Innehållsförteckning för September 2017 från Racecar Engineering

The industrial revolution saw an explosion in the use of metal gearing The engineer’s quiver of systems and structures borrows heavily from nature. After all it surrounds us, and any inquisitive mind will take lessons and ponder about it. The way a tree grows is driven by nature’s strict adherence to the laws of thermodynamics, with the added goad of utilising the minimum amount of inputs required to produce the results. This includes the raw materials, the chemical reason how chlorophyll cycle extracts the energy from sunlight to produce wood, which brings us to structures and the earliest known plants to have grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago. Natural selection produced therefore a final iteration, which seems to work pretty well. So we can say engineering can…

The objective is not to make sure any of the properties stay constant, but rather to make sure none vary excessively QUESTION On the ratio of the upper control arm length to the lower control arm length, you and Herb Adams are pretty much in agreement. Adams extends the idea a little by saying the key is to look at the swing arm length and even gives an idealised amount of 124cm, and suggests this produces the least roll centre migration. What do you think about this? On a related idea, I’m now on to building a classic car with 27in tyres. What do you feel would be a good length for the upper and lower control arms, and if I switch to 25in tyres or 23in tyres, would this…

Mike Gascoyne, the former Caterham, Toyota and Renault technical chief, is to return to Formula 1 to redesign the two-seater F1 Experience car. Gascoyne, who has recently focused on his consultancy business, has been signed up as the two-seater’s technical director before the programme is expanded to run at every Formula 1 grand prix next year. Formula 1 has appointed Ellie Norman as its head of marketing. Norman joins F1 after spending five years at Virgin Media as head of advertising. Prior to this she held the position of communications manager at Honda Motor Europe. The Sauber F1 team has recruited former Mercedes engineer Ian Wright as its new head of vehicle performance. Wright, who has already started work at the Swiss outfit, started his F1 career as senior engineer…

The Motor Sport Industry Association (MIA) has recognised the career of Pat Symonds with the presentation of its award for Outstanding Contribution to the Motorsport Industry. Symonds began his career in motorsport by designing championship-winning Formula Ford cars for Hawke and Royale, before moving into F1. Most recently chief technical officer at Williams, he is now a pundit with Sky TV. Dave Rogers, the former crew chief on the No.19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in the NASCAR Cup series, has now taken up the position of technical director for the organisation’s Xfinity Series programme, overseeing the No.18, No.19 and No.20 cars in the second-tier series. Rogers had been a Cup series crew chief with JGR since 2010 US motorsports PR firm Sunday Group Management has hired motor racing media veteran…

It should not have been beyond the imagination of the Toyota design team to envisage a situation such as an engine restart after an incident on track Designing for failure, rather than designing purely for success, may seem an odd approach, but to my mind not doing this was the cause of Toyota’s challenge disappointingly falling apart before even half-distance at this year’s Le Mans, despite it having taken – at last – the strategic decision to enter three instead of two cars. The move to three cars was expensive, but still it fitted to the old adage at Le Mans; one to crash, one to break down, one to win. In such an extreme high-speed endurance event, the car and powertrain design team must imagine that not everything will…

Once we have the forces and moments of each tyre we can calculate the outputs of the yaw moment diagram We will start this article by reviewing some basic concepts. As we have seen in the previous articles on the yaw moment versus lateral acceleration method, an understeering car is defined as a car that doesn’t have enough yaw moment and an oversteering car is a car with too much yaw moment. The yaw moment is caused by 12 factors, which come from the tyres: the four lateral forces (Fy), the four longitudinal forces (Fx) and the four self-aligning torques (Mz). Let’s also remind ourselves that at the corner apex – i.e. where the car is closest to a steady-state – the resultant yaw moment should be equal to zero.…

Former Renault F1 boss Frederic Vasseur is now the team principal at Sauber, taking on the role vacated by Monisha Kaltenborn, who departed the team after a difference of opinion with its owners in late June. Vasseur emerged as favourite to take over the role shortly after Kaltenborn left, but Sauber operated without a team principal both in Azerbaijan and then the next two races in Austria and the UK. He started work at the Swiss operation the day after the British Grand Prix. As well as having been appointed team principal of Sauber F1, Vasseur has also been named as managing director and CEO of Sauber Motorsport AG. Vasseur had been hired by Renault as racing director for its works team return to F1 in 2016 and was promoted…

This pre-season event provides a platform for industry professionals to meet, generating an estimated £1bn of global motorsport business Tickets have gone on sale for both the trade and the public areas for the Autosport International Show, held on January 11 to 14, 2018, at the Birmingham NEC in the UK. Ferrari has already been announced as the main feature for the show, with an exciting centrepiece to be created showcasing the lineage from its sportscars through to F1, courtesy of Clienti Corse, Ferrari’s exclusive client racing programme. Since 2003 the F1 Clienti department has put up for sale Formula 1 cars that are at least two years old and allowed buyers to use them to the full. The company also caters for the privateer classes that race the latest…

