35646747 professional motor sport world july 2010

P R O F E S S I O N A L M O T O R S P O R T W O R L D

John ForceTeam owner/driver, John Force Racing

Keith SauntChief operating offi cer, Lotus Racing

Marc Schramm Team co-owner, Black Falcon

Interviewed

JULY 2010

PMW goes under the skin of offshore powerboats

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS: The inside stories of the Porsche GT3 R fl ywheel hybrid and the Delft University solar racer

Dodge NASCAR exclusive: Sprint Cup aero mods and the Nationwide Challenger

Effi ciency drive

ContentsThe Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid was unlike any of the 32 other Porsches or

the 164 other vehicles that started the Nürburgring 24h in May 2010. Under its orange-and-white-striped bodywork was a four-wheel-drive, petrol-electric hybrid drivetrain. At the back was the regular 4-liter flat-six driving the rear wheels. But ahead of the driver, a pair of bespoke, 60kW electric motors and a planetary gearbox were driving the front wheels. And beside him, a magnetically

Porsche’s 911 Hybrid is arguably the racing story of the season so far. PMW spoke exclusively to its creators to get the lowdown on the flywheel pioneerWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

loaded composite (MLC) flywheel was storing recuperated brake energy to power them.

The project to create the car began more than a year previously, in January 2009. Porsche has recently revealed a number of street-car hybrid projects, notably the Cayenne SUV and 918 supercar, and was looking to build its expertise in the field of hybrid-electric drivetrains. Motorsport is the firm’s traditional proving ground, so a plan was formulated to enter a hybrid 911 in the classic Nürburgring

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endurance event as a learning exercise with obvious PR value.

For the energy storage component, Porsche evaluated three systems – one capacitor-based, and two flywheels – before settling on an MLC flywheel from Williams Hybrid Power (WHP). Decisions were taken to only recuperate brake energy, and to keep the hybrid system separate from the combustion engine’s driveline, ruling out a purely mechanical flywheel. Driving the front wheels electrically was also better for weight distribution

RACE IMAGES: CHRISTIAN MOSKOPP/TRACKSHOOTS.DE

COVER STORY20 PORSCHE GT3 R HYBRID

PMW talks to Porsche and Williams Hybrid Power about the pioneering endurance car

26 WORLD SOLAR CHALLENGEThe inside track on Delft University of Technology’s solar-powered racer

INTERVIEW32 JOHN FORCE, JOHN FORCE RACING

The ultra-successful team owner tells Mike Magda how he’ll secure his legacy

FEATURES38 DODGE MOTORSPORTS

Exclusive insight into the fi rm’s latest stock-car development programs

42 LOTUS RACINGGraham Heeps reports on how a supply chain was created in double-quick time.

48 COMPOSITESNew technology is enabling engineers to precisely predict crash performance

52 POWERBOATSCharles Armstrong-Wilson examines some water-borne motorsport machinery

REGULARS04 DAVID TREMAYNE

Rejoice! F1 is back in North America06 SERIES FOCUS: LE MANS SERIES

Mike Breslin on the endurance series08 BURNING ISSUE

A 2-liter turbo engine for British Touring Cars. Matt Joy investigates

10 CARBON COPYNürburgring 24h edition: a look at the Opel Astra OPC and Aston Martin Rapide

14 BUSINESS UPDATEWhat hi-fi manufacturer, Bowers & Wilkins hopes to gain from IndyCar sponsorship

16 HAVE YOU MET?Marc Schramm, Black Falcon co-owner

64 I REMEMBER...Taming the Alfa Romeo 33 TT 12

PRODUCTS & SERVICES54 24-hour success55 Hybrid cost cut56 Measurement systems57 Composite expertise58 Wind-tunnel steel belts60 Products and services round-up

www.pmw-magazine.com

Made from pre-preg carbon composite, hulls are too big

for any conventional autoclave but are vacuum bagged and cured over two days at temperature. Design is very much experience-driven and, while manufacturers are quite secretive about their methods, there is no evidence that CFD is being widely used.

The faster boats have stepped hulls – effectively two hull profi les in tandem. It gives two planing points of contact to support the weight and creates a ‘dry’ area downstream of the step. These hulls need to be run fl atter than the non-stepped hulls so the weight must be more evenly distributed.

Opinions are divided on hull treatments but everyone seems

agreed that a good hull can make all the difference. Sharpening the spray rails on the SuperStock boats is common practice in the belief that getting the water to peel off the hull earlier reduces drag, helping the boat cut through the water.

Other views on hull treatment are more contradictory. Some

teams will just wax the hull and drop it straight into the water while others spend serious money having it coated with a Tefl on preparation. Another school of thought favors roughening the surface in the belief that it creates micro bubbles, encouraging the water to roll off the surface.

Hull design

Keeping the racing close is a challenge. The Evolution

and SuperSport classes are balanced on a power-to-weight basis; the weight in kilos must be at least 4.5 times the power in bhp. So for a declared power output (DPO) of 1,000bhp, the boat must weigh 4.5 tonnes. Until recently, all engines were put on a dyno at Cosworth in Northampton, UK, their outputs measured, and a map of their

Equalization

Racing in the UK and Ireland in 2010 and internationally

from 2011, SuperStock is promoter P1’s latest race series. Like GP2, SuperStock is a spec formula and has standard hulls and standard engines, but is split into two classes. The 150 class boats are 21ft long and use 150bhp Honda, four-stroke outboard engines and the 300 class boats are 27ft-long and are powered by 300bhp of Mercury 300XS two-stroke outboard

motor. Control of the boats facilitates control of the costs, and the boats are also tame enough to use as pleasure craft.

As in any controlled series, standard kit doesn’t mean the scrutineers are idle. The two biggest areas to check are the

weight and the propeller profi le. All boats must weigh at least 1,100kg with empty ballast tanks and fuel topped up. So, fuel can be used as ballast to allow you to run under weight, but only to the capacity of the boat’s standard tank. In fact, weight placement is more important than total weight and, although the scrutineered weights are not published, the series confi ded that the fastest boats are often the heaviest.

P1 SuperStock

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The open SuperSport boats discourage the use of race

harnesses on safety grounds. And if one should fl ip, no roll bar is going to protect the occupants from the impact of the water at racing speeds. The favored strategy is to be thrown clear of the accident to be retrieved by the support boats. All crewmen are connected to their boat by cutouts that stop the engines should it become unmanned.

In contrast, the Evolution boats have canopies and so the wearing of race harnesses is compulsory. Not only do they stop you being thrown around inside the cockpit if you capsize, but they also keep your weight off the inverted canopy so the hatches can be operated easily.

Canopied boat crews are also advised to wear different buoyancy aids that will allow them to swim out of the cockpit before being infl ated.

Crews have to wear crash helmets and overalls to give some fi re protection (fl aming boats are not unheard of), and are also encouraged to wear wetsuits to reduce the effects of cold and shock if dumped in the water far from the coast.

Cougar Marine, maker of the P1 SuperStock hulls, is very

proud of the stability of its boats. “You may get thrown out but you won’t fl ip one,” says the company’s John Donnelly. They were developed in collaboration with Honda, but from the start it was a challenge to produce something that could take the punishment. Cougar Marine started with a couple of boats from other manufacturers but they very soon started to break up when driven at racing speeds, delaminating and ripping out the transom. The most recent design was scaled down from a bigger racing boat and converted to an outboard design. Construction is Aramid-reinforced composite. The fi ber has an ability to stretch slightly, enabling it to absorb impact without failing.

Safety

SuperStock boats are driven by one person with a

mandatory navigator. The bigger boats need two people, one to steer and trim the boat, the other on the throttles.

The aim of any powerboat driver is to keep the prop in the water as much as possible and the wetted area to the minimum. Flying through the air off the crests of waves looks impressive, but all the time the prop is in the air, the boat is losing drive.

When it’s not fl ying, contact between the hull and the water produces drag so it needs to be reduced as much as possible. While up on the plane, only the rear-most section of the hull is touching the water so drag is reduced. Trimming the hull with

weight to keep the bow up is vital to achieving this.

Ballast tanks in the bow can be fi lled with water on the move by dropping a scoop, then emptied later by pumping it out again. They may go through this procedure two or three times a lap, adding weight to keep the nose down when going against the waves and losing it for speed when running with them. Just 50kg of water in the bow of a 4.5-tonne boat makes a big difference.

Driving

vital signs created. This was then used as a reference for the same measurements at sea and any discrepancy used to highlight possible infractions.

The latest trick, however, is a torque sensor in the drivetrain. Sourced from Swedish company ABB, which supplies Formula 1 teams, it allows the output of any engine to be monitored in real time. The sensors simply bolt in-between the engine and stern drive, and are distributed to competitors on a random basis. They can also be switched between teams at any time to ensure fairness.

In contrast, the entry-level SuperStock engines are sealed by the organizers at the beginning of the season.

Powerboats offer spectacular offshore racing in several classes. PMW looks at the technology of the boats, and how best to make them go quicklyWORDS BY CHARLES ARMSTRONG-WILSON

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NASCAR Sprint Cup Cars of Today (CoT) recently switched back to running

decklid spoilers, moving away from the separate rear wings that have been a feature of CoTs since their inception. For many fans and observers, it’s a welcome return to the ‘traditional’ stock-car profile, but the move is the result of some careful R&D rather than a reaction to fan criticism.

“Part of the reason that everybody wanted to investigate going back to the spoiler was that when [wing] cars were spun around backward, they were starting to fly,” explains Howard Comstock, Dodge Motorsports’ engineering program manager.

“Back when we had a spoiler configuration and had developed the roof flaps, we had solved the flying problem. But there were particular situations whereby cars [with wings] would fly when they got backwards. That’s unacceptable to everybody, so part of the reason NASCAR started looking at the spoiler again, as an alternative to the wing, was that some people believed they were contributing to making the cars fly.”

Dodge was central to the spoiler R&D program. It offered the use of Chrysler’s full-scale, non-rolling-road, open-jet wind tunnel in Auburn Hills to NASCAR, which brought along a test car. The other competing manufacturers all attended the multi-day test at the facility, a key feature of which is its 360° turntable floor – particularly relevant to the spoiler versus wing, spin-aero investigation.

“I believe that the change back to spoilers will fix a good bit of the spin-aero problem,” he says. “Aesthetically it puts us closer to current production car looks, and technically we were able to make more downforce with a deck spoiler. We ran many, many configurations of height and width,

New in stock


The new generation of NASCAR Nationwide cars finally hit the track at Daytona in July, shortly after spoilers were reintroduced to the Sprint Cup cars. PMW spoke exclusively to Dodge Motorsports about a busy season for its engineering teamWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

Brad Keselowski in the new NASCAR Nationwide Series Dodge Challenger on its debut at Daytona

Aston Martin set out to prove the sporting credentials of its new four-door Rapide by racing it in the Nürburgring 24 hoursWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

Aston Martin raised eyebrows at the 2010 Nürburgring 24h with

a near-standard version of its latest Rapide four-door coupe.

“With Rapide we’re looking to have more comfort, more refinement, but still keep a sports GT car at its heart,” says David King, Aston Martin’s motorsport manager. “To reinforce that message, we wanted to do a 24-hour race. It follows on from the philosophy we’ve had for our other road cars since we started racing at the Nürburgring five years ago, that an almost-standard road car has the ability to do a race like this, which, in all honesty, is not something you could have done with an Aston Martin in the 1980s or 1990s.”

The Nürburgring Rapide’s standard equipment includes the body and drivetrain, with a 470PS, 6-liter V12 engine and conventional six-speed ZF automatic transmission at its core, plus the electrical system, and the metal and rubber suspension parts. Stiffer springs are fitted and the roadgoing Bilstein dampers re-valved, while the 20in road wheels give way to 18in motorsport rims and racing

Rapide prototype

slicks. Other replacements and additions include the usual safety equipment.

A comprehensive weight-loss program includes the removal of the interior trim and the replacement of the side- and rear-screen glass with plastic (also a safety issue), resulting in a near-500kg mass saving over a regular Rapide.

Every Aston Martin road car is subject to a 10,000km durability sign-off at the ’Ring, during which the development driver must keep within a percentage of a target lap time set by a pro driver. That gave the company faith in almost all of the Rapide’s standard components (it completed 3,396km (2,110 miles) during the race), but experience dictated that the engine- and transmission mounts be changed to race-spec items.

“When you put slicks on and go racing, and in particular when you pound around the Karussell, where you get a lot of vertical load on the mounts, then you’re going somewhat beyond the envelope of the road car,” says King.

“In 2006 we had a completely trouble-free run with an almost completely


Take it easyNot all the four-door machines on the eclectic Nürburgring

24h grid are as rapid as the Rapide. In this year’s race, for example, two stately V8- and W12-powered Audi luxury sedans cruised around near the back of the field.

“It’s very relaxing,” says driver Keith Ahlers. “It’s got power steering, an automatic gearbox, and a brake servo. A comfortable way to go motor racing!”

ASTON MARTIN NÜRBURGRING RAPIDE

WEIGHT: 1,490kg

BRAKES: Brembo racing calipers (six-pot front, four-pot rear) with racing cast-iron discs (380mm front, 332mm rear) and aluminum disc bells. Pagid brake pads (two sets)

WHEELS: Speedline lightweight racing alloys, 11J x 18

TIRES: Eleven sets of Yokohama 280-650-18 (F), 300-650-18 (R). BERU f1systems DigiTyre TPMS

INSTRUMENTATION: Cosworth data acquisition/monitoring and display

MAXIMUM SPEED DURING RACE:167.5mph (269km/h)

Tech spec

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standard V8 Vantage. In 2007 we put some quicker drivers in it, who gave it a harder time, and that’s when we found some issues with the engine mounts. We made some modifications to the production mounts as a result of that, so they probably would have been OK on the Rapide, but the risk wasn’t worth taking.”

Even in the absence of a major failure this time around, the four-door Aston’s faultless run to 34th overall, second in class SP8, still provided some useful feedback.

“The race car ran a slightly different aerodynamic package to the road car,” says King. “We’d not run this anywhere before, but it proved successful. The original N24 Vantage had a similarly revised aero package, some aspects of which we’re now seeing on the production car, so while nothing is certain, we could see something similar with Rapide in the future.

“And on the component side, we’ve seen an ability to withstand levels of heat and g-force over a lengthy period that surpasses that encountered in normal testing – without any issues.” <

Rapide on the Karussell. The car’s fuel consumption for the race averaged 14 liters per lap, necessitating 19 pit stops


Making the fastest solar-powered racing car in the world was the ultimate

engineering goal when the Delft University of Technology’s solar car project was started in 1999. What better way to show the enormous potential of solar energy than by developing and constructing a hyper-efficient racing machine?

The Delft University solar car project is entirely student-run. Every two years, a new team halts its studies for up to 18 months to join the Nuon Solar Team. Students come from different faculties, such as mechanical engineering, industrial design, electrical engineering and aerospace engineering. Due to a university grant, they can focus on this project on a full-time basis. Together they work to reach the ultimate goal – competing in the World Solar Challenge (WSC) in Australia. This unofficial world championship race is held every two years between Darwin and Adelaide, a route through the Australian outback. The race is often considered to be the Dakar Rally of solar racing, since many engineering teams will never make it to the finish line.

The Australian outback provides the ideal scenery for the competition: there’s 3,000km of empty roads, a burning sun, and a completely desolate desert, leaving no doubt that the team has only one power source available to rely on and tap into – solar energy.

Since 2001, the Dutch Nuon Solar Team has been competing in the WSC, finishing first in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007, and second in 2009, all with cars named ‘Nuna’.

Every two years, a new team goes back to the drawing board to give the previous solar car design a complete overhaul. One year after the start of the design of a new car, the production of the car is finished.

Much progress has been made in the past decade. The design has evolved from the first Nuna, a 250kg solar car that was fitted with 8m2 of solar panel, into Nuna5, a lean, 160kg solar car that is equipped with only 6m2 of solar panel, while average velocities have remained the same.

Besides a very aerodynamic shape, having an ultra-efficient engine is very important. For optimal efficiency, a direct drive electric motor is used, which also makes regenerative braking possible.

