, thus far, been covered by the technical regulations. Precisely what, if any, form of additional cockpit protection will ultimately be mandated remains unknown as this is written in November 2016, as too does the form of testing that will apply. However, what is crystal clear is that the previous three decades since chassis testing first began have produced colossal improvements in the rest of the cars’ design with respect to driver safety. Racecar Engineering has once again been privileged to speak with Brian O’Rourke, who, as chief composites engineer at F1 team Williams, after being recruited from the…

Two of the most successful international motorsport programmes in the sport’s recent history have been cut with the surprise announcements that Volkswagen is to cease competing in the World Rally Championship while Audi will now no longer race in the World Endurance Championship, or at Le Mans. VW broke the news soon after it clinched its fourth straight World Rally Championship drivers’ and manufacturers’ crowns, and the decision was seen as especially surprising as the company has recently finished developing its Polo for the new 2017 WRC technical regulations. Volkswagen says it will now focus its motorsport efforts on customer-based competition, with its Golf TCR and the Beetle GRC rallycross car. It will, however, return to rallying at a lower level following the development of an R5-specification Polo in 2018.…

ORECA has unveiled its 2017 LMP2 contender. The French constructor says the new ORECA 07, which is based on the ORECA 05 monocoque, benefits from radically different aero as well as significantly increased efficiency and downforce. ORECA has also revealed that the car is well below the 930kg minimum weight for the new LMP2 class, and hence carries substantial ballast. The new car, powered by the one-make Gibson LMP2 V8 engine, undertook its first test run at Paul Ricard in November. David Floury, technical director at ORECA, said: ‘The ORECA 07 was conceived around the ORECA 05’s monocoque and shares a certain number of the 05’s mechanical components. The idea was to build on the success and the quality of the ORECA 05 while developing performance. Our concept was to…

Famed race and rally preparation business Prodrive Motorsport has released encouraging financial results for 2015. The UK-based company posted operating profits of £1.9m for the year ending December 2015, which is a 305 per cent increase over its 2014 operating profit of £632,000. In the same period turnover increased by 7.3 per cent, from £27.5m in 2014 to £29.5m in 2015. Prodrive put its success down to ‘the continued efforts and results of the introduction of incremental race programmes and our engineering projects during the last few years coupled with tighter cost control’. It also states that the experience and skills it has accrued since it was founded in 1984 has played no small part in its success: ‘The company’s continued success in motorsport is primarily due to the extensive…

‘The main project goal was to increase the overall aerodynamic performance’ Super GT is Japan’s premier race series. In recent years it has been going through something of a transition, with a raft of new regulations. But it has always had a two-class structure, with each category having its own ethos. The top class, GT500, is essentially still a playground for manufacturer teams, with Toyota, Honda and Nissan fielding cars. In 2014 new rules were introduced which are largely harmonised with those of DTM, and for this year these have been further updated. Meanwhile, the second tier class, GT300, has always been more about pitting cars developed by smaller Japanese tuners against the best customer cars Europe and North America have to offer. The global rise of GT3 over the…

Now we can demonstrate what the initial following car simulations on our 2017 model have indicated, and our findings are surprising indeed With official F1 testing scheduled to take place at the end of February, time is now short for the teams to complete the build of their initial aerodynamic packages to the new regulations that come into force for 2017. And with limits on the amount of wind tunnel testing and CFD that the teams are permitted to do under the Resource Restriction Agreement, it is improbable that any of them have indulged in the relative luxury of running their new designs in multi-car scenarios to see how they will perform in traffic. Their focus will inevitably have been on hitting the track with a package designed to achieve…

It’s not that often I get to comment on what goes on in my own backyard, let alone when I’m an active participant. However, on October 13-15, 2016, the stars aligned and I engineered a customer’s car at the 2016 World Time Attack Challenge in Sydney. If you ever wanted a flashing neon sign to show what simulation can do in the right hands, then this weekend was the perfect example. I engineered the NA AutoEng Mitsubishi Evo 6 entry in the open class. Last year it placed 17th. With an aero package from AMB Aero and chassis tuning courtesy of ChassisSim, this year NA AutoEng placed third. This is the story of how we did it. The reason I’ll be going into depth about this is to disprove two…

French racecar constructor Onroak has acquired well-known US chassis builder Crawford as part of a recent expansion that has also seen it snap up engine builder Sodemo and top French racecar manufacturer Mygale. Onroak, which produces the Ligier LMP2 car, has bought Crawford – which currently builds the US Formula 4 car and has a history in Daytona Prototypes – partly because it was looking for a base in the US. Onroak Automotive will now operate directly from Crawford’s base in North Carolina for all its Ligier LMP2, DPi, LMP3 and CN activities in North America. The Crawford F4 spec chassis programme will also continue. Onroak founder Jacques Nicolet said of the Crawford acquisition: ‘Since 2014, we’ve been looking for the right place, but mostly the right people, to base…

The future of the Malaysian Grand Prix is in doubt after the country’s sports minister admitted that it could be dropped in the face of diminishing interest in F1 in Malaysia and ever-rising race hosting fees. Malaysia has hosted a round of the Formula 1 world championship since 1999, but now its sports minister has cast doubt on its continuation and it has been reported that it is looking at dropping the race. However, Malaysia and GP venue Sepang are said to have a ‘watertight’ contract with Formula One Management (FOM) to host the grand prix until 2018. Yet as Racecar went to press it was reported that a meeting had been set up with the intention of ending the contract next year. It has been reported in Malaysia that…