Innehållsförteckning för April 2021 från Racecar Engineering

America’s Cup is a team sport. It’s a technical team sport. And so there’s a lot of overlapToto Wolff, team principal at Mercedes F1 There is a general misconception that America’s Cup yacht racing is Formula 1 on the water. Yes, the level of technology, speed of manufacture, speed of change and the totally committed ‘teamwork’ ethic are all very similar, but the America’s Cup is continually pushing the envelope and evolving into the best version of itself. F1, on the other hand, is constrained to have similar vehicles with four wheels in contact with the ground the whole time, hopefully. Now, imagine those same cars with three asymmetric wheels being driven by rockets and you come a little closer to the foiling AC75 America’s Cup concept. Four years ago,…

Refuelling our cars is something most of us do as we go about our days and weeks without giving it much thought. Tank hits empty, we add fuel. Simple as that. True to form though, by adding an element of time pressure, motorsport takes what are seen as inert tasks and adds some flair and science to them. The fundamentals don’t change – you add fuel while evacuating air from the tank. In principle, this is not dangerous, but trying to achieve that process as quickly as possible takes us into risky territory. As time spent in the pits equals time lost on track, there’s a clear motivation to deliver the required fuel as rapidly as possible, a motivation which has resulted in some famous refuelling accidents involving technician or…

When Corvette Racing’s programme manager, Doug Fehan, decided to step away after more than 20 years in charge, he left some large shoes to be filled. General Motors’ choice to replace him was Laura Klauser, who had already been managing the incredibly successful Cadillac DPi and Camaro GT4 programmes, thereby streamlining the manufacturer’s approach to North American endurance racing. Klauser took over Corvette’s racing activities during a time of great change, with IMSA announcing at Daytona it will be cancelling the GTLM category, for GTE cars including the Corvette. Declining numbers of participants, as well as a pair of cost-effective replacements, has meant the class is no longer viable in the eyes of the organisation. It remains to be seen whether or not the ACO and FIA reach the same…

UK-based Radical Sportscars was one of the pioneers of the track day special market when it launched its 1100 Clubsport in 1997. Now, following some recent forays into road cars, and a management change in 2017, the company continues to go from strength to strength. Its best-selling car, the SR3, has shipped over 1300 units and the various one-make series running its cars are flourishing across the globe. Where we are seeing the market moving is a longer range car, with increased durability and ease of useJames Scott, technical development manager at Radical Sportscars According to James Scott, technical development manager at the company, even through the ongoing pandemic Radical has been seeing a boom in demand for its products, and the order books are currently full, including requests…

A high-performance structural material with lower environmental impact than conventional composites Carbon fibre is not a recent invention, it has been around for more than 150 years, but the last half-century or so has seen significant improvements in its manufacturing process that allow for its excellent strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios to be achieved and exploited. Contemporary carbon fibres contain up to 95 per cent carbon, and have considerably improved tensile strength and modulus of elasticity over the earliest versions, up to 4,000MPa and 400GPa respectively. Specific recent progress, linked with reductions in production and fabrication costs over the last few decades, has now made carbon fibre a favourite material for design engineers to use in the most demanding applications in the motorsport environment. P2T composites do not require heat or…

Formula 1 teams have unanimously agreed a freeze on engine development from 2022 after a commission meeting in February. The decision was reached in order to save costs before a new engine formula is introduced in 2025, the parameters of which were also confirmed at the meeting. The key objectives for the 2025 power unit are that it should be more environmentally sustainable, and should include automotive relevance. It should also use fully sustainable fuel, significantly reduce costs and increase appeal to new manufacturers. Red Bull later announced that it will take over the branding of Honda’s power units after the Japanese manufacturer leaves the series at the end of this year. Honda will continue the development of the engines this season before departure, leaving the newly-formed Red Bull Powertrains…

You could be mistaken in thinking the 2021 Formula 1 World Championship will be very similar to 2020, with teams carrying over much of their cars’ design for another year – a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic pushing the new era of F1 to 2022. However, the final 2021 regulations, published by the FIA in late 2020, feature several detailed revisions. These changes were initially penned as calming measures in response to the ever-increasing downforce the cars deliver, which some feared would push the Pirelli tyres beyond safe limits. Additionally, the cars’ overall pace is thought to have outgrown some tracks, certainly those that have remained unchanged as pace has steadily increased over the years. The FIA and Formula 1 management hope the changes will force a 10 per cent…

Testing began with the car and crew at the All American Racers (AAR) factory in Santa Ana, California. Things were coming together quite late, many problems hadn’t found their solution and many more complexities of working within the LMP-H class were only just starting to become apparent. Early on in budget negotiations in 2013, Nissan had insisted on three cars at Le Mans. This was to later stress our operation to the max. The car’s designer, Ben Bowlby, was in Europe and flew from the FIA in Paris to Cosworth in Northampton, UK in late September 2014. From there he drove to Flybrid in Silverstone and then flew back to AAR in California carrying a new transmission case, cast with rapid prototyped tooling in the USA. Then it was back…

With the debut of the NTT IndyCar series Aeroscreen in 2020, fighter jet pilots and racecar drivers have more in common than simply the need for speed. PPG impact-resistant transparencies now protect both from being struck by flying objects. Designed by Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the Aeroscreen consists of a PPG laminated polycarbonate windscreen attached to a titanium frame, all designed to reduce the risk of driver injury from flying debris. The windscreen required superior optics with no distortion or waviness The timeframe for producing the parts was tight. Overcoming the numerous design and production challenges inherent in such a uniquely shaped and advanced product, PPG delivered its first windscreen within eight months of engaging with IndyCar and Red Bull and supplied enough windscreens for the 2020 race series two…

Mazda has confirmed it will quit the IMSA United Sportscar series at the end of this season, having dropped to a single car entry for this year. The manufacturer has elected to make the move ahead of a change to LMDh regulations, which will include a compulsory spec hybrid system in 2023. The Japanese manufacturer was one of the first to adopt the DPi regulations. The Riley Multimatic chassis was first entered by SpeedSource, then by Joest Racing, and finally by Multimatic itself. Under the Multimatic banner, the car took victory at Sebring in 2020. ‘After five years of participating in IMSA’s DPi series, Mazda is opting to end its programme at the close of the 2021 season with the Motul Petit Le Mans race in October. This was determined…