The motor has to operate at moderately low power outputs. At 100km/h (62mph), the motor has to produce a nominal power output in

Light speedHow a team of students at Delft University of Technology set about trying to create the fastest solar-powered racing car in the worldWORDS BY JESPER WENTINK


How did you fi rst become interested in motorsport?I used to work as a management consultant on SAP IT projects. In 2003 I saw a race at the Nürburgring, got interested and did some trackdays and races myself. That’s how I got to know Alex Böhm and we founded Team Black Falcon together in 2006.

How has Black Falcon grown since then? It’s not a little team anymore. We now have almost 20 employees and big new premises (2,700m2) on the way in Meuspath, which will be fi nished this coming winter and will be the nicest in the area. Four years ago we said we wanted to be among the top teams based at the ’Ring within fi ve years, both in national and international races. We’re now in our fi fth year and I think we’re already among the top teams here, certainly from the VLN side.

Where do you see the team in fi ve years’ time?It’s a matter of budget. We know how to win races, but the hardest thing is to get the right balance between performance and fi nancial risk. Some of the other Audi teams at the Nürburgring 24h have maybe four times the budget for the weekend that we do. As a private team it’s diffi cult to get the right package of some good pay-drivers and good young guys. We’d like to add a second top R8 with drivers of our choosing, plus the gentlemen-driver car, and we might look at doing the ADAC GT Masters in the future.

Are pay-drivers still your major source of revenue?Alongside the racing we do some road car maintenance and clubsport track preparation work. We also have good sponsors, such as Yokohama, Bilstein, Castrol, and many other technical partners. But in the future we’ll defi nitely need more sponsorship – the budget has to be bigger if we’re to get right to the top. In FIA GT3 we were the second Audi out of eight at Silverstone in May, which was good for us, but it could be even better.

How do you see VLN and the Nürburgring 24h changing in the next fi ve years?VLN is an amateur series with professional input, but you can already see the growing professional infl uence in it – the marketing is getting better, the TV coverage is good, so it’s good value for the drivers. The 24h in particular is getting more and more professional. This year, with a professional driver in our second R8, we qualifi ed 22nd.In the VLN we’re usually fi fth or sixth but in the 24h, even our top car was only 17th, which shows you how the level’s gone up, and it will increase even further in the next few years.

What could race organizers do to make your life easier?At the 24h this year there were seven cars in our pit garage. Even with the usual six in there, it’s full; we had to work on two cars back in the paddock. Some of the other really good local teams like Farnbacher [who fi nished second overall] were in a pit of seven too, but some of the factory cars were only fi ve to a garage. Overall the organizers do a very good job here and we have a very good relationship with them. But the seven-car thing is a mess, it’s upsetting.

What would you do if you didn’t work in motorsport?I’d travel around with my wife and baby daughter. I don’t get enough time to see them. <

Marc SchrammAge: 39

Occupation: Co-owner/manager, Team Black Falcon

Interests: Golf and skiing

INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM HEEPS

“WE KNOW HOW TO WIN RACES, BUT THE HARDEST THING IS TO GET THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND FINANCIAL RISK”

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Marc SchrammTeam co-owner, Black Falcon

Interviewed

JULY 2010

PMW goes under the skin

of offshore powerboats

SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS: The inside stories

of the Porsche GT3 R fl ywheel hybrid and the

Delft University solar racer

Dodge NASCAR exclusive:

Sprint Cup aero mods and

the Nationwide Challenger

Effi ciency drive

Matt JoyAs a former features editor of Total Vauxhallmagazine, Matt was in his element researching the TOCA 2-liter turbo that recently took its fi rst BTCC victory... in a Vauxhall Vectra! (p8)

Arturo MerzarioArturo’s long racing career included Targa Florio victories and F1 team ownership. One highlight was his 1975 world championship with Alfa Romeo, as he recounts on page 64

Jesper WentinkMotorsport doesn’t come much greener than the annual World Solar Challenge in Australia. Jesper works on aerodynamics and CAD for the University of Delft team (p26)

A note from the editorSince our last issue was published I’ve been to three major motorsport events: the catchily titled Crown Royal presents the Heath Calhoun 400 NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway (RIR); the Nürburgring 24-hours; and the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The above-mentioned events are all phenomenally well-attended. RIR, for example, has reduced its capacity compared to 2009, but most of the remaining 98,000 seats were still fi lled for the Saturday-night Cup race. Goodwood meanwhile, was a four-day, 176,000-spectator sell-out.

That’s no coincidence. All three offer great value for the fans, with plenty else to do besides watching cars go round a track (or in the case of Goodwood, up a hill). The huge Fan Fest at RIR kept my young family entertained for hours before the big race got under way. Politically controversial it may be, but the Nürburgring’s new Ring-Werk museum and Ring-Boulevard midway give racegoers a reason to temporarily break up the 24-hour beer party. You could even buy tickets to a Top Gear stunt show running at the Ring-Arena – an affordable option, given the modest entry price to the race itself ( 52 for the weekend).

The open paddock at the Nürburgring provides fantastic access to some great cars and drivers, which is also a feature of the Festival of Speed. This year’s Moving Motor Show on the Thursday even gave Goodwood visitors the chance to drive some of the latest road cars up the hillclimb course, before the more exotic race and rally cars took over the following day.

The point is that in continually challenging times, motorsport should be working harder than ever to put on a show for the consumer, by which I don’t just mean the hardcore race fan. That starts with a great product on the track, but there have to be other reasons for people to choose to give up their free time and money to be at a racetrack rather than, say, a soccer match. ISC-owned tracks like RIR are well aware that their main competitors include football, baseball, ice hockey or basketball games.

On this side of the pond, the Nürburgring and Goodwood are exceptions. Ensuring that the casual spectator leaves a motorsport event feeling like they’ve had value for money is something that, in my view, we Europeans have not traditionally been very good at. Perhaps the pay-drive culture of the single-seater ladder formulae means there’s less of an onus to get bums on seats. But bigger crowds mean greater exposure for sponsors, so surely it’s in everyone’s interest to get more people through the gates?

All I know is that, however interested I might be in a bunch of identical single-seaters droning around a windswept racetrack in front of a few thousand people, I’m going to struggle to sell the concept to the rest of my family. So let’s hear it for fi ghter jets, bouncy castles, and lots of free stuff!

Graham Heeps

Charles Armstrong-WilsonOffshore powerboating has some technology in common with track racing, plus the pictures are spectacular! Charles dons his lifejacket to get the story (p52)

Mike BreslinMike takes a look at the Le Mans Series in Series focus to fi nd out whether it hasappeal as a standalone product, or whether it’s really all about getting to La Sarthe... (p6)

CONTRIBUTORSEDITORIAL Editor Graham Heeps

Sub editors Alex Bradley, William Baker, Helen Norman

Proofreaders Aubrey Jacobs-Tyson, Frank Millard

Contributors this issueCharles Armstrong-Wilson,

Mike Breslin, Matt Joy, Mike Magda, David Tremayne, James Waller, Jesper Wentink

ADVERTISING

Sales and marketing directorColin Scott

Publication managersAndrew Holland, Val Lesishin

PRODUCTIONArt director James Sutcliffe

Design teamLouise Adams, Andy Bass, Anna Davie,

Craig Marshall, Nicola Turner, Julie Welby, Ben White

Production managerIan Donovan

Production teamCarole Doran, Lewis Hopkins,

Cassie Inns, Emma Uwins

CIRCULATIONcontact Adam [email protected]

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Professional MotorsportWorld magazine

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John Force

Team owner/driver, John Force Racing

Keith Saunt

Chief operating offi cer, Lotus Racing

Marc Schramm

Team co-owner, Black Falcon

Interviewed

JULY 2010









Effi ciency drive

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I didn’t meet anyone in Montreal who did not express heartfelt relief that Formula 1 was back in North America. Hell, there

wasn’t even a single complaint about the intersection between the road into the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the fl ow of pedestrians heading across the bridge from the rail link. It seems that that infuriating bit of ergonomic disaster disappeared along with former organizer Norman ‘The Goat’ Legault.

You only had to go to downtown Montreal – St Catherine Street or Crescent Street – to see just how alive the place was with F1 fever. Fans and city entrepreneurs alike welcomed it back with open arms.

The Canadian Grand Prix is a prime example of how an F1 race can be integrated into a big city to mutual benefi t, and full marks to the burghers of Montreal and Bernie Ecclestone for getting back round the table and sorting out past differences. A World Championship needs North America. Full stop.

The other excellent news is that there will be a race in the USA, too, from 2012.

Personally, I’d love to see F1 go back to Watkins Glen. Or to Laguna Seca. It makes me smile when I think how we were told that we could never go there


First Montreal, now Austin. Formula 1 coming back to North America has to be a good thing

“THERE WAS SURPRISE WHEN THE DEAL FOR A RACE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS WAS ANNOUNCED JUST BEFORE THE TURKISH GP, BUT THE MORE YOU LOOK INTO IT, THE MORE SENSE IT MAKES”

The demographics are good, with a lot of students in the universities, and a vibrant music scene. It is also a technological hub, with companies such as IBM, Apple, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Freescale Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Cisco Systems, Intel, and Samsung all having major presences. It is, in the vernacular, a ‘happening’ place. And, unusually, it doesn’t have any affi liation with other major professional sports, such as baseball, hockey, football or basketball. Formula 1 would help to create a distinctive identity.

It’s a sizeable city with a population of 1.6 million, but there are said to be some 22 million people within driving distance, notably in Dallas-Fort Worth (6.3 million), Houston (5.7 million) and San Antonio (2 million). Turning them into Formula 1 fans won’t be the work of a moment, but much of that will depend upon how well the race is marketed, and whether Hermann Tilke can design a circuit on which overtaking is possible. I’m tempted to suggest that he takes a look at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, rather than copying his notes from Valencia. In Turkey there was a suggestion that Istanbul Park should just be shipped Stateside.

I’m also disposed, for purely emotional reasons, to like Tavo Hellmund, the prime mover behind the project, because his father Gustavo was instrumental in bringing the Mexican GP back to life in the late 1980s and then regenerated the circuit in Mexico City named in honor of Ricardo and Pedro Rodriguez (my fi rst motor racing hero).

Hellmund and his wife Arun have a good track record of attracting and promoting motorsport events, including the NASCAR Grand National Division (West Series) and USAC National Midget Series. They are also well acquainted with Bernie, so they understand one another’s ways.

The Hellmunds are fi nancing construction of the new facility – and they have their work cut out to get it done within two years – but the state government is getting behind the venture big time in order to help pay the not inconsiderable bills in a 10-year deal. Austin has plenty of hotel accommodation but needs more if it is to hit the jackpot and attract major conventions. Putting it on the world map would certainly help with that, which means that a key player has a very strong motive for providing the essential back-up. There was surprise when the deal was announced just before the Turkish GP, but the more you look into it, the more sense it makes. <

because there were insuffi cient hotels, when there are plans for us all to stay on ships in a harbor in Korea later this year…

I didn’t have any beef with Indianapolis, either. I’m not sure I’d want to live there, though I have friends who do, but downtown Indianapolis is a cool enough place. And you never step within the boundaries of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway without appreciating that you are somewhere special.

On the face of it, Austin, Texas seems an incongruous place for Mr E to take us as F1’s next attempt to break into the USA. Dallas and Las Vegas didn’t make it, any more than did Phoenix, though Detroit established itself for a fair time, as did Long Beach. But I hear very good things about Austin.

24-hour shadow

Ironically, the one race that keeps cropping up in any conversation about

the LMS is not even in the championship. So is the LMS just a ticket to Le Mans, or is it important in its own right? “I think it’s just as important really,” says Zytek’s MD, Trevor Foster. “Customers can’t buy a car and run it just for one event, and they use their LMS racing to develop their skills, hopefully to stand them in good stead for the 24 Hours.” Mark Busfield, MD at GT2 team CRS Racing – which was unable to get an entry for Le Mans this year – agrees. “The LMS is one of the most competitive and highly contested sportscar series.” But, he adds, the big race is still a major draw. “You’re opening up the opportunity to get a Le Mans entry … [If] you do a good job you’ve a better chance when it comes to the selection committee.”

Costs

With four classes, and the inclusion of the 24 Hours at the kernel of many

budgets, costs differ hugely. LMP1 Aston Martin-running team Signature Plus spends, “around 3 million, with the car,” says team manager Philippe Sinault. Rupert Manwaring, of LMP2 squad, RML, says, “Doing the season including Le Mans, I would think the range of budgets for LMP2 is between 1-2 million.” GTs are just a little cheaper, one GT2 outfit telling PMWthat a season would cost about 800,000. The entry fee for a single race is 12,000, while 46,000 covers an entry for the entire season, and Sinault reckons the main operating costs are spare parts and personnel. As for the price of cars, Zytek sells prototype chassis for 475,000, Signature’s Aston cost a cool 1 million, and a race-ready GT2 is about 400,000.

TV coverage

In a television world of instant thrills endurance racing will always struggle

to sell itself and although the LMS seems to have a reasonable package (it’s on Eurosport, sometimes live, and highlights packages air across the globe), this is certainly an area in which it could improve. “Important amounts are put into the production of TV images as we would like to attract more channels. It is certain that the Intercontinental [Cup] will allow us to considerably increase our audience,” says LMS general manager, Patrick Peter. Which might help coax more major OEMs back into the fold. “Television is a key factor,” says Audi Motorsport’s Dr Wolfgang Ullrich. “If there is a chance to get more and better distributed coverage, then I think this championship will also grow, because it helps with sponsorship and popularity.”


Endurance car diversity in the LMS field at Paul Ricard in April, including LMPs from Peugeot, Audi, Lola Aston-Martin, ORECA, Ginetta-Zytek, HPD, and Pescarolo; and GTs from Aston, Porsche, and Ferrari

Think Le Mans, think endurance racing. Little wonder then that the European championship that caters

for this discipline also has ‘Le Mans’ in its title. But it would be wrong to think of the LMS as just a spin-off of the 24 Hours, because it’s also a very healthy championship in its own right.

That said, Le Mans 24 Hours organizer, the ACO (Automobile Club de l’Ouest) is a major shareholder in the LMS organization and LMS runs to ACO regulations. Competing teams are looked upon favorably when it comes to dishing out entries for the over-subscribed 24 Hours.

The LMS came into being in 2004 and this year it is competing over five six-hour races

contested by up to 50 cars – that’s 20 up on the first year – split into four classes: LMP1 and LMP2 prototypes, plus GT1 and GT2.

Although grids are healthy, the prestige of the series has taken a knock in recent years thanks to the decision of the major manufacturers involved in sportscar racing to pick and choose which races they compete in. For example, this year Audi originally planned to simply race in the Intercontinental Cup – a series comprising the top races from LMS, ALMS and the Asian LMS. Both it and Peugeot are likely to do the same in an expanded Cup in 2011, although this will include two rounds from the LMS. <

It may be named after the most famous French city in motor racing, but the Le Mans Series (LMS) is much more than just a shortcut to the annual 24-hour spectacularWORDS BY MIKE BRESLIN

Le Mans SeriesThe last word

“It’s a very well organized and very well promoted series. I think that five races is just the right number, certainly when it comes to the gentlemen drivers, as they tend to combine the racing with their business, and there’s a solid following from gentlemen/businessmen. There is also obviously a very strong passion for sportscars as a really good alternative to single-seaters or Touring Cars. It’s also very good racing.”

Rupert Manwaringsponsorship and marketing director, RML

“Until the beginning of the 1970s endurance racing was very successful and drew big crowds. After a period during which Formula 1 crushed all other motorsports, endurance racing returned with increasing success each year. The prototypes are impressive and interesting from a technological point of view. GTs have always been dream cars, and the grid is varied. All these elements contribute to the return to success.”

Patrick Petergeneral manager, LMS

“For us it is an important series, because it is a good platform for us to learn our job in endurance, and it is a good platform to run in Europe with this car – it is the only platform to run in Europe with this car, and with a reasonable cost. Le Mans is one of the aspects, for sure. I have to be honest: without Le Mans the LMS would be of less interest to us. It is useful for us to prepare a car for Le Mans.”

Philippe Sinaultteam manager, Signature Plus

“This year these races fitted very well with our preparation schedule, because testing is one thing, but racing is quite another, and at the end to get more and more race experience is always very good for a team. Therefore, for us it was very helpful that we could have two races before the 24 Hours, and we used the first LMS race in Paul Ricard with one car, and then the complete squad – the Le Mans squad – with all three cars and all the personnel at the Spa race, to prepare ourselves for the 24 Hours.”

