Innehållsförteckning för April 2023 från Racecar Engineering

F1 INTERVIEW – MATT HARMAN Bruno [Famin] is a highly experienced engine engineer and, between the two of us, you’ll see that [2023] will be a much better show The Formula 1 paddock’s demographic is generally binary: folk who are in the sport because they love it above all else, and those who are attracted by the world class standards demanded from every pass holder, regardless of discipline, be it in hospitality, marketing, logistics, engineering, on the sporting side or wherever. Occasionally, though, individuals are attracted to F1 due to its exacting demands, and then develop a deep love for the wider sport, acquiring that crucial winning ethic and with it, an unquenchable thirst for on-track success that simply does not exist outside of motorsport. One such engineer is Matt…

TECHNOLOGY – MOTORSPORT TUBULAR STEELS Purchase a fake Rolex and you’re going to be out of pocket and may be late for work. Buy counterfeit high-spec steel for a spaceframe or rollcage build and the results could be much more serious. Because tubular steel, which even in this age of carbon is still at the heart of the vast majority of competition vehicles, is nearly always used in a way that’s vital for driver protection. It’s also used in great quantities. If you lay the tubing that makes up some rollcages end to end it can stretch for 40 metres, for instance. But is there really a chance the steel you buy is not as advertised? Well, yes, but before we go into that, we need to fully understand what…

The NXT Gen Cup, which races cars based on the electric Mini Cooper SE road car, has stepped up its production to 20 cars for this season, which starts at the Swedish Falkenberg track in July. It is the first 100 per cent electric junior Touring Car cup, and the cars are bring prepared at the Lestrup Racing Team facility in Sweden. ‘We received 20 new bodyshells in October last year from the Mini plant in Oxford, UK, and we are working at full capacity to turn these into the LRT NXT1 racecars,’ says Fredrik Lestrup, co-founder of the series. ‘The development phase is focused on a wide array of areas such as battery performance under intense race conditions, tyre performance and general durability. We have put thousands of kilometres…

F1 – RBPTH001 POWER UNIT The Red Bull RB18, which won the 2022 F1 Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships, was powered to its dominant success by a Red Bull Powertrains (RBPT) RBPTH001. This power unit is a derivative of the Honda RA621H, used by the Japanese manufacturer during the 2021 F1 World Championship campaign. Red Bull Powertrains was created in 2021 to supply power units to Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the 2022 F1 season and beyond, after Honda announced it would exit F1 at the end of the 2021 season. Although Honda’s participation in F1 was officially over, the 2022 Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri power units were Honda-produced, assembled, maintained, and trackside supported, despite their RBPT designation. Between 2021 and 2022, there were significant…

The 2022 WRC season saw a dominant performance by Toyota’s Kalle Rovanperä, with the 22-year-old Finn becoming the youngest champion in the sport’s history, and the first of its new hybrid era. However, over the course of the year, though Toyota remained imperious, Hyundai, in particular, made considerable performance strides with its i20, turning what looked like a disaster at the beginning of the year into a rally-winning machine. Due to the way development works under the WRC regulations, updates must be introduced via the use of ‘jokers’, meaning manufacturers tend to add parts for the next season before the year is out, in order to make best use of their allocation. Jokers can only be added at fixed points in the year, with submissions having to be made on…

‘Developing a set-up philosophy with the new cars was a learning curve, especially with the rear suspension. Trading off aerodynamic stability for mechanical stability for corner entry is a hard compromise to strike’ The 2022 NASCAR season saw the implementation of the sport’s most significant technical overhaul since its inception. The development of the so-called Gen 7 (2022-present) cars saw thousands of hours of design and testing work over several years, making its debut at the Sun, LA Memorial Coliseum in February that year. General Motors’ brand, Chevrolet, continued its long-standing commitment to competing in NASCAR into this new generation and its director of NASCAR programmes, Eric Warren, coordinated the Gen 7 Camaro NASCAR ZL1 design effort, as well as its ongoing development. Warren has been working in NASCAR for…

Mahindra, and its partner, ABT Motorsport team, were forced to withdraw from the fifth round of the FIA Formula E Championship in Cape Town, South Africa, after a rear suspension problem manifested itself following the second free practice session. The cars had shown promise during early running during the weekend but Mahindra then established there was a problem, thought to be flexing, in the rear suspension. ‘Mahindra Formula E team have confirmed their withdrawal from the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship qualifying sessions and race in Cape Town due to rear suspension safety concerns,’ read a team statement issued at the event. ‘A thorough investigation on the suspension elements of the Mahindra M9Electro racecars will take place on the team’s return to the UK. The decision also affects their…

F1 – 2026 POWER UNITS The burning question is what happens if an F1 PU brand unexpectedly departs? Who steps into the breach, and on what basis? The FIA’s confirmation amidst the Red Bull launch (at which Ford announced it would partner the reigning champion team from 2026) outlined six power unit suppliers who registered for what is internally known as PU2026: Red Bull Powertrains (Ford); Ferrari; Mercedes AMG HPP; Renault (Alpine); Honda and Audi. Significantly, Porsche, who fell out with Red Bull in September, is not registered. FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, commented: ‘The confirmation that there will be six power unit manufacturers competing in Formula 1 from 2026 is testament to the strength of the championship and the robust technical regulations that have been diligently created by the…

LAND SPEED RACING – JCB DIESELMAX Being asked to set a Land Speed Record with a couple of ‘digger’ engines still ranks as one of the stranger requests I’ve had in my life The main job of the race (or in this case ‘run’) engineer is to be the link between the driver and the team and optimise the speed of the car At its heart, motorsport is a simple sport. Go fast, don’t crash until you see the chequered flag. Whether that’s at the end of a prescribed distance or time, if you reach it first, or in the quickest time, then it’s job done. With the exception of one year of my motorsport life, these rules applied. That year was spent setting the diesel Land Speed Record [LSR].…

Toyota has unveiled the second generation GR010 for the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship. The car has been sympathetically updated, bearing in mind cost constraints and homologation limits, which have prevented Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR) from going to town on the updates. Nevertheless, the team says its 2023 package is lighter and more serviceable. The car retains the GR010 name as the chassis and engine are the same, although the latter has been developed for weight saving purposes. The regulations state there can be no improvement in power as it is limited and monitored, with torque sensors fitted to the driveshafts, and there can be little performance gain from aerodynamics due to the cars fitting into a narrow window of the lift / drag graph. That’s not to say that…

The 100th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will have the largest field of Prototypes in the top class since 2011. No fewer than 16 Hypercars are confirmed among the 62-car grid, representing seven manufacturers. The category has seen a massive increase in popularity as the LMDh class cars, nominally based on an LMP2 chassis but with manufacturer engine and aero kit, is eligible to race in both the FIA WEC and IMSA’s WeatherTech Sportscar Series. Even within the LMH group of cars, designed and built from the ground up, the cost of competing in the top class with these cars has plummeted compared to the old LMP1 cars, while return on investment has increased due to the global regulation set. ‘The Hypercar class reached an impressive 16…

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest has changed the safety car procedure for its showcase event at Le Mans in June in a bid to make the racing better. The 13.6km Circuit de la Sarthe requires three safety cars to manage the 62 cars, and races have been won or lost by falling behind the ‘wrong’ safety car. Balance of Performance makes it harder still for cars to make up any lost time and so the ACO has introduced a format that will allow cars to close up behind one safety car before a restart. There will be three phases of the new restart. First, the field will bunch up behind one safety car. Second, cars that have their class leader behind them will be allowed to pass the sole safety…