Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Racecar Engineering

Peugeot will field a full ground-effect Le Mans Hypercar when the French manufacturer returns to endurance racing in 2022. The company revealed its challenger, the 9X8, early in July and presented a show car at the third round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Monza a few weeks later. The most striking element of the car is the lack of rear wing, the design team having established the maximum downforce levels early on in the design process using underfloor aero marrying up with the flow over the rear deck. It therefore did not need an additional downforce generator at the rear. Also clear in the design is the relationship with the production cars, a feature that is made possible by the Balance of Performance system for the top category…

‘I think the results will bring advantages both to the racing world in Formula 1… and in the consumer car world and with road car engines in general’Tomek Young, global motorsport technology manager at Mobil 1 Few mechanical systems put as much stress on their components as a Formula 1 hybrid power unit. Providing technical solutions in such a demanding environment pushes suppliers to enhance their products and develop new technologies in a bid to yield an advantage over rivals on the track. The partnership between Honda and the Red Bull Technology group Formula 1 teams, Red Bull Racing and Alpha Tauri, has provided a key learning platform and a proving ground for the fuels and lubricants brand, Mobil 1. The partnership provides Mobil 1 with the opportunity to improve…

Audi has launched its new GT3 challenger, the R8 LMS GT3 2021, that will take part in customer-based endurance racing from 2022. The new car is still in the test phase and has not yet been signed off, but will be ready for customer teams in time for the Daytona 24 hours in January. ‘The innovations improve the driveability and will allow professional drivers in particular to make better use of the power potential and torque curve for consistent lap times,’ says Audi’s head of sport, customer racing, Chris Reinke.‘The chassis features a new shock absorber solution that makes it easier for teams to set the car up. ‘Modified software means the traction control can be used even more individually to suit particular needs and different tyre characteristics.’ The car…

The FIA World Motorsport Council approved rushed-through agreements between the FIA, ACO and IMSA to allow Prototypes to compete globally. The FIA / ACO regulations permit Le Mans Hypercars to run with or without hybrid systems but, if they choose to run one, it must power the front wheels, effectively giving the Le Mans Hypercar Prototypes four-wheel drive. The IMSA regulations are designed to permit LMDh cars, which feature a spec hybrid system on the rear axle only. ‘I think we will find something that will make sense for everyone’Olivier Jansonnie, technical director at Peugeot Sport Balancing the two will be tricky with totally different characteristics for either concept, but an agreement has been put in place that cars which compete in the FIA WEC and at Le Mans will…

The ideal situation is for every department to access whichever data it needs, at any time, and interrogate it to achieve a competitive advantage Formula 1 runs on data, and every element of each team’s operation is monitored and analysed to the n’th degree. The reason outfits such as Mercedes are so successful is because, among other factors, they have the best grasp of the data available to them and are able to process and understand it rapidly. This is only possible thanks to a constantly evolving array of tools used to record, store, transmit and analyse that data. And, most importantly of all, filter out that which is most significant. The ideal situation is for every department to access whichever data it needs, at any time, and interrogate it…

When Racecar visited Venture Engineering in June, it had just moved from its original site in Bourton-on-the-Water to a brand new, 15,000sq.ft facility in the suitably-named Tungsten Park, Witney, Oxfordshire, deep in the heart of Motorsport Valley. It’s a smart, ultra-modern facility, with enough space to align with the company’s ambitious plans for the future. Not that Venture hasn’t done plenty  already. It was set up in 2015 by three Prodrive employees, former Aston Martin Racing engineer Stuart Gale, purchasing manager Adrian Perkins and fabricator Joe Lofthouse. It was initially to be just a fabrication concern, but now the company is pretty much a one-stop shop for all motorsport engineering solutions. ‘The business was 100 per cent fabrication to begin with,’ says Lofthouse, ‘but very quickly we realised we had…