Dr Wolfgang Ullrichhead of Audi Motorsport

Sponsorship

Patrick Peter from the LMS says: “Endurance racing carries values which

are fundamental to today’s society: team spirit and a long-term effort. These values can be important in the choice made by sponsors who require visibility but also a unique conviviality for their public relation operations.” Which is all very good, but talk to the men at the sponsor-hunting coal face and its clear that the real selling point is Le Mans. “I attract sponsors with Le Mans, not with the Le Mans Series”, says Signature’s Philippe Sinault, and RML sponsorship and marketing director Rupert Manwaring says, “I think it’s probably 60% you’re selling the presence of the 24 Hours and 40% the rest of the season.” Of course, a lack of sponsorship doesn’t necessarily mean no racing, thanks to the ‘gentlemen’ racers, or pay-drivers, who compete largely in the GT and LMP2 classes.

Regulations 2011

Changes in the regulations for next year partly seek to further differentiate

between the two prototype classes. Peter explains, “LMP1 is mainly for manufacturers and the costs can be quite important if they use new technologies, as will be the case next year [with the introduction of KERS/hybrid]. The ACO has decided to reduce the costs in LMP2 so that these cars remain accessible to gentlemen drivers. The aim is to put the cost of an LMP2 chassis at just over 300,000.” Meanwhile, GT1 is to be dropped and replaced with a single GT class (using GT2s but split into two subclasses based on driver ability and age of car, with pro drivers using new cars in the top class). This is no surprise, as GT1 has suffered recently, partly because of the new FIA GT1 series, although Peter downplays its impact: “GT1 and LMS are totally different and do not get in each other’s way.”


British Touring Car regulations are once again going through

a period of substantial change, with the emphasis on close competition and a reduction in costs. At the heart of series organizer, TOCA’s Next Generation Touring Car program (NGTC) is a new engine, developed and built by Swindon Racing Engines. Use of this engine is not mandatory, but it has been devised to be used by those teams who don’t wish to develop their own engine to the new regulations.

Raphaël Caillé is managing director of Swindon Racing Engines, and oversaw the development of the NGTC unit. After a tender process and a successful bid by SRE which

A new set of regulations in British Touring Cars includes a return to turbochargers, with Swindon Racing Engines the brains behind a TOCA-branded power unitWORDS BY MATT JOY

Touring turbo


SRE/TOCA NGTC

CONFIGURATION: I4

DISPLACEMENT: 1,998cc

BORE/STROKE: 86mm x 86mm

VALVETRAIN: DOHC, chain driven

FUELING: Bosch direct-injection

INDUCTION: KKK hybrid twin-scroll turbocharger

ECU: Cosworth Pectel with TOCA-specified calibration

INSTALLATION: longitudinal or transverse, 10° tilt toward exhaust side

Tech spec

met the key criteria – adjustability in terms of performance, parity with existing S2000-specification designs, universal installation for different car designs, and support for teams on test days and throughout the season – development began in November 2009.

The unit is based on a four-cylinder road car engine, designed and developed by Lotus Engineering, that has a proven record both on road and track. The unit was chosen as the basis, due to its performance potential and aspects of its design, chiefly the all-aluminum structure and direct injection, still something of a novelty in production engines.

“We took an engine where we knew the block and the cylinder heads were strong enough to do the job, and I wanted a direct-injection engine because that is not the future, it is the present” explains Caillé.

With a number of turbocharged road-car engines already comfortably exceeding the 200bhp mark, the initial target of about 300bhp for the TOCA engine was comfortably modest, enabling a number of key components to remain largely standard. The engine block is untouched, and the chain-driven valvetrain retains its variable valve timing on the inlet and exhaust valves, for increased efficiency and performance.

Right: The TOCA engine installed in Eurotech Racing’s BTCC VectraBelow and bottom right: SRE CAD images of the NGTC motor

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Minor improvements were made to the cylinder head for performance but mainly for reliability. The direct-injection system is also carried over from the production engine, but controlled by the Pectel ECU for the demands of the series.

“Where our know-how comes in the most is actually putting it together and making it all work within the environment” Caillé says. “It is turbocharged, it has direct-injection, it runs on track with slick tires and very high lateral acceleration, so it is about how to handle the oil, how to make the engine management work – that is where the challenge of such a project lies.”

The standard forged-steel crankshaft is sufficiently strong to cope with the TOCA-specified 7,000rpm rev limit, although the pistons and con-rods are SRE-specified items. The turbocharger is based on the existing unit, but with a mixture of higher-specification components off the shelf and additional SRE-designed elements to ensure reliability.

At the exhaust end, reducing back pressure was the main goal, but the precise design of manifold seen on naturally aspirated engines was not required here, with the turbocharger doing most of the hard work. The cooling system was deemed to be largely sufficient to cope with the demands of racing, but the oil system required an overhaul before it could handle the high loads and avoid starvation, including a baffled sump.

With the major components in place the long process of dyno testing and software


development began, although the pressure of time was never far away. Without the luxury of a long development program, 80% of the work was done on the bench, with units appearing in customer cars just days before the start of the season.

“We had to sign it off very quickly, because if you start testing mid-February and your first race is the beginning of April, you have basically six weeks,” explains Caillé.

“And to build an engine from A-Z takes eight weeks. But even in our first race, one of our customers, Andrew Jordan, was P4 on the grid.”

SRE offers a full support package for the TOCA engine with a number of options for teams. An outright purchase of the TOCA engine is £9,900, with the essential support package a

further £15,900 per car per season, including technical support at races and tests with access to spares. A typical rebuild is £5,900, with an expectation of just one rebuild per season (at 5,000km). A lease option is also available at £23,900 per car per season, with support and a warranty for 10 BTCC race meetings and up to four test days.

Teams remain free to develop their own engines, but this ‘TOCA’ engine is designed to offer a cost-effective and competitive option for those that don’t. And with performance increases already pencilled in for the 2013 season, the engine will not only help cut costs, but should also increase the spectacle that the BTCC offers in the coming years. <

“THE STANDARD FORGED-STEEL CRANKSHAFT IS SUFFICIENTLY STRONG TO COPE WITH THE TOCA-SPECIFIED 7,000RPM REV LIMIT”

With such a great emphasis on lower emissions in production

cars, it comes as no surprise to find similar efforts being made in the world of motorsport. Since 2009 TOCA has been measuring the exhaust emissions of its race cars, with the overall aim to bring C02levels to a comparable level with the equivalent road car.

It’s no coincidence then that the TOCA engine brings direct-injection to BTCC racing, and with it the promise of a more efficient burn in the cylinder, not only preventing wasted unburnt fuel but also giving more precise control over the amount of fuel and injection timings for maximum performance.

This works hand-in-hand with turbocharging returning to BTCC for the first time since 1990, although the thinking behind it for today’s racing is quite different to its application on the Ford Sierra RS500 that was champion that year. Car manufacturers are increasingly

turning to turbocharging to increase efficiency, and smaller, lighter, ‘downsized’ turbocharged engines are replacing the larger-capacity naturally aspirated engines of old. The new TOCA engine produces almost identical power to the S2000 naturally aspirated unit, and therefore does so in a much milder state of tune. Even with the planned increase in performance in 2013, the TOCA turbo powerplant will maintain the progress that has been made in making BTCC motors more efficient.

Clean living

“TOCA HAS MEASURED THE EXHAUST EMISSIONS OF ITS RACE CARS SINCE ‘09”

Below: Andrew Jordan took the first race win for the new engine at Croft on June 20

In April 2009, Opel began the second season of its

race-driver search program. Through a series of tests over a 12-month period, filmed for a TV series called OPC Race Camp on the German channel Sport1, the original 22,000 applicants from the general public were whittled down to eight drivers. Schooled by former winners Manuel Reuter and Joachim Winkelhock, these eight then competed as two crews of four in May 2010’s Nürburgring 24h.

OPC (Opel Performance Center), the high-performance division of GM’s German brand, already had a race version of the Astra hatchback available from the first season of Race Camp, but resolved to

Opel’s performance division worked with Kissling Motorsport to develop Astra endurance racing cars for its OPC Race Camp-selected rookie driversWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

Small screen star


OPEL ASTRA OPC

DIMENSIONS: 4,200mm (L) x 1,840mm (W) x 1,310mm (H). Wheelbase 2,650mm. Unladen weight approximately 1,130kg

ENGINE: Based on the Insignia’s 1,998cc, Ecotec I4. Bore/stroke 86.0 x 86.0mm, intercooled turbocharger with external wastegate. Performance over 320PS @ 5,200rpm, max torque 420Nm @ 3,800rpm (road version 220PS/350Nm)

TRANSMISSION: Xtrac sequential, six-speed gearbox with pneumatic paddleshift and ignition interruption

BODY: Lightweight aero package, adjustable rear wing, diffuser, welded-in steel-tube roll cage, Recaro racing seats, 100-liter safety fuel tank, pneumatic jacking system

CHASSIS: Aluminum suspension components, motorsport ARB, Eibach springs, four-way adjustable KW Suspension dampers

WHEELS/TIRES: ATS 9.5J x 18 (20.0mm offset), Dunlop 245-650 R18 tires

BRAKES: Brembo. Ventilated, 378mm discs with six-pot calipers (F); two-pot calipers with 264mm discs (R). Adjustable front/rear brake balance, 12-program racing ABS/traction control system. Pads 4mm thicker for 24h race than under standard conditions.

Tech spec

build a new, improved version for 2010. Led by Volker Strycek – himself a highly experienced racer and former winner of the 24h – OPC teamed up with Kissling Motorsport to develop and build the two new Astras to a clean-sheet design.

“I’ve known Kissling for 30 years,” Strycek explains. “They’ve run a lot of Opels and have a knowledge of the Nürburgring that really nobody else has. Their knowledge and our ideas allowed us to bring everything together in only five months: we only started building the car in December, but were running on the track at the end of January.”

The Astras were built to the regulations of class SP3T, for turbocharged vehicles of up to two liters’ displacement.

A feature of the design is the use of road-car parts for key features of the chassis. These were sourced not from the Astra OPC, but from its bigger brother, the Insignia OPC.

OPC puts all its cars through a 10,000km durability run at race pace on the Nordschleife, so the engineers developing the Astra could be sure that the production-sourced components would be up to the job. Wheel bearings and hubs were thus adopted from the hot Insignia, which at almost two tons, puts higher loads on its chassis parts than the 1,130kg race Astra, as was the HiPerStrut front suspension.

The HiPerStrut design provides an independent kingpin axis to reduce torque steer compared with a

Right: The #142 Astra OPC on its way to second in

class, 19th overallBottom: Kissling, Spiess and Opel

developed the 2-liter turbo engine

conventional MacPherson front suspension. “It has the advantage of less camber change during bump and rebound, and therefore less stress on the tire,” notes Strycek. “You put much less force into the steering system, and you have more grip.”

HiPerStrut’s application on the Astra race car is consistent with the team’s twin goals of improving driveability – especially important in a 24-hour race with rookie drivers at the wheel – and reliability. With the latter target in mind, an extra 20mm of suspension travel in extension was added compared with last year’s Astra. “The car is completely in the air six times during a lap,” he says. “Most of the jumps occur under high-speed conditions, so when it comes down the load on the drivetrain is unbelievably high. We were determined to have the wheels back on the ground as soon as possible, so extended the wheel travel.”

For the rear suspension, Opel had no suitable independent setup available off-the-shelf, so a brand-new design was put together. Here too, durability was the watchword, and the setup features wheel hubs and bearings from the standard Insignia OPC. “Our focus was to have a high-reliability car,” Strycek stresses. “If we only needed a 6mm bolt, then we ran a 10mm one. The suspension parts are thicker than normal racing parts, too, because for sure you’ll have contact with other cars and we couldn’t have a situation where the car broke immediately. It means we run a little heavier, but we’re on the safe side.”

The Astra’s aerodynamic development focused on good front/rear aero balance to promote even tire wear, while ensuring stability on the rear axle at high speed. The fi nal bodyshape was honed through a combination of CFD and four sessions in the FKFS wind tunnel in Stuttgart.

Following an initial shakedown in February on


Ray of sunshineThe OPC Race Camp Astras were joined in the Nürburgring 24h by a privately entered Opel Manta. 2009 was supposedly the last year of competition for this particular 1980s throwback, which has now clocked up more than 100,000km of racing, but a fans’ petition persuaded the race organizers to delay its demotion to the Nürburgring Classic for at least one more year.

Mantas have a cult following in Germany and there are dozens of derogatory jokes about their supposedly slow-witted drivers. But Opel remains proud of what it stands for: “If a 25-year-old car can still mix it in the front half of the fi eld, then that says something about the strength, reliability, and performance of the car, and the brand,” reasons Thomas Benkner, group product manager for OPC. “Jokes aside, Manta was an extremely successful car for us, an icon of its time. It’s part of our history and we can be proud of it; we don’t have to hide it away.”

Sadly there was no fairytale ending for the Manta in the 2010 race. Volker Strycek, who describes it as “a real man’s car”, was at the wheel an hour into the race, when a rear suspension failure pitched him into the barrier at high speed. He was uninjured, but the Manta was too badly damaged to continue. The lobbying has already started for another exemption in 2011.

“On my qualifi cation lap this year I overtook three Porsches,” Strycek laughs. “The problem only was that the marshalls were showing me the blue fl ag, not them!”

“MOST OF THE JUMPS OCCUR UNDER HIGH-SPEED CONDITIONS, SO WHEN IT COMES DOWN THE LOAD ON THE DRIVETRAIN IS UNBELIEVABLY HIGH”Opel’s test track in Pferdsfeld, Germany, the team spent three days at Zandvoort in Holland, with Strycek and Stefan Kissling completing the development driving in between snow showers. The Race Camp drivers then got their fi rst taste of the cars during a week-long test at Monteblanco in Spain.

Those three sessions added up to more than 5,000km of test mileage, but it was only when the squad arrived at the Nürburgring for some preparatory VLN outings in March that problems arose. “We’d done long runs, race distances, and so on and nothing had gone wrong,” says Strycek. “But when we got to the Nordschleife, within a day, lots of things had broken. For example we’d had no gearbox problems whatsoever – it’s designed to take more than 650Nm – but suddenly we had a broken shaft, then another. So we changed the diameter of some of the internal parts and it’s been fi ne since. That’s the Nordschleife for you.”

At the 24-hour race in May, the hard work paid off for both the Astra’s development team and the Race Camp driver coaches. The two OPC

machines ran faultlessly, while the rookie racers stayed out of trouble to come home an impressive 19th and 22nd overall – second and third in class. <

Above: Race Camp graduate, Sebastian Amossé in-carRight: HiPerStrut front suspension from the Insignia OPC

Aston Martin set out to prove the sporting credentials of its new four-door Rapide by racing it in the Nürburgring 24 hoursWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

Aston Martin raised eyebrows at the 2010 Nürburgring 24h with

a near-standard version of its latest Rapide four-door coupe.

“With Rapide we’re looking to have more comfort, more refinement, but still keep a sports GT car at its heart,” says David King, Aston Martin’s motorsport manager. “To reinforce that message, we wanted to do a 24-hour race. It follows on from the philosophy we’ve had for our other road cars since we started racing at the Nürburgring five years ago, that an almost-standard road car has the ability to do a race like this, which, in all honesty, is not something you could have done with an Aston Martin in the 1980s or 1990s.”

The Nürburgring Rapide’s standard equipment includes the body and drivetrain, with a 470PS, 6-liter V12 engine and conventional six-speed ZF automatic transmission at its core, plus the electrical system, and the metal and rubber suspension parts. Stiffer springs are fitted and the roadgoing Bilstein dampers re-valved, while the 20in road wheels give way to 18in motorsport rims and racing

Rapide prototype

slicks. Other replacements and additions include the usual safety equipment.

A comprehensive weight-loss program includes the removal of the interior trim and the replacement of the side- and rear-screen glass with plastic (also a safety issue), resulting in a near-500kg mass saving over a regular Rapide.

