Innehållsförteckning för October 2020 från Racecar Engineering

The GT classes make up half the grid, but are stacked heavily in favour of the ‘Am’ class for GTE cars that are more than a year old. Three Ferraris will take on two Porsches and two Aston Martins in the seven-car Pro class, while the Am class has Porsche and Ferrari’s duopoly broken only by two Aston Martins for TF Sport and Aston Martin Racing. Corvette will not race its C8.R, that has dominated in IMSA since the restart in July, at Le Mans this year due to Covid restrictions, coupled with a condensed IMSA schedule. That schedule has also meant Porsche has not sent its US team. Risi, on the other hand is not contesting the full IMSA series and therefore has prioritised Le Mans with its Ferrari.…

High-profile activities have shaped Volkswagen’s motorsport participation over most of the past decade. The top-flight Polo R WRC won the FIA World Rally Championship for four consecutive seasons from 2013, and the Golf GTi Touring Car has dominated international TCR series since 2016. A customer sports racing programme similar to that of the Polo GTi R5 cars the Hanover-based Volkswagen Motorsport outfit also builds, the GTi TCR has been phenomenally successful for the German manufacturer in terms of wins and exposure, and has even inspired a road car with the same name. The arrival of the eighth-generation Golf has yet to see the racing TCR updated but, away from the glare of the official home motorsport activity, the world’s first Golf 8 racer has been unveiled. Volkswagen Motorsport South Africa…

Q Hi Mark, I wanted to thank you for the Chassis Newsletters. I reference them all the time when setting up our cars. The photo (right) is from a race at Portland International Raceway where we won the big-bore vintage race in this former Mark Martin Winston Cup car from when Mike Laughlin ‘drop snout’ perimeter chassis were supplied to Roush Racing (and a number of others). Steve Hmiel, Mark’s crew chief, said in an interview I saw recently they used the Laughlin chassis at Roush for ‘flat tracks’, including road courses. Steve said they built a total of 46 cars from the late 1980s through to 1994 (the year the interview was videotaped for broadcast). Steve was crew chief for Mark Martin there through 1996 and says they used…

No matter how much data you have, or how much you think you know, rubber will always prove you wrong Understanding, measuring and minimising tyre degradation is the golden ticket to race wins and championship trophies across the spectrum of motorsport. Yet, despite some of today’s teams being equipped with entire departments of tyre engineers, and having access to advanced, real-time tyre models, the specific behaviour of tyre degradation continues to baffle them. This is predominantly due to the viscoelastic nature of rubber. A viscoelastic material is one which exhibits a mixture of recoverable elastic deformation and permanent viscous deformation. In other words, once rubber has been deformed and the load removed, it returns to its original shape, but only after a period of time. This time, or lag, between…

Toyota is the last of the manufacturers still standing after successive rivals ditched their programmes for various unrelated reasons. The Japanese manufacturer has released details of its development curve since it first joined the WEC in 2012, showing a dramatic drop in fuel consumption, increase in power and reduced lap time in the past eight years. Comparing 2012 with the best of subsequent years, 10 seconds has been shaved off the fastest qualifying time, from 3m24.842s at the start of the programme to 3m14.791s in 2017. A similar amount has come off the fastest race lap, from 3m27.088s in 2013 down to 3m17.297s in 2019. Perhaps more significant is the fastest 20 per cent of laps in the race, which in 2012 was 3m28.82s compared to 3m19.10s in 2018. A…

Even though the Aeroscreen only hit track in an official event in 2020, and the operative design phase only started in 2019, IndyCar had been collaborating with Dallara Automobili on its development since 2017. As a popular adage says, Rome wasn’t built in a day, though, and it took a great deal of time and effort to study and optimise all its elements properly, involving multiple different aspects and engineering disciplines. In this article, we will go behind the scenes of the Aeroscreen’s aerodynamic development. Engineers had to consider the loads the air velocity and pressure field…provoke on drivers’ bodies. And the aerodynamic forces acting on the driver’s head Looking at the overall dimensions of the Aeroscreen, one could imagine a high impact on the aerodynamic performance of the car…