Marelli Motorsport and 1NCE, the world’s first fully-fledged operator of Internet of Things network services, are joining forces to develop new, real-time tracking solutions in the world of motorsport. The two will create a globally standardised cellular connectivity system. ‘By offering globally available and easy to implement cellular connectivity, we found 1NCE to be the perfect partner for our needs,’ says Ricardo de Filippi, CEO of Marelli Motorsport. ‘Combining a worldwide presence and a simple pricing structure, 1NCE delivers the ideal connectivity solution for our upcoming telemetry products. Once set up, we can start using them immediately on any of our motorsport locations around the world.’…

British company, Dynisma, is putting the finishing touches to the Scuderia Ferrari simulator that will be used to develop the 2022 grand prix car. Calibration work is now being carried out ahead of the system coming online in September. This will be on the cutting edge of vehicle dynamic simulation, the company tells us, and reproduces in a 360-degree environment the lowest latency and highest bandwidth motion curing of any motion simulator on the market. It is based on a completely new concept, the result of a collaboration between Scuderia Ferrari and the independent, UK-based company headed up by former Ferrari engineer, Ash Warne. ‘Simulation and digital technology are going to play an ever more important role in the development of a Formula 1 car, and we believe we have…

In last month’s issue, Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) class regulations were reviewed, highlighting what, in the author’s view, are the most significant points. Rules related to performance-critical areas like powertrain, aerodynamics and tyres will be analysed in more detail here to understand how the rulebook should lead to cars achieving the targeted lap times of 3m30sec in Le Mans race trim. In this instalment, we will perform an in-depth analysis using lap time simulation to quantify and understand how LMH cars are expected to perform. The tool employed for this investigation was coded by the author and is based on a quasi-static approach; each small section of a track is analysed assuming a constant acceleration and that the vehicle is in static conditions. The four-wheel vehicle model incorporates full aeromaps,…

To provide power for almost half the grid competing at Le Mans this year is an achievement in itself but, judging by the opening few races of the 2021 FIA WEC season, this year is engine manufacturer Gibson’s best chance of securing overall victory for the first time. The British company landed the contract to supply the LMP2 cars, for customer teams and drivers, when the new category was launched in 2017, and almost immediately come close to winning endurance racing’s greatest prize in its first year as the Prototypes from Toyota and Porsche hit trouble. The Jackie Chan Racing ORECA Gibson LMP2 led the race for much of Sunday, only ceding the lead in the final 90 minutes to a fast-recovering Porsche LMP1 car. Despite Brexit, which has added…

Further to the reveal of the new GT3 car, Audi has also launched its Dakar challenger, the RS Q e-tron, which features a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, turbocharged engine taken from the manufacturer’s DTM unit, mated with a generator taken from the company’s Formula E programme, which combine to provide 300kW of power driven through all four wheels. Audi says it wants to be the first company to compete for overall victory in Dakar with an electrified drivetrain. The car features an MGU, lightly modified compared to the Formula E application, on the front and rear axles, while a third MGU is part of the energy converter and recharges the battery while driving. The battery weighs 370kg and has a capacity of 50kWh. The front and rear axles are not mechanically connected…

The FIA has unveiled its second generation Formula 4 car that features an upgraded survival cell able to withstand stringent load tests, along with new anti-intrusion panels that increase safety for this entry-level car. An upgrade to the powertrain also offers the versatility to fit a hybrid system, while maintaining the power-to-weight ratio of 3.6kg/bhp across all cars in the various championships. The car was unveiled in Monaco by outgoing FIA president, Jean Todt, along with Formula 1 single seat sporting director, Michael Masi.…

The UK government introduced R and D incentives in 2000 to encourage any limited company based in the United Kingdom to explore innovative solutions to problems encountered in their sector and manufacturing process. All countries in the EU, America and most other nations run similar incentives, repaying the company for costs associated with projects that qualify as R and D undertaken by the business each year. This is not a one-off grant or loan that has to be repaid. The R and D incentive can be claimed year on year and any payment received by the business has no criteria on what it is used for. The incentive scheme has now run for 20 years and has been met with great success as many of the F1 teams that have…