Every Aston Martin road car is subject to a 10,000km durability sign-off at the ’Ring, during which the development driver must keep within a percentage of a target lap time set by a pro driver. That gave the company faith in almost all of the Rapide’s standard components (it completed 3,396km (2,110 miles) during the race), but experience dictated that the engine- and transmission mounts be changed to race-spec items.

“When you put slicks on and go racing, and in particular when you pound around the Karussell, where you get a lot of vertical load on the mounts, then you’re going somewhat beyond the envelope of the road car,” says King.

“In 2006 we had a completely trouble-free run with an almost completely


Take it easyNot all the four-door machines on the eclectic Nürburgring

24h grid are as rapid as the Rapide. In this year’s race, for example, two stately V8- and W12-powered Audi luxury sedans cruised around near the back of the field.

“It’s very relaxing,” says driver Keith Ahlers. “It’s got power steering, an automatic gearbox, and a brake servo. A comfortable way to go motor racing!”

ASTON MARTIN NÜRBURGRING RAPIDE

WEIGHT: 1,490kg

BRAKES: Brembo racing calipers (six-pot front, four-pot rear) with racing cast-iron discs (380mm front, 332mm rear) and aluminum disc bells. Pagid brake pads (two sets)

WHEELS: Speedline lightweight racing alloys, 11J x 18

TIRES: Eleven sets of Yokohama 280-650-18 (F), 300-650-18 (R). BERU f1systems DigiTyre TPMS

INSTRUMENTATION: Cosworth data acquisition/monitoring and display

MAXIMUM SPEED DURING RACE:167.5mph (269km/h)

Tech spec

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standard V8 Vantage. In 2007 we put some quicker drivers in it, who gave it a harder time, and that’s when we found some issues with the engine mounts. We made some modifications to the production mounts as a result of that, so they probably would have been OK on the Rapide, but the risk wasn’t worth taking.”

Even in the absence of a major failure this time around, the four-door Aston’s faultless run to 34th overall, second in class SP8, still provided some useful feedback.

“The race car ran a slightly different aerodynamic package to the road car,” says King. “We’d not run this anywhere before, but it proved successful. The original N24 Vantage had a similarly revised aero package, some aspects of which we’re now seeing on the production car, so while nothing is certain, we could see something similar with Rapide in the future.

“And on the component side, we’ve seen an ability to withstand levels of heat and g-force over a lengthy period that surpasses that encountered in normal testing – without any issues.” <

Rapide on the Karussell. The car’s fuel consumption for the race averaged 14 liters per lap, necessitating 19 pit stops

Bowers & Wilkins (B&W)’s audio equipment is used

around the world, in places as diverse as London’s famous Abbey Road recording studios and the in-car audio system on a Jaguar XK, XF or XJ.

It’s the latter application that has drawn the premium manufacturer into motorsport, as a primary backer of the Fazzt race team, which competes in the IndyCar Series. B&W has built up its automotive division slowly since its formation in 2006, but is now pushing to promote its expertise, both to potential customers and automotive clients.

“Motorsport provides the right profi le to increase awareness of the B&W brand – the demographics tie in well,” says company chairman, Joe Atkins.

The decision to link up with IndyCar was made at a time when B&W is looking to cement its position in North America and expand into areas including Brazil, Japan, and Canada. That tied in well with IndyCar’s geographic reach. Evert Huizing, the executive vice president of B&W, also saw key synergies between the sport and B&W.

it is running with signifi cant branding on the team’s car (Tagliani is doing the whole championship with the squad, while Bruno Junqueira’s outing in a second car at the Indy 500 was a one-off), it has not yet attempted any large scale trackside promotions on the back of its involvement, be it fan promotions, B2B or B2C.

“Our initial program is about raising awareness among the public,” says Huizing. “We’ve had involvement with local dealers at the races, but that is not our focus. What we are measuring is public response, and all the early signs are good.”

The current sponsorship deal is under constant evaluation, as B&W seeks to quantify the return on its investment. Midway through the season, Huizing sees no reason to change what is proving to be a successful formula.

Longer-term, B&W wants to integrate more with Fazzt. At present, no B&W equipment is


Sound decisionAlex Tagliani’s new Fazzt squad has brought Bowers & Wilkins audio equipment as a new sponsor to the IndyCar SeriesWORDS BY JAMES WALLER

Window of opportunity

Although B&W has yet to use its IndyCar

sponsorship as a platform for B2B or B2C entertaining, many companies do, including Window World, which entertains franchisees and clients.

Sally Shake, the franchise holder for the Indianapolis branch of Window World, is clear about the benefi ts of the sponsorship, even when, as this year, its car, driven by John Andretti, crashed out on lap 65 of 200.

“The result isn’t important,” she says. “What counts for our

customers and clients is that they get to meet up and be part of a great event. Access to the team and driver is wonderful, the hospitality is cost-effective, and the profi le of the sport is suffi cient that, whatever the result, you know people will walk in the store on Monday and be talking about it.”

“MOTORSPORT CAN PROVIDE LIGHTER, STRONGER ALTERNATIVES THAT CAN ENHANCE AUDIO, DURABILITY, OR EVEN AESTHETICS”EVERT HUIZING, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, BOWERS & WILKINS

“We already use materials found on the IndyCar,” he explains. “Kevlar, Rohacell, aluminum, glass fi ber, titanium, and magnesium are just some of the products we use and the teams use. Motorsport can provide lighter, stronger alternatives that can enhance audio, durability, or even aesthetics – we share a lot.”

The Fazzt link came about partly because driver and team co-owner Alex Tagliani is Canadian, just like Atkins, and partly because, as a start-up team in 2010, it was straightforward to broker a deal that gave the on-car profi le B&W wanted.

“We’re growing signifi cantly, and looking to expand,” explains Huizing. “We’ve signed some major deals to promote our products recently, most notably having six different pieces of our equipment sold in every Apple Store. That deal alone means our products will be in front of more

than 55 million people a quarter, and we want to make sure that when they go in the store they are aware of B&W and the qualities we stand for.”

B&W’s involvement with Fazzt is growing step-by-step. Although

used by the team – even with the pits-to-car radio there are no obvious applications of existing B&W products. However, there are plans for engineers from the audio development and race teams to brainstorm together. <

16, 17, 18 NOVEMBER 2010 COLOGNE, GERMANY

‘THE MOTOR SPORT

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PROFESSIONALS’

Professional MotorSport World Expo 2010UKIP Media & Events, Abinger House, Church Street, Dorking, Surrey RH4 1DF, UK Tel: +44 (0)1306 743744Fax: +44 (0)1306 742525Email: [email protected]

How did you fi rst become interested in motorsport?I used to work as a management consultant on SAP IT projects. In 2003 I saw a race at the Nürburgring, got interested and did some trackdays and races myself. That’s how I got to know Alex Böhm and we founded Team Black Falcon together in 2006.

How has Black Falcon grown since then? It’s not a little team anymore. We now have almost 20 employees and big new premises (2,700m2) on the way in Meuspath, which will be fi nished this coming winter and will be the nicest in the area. Four years ago we said we wanted to be among the top teams based at the ’Ring within fi ve years, both in national and international races. We’re now in our fi fth year and I think we’re already among the top teams here, certainly from the VLN side.

Where do you see the team in fi ve years’ time?It’s a matter of budget. We know how to win races, but the hardest thing is to get the right balance between performance and fi nancial risk. Some of the other Audi teams at the Nürburgring 24h have maybe four times the budget for the weekend that we do. As a private team it’s diffi cult to get the right package of some good pay-drivers and good young guys. We’d like to add a second top R8 with drivers of our choosing, plus the gentlemen-driver car, and we might look at doing the ADAC GT Masters in the future.

Are pay-drivers still your major source of revenue?Alongside the racing we do some road car maintenance and clubsport track preparation work. We also have good sponsors, such as Yokohama, Bilstein, Castrol, and many other technical partners. But in the future we’ll defi nitely need more sponsorship – the budget has to be bigger if we’re to get right to the top. In FIA GT3 we were the second Audi out of eight at Silverstone in May, which was good for us, but it could be even better.

How do you see VLN and the Nürburgring 24h changing in the next fi ve years?VLN is an amateur series with professional input, but you can already see the growing professional infl uence in it – the marketing is getting better, the TV coverage is good, so it’s good value for the drivers. The 24h in particular is getting more and more professional. This year, with a professional driver in our second R8, we qualifi ed 22nd.In the VLN we’re usually fi fth or sixth but in the 24h, even our top car was only 17th, which shows you how the level’s gone up, and it will increase even further in the next few years.

What could race organizers do to make your life easier?At the 24h this year there were seven cars in our pit garage. Even with the usual six in there, it’s full; we had to work on two cars back in the paddock. Some of the other really good local teams like Farnbacher [who fi nished second overall] were in a pit of seven too, but some of the factory cars were only fi ve to a garage. Overall the organizers do a very good job here and we have a very good relationship with them. But the seven-car thing is a mess, it’s upsetting.

What would you do if you didn’t work in motorsport?I’d travel around with my wife and baby daughter. I don’t get enough time to see them. <

Marc SchrammAge: 39

Occupation: Co-owner/manager, Team Black Falcon

Interests: Golf and skiing

INTERVIEW BY GRAHAM HEEPS

“WE KNOW HOW TO WIN RACES, BUT THE HARDEST THING IS TO GET THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND FINANCIAL RISK”

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Marc Schramm Team co-owner, Black Falcon

Interviewed

JULY 2010









Effi ciency drive


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“It’s a very good exhibition and the timing of the show, in November, is good for production”Giuseppe Angiulli, chief engineer, Osella Engineering

As of 20th July 2010

Porsche’s 911 Hybrid is arguably the racing story of the season so far. PMW spoke exclusively to its creators to get the lowdown on the fl ywheel pioneerWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS


The Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid was unlike any of the 32 other Porsches or

the 164 other vehicles that started the Nürburgring 24h in May 2010. Under its orange-and-white-striped bodywork was a four-wheel-drive, petrol-electric hybrid drivetrain. At the back was the regular 4-liter flat-six driving the rear wheels. But ahead of the driver, a pair of bespoke, 60kW electric motors and a planetary gearbox were driving the front wheels. And beside him, a magnetically

loaded composite (MLC) flywheel was storing recuperated brake energy to power them.

The project to create the car began more than a year previously, in January 2009. Porsche has recently revealed a number of street-car hybrid projects, notably the Cayenne SUV and 918 supercar, and was looking to build its expertise in the field of hybrid-electric drivetrains. Motorsport is the firm’s traditional proving ground, so a plan was formulated to enter a hybrid 911 in the classic Nürburgring


endurance event as a learning exercise with obvious PR value.

For the energy storage component, Porsche evaluated three systems – one capacitor-based, and two flywheels – before settling on an MLC flywheel from Williams Hybrid Power (WHP). Decisions were taken to only recuperate brake energy, and to keep the hybrid system separate from the combustion engine’s driveline, ruling out a purely mechanical flywheel. Driving the front wheels electrically was also better for weight distribution

RACE IMAGES: CHRISTIAN MOSKOPP/TRACKSHOOTS.DE


and increased the performance potential of the car by introducing four-wheel drive, with torque-vectoringcapability between the electric motors.

“You have periods of only a few seconds to capture brake energy,” explains Dr Daniel Armbruster, Porsche Motorsport’s manager of electrical systems, and project manager for the GT3 R Hybrid. “It means you have a very high amount of current. It’s not possible to get the current into a battery system that quickly, it will overheat. With the flywheel, it’s basically an electric motor – it’s very easy to spin it up and store the energy as kinetic energy. Capacitors can also store a very high current in a very short time, but the technology was not as advanced as the flywheel was.”

Williams Hybrid Power, which is majority-owned by the Williams Formula 1 team (see panel above), had

“Two flywheels about the size of the Porsche’s could

fulfill the hybrid requirement for a London bus,” says WHP’s Ian Foley, giving an indication of the type of application that might propel his MLC flywheels into series production within the next three years.

With attractive cost benefits and political pressure driving efficiency improvements, mass transit is the most likely first route to production and revenue generation for WHP. But a burgeoning portfolio of automotive projects is also on the agenda at the firm, which is likely to double in size from 10 to 20 staff in the next 12 months. The potential to

manufacture the flywheel at low cost, its stability of performance under temperature variations, its long lifespan, and its low weight compared to batteries in high-power applications, are all potential advantages that could be attractive to automotive OEMs.

“We’re making major progress with one particular customer,” he reveals. “We’ve come up with a specification that’s got significant benefits over what they were going to do. If those benefits are proved to be real, then they could push for it to happen.”

It’s all a far cry from just two years ago, when Foley pretty

much gave up approaching OEMs due to their lack of interest. “That’s all changed in the last 18 months,” he says, “such that I get an unsolicited enquiry every couple of weeks now from a major company, which is brilliant.”

The Williams Formula 1 team, which was Foley’s first development customer but has yet to race the technology, seems certain of its future success. It recently increased its stake in WHP to 78%.

Come fly with me

“THE HIGHER POWER REQUIREMENT NEEDED A LARGER FLYWHEEL, SO IT HAS A SLOWER MAXIMUM SPEED OF JUST UNDER 40,000RPM”

bearings and has a separately manufactured, pre-preg layup carbon-fiber end cap. The device contains about 3kg of carbon fiber in all.

Foley explains that a hydraulic pump maintains the vacuum around the flywheel but that the rest of the motor has a glass-fiber casing around it to facilitate cooling with transformer oil – especially important in a high-power, high-duty-cycle application. The whole assembly sits in an aluminum casing and has been extensively tested by WHP to ensure containability in the event of a bearing or shaft failure (see panel, overleaf).

“Fundamentally it’s a very simple device,” Foley adds, “but there’s been a lot of detail development to get to where we are now, for example in how you run it for maximum efficiency – we’ve achieved electrical efficiency of about 98% for the motor itself, so it’s a very efficient electrical machine.”

Separate to the flywheel assembly is an electronics box, also supplied by WHP to Porsche, which converts the DC voltage to AC to drive the motors. The box weighs around 10kg, the flywheel assembly about 47kg. Note that the entire car is designed to compete at a 1,350kg minimum weight, compared with 1,200kg for a regular GT3 R, but gets a larger, 120-liter fuel tank to help compensate for the extra mass.

already developed an as-yet unraced F1 flywheel sized for 60kW/800kJ, spinning to around 45,000rpm. “Porsche wanted twice the power but also at a much higher duty cycle,” says Ian Foley, WHP’s managing director. “The higher power requirement needed a larger flywheel and therefore it has a slower maximum speed – just under 40,000rpm – to maintain the same stress level in the rotor.”

The outside layer of the flywheel is pure carbon-fiber filament winding; the inner, MLC layer consists of glass-fiber filament winding with resin and magnetic powder. CTG in the UK did the filament winding element of the flywheel, which runs on ceramic ball

Below: General layout: 1) Power electronics; 2) Portal shaft with two electric motors; 3) High-voltage cable; 4) Electrical flywheel battery; 5) Power electronics.Capacitors were rejected because the technology was deemed not as far developed as the flywheel


For the other major components of the hybrid architecture, Porsche took a more in-house approach. “We took a general decision to design as much as possible for ourselves because we wanted to learn from this project,” Armbruster explains. “We cherry-picked, so that we were involved every step of the way. In parallel to looking for an energy storage system, we spent about six months designing the portal axle at the front. The motors are bespoke to our requirements. We did a lot of the design work ourselves, and with every new company we dealt with, the main goal was to build up our knowledge of electric drivetrains.” The electromagnetic layout of the motors was designed by a university in Switzerland.

When it came to the power converters for the electrical drivetrain, Porsche again looked to combine in-house design with supplier expertise. It was decided that off-the-shelf inverters could not be employed unaltered: “They are very large, very heavy, and we needed two of them,” Armbruster says. “That meant a big packaging problem so, working with a Swiss company, we reduced them down and repackaged them.

“This is not just racing, it’s also about solutions for street cars,” he stresses. “For example, we have built our knowledge not just of the

“With it we could drive the full Nürburgring cycle,” he relates. “We already had a battery simulation model from our current hybrid street cars so it was very easy to adapt it to our drivetrain so that we could run the whole system before the flywheel arrived. When it did arrive, we checked the complete system in the lab, too.”

