Innehållsförteckning för March 2017 från Racecar Engineering

‘I’m not good at partnerships but in the end we said yes, let’s do it, let’s go in together’ When the tender for LMP2 2017 was put out, there was a clear message from IMSA – one of the four chassis manufacturers would be from North America. It was perhaps no surprise that the tender went to two of the most established and respected companies in North America, Bill Riley’s eponymous concern and Larry Holt’s Multimatic company, although how they came together was more haphazard than might have been expected. ‘It all started when they started talking about a new car,’ says Riley. ‘I was going to the meetings, as did Multimatic, and we had worked with them on the Viper programme. We didn’t want to go up against Multimatic,…

‘The car has been completely developed on computer and every single part has been designed in CAD’ Initially planned as a potential one-make series car, a project with the Austrian and European arms of Korean car maker Kia, the Cee’d will now join the ranks of TCR this season. Rather than Kia running the Cee’d itself, STARD – the advanced research and development wing of Stohl Group – has decided to play a key role in running the car. According to Michael Sakowicz, CEO of STARD: ‘With the recent possibility around TCR [its growth], we came back to this idea to do something with the Kia brand in motorsport, based on the production car.’ From what was to be at one-time a one-make series car, the Cee’d received critical development…

The best way to exploit this is to keep the wheel rate in the roll mode fairly constant QUESTION I have been planning for a high downforce setup on a fast sports racer. My aero guy stresses the importance of a stable platform. We have too much dive and roll right now. We’re considering a set-up using a heave spring (like a typical third spring) and a roll bar (damped) only. The third spring (not really a third spring in this case) has zero roll resistance as typical. My expectation is that the car could be stiff in roll and heave, but allow good compliance on one wheel bump (like running over kerbs). I am thinking about this on the front only. What are your thoughts on this? THE CONSULTANT…

‘Once you get to the level that we are aiming at, the driver is a component of the simulator’ Back in 2007 rFpro was launched as an offshoot to the game rFactor. It is described as an environment simulation program that is physically accurate as well as visually and aurally realistic, and it has now emerged as one of the motorsport industry’s go-to sim packages, in what is an ever-more competitive market. Intriguingly, rFpro’s story starts at the very highest level of motorsport, as its technical director Chris Hoyle explains: ‘We started as a project within a Formula 1 team, on October 23 2007, when I was introduced to the head of R&D at one of the higher budget F1 teams. We spent most of that day planning out the…

1. The car is mounted on Toe and side pull rig. 2. A strain gauged pull rod is mounted with pulley to give simulation of braking or acceleration forces. 3. For braking, total load checked with all four wheels on pads. Brake pedal locked. 4. For front or rear braking deflections, blank off hose so appropriate front or rear system is neutralised. 5. Load car with pulley. 6. Register the readings on dial gauges mounted on the wheel. Widest possible span best. Beam attached to wheel with clamps. 7. If you are feeling ambitious, you can apply combined loads by pulling simultaneously longitudinally and laterally, but for a given car weight it will reduce individual wheel deflections before you pull it off the rig. It is better to measure single…

Who would not want to take on Lewis Hamilton at Monaco in real time? The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become more popular for major motor manufacturers than the traditional car shows such as Los Angeles and Geneva, and that has alerted the motorsport industry to what may be a paradigm shift in the way consumers view automobiles and motor racing. This was one of the main topics of discussion at the annual MIA Energy Efficient Motor Sport Conference, held at the NEC in Birmingham, just before the Autosport Show kicked off. While the five panels were made up exclusively of men aged over 45 wearing suits, the main topic of conversation was not the future of fuels in the sport, rather it was all about fan engagement…

There was no baseline data, no track data, nothing on which to base the Balance of Performance, and IMSA’s season starts in January while the WEC begins in April When the new regulations for LMP2 were announced, there was an immediate problem identified by the ACO. While the category was, for them in Europe, the WEC and the Le Mans privateer class, in the US it was the main category and IMSA already had interest from several manufacturers, including Mazda and GM. So, would manufacturers allow their cars to be raced by privateers, or would they want to have professional drivers, and an input into the design and running of the car? In the end, it was agreed that this would be the global prototype category as originally envisaged but,…