Each category of motorsport demands a different type of tyre, and one of the most brutal environments a tyre has to endure is that of World Rallycross (RX). Supercars that boast 600bhp run on a mixture of asphalt and unsealed (gravel) surfaces, complete jumps that are 2.0m high and accelerate from 0-60mph in 1.9s, which is faster than F1. These extreme longitudinal loads require a robust tyre with an extremely strong construction. ‘It all comes down to the way you lay up the plies of the tyre to achieve a construction that can withstand the loads during jumps, starts, impacts and kerbs,’ explains Matthew Vincent, materials development manager at series supplier, Cooper Tires. ‘The sidewall in a World RX tyre has some additional reinforcement in it, and even the compound…

Formula 1 is a hotbed of innovation, and carbon is one of the mainstays of the modern motor racing era. From the first carbon monocoque chassis that McLaren developed and raced in its MP4/1 in 1981, the material has become ever more prevalent and now makes up around 70 per cent of current car’s structural weight. Despite its benefits, there is no doubt that using it carries a negative environmental impact so Swiss company, Bcomp, has been at the forefront of developing an alternative. It has already made significant impact on various top-level areas of the sport, including the DTM and GT racing. Now, however, the company has moved into Formula 1 with McLaren, developing a natural fibre racing seat for the team, the first Formula 1 car part to…

This year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans will take place not only behind closed doors and without many competitors from IMSA, but it will also be the last time the LMP1 hybrids will grace the Sarthe circuit. It brings to an end a period that started with the advent of the World Endurance Championship and involved full factory development programmes from Toyota, Audi, Porsche and Nissan. Next year, the Hypercar regulation set will replace these regulations which have remained similar since 2012. These are hybrid prototypes that will be performance balanced. In 2022, the Hypercars will be joined by LMDh, which has a regulation set based on IMSA’s existing DPi philosophy. The entry list for the 2020 edition of Le Mans boasts 60 cars, but the majority of the grid…

The LMP2 class is dominated by ORECA and Dallara chassis, with only three teams choosing the Ligier baseline for the 24-hour race. Each of the cars is powered by Gibson’s GK428 4.2-litre V8 engine that is the European standard in the European Le Mans Series and World Endurance Championship. The company also supplies IMSA teams, and produced the GL458 for Rebellion’s LMP1 programme. With 24 cars in the class, LMP2 will be hotly contested. It is also the only category in which there is tyre competition between Goodyear and Michelin, with four teams on Goodyear. For 2021, Michelin will supply the top prototype class and GTE-Pro, while Goodyear will supply the customer LMP2 and GTE-Am classes.…

Readers might remember that in Racecar Engineering V28N5 we featured the Hartley V12, a naturally aspirated V12 engine, based on 5.0-litre Toyota castings, which produces about 750bhp at 9500rpm. Since then, the Palmerston North, New Zealand-based company behind it has produced a second version of this potent powerplant, designated Prototype Number 2, which has twin turbochargers and is estimated to produce upwards of 1500bhp on full boost, and a more modest 1050bhp at 12psi of boost pressure. While the figures for both units are impressive, equally noteworthy is the way they are produced. This is because, in order to speed up manufacture and reduce cost, Nelson Hartley, co-owner and engine designer (and, incidentally, brother of former F1 and LMP1 driver Brendon) at Hartley Engines and Motorsport, has taken to making…

Slowly but surely, hybrid systems are starting to creep into race series across the globe, with electric assistance no longer reserved for the rarefied heights of Formula 1 or LMP1. This is understandable, with even the most basic hatchback from most manufacturers now available with at least a 48V mild-hybrid system, it is to be expected that demand for their use in motorsport will grow. If anything, it is surprising it has taken so long for them to arrive. Hybrid road cars have been widely available for two decades now, with the rate of uptake among the buying public increasing considerably in the past five years. As Matthias Dank, director of motorsport at McLaren Applied points out: ‘The need for people to adopt hybrid systems [in racing] has been there…

Balancing the performance of electric and traditional drivetrain technology is not an issue, and the racing is likely to be spectacular The British Rallycross Championship is set to include electric cars at low cost as early as next season as the organisers look to keep up with the changing trends in motorsport. Pat Doran, who owns the Lydden Hill circuit in Kent and who is driving the changes in the sport says there are a number of options currently being considered for the series next year. Rallycross perfectly lends itself to the introduction of electric technology. With short races and just five cars per race, balancing the performance of electric and traditional drivetrain technology is not an issue, and the racing is likely to be spectacular. In 2017, Racecar Engineering…