To integrate the hybrid system into the rest of the car, it has an almost completely new electrical system. Porsche took the electrical architecture of its RS Spyder LMP2 car as a basis and added or modified modules and control units as required. All the development for the electrical system – hard- and software – was done in-house by Porsche Motorsport at Weissach.

hardware but also software solutions. Working mainly in Simulink, we built simulation models and used the hardware to tune our models so that in the future we can define new concepts for cars much better than before.”

Simulation was crucial to testing the hybrid system before it was installed in the 911. First the electric motors were checked in the lab with a battery simulation system as soon as they became available in August 2009.

Above: Sparks fly at the Karussell Left: View of theView of the flywheel assembly in the passenger seat: 1) Rotor; 2) Stator; 3) Power electronics

Above: The newelectric front axle: 1) Transmissionsupport; 2) Multiplate clutch; 3) Electricmotor; 4) Power electronics


As part of the work, the hybrid drive through the front wheels was integrated fully into that provided at the rear by the regular powertrain, making life comparatively simple for the driver. A boost paddle on the steering wheel enables him to decide when he wants to use the additional power – some six to eight seconds-worth when accelerating out of a low-speed corner, or for overtaking, for example. Electronics then combine the accelerator pedal position with a number of other parameters, such as

Safety fi rst

WHP has put a lot of time and effort into ensuring its fl ywheels

are safe for motorsport use. “There are two primary fl ywheel failure modes,” explains Ian Foley. “One is an intact rotor failure – if the shaft broke or the bearings failed, the whole rotor’s in one piece rubbing around the stator. We have a hexapod test rig where we can deliberately fail a fl ywheel. They’re strain-gauged and we’ve measured the fl ywheel loads in the event of an intact rotor failure and compared them with models, so we have a good understanding of what will happen. When we get into production and there are lots of fl ywheels out there then that is something that is likely to happen and it’s all containable.

“We have a yaw rig that we originally built for the Formula 1 application, to simulate the effect of cornering on the fl ywheel,” he continues. “We can set it up to spin in either direction to a preprogrammed speed profi le. For the F1 machine we program track maps in so that we could, for example, do a number

of hours running around Monaco, which is the worst case. At the hairpin, you’ve 100°/sec of yaw. We also simulated the car spinning, which is about 150°/sec. In testing we’ve even deliberately notched the shaft and spun the fl ywheel until the shaft’s failed. There is secondary test containment in case the case fails; after the test we check that there are no problems with the containment.

“The other failure mode is a burst failure. The mitigation for that is that we’ve done considerable materials testing. We follow aerospace standards in terms of materials testing and factors of safety to ensure that the fl ywheel won’t burst. That methodology is exactly the same as, for example, the fi lament-wound pressure vessels on aircraft, which, if they fail, could blow a hole in the side of the aircraft, or fi lament-wound hydrogen storage tanks for fuel cells. But the environment the fl ywheel is in is a lot tighter than those because it’s living in a vacuum at a controlled temperature.”

steering wheel angle and lateral acceleration, to determine how much power is deployed at the front, just as they do at the rear. There is no automatic drive to the front wheels for stability- or traction-control purposes if the rear wheels lose traction when the paddle is in the off position.

The completed GT3 R Hybrid made its race debut in March. Entered by Nürburgring specialists Manthey Racing with support from Armbruster and his colleagues, it fi nished sixth overall in a VLN endurance race.

Despite running quickly and reliably in both that and a second VLN race in preparation for the 24 Hours, few expected the car to challenge for overall victory in the main event. A 25kg weight penalty, imposed by race organizers after its third place in April’s four-hour VLN race, should have further counted against it.

But come the 24 Hours, accidents and mechanical woes took several other leading entries out of contention during the Saturday night. The fl ywheel 911 assumed a lead that it would hold comfortably for more than eight hours until shortly after 13:00 on Sunday, when a valve spring in its conventional petrol engine failed less than two hours from the fi nish. Victory went instead to a less radical, but ultimately more reliable BMW.

At the time of writing there is no guarantee that the Hybrid will race again in its current spec, nor is it certain that a fl ywheel hybrid is on the cards for production, but whatever happens next, Porsche has made its point.

“It wasn’t enough for a win, but the Porsche hybrid technology clearly proved its potential at one of the world’s toughest races,” says Michael Macht, chairman of the board at Porsche AG. “We will continue developing this innovative drive concept. That was certainly not the last race for a Porsche hybrid car.” <

Above: The Hybrid heads for the Manthey Racing pit during the night

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Light speedHow a team of students at Delft University of Technology set about trying to create the fastest solar-powered racing car in the worldWORDS BY JESPER WENTINK



Making the fastest solar-powered racing car in the world was the ultimate

engineering goal when the Delft University of Technology’s solar car project was started in 1999. What better way to show the enormous potential of solar energy than by developing and constructing a hyper-efficient racing machine?

The Delft University solar car project is entirely student-run. Every two years, a new team halts its studies for up to 18 months to join the Nuon Solar Team. Students come from different faculties, such as mechanical engineering, industrial design, electrical engineering and aerospace engineering. Due to a university grant, they can focus on this project on a full-time basis. Together they work to reach the ultimate goal – competing in the World Solar Challenge (WSC) in Australia. This unofficial world championship race is held every two years between Darwin and Adelaide, a route through the Australian outback. The race is often considered to be the Dakar Rally of solar racing, since many engineering teams will never make it to the finish line.

The Australian outback provides the ideal scenery for the competition: there’s 3,000km of empty roads, a burning sun, and a completely desolate desert, leaving no doubt that the team has only one power source available to rely on and tap into – solar energy.

Since 2001, the Dutch Nuon Solar Team has been competing in the WSC, finishing first in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007, and second in 2009, all with cars named ‘Nuna’.

Every two years, a new team goes back to the drawing board to give the previous solar car design a complete overhaul. One year after the start of the design of a new car, the production of the car is finished.

Much progress has been made in the past decade. The design has evolved from the first Nuna, a 250kg solar car that was fitted with 8m2 of solar panel, into Nuna5, a lean, 160kg solar car that is equipped with only 6m2 of solar panel, while average velocities have remained the same.

Besides a very aerodynamic shape, having an ultra-efficient engine is very important. For optimal efficiency, a direct drive electric motor is used, which also makes regenerative braking possible.

The motor has to operate at moderately low power outputs. At 100km/h (62mph), the motor has to produce a nominal power output in

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the order of 1.0-1.5kW and should have a peak power production of up to 15kW.

The current engine has been in development since 2006 and is one of the few projects within the team that required multiple years to complete. Since 2001, the Nuna solar cars have been driven by electric motors from Biel University, Switzerland. These

The motor controller converts the DC from the battery into a three-phase waveform to have an optimum power input. This off-the-shelf product allows for excellent modification opportunities since a major part of internal programming can be adapted. The whole system of the engine kit and motor controller is priced at about US$17,000.

Since the motor is delivered as a kit, each team has to create its own housing and bearing system. This gives excellent opportunities to pay close attention to weight reduction. In the latest design of the Nuna5 engine, a combination of carbon fiber, titanium, aluminum and magnesium resulted in an engine weight of only 16kg, which includes the rear tire and rim.

A second and very important design parameter is the air gap between the stator and the permanent magnets. Choosing an air gap is a very important design trade-off between engine performance and engine efficiency. In the final design, an air gap in the order of 2mm is used, which poses strict requirements on engine housing.

The engine is designed such that it can be changed quickly. In the case of a flat rear tire, the motor would need to be replaceable within minutes. For this reason, a single-sided swing arm suspension system is employed.

It goes without saying that the motor should be compact enough to fit in a special 16in tire. Since the start of the project, tire manufacturer Michelin has been a leader in making low rolling resistance tires for solar

Above: Evolution of Nuna. From left to right: Nuna1, Nuna4, Nuna5, Nuna3, Nuna2

The upper body gives Nuna5 its aerodynamic shape. Since it does not contain any heavy components, there is no need for it to be rigid. It slides over the stiff chassis in the style of a matchbox lid

“THE ENGINE IS DESIGNED SUCH THAT IT CAN BE QUICKLY CHANGED. IN THE CASE OF A FLAT REAR TIRE, THE MOTOR MUST BE REPLACEABLE WITHIN MINUTES, SO A SINGLE-SIDED SWING ARM SUSPENSION SYSTEM IS EMPLOYED”engines were developed in the late 1990s, but are not produced anymore, so the team looked for alternative solutions.

As a result, during development of the Nuna4 solar car, research started on choosing a new engine system. Team members from Delft University of Technology’s departments of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering were involved. A special test bench was developed, which consisted of two counter-rotating engines fitted with a torque sensor, which obtains valuable data on both engine performance and efficiency. Even though research was not completed for the 2007 (Nuna4) race, the latest car is fitted with the new engine system.

The brushless electric motor is obtained as a kit from CSIRO, an Australian scientific research organization. This engine was originally developed for an Australian solar car team, Aurora, which used it in their 1996 car.

The engine is far lighter and more efficient than any comparable unit. Due to the use of high flux-density rare-earth magnets, magnetic losses are reduced to a minimum. A Wavesculptor motor controller by Tritium is used to control the engine.

Nuna is made almost entirely of carbon fiber

Average speed:

100km/h


Power production

The Nuna5 engine is powered by a state-

of-the-art solar panel. Nuna5 is fitted with 6m2

of Gallium Arsenide solar panels, which are normally used on satellites. These have a conversion efficiency of more than 30%, about twice that of normal solar cells, giving a peak power production of up to 2kW at noon.

The solar panel is designed such that its power production is optimal during the whole day. In the early morning and late evening, the sun’s low position may reduce power production. By carefully designing the external shape of the car to

minimize shade, the power production is optimized. In addition to this, the solar panel is covered with a special laminate that consists of small prisms that reduce reflection at low light angles.

The power from the solar panel is fed into a 25kg lithium polymer battery pack. This pack is used as an energy buffer during the race and has a capacity of about 4.5kWh. The design of this battery pack is very important, since the output voltage dictates not only the solar panel design, but also the engine performance, since the top speed of Nuna5 is limited by the battery voltage.

characteristics, which may require different engine configurations.

Besides the 3,000km endurance race through Australia, there is the American Solar Challenge that has a similar setup and does not require any change in engine configuration.

Currently, the team is preparing itself to participate in the Suzuka Dream Cup on the Suzuka racetrack in Japan. This race is completely different to the Australian endurance race and poses new requirements on the motor and suspension. A much higher power consumption is to be expected, which may cause different problems.

Based on the Mitsuba engine kit, the Japanese TIGA solar racing team

Early version of the motor, with the three-phase wiring entering the unit. Sensors monitor the suspension travel

“NUNA5 RACES VERY EFFICIENTLY. USINGA RELATIVELY SMALL BATTERY, CONTAININGTHE ENERGY OF ABOUT 0.3-LITERS OF PETROL, THE CAR CAN RUN AT 100KM/H”

cars. These tubeless tires have a rolling resistance of less than 1kg per ton, which is key for an efficient drivetrain.

To minimize losses due to loss of road contact, an optimal suspension system is important. The two front wheels have a lightweight, double-wishbone suspension. By using carbon-fiber tubing combined with aluminum inserts, weight can be kept to a minimum. A similar combination is used in the rear wheel single-sided swing arm suspension.

To further improve handling, custom-made shock absorbers are used. A solar car needs special dampers since a combination of high velocity and low weight is not seen

very often in the racing industry. To fit the team’s special needs, Dutch company Intrax has fitted Nuna5 with special shocks. These are a combination of metal springs and gas dampers, with adjustable springs and rebound damping.

The new shock absorbers improve the road handling significantly, as was tested on a racetrack. Previous solar cars have had issues with tire scrub due to side winds, but due to a slight modification in suspension geometry, this issue has been resolved and no flat tires were reported during the 2009 race.

With this engine design, heat production is another key issue. Since the stator does not contain any iron, any cooling has to be done by ambient air. At prolonged periods of high power usage, heating is a serious issue that can reduce performance, but during normal race conditions, heating is not a problem, and due to extremely low losses, heat production is limited.

Solar racing regulations require qualification on a racetrack just a few days before the race. During qualification, stator temperature is an important issue since some teams have reported problems with melting stators after qualifying. Several temperature sensors are put in the engine design to make sure that overheating is prevented.

In the near future, it is expected that solar racing teams will compete in more than just a few races. Each race has different performance

has developed an engine that has a variable air gap during its operation. This is a noteworthy concept that the team will follow closely, since it may be an interesting development for track racing.

Nuna5 can race in a very efficient manner. Using a relatively small battery, which only contains the energy of about 0.3-liters of petrol, the car can still run 100km/h using just solar energy.

If Nuna5 were fitted with a normal, 35%-efficient petrol engine, it could still drive up to 200km per liter. The team thinks that these racing cars will pave the way for a better public awareness of what the combination of sustainable energy and mobility will look like on real roads.

At this moment, there are no plans for making production-like solar cars. The team is focused on race cars, since these cars provide the best platform to promote sustainable energy, which is a combination of speed and high-tech engineering. Some former team members, however, are involved in adapting cars to make them more sustainable.

One of the founders of the project, Tim de Lange, is involved in converting standard Lotus Elise sports cars into electric derivatives, with his company InnosysDelft. Another Nuna4 team member, Hjalmar van Raemsdonck, is currently setting up his own company, Ephicas, which makes aerodynamic side skirts for trailers, resulting in fuel savings of up to 10%. <

www.motorsport.bilstein.de • +49 (0) 2333 791-4720

Exhibitor PMW

Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology

Foundation Degree in Motorsport – Work-based Learning periodWith continued growth in student numbers, the FoundationDegree in Motorsport is part of our overall success-story.What makes it really special is the 34 week work-basedlearning period where our students get valuable hands-onlearning and experience of motorsport; in-company and attrackside. In return, our partners reap the benefit of beingpaid to work with highly motivated and enthusiastic students,adding value to the business. Students are taught on-campusfor one day per week during the period and allowed up tothree weeks of leave.

We are looking for industrial partners to provide a number ofunpaid places starting on a date to be agreed in January 2011

and therefore inviting interested motorsport companies totender for this work. Experience has shown us that studentsare best placed in groups of 10-15 rather than individuals and we would look to continue this arrangement as closely as possible.

For an informal discussion about our requirements, contact Alex Heaton, Award Leader on 01785 353203,[email protected] To register an expression of interest,contact David Glover on 01785 353313, [email protected]

The closing date for written expression of interest is 12 noon 16 August 2010.

John Force is arguably the most successful

owner-driver currently competing in a

major motorsport series. His cars have

won 16 NHRA Funny Car championships in the last

20 years – 14 with Force in the driver’s seat. He is

the winningest drag racer of all time, with all 130

victories (as of July 2010) coming in the sport’s

most dangerous nitro-burning class.

Although spirited and in excellent physical

condition, Force is now 61 years old. Even with a

contract extension that keeps him racing a Ford

Mustang through the 2014 season, he knows that

the destiny of John Force Racing (JFR) can’t depend

solely on his split-second reaction time.

“I have to look toward the future,” he says, “and

I’m addressing three things.”

First is the relocated racing operations in Indiana

and the grooming of family members as the next

generation of hopefully winning and sponsor-

pleasing drivers. Second is the expansion of in-

house engine and chassis programs that will sell

equipment to other drag racers. And third is the

development of an entertainment division to

produce commercials and TV shows out of his

original race facility in California.

LEGENDARY DRAG RACING

OWNER-DRIVER, JOHN FORCE

IS WORKING ON SEVERAL

FRONTS TO SECURE HIS LEGACY

WORDS BY MIKE MAGDA

Fourteen races into the 2010 schedule, Force

has four wins and is first in the Full Throttle Funny

Car points standings, just a few points ahead of

teammate and son-in-law, Robert Hight. Daughter

Ashley Force-Hood is sixth in the standings.

Force’s season-opening victory in the 50th

running of the Winternationals in February

snapped a 40-race, 20-month winless stretch

through which fans and media questioned his

health and tenacity. In a time of economic

uncertainty, sponsors were also checking their

ROI spreadsheets. The unflappable and

irreverent Force was getting his usual TV time

and Force’s merchandising sales are more

profitable than many NASCAR drivers’, but the

main attraction to John Force Racing (JFR) has

always been affiliation with a champion. Hight

kept that spirit alive in 2009 by winning the

Funny Car title for JFR, but only after a late-

season controversial victory over Force in

which charges of “team orders” were leveled

by the defending champion, who was

eliminated by Hight’s win.