The P3 pictured in this feature is chassis 50005, which is among the very last Tipo Bs produced. It is one of three cars fitted from new with the Dubonnet-style independent front suspension. Once added to the Scuderia Ferrari stable, it also received the SF45 moniker, which helped the team identify individual cars. Alfa Romeo and Scuderia Ferrari were not known for their record keeping skills, so it is virtually impossible to track the individual histories of the cars. But Nuvolari’s win in the 1935 German Grand Prix was instantly recognised as historic, so observers at the track actually made the effort of noting down the serial number of the victorious Alfa. As a result, we know with considerably certainty that this is the very car used by Nuvolari to…

One of the main objectives was to aim for best efficiency rather than maximum overall downforce In the Spring of 2011 we evaluated the aerodynamics of the original DJ Firestorm hillclimber, a car that went on to take a number of British Hillclimb Championship (BHC) Top 12 Run Off wins with 3.2-litre V8 Cosworth XD power. During early concept discussions on the car, another engine considered was the ex-DTM 2.5-litre V6 Cosworth KF. This was the lightest and most compact option then available, and it had already won the 2001 and 2002 BHCs in the rival Gould GR51 chassis. Despite lacking power and torque compared to the now very popular 3.5-litre V8 NME, it was chosen for the latest DJ Firestorm to propel the 2015 British Hillclimb Champion Alex Summers…

Grainger and Worrall’s continuous drive for innovation and development has helped it win nine awards over the last five years. It has supplied parts to every F1 constructors’ champion, and nearly every F1 race winner since the early 2000s, with its involvement in other series proving equally successful. In the last 12 months alone, Grainger and Worrall estimates it has completed 400 turnkey products within the motorsport and prototype teams. ‘These departments are effectively the heartbeat of our business, from which all other areas can benefit from. The fast-paced demands from motorsport forces us to try new things, evaluate and improve. This has helped us develop an innovation culture,’ explains Denholm. ‘The new technologies we are seeing are often first deployed in motorsport, which means we can become very early…

‘What has been a bit overlooked in the last few years is the fan experience’ Gone is the dictatorship in Formula 1. In its place there’s a gang of three: CEO Chase Carey, the one with the the background in global media; managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn, the former championship-winning team boss and serial Formula 1 team technical director, who needs no introduction in this particular publication; and the managing director, commercial operations, Sean Bratches. Bratches is probably the least well-known of the Liberty Media three. Like Carey his background is in global media, particularly at ESPN. He knows his stuff when it comes to media, then. But does he know Formula 1? A fair enough question, when you consider that this year’s F1 opener at Melbourne was his…

The man who was largely responsible for making the Macau Grand Prix for F3 cars the hugely prestigious event it is today has died at the age of 71. Barry Bland started his motorsport career at the British Automobile Racing Club as competitions secretary and a race-meeting organiser, after a brief spell as a driver. In 1971 he joined Motor Race Consultants, where he worked for the rest of his life, organising race entries, logistics and insurance for events around the globe. But his claim to fame must be the Macau race, which came about after plans to replace a struggling Formula Atlantic counter in the Far East city with a Formula 2 race fell short due to the narrowness of the track at one point on the circuit. F3…

AP Racing, the leading manufacturer of performance brake and clutch systems for road and racecars is soon to launch World Radi-CAL 2 – a new forged 4- and 6-piston caliper range. Available to order in the final quarter of 2017, the latest brake is said to offer less mass, improved rigidity and better cooling characteristics. A major innovation in braking technology, the calipers incorporate all of the features demanded by the road market, including dirt seals, an attractive painted finish and noise abatement solutions. The Radi-CAL 2 incorporates patented technology allowing road users to experience superior performance, from the race track to the street. The core product range from AP Racing includes clutches, calipers, discs, pads, master cylinders, pedal boxes and air jacks, as well as road and competition brake…

In all areas Joest’s involvement is something of a game changer The news that Joest Racing will take over the Mazda Prototype programme in the IMSA United Sportscar series is big. It signals a return of one of the great endurance racing teams, it signals intent from Mazda in the US, and it signals that the competition in the IMSA series is about to take a big step up. It also signals a change in focus for endurance racing, from Europe to the US, and we have been here before. Back in 1998, the FIA GT Championship was the place to be with Mercedes, Porsche and Dodge involved. The cars were spectacular, the drivers high calibre, but even then there were warning signs. BMW had left at the end of…