Innehållsförteckning för October 2023 från Racecar Engineering

RALLYCROSS – HANSEN PEUGEOT 208 RX1e ‘We love to run these cars because you know, there’s no smell, no exhaust, it’s not noisy with people setting up their anti-lag systems. Yeah, we like it a lot’ Kenneth Hansen, team principal at Hansen Motorsport Rallycross (RX) is the ideal candidate for electrification and, as it made the switch at the start of 2022, actually beat Formula E to the count in being the first all-electric series with FIA world championship status. With short duration heats, the need for excessively large, and therefore heavy, battery packs is negated, while the instant torque of an electric powertrain perfectly suits the point and squirt nature of RX and its short course tracks. Teams were given the choice of retro fitting their existing ICE Supercar…

‘Our hydrocarbon-based fluid is dielectric, so… it can come into direct contact with all the electrical parts without causing short cuts, and can therefore cool the motor more efficiently’ Florian Glattes, vice president for e-mobility solutions at Shell Efficiency is more than just a buzzword in the ABB FIA Formula E world championship, and in that context it’s more than just a word associated with the fundamental powertrain components such as motors, inverters and coils. Transmission efficiency is just as vital in the now decade old EV series as it is in motors and inverters. With efficiency now in the 95 per cent range, the gearbox is one crucial area where teams can still make strong gains in the new Gen3-spec Formula E era. Single or twin-speed transmissions have been…

McLaren’s Formula 1 team will switch to its own wind tunnel facility after 12 years of working in Cologne with Toyota. The team has developed its own tunnel and will move the aero programme to its new base ‘soon’ according to Toyota. McLaren has not only used the wind tunnel in Cologne, but also engine, component testing and transmission facilities, which became available once the Japanese manufacturer withdrew from F1 in 2009. ‘TGR-E’s support has been invaluable to our success,’ said Andrea Stella, McLaren’s F1 Team Principal. ‘We have established a good working relationship between the McLaren team and the staff on-site at the facility, with their in-house additive manufacturing capabilities and other onsite facilities being vital to the development of our cars.’ Since moving its development to Cologne, McLaren…

The McLaren MCL60 has returned the company to the sharp end of the grid. The car is the fourth single-seater racecar designed by James Key, and the last before his departure from the Woking, UK-based team. The car is, to all intents and purposes, an evolution of the 2022 MCL36. In fact, the version seen starting from the pre-season tests in Bahrain corresponded well to the one seen in Abu Dhabi in the last race of last year. However, it has had some significant upgrades that have elevated the car from one that was capable of only fifth in the Constructors’ standings last year to a podium contender. The MCL36 undoubtedly performed below the team’s expectations during the 2022 season. It was the only F1 car to share the same…

Professional drifting, a motorsport discipline that combines skill, precision and style, can trace its origins to the mountain roads of Japan in the 1970s. It emerged from the illegal street racing culture there, where drivers would compete to see who could slide their car around corners with the most finesse and control, pushing traction to its limit. As drifting grew in popularity, it transitioned from its underground origins to an organised, professional motorsport. The establishment of the Formula Drift Championship in the United States in 2004 played a crucial role in bringing drifting to a wider audience. This championship created a stage to showcase high-level competition, attracting professional drivers and car manufacturers who began to recognise its enormous marketing potential. As a result, they started providing support to drift teams,…

Lotus has presented a new limited- edition track-only sports car, the Type 66, which has been developed from the blueprints of a 1970s Can-Am vehicle that never raced. The new car combines the original design of the British manufacturer’s cancelled North American monster with modern technologies, including ABS, anti-stall, power steering and a sequential gearbox. On the instructions of Colin Chapman, Lotus designer Geoff Ferris worked on a Can-Am concept in the 1960s, but the project was shelved, and his Type 66 sketches were stowed away as the company opted to focus on Formula 1. However, when the plans resurfaced decades later courtesy of Chapman’s son Clive, the Lotus design team converted Ferris’ drawings into 3D renders and set about reviving the Type 66 for a new customer market. Its…

Ford has launched the street-legal version of its GTD competition Mustang, featuring a carbon fibre body, active aero and a supercharged 5.2 litre V8 engine that produces more than 800bhp. The Mustang GTD features carbon ceramic brakes, a rear-mounted 8-speed dual-clutch transaxle and lightweight carbon fiber driveshaft for near 50/50 weight distribution. ‘We obsessed about the racing technology under its skin,’ said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports. ‘When you look at the engineering, the aerodynamics, how the powertrain works, the Mustang GTD is a rocketship for the road.’ The Mustang GTD was born from the concept of the Mustang GT3 race car returning to Le Mans next year and will be the pinnacle of the Mustang family that now includes both street-legal and track-only race cars. This…

Race report Formula Student UK (FSUK) celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Held at the famous Silverstone circuit, the epicentre of UK motorsport, the competition once again delivered innovative technologies, controversial concepts and its fair share of dramatic racing. Unlike the heatwave of last year, this year’s forecast included weather warnings for wind and rain, although this did little to dampen the spirits of the 91 teams that arrived from 17 different countries to compete. The FSUK competition is essentially split into two halves, the first being the static events and scrutineering that take place on Thursday and Friday, while the main dynamic events such as Acceleration, Sprint and Endurance occur across the weekend. Any team with aspirations of outright success must take both aspects seriously. Of the 91 entries,…

Time Attack is different. The spectators are generally from the aftermarket street scene, the aero packages on the cars are cartoonishly extreme, and there’s usually a throbbing backing track playing loudly in the pits. As for the format, it’s somewhere between hillclimbing without the hills and motor racing without the races. Maybe not one for the motorsport purist, then... Or is it? Consider the facts. Time Attack offers competition that does not involve contact between cars, very high levels of technology and unfettered and continual development in its top classes. Given all that, this might just be the purest form of motorsport out there, especially when it comes to actual racecar engineering. Of the relatively free UK motorsport categories we have been championing in these pages over the past year,…

In many ways, a racecar is simply an energy conversion mechanism. The combustion engine converts chemical energy in fuel to rotational kinetic energy in a crankshaft; the braking system converts kinetic energy to heat energy; the springs in a suspension system convert kinetic energy into elastic energy and, with more recent hardware, power electronics systems around a car convert chemical energy stored in batteries to electrical energy, which subsequently undergoes another conversion to kinetic energy in the moving vehicle. These are all ideal cases, however. In reality, the process of converting energy from one format to another always incurs losses. These losses are inefficiencies that manifest themselves as large proportions of energy being dissipated as heat, sound and sometimes even light energy. In the majority of automotive scenarios, heat losses…

IndyCar has completed the first track test with its new hybrid system that will be used on all cars next year. Both engine suppliers, Honda and Chevrolet, were at Sebring in mid-August to trial integration of the hybrid components with their 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 units. IndyCar’s hybrid system will generate an additional 150bhp from a rear-mounted Motor Generator Unit (MGU) that is linked to a super capacitor energy store, rather than a battery. The power boost will come from regeneration under braking and the test in Florida included evaluation of manual and automatic regen methods. Despite some rain and high humidity, the two-day session on Sebring’s 1.7-mile short layout compiled more than 1,400 miles between the Team Penske Chevrolet driven by reigning IndyCar champion Will Power and the Chip Ganassi…