Force’s resurgence comes while driving

JFR’s first production chassis and hitting the


throttle on one of its new 8,000-horsepower Ford Boss 500 engines. It’s the first time since Mickey Thompson’s cars ran in the late 1960s with the 427 SOHC nitro engine that an all-Ford body/motor combo is winning in Funny Car.

Both chassis and engine were developed with extensive engineering and analytical support from Ford, which is extending its “One Ford” philosophy from NASCAR to drag racing. Force will get the first products but the engine components will carry Ford part numbers and be made available to other Ford Funny Cars and eventually Top Fuel dragsters. In return, teams will share some information.

The Boss 500 was first shown at the 2007 SEMA Show and picked up its inaugural victory late last year with former JFR driver Mike Neff. Ford engineers worked with JFR R&D director John Medlen in designing a stronger block, a new belly pan, and retro-styled valve covers. The team also designed new cylinder heads, but rules restricted any significant deviation from the traditional two-valve, hemispherical combustion chamber configuration based on the 1960s Chrysler 426 Hemi. The only parts not manufactured at JFR are the crankshaft, rods, and pistons.

“In the middle of all this, [Force teammate Eric Medlen] gets killed. Now you got problems because my kids are out there,” says Force, whose younger daughters Courtney and Brittany are driving A-Fuel dragsters in the Sportsman division on a limited schedule. “My wife [Laurie] said, ‘What are we going to do, sit around and drink margaritas until it happens to our children?’”

Medlen died following a testing accident in early 2007. A rear tire split in half during the run, causing the car to shake violently with each turn of the axle.

“UNLIKE OTHER HIGH-PROFILE TEAMS, FORCE DOESN’T HAVE A CATERING TRUCK AND HOSPITALITY TENT NEXT TO HIS TRAILERS”


There’s plenty of space for the JFR haulers inside the team’s vast Brownsburg facility

Ashley Force Hood’s Funny Car at the 2010 season-opening Winternationals in Pomona, CA

In the early 1990s there were no multiple-car Funny Car teams. One of John Force’s toughest foes, however, also raced a Top Fuel dragster. The clutch and fuel setups are different, but Force did notice the two crew chiefs exchanging information.

So Force approached long-time sponsor Castrol in 1996 to fund a second team as a test operation. Fortunately, Castrol was releasing its new Syntec brand and also wanted to reach the Hispanic market. Force hired Tony Pedregon – whose father used to race Top Fuel in the 1960s – to run at select races and help JFR gather more track data. Force also hired John Medlen to crew chief, and within five races Pedregon hit the winner’s circle.

That was the start of JFR’s growth into a championship operation that employs nearly 100 people today. He converted a bankrupt Infiniti dealership in his hometown of Yorba Linda, California, into a race shop. More sponsors came aboard. Medlen, who was put in charge of research and development, wanted to make his own parts to improve reliability and lower costs.

“Pretty soon we got a ton of machines and no place to put them,” says Force.

As John took on third and fourth cars in the next decade, he purchased industrial land in Brownsburg, Indiana, with intent to construct numerous buildings – one to relocate the JFR race operation and the others for rental income. So far Force has built three buildings costing more than US$11 million and totaling nearly 15,000m2. JFR takes up most of the space, although some renters like Simpson Safety and Elite Motorsports have moved in. His complex includes a paint shop, machine shop, storage for all the transport big-rigs, museum, and apparel store. The main shop is designed with walk-over bridges so fans can take tours without disrupting the work. Huge video screens show race replays and other features for visitors. Force still has plenty of acreage to construct additional buildings for rental customers.

With Mike Neff on board, Force now has three crew chiefs. Austin Coil handles race tune, while Bernie Fedderly provides consultation and organizes the race team.

Proliferation


Medlen lost consciousness when his helmet slammed hard against the rollcage several times, and he died seven days later from severe closed-head injuries.

Investing his own money, Force launched the Eric Medlen Project with John Medlen (Eric’s father and crew chief) in charge. The primary mission was to construct a stronger Funny Car chassis, which hadn’t changed much in design for more than 30 years. JFR teamed with Ford’s engineering labs to test the chassis on a shaker rig, run FEA on the materials, and review the entire chassis program.

JFR first worked with respected chassis builder Murf McKinney to widen the team’s existing rollcages and add military-style padding capable of absorbing multiple impacts. Ford also made suggestions that helped the overall strength of the older chassis while the new JFR in-house designs were still on the drawing board.

A few months into the safety initiative, Force was injured when his car literally broke in half at more than 300mph. The front half, including the engine, shot over into his competitor’s lane while the back half, with Force still in his seat, barrel-rolled and came to rest against the wall. Some of Force’s injuries were caused by the support tubes for the carbon-fiber body breaking off and literally becoming lethal shrapnel. Now Force has proposed the development of a next-generation Funny Car body that doesn’t need a tubular support grid. As part of the Medlen Project, Ford also supplied Delphi-built ‘Blue Box’ crash-data recorders to all NHRA fuel cars.

The first JFR chassis debuted last year. The six-rail design improves on the traditional four-rail frame by adding tubing around the driver and increasing the overall rigidity of the chassis. The JFR chassis

JFR’s manufacturing capability expanded considerably in the past decade under John Medlen

Force worked with Ford Racing to develop the Boss 500 nitro engine, which debuted in 2008

also replaces the ‘slip tube’ feature found on many Funny Car chassis with a new ‘bowed-tube’ design, and Force has eliminated all heat-treated tubing from the frame construction. The ultimate goal is a clean-sheet design with a cockpit that fully encloses the driver’s head and limbs.

Although John Medlen recently left JFR for another crew chief position, the chassis and engine programs are now fully operational in JFR’s three-building, 15,000m2 facility in Brownsburg, Indiana. Hight will receive the second JFR chassis followed by Ashley. Work is also underway to design a JFR rear-engine dragster chassis that would provide the team with another option for expansion.

“I’ve got to turn this part of it into a profitable business,” says Force, noting he already has talked

A selection of the cars, trophies and memorabilia greeting visitors to the JFR race shop


m2

John Force: Hollywood mogul?

to other teams about purchasing his parts and has instructed the Indiana shop to gear up for full production.

Force’s contract extensions didn’t come without some reorganization. Although Ford didn’t have the bankruptcy problems that plagued GM and Chrysler, the automaker was very clear that it wanted winners on less money. Force cut back during the 2009 season. He teamed with Ford dealers to get cars instead of using a rental agency. He booked less expensive hotels.

“We cut everywhere,” says Force. “We saved US$100,000 just in nitro by warming up on alcohol. I went back to Ford, showed them the numbers and out of that we got a new five-year contract.”

For 2010, Force had to tighten a little more. He cut back to three teams, parking the car driven by 2008 Rookie of the Year Mike Neff, but adding Neff to his team as a third crew chief.

“I’ve had to re-evaluate everything from show car programs to midway displays to help activate programs for the sponsors and help cut costs,” adds Force, who brings in upwards of US$4 million a year in personal endorsements and appearances.

One division of JFR that didn’t need cutting was sponsor hospitality. That’s because Force won’t entertain sponsors in his pit. Unlike other high-profile teams, Force doesn’t have a catering truck and hospitality tent next to his trailers.

Dean “Guido” Antonelli, crew chief for Ashley Force Hood, preps her Mustang at Pomona

“I have to focus. I’m an owner-driver,” says Force, noting he will work with sponsors by setting up off-track parties or functions in the track suites. “I can’t worry about whether the hot dogs are cooked.”

Despite all his accomplishments as an owner, Force has yet to consider a move into other forms of motorsport, such as NASCAR or IndyCar. There is some precedent for drag racers moving to other venues with success. Raymond Beadle, owner-driver of the famous Blue Max Funny Car, won the 1989 NASCAR championship with driver Rusty Wallace. And Kenny Bernstein, driver of the Budweiser King Funny Car and Top Fuel dragster, sat on the pole for the 1992 Indy 500 with Roberto Guerrero.

“At the end of the day, I don’t know NASCAR and I don’t know Indy,” says Force, who is also in talks to launch a driving school. “If you’re going to lead, you got to understand it. When I go into their world, I’m not at home.” <

Force plans to sell the Funny Car chassis developed by the Medlen Project to other teams

“THERE’S BIG MONEY IN TV, BIG MONEY IN SELLING YOUR SPONSORS, AND BIG MONEY IN MAKING WHO YOU ARE MORE POPULAR”

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Brad Keselowski in the new NASCAR Nationwide Series Dodge Challenger on its debut at Daytona


NASCAR Sprint Cup Cars of Today (CoT) recently switched back to running

decklid spoilers, moving away from the separate rear wings that have been a feature of CoTs since their inception. For many fans and observers, it’s a welcome return to the ‘traditional’ stock-car profi le, but the move is the result of some careful R&D rather than a reaction to fan criticism.

“Part of the reason that everybody wanted to investigate going back to the spoiler was that when [wing] cars were spun around backward, they were starting to fl y,” explains Howard Comstock, Dodge Motorsports’ engineering program manager.

“Back when we had a spoiler confi guration and had developed the roof fl aps, we had solved the fl ying problem. But there were particular situations whereby cars [with wings] would fl y when they got backwards. That’s unacceptable to everybody, so part of the reason NASCAR started looking at the spoiler again, as an alternative to the wing, was that some people believed they were contributing to making the cars fl y.”

Dodge was central to the spoiler R&D program. It offered the use of Chrysler’s full-scale, non-rolling-road, open-jet wind tunnel in Auburn Hills to NASCAR, which brought along a test car. The other competing manufacturers all attended the multi-day test at the facility, a key feature of which is its 360° turntable fl oor – particularly relevant to the spoiler versus wing, spin-aero investigation.

“I believe that the change back to spoilers will fi x a good bit of the spin-aero problem,” he says. “Aesthetically it puts us closer to current production car looks, and technically we were able to make more downforce with a deck spoiler. We ran many, many confi gurations of height and width,

New in stockThe new generation of NASCAR Nationwide cars fi nally hit the track at Daytona in July, shortly after spoilers were reintroduced to the Sprint Cup cars. PMW spoke exclusively to Dodge Motorsports about a busy season for its engineering teamWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS

and tried ‘batwings’ – a confi guration with 4in [of height] across the middle, with an extra inch of height in the last foot [on each side], which enabled the driver to be able to see out the back of the car. [A similar design has been used on the new Nationwide Series cars.]

“The fi nal spoiler design provides increased rear visibility; we’ve been able to surpass the amount of downforce that the wing makes; we get more of a production-car look; and I personally believe it helps the spin-aero problems. It was a good project – all the manufacturers were happy to work on it, NASCAR took suggestions from everybody. We’ve come up with a package that works pretty well. I think it’s better for the drivers, better for the fans, and it’s safer.”

The fi nal spoiler design (4in tall in the center and 64.5in wide) is an aluminum part that teams buy from the NASCAR-approved supplier, Richardson Racing Products. It has a welded brace on the back to keep the blade angle at 70°. On the two restrictor-plate tracks, Daytona and Talladega, NASCAR issues teams with


spoilers of a different design, fi tted with adjusters. At Talladega in April, the cars ran a spoiler 4.5in tall and 63in wide, with a 2in radius at the top right and left corners.

“When you put it on your car, NASCAR checks it with a 17lb (7.7kg) cantilevered weight,” Comstock explains. “If there’s fl ex in your decklid, you have to turn the turnbuckles up to achieve the 70° with the 17lb weight. So if you want to cheat with the decklid, you pay it back with the blade angle!”

The former Roush crew chief adds that the spoiler has added downforce

to the car – front and back – and that it has not resulted in a major change to the mechanical setup of CoTs, which still run on their bumpstops.

“It’s the current fast way around. With the points-leading cars parked so close together in the garage, you can see what the guy next door to you has got. You can’t glean the spring rate from the spring that’s in there, but if you’ve looked at enough springs, you can tell it pretty close. You can look at their geometry a little bit too. It’s a nuance, but news travels fast in the garage. It’s a self-policing business.”

Spoiler-equipped Dodge Chargers in the draft at Talladega in April

Chrysler wind tunnel lead technician, Victor Lorenz demonstrates the aerodynamic qualities of the new Dodge Challenger


The reintroduced spoiler is the first of

two confirmed bodywork changes for the Sprint Cup’s CoTs. For the 2011 season, the braced front splitter that’s been a feature of Cup cars since 2007, will be replaced by a new, more aesthetically-pleasing and production-looking lower front fascia – akin to the one on the new Nationwide cars. “NASCAR and the teams are redesigning the part from the centerline of the bumper downward,” Comstock explains. “Part of the pressure for that change came from NASCAR. When it saw how the new Nationwide cars looked, it said, ‘we can’t let Cup cars look like this, we have to come up with something

new’. So [NASCAR] asked each manufacturer for a design and has taken elements from all. We’re pretty close now on what that’s going to look like.”

NASCAR’s vice president of competition, Robin Pemberton, recently told NASCAR.com, “As we work forward, that’s not the last change. We’re looking at some stuff that coincides with the manufacturers and their introduction of new cars to sell.” That could mean further detail changes over the next few years to make the generic CoT chassis more manufacturer-specific; a move that would doubtless be welcomed by the fans, providing the balance of performance is maintained.

United front

The impact of the spoilers on the racing is still being assessed, but the consensus is that the impact has been positive so far. “I think Talladega raced differently to what we’ve seen in the past,” says Comstock. “I thought the cars were much more stable three-wide. The car in the center was able to run without problem, so I think the overall air mass was cleaner. I think the way the cars drafted two at a time was a little bit different, and I think teams are still figuring out the advantages and disadvantages – the moves you want to make, and the moves you should stay away from. At the finish, the #29 car [Kevin Harvick] was able to push the #1 [Jamie McMurray] all the way around the track. Coming through the tri-oval, he was able to pull out, shoot ahead and win the race by two feet.”

for a manufacturer that can only count on the three Penske Racing cars to uphold its honor in NASCAR’s premier division, following Richard Petty Motorsports’ merger with Yates Racing and switch to Ford at the end of 2009. Comstock is realistic about the chances of expanding Dodge’s Cup Series presence.

“I hope, so but it’s a huge commitment that a team owner has to make. We’ve got resources in place from when we supported more teams in 2009, but it’s a team decision, and sponsorship will be a challenge for some years to come. We’ve treated our Nationwide program this year as a kind of junior-Cup program. It’s the first time the factory has been involved and it’s working out; we’re pretty happy to be winning races and leading the points with Brad Keselowski.”

The technical highlight of the Nationwide season has been the recession-delayed introduction of the new Challenger, Dodge’s version of the next-generation Nationwide cars that will race four times in 2010 before becoming standard throughout 2011.

“NASCAR is trying to make a race car that looks more like a street car so that there’s some brand identity and some value in it for everybody,” he says. “They’re trying to make the Nationwide Series cars different to the Cup cars, so that it’s not just a me-too series.

“We did wind-tunnel testing with all four brands and NASCAR made the other brands try to aero-match what we’ve got,” Comstock recounts. “Challenger is more blunt at the front end, like the production car. But while our car is more blunt, the new Chevrolet Nationwide car, for example, is much taller in the headlight area, so that the aero matches ours.”

All the new designs are CoT-based, so that Nationwide teams will be able to buy second-hand cars from Cup teams and rebody them. For the Challenger, Dodge supplies the bodies; Five Star makes the carbon parts for Dodge, which stamps the sheet-metal parts in-house.

Looking further to the future, it’ll be interesting to see what impact, if any, Fiat’s takeover of Chrysler has on the Dodge Motorsports program. For the moment, it’s business as usual for Comstock and his team.