The Cheetah is a low cost car designed for amateur drivers to have fun in Go to a Formula Student event anywhere in the world and you will likely see groups of nervous students who have to present a business pitch to a panel of industry experts. The aim of this exercise is to show a serious business case for the production and sale of an FSAE rules style car for the amateur weekend racer. It’s always been something a theoretical exercise as, aside from a very small number of American autocross cars, no company has ever seriously built and marketed such a product. Until now, that is. Dome, the Japanese constructor best known for its Le Mans Prototypes, has created what it calls ‘Micro Formula’ racers, and the first…

Claude Shannon, the famed mathematician, once said: ‘Information is the resolution of uncertainty’. So what do you do when your new design is not behaving as you thought it would, or more pertinently, should? You did all the geometry, you ran your simulation, you stressed out all the components, you managed to get your centre of gravity where you wanted it to be, you may even have evolved a stunning L/D. But when you fit your driver in it you have the usual turbine like high pitched whine (that a driver will often emit) berating its handling characteristics. Assuming you are a better man than me, and have got all your parameters and design targets right, that in itself does not mean the car as built is behaving like the…

Why will lap time simulation sometimes favour an unstable response? Simply because at times that is where the grip is One of the biggest criticisms that is often levelled at lap time simulation packages is that they can deduce set-ups that are simply undrivable. There is a key reason of why that is so and we will discuss this in some detail shortly. Over the last couple of years I have discussed in depth a concept known as the stability index. Recently we have just incorporated this into ChassisSim and this should go a long way to incorporating driver feel into the lap time calculation. The purpose of this article is to discuss in depth where this comes from, and more importantly how to employ it. Just to refresh your…

Already the DPi cars have shown performance that is approaching LMP1 speeds of six years ago Mazda’s long history in endurance racing has taken its next step with the introduction of a 2-litre turbocharged engine and stylised bodykit on a Riley Multimatic chassis – which is basically a complicated way of saying that it has debuted its new Daytona Prototype International, the RT24-P. The 2017 Daytona Prototypes are the first of a new breed of US sports racing cars, with stylised bodywork fitted onto the new LMP2 chassis. They are also fitted with engines from a manufacturer. Cadillac, Mazda and Nissan let their production car designers loose on the bodywork styling, knowing that the kits would be balanced in the wind tunnel, so outright performance was of less importance (see…

The complexity of front wings and their end plates on Formula 1 cars is pretty bewildering, and certainly beyond the capability of those of us operating from our humble home workshops to manufacture, let alone design in the first instance. Furthermore, the design solutions we see in the top echelons are specific to the prevailing technical regulations and are not necessarily generally applicable to other categories. And it is also readily apparent from the wide variation in designs that there is no single definitive solution for a front wing end plate, although there may be some generic aspects we can learn from. So, with the benefit of ANSYS CFD-Flo and our oft-seen basic single seater CAD model, this feature will look at some of the basics of front wing end…

The ratchet chain pulley is used to input lateral and longitudinal loads into chassis via tyre contact patch. 1. Four studded pads are fixed on frame to provide grip. 2. Pads are studded for maximum grip, and made out of marine plywood, with approximately 400 nails per pad. 3. Attachment points are made for the chassis, in this case a bar is bolted to the front bulkhead for brake tests. 4. For toe and caster stiffness, the same bar is used at the rear for acceleration tests. 5. For side load, a pulley attachment is fitted to side of rig, and loads applied to plate bolted to floor of car (camber stiffness). 6. Bars attached to chassis give a reference for dial gauges attached to the wheels. 7. Ensure holder…

Electronics Charge of the light battery RPS has launched a range of lithium based batteries for motorsport. It is claimed that they offer a weight saving of approximately 70 per cent over conventional batteries, have a smaller volume, faster charge time and a lower self-discharge than conventional products. RPS says that its batteries can be fitted in any position, even inverted, and require no checking or topping up. They can also be placed in the boot or under the rear seat for better weight distribution across the racecar or to free up space in the engine compartment. The batteries are available in 12v only with a nominal capacity of either 13.0Ah, 16.0Ah or 20.0Ah, with various mounting brackets. www.rps-battery.co.uk Instruments Clock work AEM’s X-Series GPS Speedometer displays ground speed, course…