“Nothing specific has changed since Fiat came in,” he says. “We’d like to see more integration but it’ll take some time. The company is focused 100% on [customer] product, as it should be. When the time comes I’m sure we can meet with those folks and get some input from them.” <

Dodge Chargers weren’t involved in the battle for the win that day, but Kurt Busch’s car has scored two points-paying Cup victories in 2010, as well as winning the non-championship All-Star Race. At the time of writing, Busch lay fifth in the Sprint Cup standings. It’s an impressive return

“WE DID WIND-TUNNEL TESTING WITH ALL FOUR BRANDS. NASCAR MADE THE OTHERS TRY TO AERO-MATCH WHAT WE’VE GOT”HOWARD COMSTOCK, ENGINEERING PROGRAM MANAGER, DODGE MOTORSPORTS

Above: A ‘Batwing’ spoiler was one of several designs that were tested Right: Chrysler’s6,400hp electric wind tunnel fan


ScratchbuiltWhen Lotus Racing won a Formula 1 entry slot for 2010, it had to build a supply chain before it could build a carWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS


On-track, Lotus Racing has rapidly established itself as the fastest of Formula 1’s

‘expansion teams’ for 2010. Off-track, it’s had to work just as fast, establishing not only a race team infrastructure from scratch, but also a comprehensive supplier base of some 650 companies.

Lotus is based in Hingham, in the UK county of Norfolk, where the separate Lotus Cars’ operation is also located, and just a few miles from Colin Chapman’s historic former Team Lotus HQ at Ketteringham Hall.

Keith Saunt, chief operating officer for Lotus Racing, is himself a former Team Lotus employee who ‘came home’ to Norfolk to work for the new team. Saunt says that, given the compressed timeframe in which the team and its T127 race cars were put together, the role of local suppliers has been particularly important.

“It makes lots of sense for us logistically to use local people where we can,” he explains. “We’ve placed orders with people in the NR postcode region (in or around Norfolk) totalling £2.8 million since we started, so I think we’re good for the local economy. If you include service providers such as taxi companies, then 86 of the suppliers on our database are from the Norfolk area.”

Building this supplier network from scratch was top of Saunt’s list when he began work at Hingham in September 2009. “I have an address book I’ve been carrying around for the best part of 20 years so there were lots of old contacts in there, people in

Rear bodywork and floor structures for the T127, made by

local supplier, CFT

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fast, you need a supplier base that you can trust, and you need it quickly,” he says. “So my first thoughts on day one were to get a purchasing department and a production department in, which we did.

“To begin with, we had no systems, no computers,” recalls Saunt. “We had a network with network points but very little else. The first thing we did was to buy a purchasing system, which is not easy to do if you don’t have a purchasing system! So that was effectively bought off-the-shelf on credit card; we were hoping it would last us four-six weeks until we got something more robust set up, but it’s still running to this day. We began to populate it with people I’d worked with before and people I’d been to visit.”

From three employees on day one, Lotus Racing will have some 170 staff by mid-summer, on its way to a full-strength figure that Saunt estimates will level out at around 195 people.

“Some of the bigger teams will have to come down toward where we are;

Below: The stores at Hingham have had to be stocked from scratch with thousands of items

“WE WANT A SYSTEM THAT SUPPORTS WHAT WE DO, NOT TELLS US HOW TO DO IT”KEITH SAUNT, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, LOTUS RACING

and around Norfolk who are still in business, so we had a kind of kernel of suppliers we could look to get on board,” he says. “These included engineering firms, parts machining, and some composites companies. Of course, a number of new firms had also sprung up in the time since I was at Team Lotus.

“In the first week I made a number of visits to local companies such as Mussett Engineering in Loddon (see panel, opposite) and Carbon Fibre Technologies (CFT) in Wymondham (who subsequently made floors and bodywork for the team), looking at their workforce, their turnaround times, and their quality.”

However, no purchase orders could be raised until Lotus had a purchasing department and appropriate IT.

“When you’re starting out and the drawings are already coming thick and


I think I’d rather be going in our direction than theirs,” he assesses.

One consequence of having so few people on board in late-2009/early-2010 has been that a comparatively high proportion of the car was built externally. For the current season, 28.7% of all parts have been made in house, a figure that should rise sharply for 2011. With human resources limited, Saunt is quick to pay tribute to the dedication of the workforce in achieving that figure.

“Every single one of our guys is working extremely long hours to get as much done internally as we can,” he says. “But we also rely on the expertise of local suppliers, who have done us proud. We wouldn’t have stood a chance without them.”

He reveals that another of the local companies to come to the team’s assistance has been Lotus Cars. “We’ve had a very positive reaction from the guys at Lotus Cars and its facilities have certainly been of help,” he confirms. “They’ve looked to support us in some of our R&D work

“The composites side of the business is less than three years old, but we’ve already supplied a couple

of F1 teams,” says Brian Alexander, composites manager for Mussett Engineering. “Keith came to look at our facility and it’s progressed from there; we’re now starting to supply Lotus with Rohacell foam parts for their aero package. It’s key for us because it’s local industry – it’s very easy to deliver parts, and if there are any issues we can jump in a car and be there within 20 minutes.”

The supplier’s perspective

and some of the testing, because they have the rigs on-site and we don’t.

“The Multimatic Technical Centre at Thetford [less than 20 miles from Hingham] has helped us on a number of occasions too. Perhaps eventually when we grow our equipment on site then these things might change but at the moment we have help from people all over the country with things like suspension testing, or non-destructive testing – all of the things you take for granted when you’re a big team.”

An important asset to underpin the future growth of the team will be in place from the end of July, when Lotus Racing’s ERP suite goes live. User acceptance testing for the Microsoft Dynamics AX system was already under way as PMW closed for press. Its adoption will spell the end for, among other things, the original, ‘temporary’, purchasing software.

“The ERP has taken a number of months to sort out properly, and we’d rather have a single data migration to a state-of-the-art system for work-order processing,” Saunt explains.

Having left his previous posts as COO of Red Bull Racing and

a director of Red Bull Technology, Keith Saunt thought he’d retired from F1 when he got a call from chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne regarding the new Lotus team. “I rate Mike very highly, so I knew it was going to be a professional outfit from the start,” says Saunt. “I was born and bred in Norwich, so I’m a Norfolk lad through and through, and it seemed poetic to come back here, full circle. I started at Team Lotus, then went to Benetton, Renault (where he worked with Gascoyne), Red Bull, then back to Lotus – it

just seemed right. And what an opportunity – if someone asks if you want to start an F1 team, you say yes! Only then do you start worrying about how you’re going to do it...”

Why do it?


The ‘old RTN building’

“We will be able to take a drawing from SmarTeam out of CATIA and inject it straight into the ERP system. Bolted on the other end will be our own lifting system for the mileage check. Hopefully it will cover everything we need; in my previous teams I’ve experienced everything from PeopleSoft, to Baan, to SAP, to Tetra Chameleon, so we had a bit of a head start [in researching packages].

“We want a system that supports what we do, not tells us how to do it – we’re desperate to avoid the ‘computer says no’ syndrome,” he says. “Some of the big guys use SAP, or bespoke versions of some of the modules, but we’re going with something we think is more tailorable to a small team with a lot to do.

“Because we’re so small we have to remain lithe and be able to react quickly. We can’t have 10 spare sets of everything sitting in the stores. It’s all about speed-to-market – we don’t have 700 people each with a tiny bit to do, we have 170 people with everything to do. Since the first race at Bahrain we’ve had new components for every race, which means a lot of new parts going through the system,

and they all have to be managed in some way.”

Looking further ahead, Saunt hopes to add more suppliers from Malaysian-owned Lotus’s other ‘local’ region to his new database.

“There are a number of large manufacturing organizations based in Malaysia who we are keen to support us, and who are keen to become our suppliers. We have started to build a supplier base in Malaysia and I’m sure that’ll go from strength to strength as the months and years unfold.

“That is the longer-term plan,” he explains, adding that such relationships wouldn’t necessarily take the place of existing business.

“Talk to any team during the November/December/January car-build, and they’ll tell you that you can never have enough great suppliers,” comments Saunt. “Everything’s concertinaed into a few months, maybe even one month, so you need that broad base of suppliers to accept that work when it concertinas up, as it inevitably does.

“The longer you’re in the wind tunnel, the faster the part will be, but the faster it is, the sooner the race team will want it out of your hands! For the bit in the middle you look to competent suppliers and great staff.” <

The purchasing office (above) and composites clean room (left) at Lotus

“WE CAN’T HAVE 10 SPARE SETS OF EVERYTHING SITTING IN THE STORES. IT’S ALL ABOUT SPEED-TO-MARKET”

“Of the [location] options we had when we started up in mid-September last year, the

best was what was referred to as ‘the old RTN building’,” says Keith Saunt of the former Racing Technology Norfolk premises that is now home to Lotus Racing. “Walking in on day one to give it the once-over, realizing there were 50,000ft2, two fully-functioning autoclaves, and six machining centers, it just made sense to pursue the option here in Hingham. It was a kind of Shake’n Bake colony – just add people! – plus Classic Team Lotus and

Group Lotus are in Norfolk anyway, although we are a completely separate entity.

“On my first day I feared the worst because the place had been untouched for 20 months, but the inherent capability was all there. It’s on a lease arrangement and the landlord is supportive of what we’re doing; because it was a motorsport facility before, he knows what to expect. At the moment we still suffer from the entire building being grey-blue with red trim. In time we’ll look to change it more toward our Lotus green, white and yellow.”

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ENGENUITY

Mussett Composites Ltd.Loddon Industrial Estate, Loddon, Norwich, Norfolk NR14 6JDT 5 ax:el: 01508 22500 F 01508 528769e-mail: [email protected] www.mussett.co.uk

CAD/CAM engineeringand design

Temperature and humiditycontrolled clean room

Tool and jig manufacture

Full project managementfrom initial design through tocompletion

Bespoke design, one offprototypes to full production

1.8 diameter x 5m long autoclave100 psi 200˚C

Full trim and fitting facilities

5 - axis full machiningcapabilities

Model making

CMM inspection facilities

Experience in Motorsport, Aerospace and Marine

Mussett Composites hasbeen formed to developthe use of the latestcomposite technologyinto new markets andapplications.

Caught in the crushNew software can precisely predict the crash behavior of composite structures, offering valuable time and money savings to race teamsWORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS



For some time it has been possible to accurately predict the crash

deformation of steel and aluminum structures – techniques extensively employed in both motorsport and mainstream automotive development. But until very recently the same could not be said of composite safety structures, such as noseboxes or rear crash structures, which relied primarily on expensive and time-consuming sled tests for design validation.

Conventional composite-failure theories can model the onset of compressive failure, which usually occurs at around 2% strain for carbon composites, but this is quite different from what happens when crushing, or when continuous fragmentation is designed into the component for energy absorption throughout its length. The problem is that the conventional failure models aren’t intended to represent crushing, and at best can be ‘doctored’ to represent a series of force spikes as each element reaches the impactor.

“The problem is that with this approach you are putting loads into the structure that you don’t get in the real world,” explains Richard Roberts, engineering analyst at British-based composite specialist, Engenuity. “The overall energy levels going through the structure may be correct, but the force peaks and troughs entering the structure are very different to reality. At 2% you quickly start to fail the composite element [in the model] to nothing, so for the rest of the edge length of the element you’re absorbing no energy. Putting the wrong forces into the structure, unsurprisingly, yields an incorrect response, often leading to unrealistic failure predictions in the back-up structure, such as the A-pillar of a car.”

What’s needed, then is for a specialist approach, to explicitly represent composite crushing behavior. Engenuity has come up with a two-part solution to the problem. The first is a means to accurately capture what it terms the ‘crush stress’ – defined as ongoing resistive crush force per unit area – of any given composite material. The second is software – in this case, a fully integrated add-on to Abaqus, called CZone – to feed that material property, and the associated behavior, into the wider crash simulation.

An example of the water-jet cut

sample sheets that provide crush-stress test coupons


Engenuity determines crush stress from coupons tested in a bespoke metal fixture (see picture, far right)on a servohydraulic rig. Whatever the material, a small, flat (usually 1.2-10mm thick) coupon, water-jet cut from sample sheets supplied by the customer, is inserted and crushed at a speed in the range of 2-3.5m/s, which analysis has shown to correlate with material behavior in a typical high-speed impact of around 10-15m/s.

The height of the gap at the bottom of the fixture through which crushed material escapes, naturally impacts on the result of the test (more constraint equals more resistance to crush), so for each material, sensitivity tests are conducted to establish a suitable gap height, before the main testing commences.

During testing, the load and velocity are measured, and the ongoing crush

Predicted failure of the structure around an insert (above left), and the actual part post-failure (above)

behavior of the material when used at curved corners of a structure – where it is intrinsically more resistant to delamination and often gives around double the crush performance – so that a representative spread of crush-stress values can be fed into the simulation. Similarly, material damping is measured from another material coupon on a dynamic mechanical analyzer, removing yet another unknown from the mix.

Engenuity is now working with the US Department of Energy (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) and the University of Utah to define the crush-stress capture process in an internationally recognized standard. In the meantime it has two crush fixtures in production for US customers who currently send materials to the firm for testing. In the longer-term it expects more test facilities around the world to have them in-house, once the fixture and procedure are standardized.

The CZone software, whose algorithms handle the crushing interface within the wider Abaqus structural model, originally grew out of the need to address the outstanding challenges following Engenuity’s involvement in Focal Project III, a US Department of Energy research program involving GM and the then DaimlerChrysler, that ran from 2001-2006. The goal was to produce a composite automotive body-in-white that was 60% lighter than current structures, as strong, as stiff, and with good crash performance. At the time there was no software available to conclusively prove the latter characteristic and Engenuity, which had become involved after working on the Mercedes-Benz all-composite CLK GTR Le Mans car, set about filling the gap in the market.

By the end of 2004 it had completed its program to work out how to predict crash behavior using crush stress, although still without the means to obtain crush-stress values other than through back-calculation from physical testing of small components. The software’s predictions were corroborated through the testing of 21, 3.6kg composite cones at GM’s crash labs in the USA. At that point, the company submitted a patent application and sought out a software partner to exploit the technology; CZone was ultimately licensed to Simulia for use in Abaqus in November 2008. Roberts points out that even if a potential user does not currently carry out crash analysis in Abaqus, the strong likelihood is that it already uses Abaqus for other development tasks, making the implementation of

“IF YOU CHANGE THE COATING ON A FIBER, ALMOST AT THE NANO LEVEL, THEN IT CHANGES THE CRUSH STRESS”RICHARD ROBERTS, ENGINEERING ANALYST, ENGENUITY

force is divided by the cross-sectional area of the coupon to determine the crush stress.

“We are fundamentally of the opinion that crush stress is a laminate property, not linked to any of the underlying constituent material properties, or at least, not in a way that you can reliably decode,” Roberts explains. “We can deconstruct the stresses that act on the ply layers in each direction. When it goes into the finite element model, we can say that for this material, the crush stress in the 0 direction is X, and in the 90 direction is Y.

“We can compute what the force will be for any angle; if you crush against a wall and rotate at the same time, such as in an offset impact, you’re changing the crush stresses as you go through the angles. We apply that as a layered material property, but you have to measure that in the laminate form because, depending on the resin, the cure cycle, and how it’s consolidated, you get very different numbers for what could be thought of as being the same material. We also know that if you change the coating on a fiber, almost at the nano level, then it changes the crush stress, because the matrix doesn’t adhere as well to the fibers, so they don’t fail in the same manner.”

An alternate, ‘pronged’ baseplate for the crush fixture mirrors the crush

Material test coupon pre- and post-crushing


CZone simpler than it might otherwise seem at first glance.

“All we’re doing in CZone is predicting the loads that will go into the backup structure,” says Roberts. “It’s Abaqus that is getting the point of failure correct; when CZone’s running, all the existing failure methodologies that Abaqus has spent many years developing, either in the crash area or away from it, are still active. We just supplement them with a crush stress.”

With the tools now available to accurately predict the crash performance of composite structures, there are obvious savings to be had for race teams designing composite vehicles. For F1 in particular, the ability to validate a crash structure with confidence in the virtual world could open the door to valuable extra months of aerodynamic development. The technology makes composite road-car development easier and cheaper, too – Engenuity, itself, is working for more than one OEM on passenger cars with composite body structures that are destined for volume production runs – and could also benefit the aerospace industry, for example, in the all-composite passenger jets that are under development by Boeing and Airbus.

Roberts pledges to continue developing the software for even better fidelity and for ever-more complex applications, such as modeling strikes from track debris. Recent investigations, for example, have focused on using ultrasonic testing to pre-screen materials for manufacturing flaws before crush testing. The early indications are that crush performance is relatively resilient to many of the flaws that can be seen under ultrasound. <

Pump up the volume

Engenuity’s work is helping to give automotive users confidence in the safety

of composite structures. Others are focused on resolving the cost and manufacturing issues that make F1-style, prototype-volume composite parts ill-suited to the repeatable, mass-production demands of the mainstream automotive industry.

“A key aspect is finding existing processes that can dovetail into composites so that you can speed up the knowledge transfer to the [automotive] industry,” explains Mark Preston, the former technical director of Super Aguri F1 who’s now managing director of Formtech Composites in the UK.

“For automotive customers, the ability to certify a part is crucial, which comes down to repeatability, so we’re looking at automated processes, thermoplastics, and some of the new robot tape-laying systems.

“One direction for the future could be making tailored blanks. You use a robot to lay down material in a defined way, and then you heat that up and put it into a current-technology mold tool.”

Preston’s company is working on some of these developments with its parent organization in Germany, which is experienced in producing tooling for metallic parts for the automotive industry. He cites the composite reinforcement foam, Rohacell, as an example of a high-tech material that might make the transfer from F1 use to volume applications, if a cheaper production process can be found.

“We realized that using Rohacell, even in small-volume applications, was not that competitive because it has to be five-axis machined for every part,” he explains.

“At the moment we’re looking at another idea for Rohacell, to be able to mold it, so that we don’t have to machine every single part. To begin with we’re looking at [processes for] low-volume production, and then perhaps, we can apply what we learn there to longer runs.”

The benefits of Formtech’s work could extend not only into road-car production, but back into motorsport, particularly low-volume manufacturing, such as for cars for one-make series. In particular, automated composites production could be good news for western producers who might otherwise lose business to lower-cost countries.

“It all depends on the tooling costs,” Preston assesses. “What we haven’t determined yet – and it’s one of the next things we’re going to

work on – is, where is that cut-off point, what sort of volume can we come down to? But if we can get cheap enough tooling to make it viable, then small-volume motorsport applications could use some of those F1 materials in a more productionized way. And as usual, there may be an idea that spins back to F1. If it is cheaper, or more flexible, or easier to use, then, of course F1 will be interested.”

Further evidence of the industrialization of composite part manufacture can be found at McLaren Automotive, which recently placed a

150 million order with Carbo Tech to supply composite monocoques for its new family of sports cars. Working alongside the Austrian company, as well as Toray of Japan, McLaren has pioneered a new carbon-fiber production process that allows the so-called ‘MonoCell’ tub to be produced in a single piece, in four hours.

The MonoCell (above) is made in a new resin transfer molding process. Dry carbon fiber pre-forms are cut to shape and laid out in a multipiece, complex-part metal mold with coring technology to make the MonoCell hollow. All parts of the tool close simultaneously; it then goes into a press which restrains the mold against pressure at a constant temperature. High-performance epoxy resin is injected at very high pressure, permeating the whole tub, and the resin cures to deliver the tub’s strength.

The finished tub emerges in one piece. Various finishing processes are completed on a computer-controlled milling machine, including the interfaces between the tub and the front and rear aluminum crash structures.

“Because we are machining the interfaces so accurately, it makes sense to machine locations for other ancillaries too,” explains Claudio Santoni, McLaren Automotive’s body structures function group manager. “Things like the wiring harness. Although it doesn’t need to be so accurately placed, the MonoCell enables us to use the accuracy of the concept to build a car to exacting McLaren standards.”

“IF IT IS CHEAPER, OR MORE FLEXIBLE, THEN OF COURSE F1 WILL BE INTERESTED”MARK PRESTON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FORMTECH COMPOSITES

Made from pre-preg carbon composite, hulls are too big

for any conventional autoclave but are vacuum bagged and cured over two days at temperature. Design is very much experience-driven and, while manufacturers are quite secretive about their methods, there is no evidence that CFD is being widely used.

The faster boats have stepped hulls – effectively two hull profi les in tandem. It gives two planing points of contact to support the weight and creates a ‘dry’ area downstream of the step. These hulls need to be run fl atter than the non-stepped hulls so the weight must be more evenly distributed.

Opinions are divided on hull treatments but everyone seems

agreed that a good hull can make all the difference. Sharpening the spray rails on the SuperStock boats is common practice in the belief that getting the water to peel off the hull earlier reduces drag, helping the boat cut through the water.

Other views on hull treatment are more contradictory. Some

teams will just wax the hull and drop it straight into the water while others spend serious money having it coated with a Tefl on preparation. Another school of thought favors roughening the surface in the belief that it creates micro bubbles, encouraging the water to roll off the surface.

Hull design

Keeping the racing close is a challenge. The Evolution

and SuperSport classes are balanced on a power-to-weight basis; the weight in kilos must be at least 4.5 times the power in bhp. So for a declared power output (DPO) of 1,000bhp, the boat must weigh 4.5 tonnes. Until recently, all engines were put on a dyno at Cosworth in Northampton, UK, their outputs measured, and a map of their

Equalization


Powerboats offer spectacular offshore racing in several classes. PMW looks at the technology of the boats, and how best to make them go quicklyWORDS BY CHARLES ARMSTRONG-WILSON

Racing in the UK and Ireland in 2010 and internationally

from 2011, SuperStock is promoter P1’s latest race series. Like GP2, SuperStock is a spec formula and has standard hulls and standard engines, but is split into two classes. The 150 class boats are 21ft long and use 150bhp Honda, four-stroke outboard engines and the 300 class boats are 27ft-long and are powered by 300bhp of Mercury 300XS two-stroke outboard

motor. Control of the boats facilitates control of the costs, and the boats are also tame enough to use as pleasure craft.

As in any controlled series, standard kit doesn’t mean the scrutineers are idle. The two biggest areas to check are the

weight and the propeller profi le. All boats must weigh at least 1,100kg with empty ballast tanks and fuel topped up. So, fuel can be used as ballast to allow you to run under weight, but only to the capacity of the boat’s standard tank. In fact, weight placement is more important than total weight and, although the scrutineered weights are not published, the series confi ded that the fastest boats are often the heaviest.

P1 SuperStock


The open SuperSport boats discourage the use of race

harnesses on safety grounds. And if one should fl ip, no roll bar is going to protect the occupants from the impact of the water at racing speeds. The favored strategy is to be thrown clear of the accident to be retrieved by the support boats. All crewmen are connected to their boat by cutouts that stop the engines should it become unmanned.

In contrast, the Evolution boats have canopies and so the wearing of race harnesses is compulsory. Not only do they stop you being thrown around inside the cockpit if you capsize, but they also keep your weight off the inverted canopy so the hatches can be operated easily.

Canopied boat crews are also advised to wear different buoyancy aids that will allow them to swim out of the cockpit before being infl ated.

Crews have to wear crash helmets and overalls to give some fi re protection (fl aming boats are not unheard of), and are also encouraged to wear wetsuits to reduce the effects of cold and shock if dumped in the water far from the coast.

Cougar Marine, maker of the P1 SuperStock hulls, is very

proud of the stability of its boats. “You may get thrown out but you won’t fl ip one,” says the company’s John Donnelly. They were developed in collaboration with Honda, but from the start it was a challenge to produce something that could take the punishment. Cougar Marine started with a couple of boats from other manufacturers but they very soon started to break up when driven at racing speeds, delaminating and ripping out the transom. The most recent design was scaled down from a bigger racing boat and converted to an outboard design. Construction is Aramid-reinforced composite. The fi ber has an ability to stretch slightly, enabling it to absorb impact without failing.

Safety

SuperStock boats are driven by one person with a

mandatory navigator. The bigger boats need two people, one to steer and trim the boat, the other on the throttles.

The aim of any powerboat driver is to keep the prop in the water as much as possible and the wetted area to the minimum. Flying through the air off the crests of waves looks impressive, but all the time the prop is in the air, the boat is losing drive.

When it’s not fl ying, contact between the hull and the water produces drag so it needs to be reduced as much as possible. While up on the plane, only the rear-most section of the hull is touching the water so drag is reduced. Trimming the hull with

weight to keep the bow up is vital to achieving this.

Ballast tanks in the bow can be fi lled with water on the move by dropping a scoop, then emptied later by pumping it out again. They may go through this procedure two or three times a lap, adding weight to keep the nose down when going against the waves and losing it for speed when running with them. Just 50kg of water in the bow of a 4.5-tonne boat makes a big difference.

Driving

vital signs created. This was then used as a reference for the same measurements at sea and any discrepancy used to highlight possible infractions.

The latest trick, however, is a torque sensor in the drivetrain. Sourced from Swedish company ABB, which supplies Formula 1 teams, it allows the output of any engine to be monitored in real time. The sensors simply bolt in-between the engine and stern drive, and are distributed to competitors on a random basis. They can also be switched between teams at any time to ensure fairness.

In contrast, the entry-level SuperStock engines are sealed by the organizers at the beginning of the season.

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The annual 24-hour race around the Nürburgring

Nordschleife is certainly one of the world’s most fascinating races. However, this is not the only reason why Bilstein attaches such value to this race for its motorsport involvement. The Nordschleife’s unique track topography offers a wide range of conditions, including different surfaces, bumps, compressions, jumps and curbs. Together with the modern GP track, the Nordschleife is one of the best places to demonstrate damper performance.

Roughly a quarter of the almost 200 starters in this year’s 24-hour race relied on dampers from the German suspension specialist Bilstein. Nearly all types of Bilstein dampers, from adjustable to non-adjustable, were used in the race. Bilstein supported all its customers throughout the whole event from its Service Truck stationed directly in the paddock.

Qualifying started successfully for Bilstein with four Audi R8 LMS occupying the top four grid positions and the Mamerow Porsche GT3 R on the third row. Due to an accident in the practice session the Farnbacher Ferrari F430 GTC was unable to make the top 10.

Qualifying again highlighted the performance of Bilstein’s

ContactMartin Flick at ThyssenKrupp BilsteinTel: +49 2333 791 4857;Fax: +49 2333 791 4675;Email: martin.fl [email protected];Web: www.motorsport.bilstein.de

value for Bilstein customers on nearly every type of racetrack and race car.

Bilstein MDS dampers cover a wide range of applications. The MDS860 series (36mm piston) is designed for lightweight touring cars, prototypes and single seaters. MDS1500 (46mm piston) is for applications subject to greater damping forces like touring cars, GT cars and other larger vehicles.

In the race itself, Bilstein claimed a double podium fi nish due to an astonishing performance by the Farnbacher Ferrari (second overall) and the winner of the extremely hard-fought GT3 class, the Phoenix Audi R8 LMS (third overall). Two further cars in positions four and eight made Bilstein the best represented damper brand in the top 10.

Although the Bilstein Audi R8 LMS (see image, above center), with the experienced Nordschleife driver squad of Stuck/Basseng/Rockenfeller/Stippler, did not fi nish due to an accident while overtaking, Bilstein is already looking forward to the 2011 running of the Nürburgring 24h. <

READERENQUIRYREFERENCE

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24-HOUR SUCCESSThe capabilities of Bilstein race dampers were once more highlighted in the Nürburgring 24h endurance race, with four Bilstein-equipped cars fi nishing in the overall top 10

Modular Damper System (MDS). MDS Dampers exploit the advantages of a monotube gas pressure damper combined with an internal two-way valve system, as well as the advantage of not requiring an external reservoir.

The innovative, lightweight two-way MDS damper (see images, above and left) offers easy, uncomplicated handling for the customer. Ten digits on each adjuster, red for rebound and blue for bump, allow a rapid manual change of damper setting. On top of this, it is also possible to make a fast visual check of the setting without using any tools.

The integrated two-way valve system is located inside the piston, allowing a very compact design which, in turn, leads to the complete independent adjustment of compression and rebound forces. As there is no need for an external reservoir the damper benefi ts from low hysteresis, as well as from simplifi ed packaging in the race car. Combined with low-friction seals, high-quality parts and leading edge technology, MDS dampers provide outstanding

Porsche GT3 R front MDS damper, a so-called ‘upside-down damper’ used for MacPherson struts

“TOGETHER WITH THE MODERN GP TRACK, THE NORDSCHLEIFE IS ONE OF THE BEST PLACES TO DEMONSTRATE DAMPER PERFORMANCE”


Bilstein-sponsored Audi R8 LMS during the Nürburgring 24 hours

Basic design of the MDS coil-over damper fi tted to the

Audi R8 LMS, Ferrari F430 GTC, and many other double-

wishbone cars

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Silverstone, UK-based Flybrid Systems has

released more information about its latest Formula 1 kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). The development was aimed squarely at performance improvement, but the system also offers signifi cant promise for wider motorsport application, due to its lower production cost.

The new system, called CFT KERS, is aimed fi rstly at Formula 1, where KERS will once more be permitted from the 2011 season. A system capable of 60kW and 400kJ energy release per lap weighs less than 18kg, with a plan-view section of the complete system fi tting comfortably on an A4 piece of paper.

Using the same, proven and patented, high-speed fl ywheel technology as other Flybrid products, the CFT KERS employs an all-new transmission arrangement for connection between the fl ywheel and the car. The transmission uses a number of discrete gears and special Flybrid-developed high-speed clutches that perform a controlled slip to transmit the drive.

It might be assumed that this principle of operation would be ineffi cient. In fact, this is not the case and effi ciencies of 64% round trip are reported on typical racing laps. This is because the clutches have a relatively small amount of slip across them, keeping losses low. This is possible because

ContactJon Hilton, managing partner, Flybrid Systems LLPSilverstone Technology ParkNN12 8GXUnited KingdomTel: +44 1327 855190;Web: www.fl ybridsystems.com

Using a number of discrete gears shares out the thermal load between the clutches, and it should be remembered that the total amount of energy transferable is limited by the fl ywheel capacity. The system has been designed for the rigors of F1 and is expected to have a long service life with clutch-wear rates measured in microns per 1,000 operations.

The lower production cost of the CFT KERS means the new cap for F1 KERS costs ( 1 million per season running costs) is easily met. Flybrid suggests that, as the sales volume increases, the system cost will drop dramatically, making this a viable option for a wide range of premier motorsport series. <


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HYBRID COST CUTThe latest developments from Formula 1 yield promise for wider application in motorsport, according to fl ywheel hybrid-technology specialist, Flybrid Systems

the device is typically connected to an engine speed shaft within the vehicle transmission. This results in the three speeds of the CFT KERS being multiplied by the seven speeds of the car main transmission to give 21 speeds between the fl ywheel and the road wheels. This high number of gears means an effi cient choice is always available.

The clutches are designed as normally open wet multiplate devices so that a controlled pressure to close the appropriate clutch causes torque transfer through its connected gears. A computer controller decides which gear to use, seamlessly blending from one to another as necessary, with no torque interruption. The value of torque transferred is proportional to actuation pressure accepting the requirement for calibration of non-linearities, such as fl uid temperature.

The clutches in this design clearly have to dissipate any losses as heat to the lubricating fl uid and Flybrid has developed an innovative cooling system to manage this, the subject of a recent patent application.

“THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN DESIGNED FOR THE RIGORS OF FORMULA 1 AND IS EXPECTED TO HAVE A LONG SERVICE LIFE”


The new system uses Flybrid’s proven fl ywheel technology

The new CFT KERS promises improved performance and lower cost

In today’s increasingly competitive racing

environment, winning teams are always searching for every last bit of performance enhancement – be it in the form of speed, time, accuracy, or efficiency. Top-performing teams in series such as IndyCar, Formula 1, NASCAR, and American Le Mans use the most powerful design and engineering solutions available. For many, these solutions start with FARO.

“We’re constantly updating and expanding technology, and FARO opened new parameters in manufacturing and engineering for us,” says Gary Pratt of Pratt & Miller and Corvette Racing. “FARO has really opened our eyes and they’ve been fantastic for us. Once you get something like this, you can’t see how you did without it.”

ContactDan Alred, product marketing manager at FAROEmail: [email protected];Web: www.faro.com

advanced research and development technologies available – like those provided by FARO. Pratt & Miller uses the FARO Laser ScanArm to design, construct, and analyze virtual components, systems, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and complete cars – every facet of a project from initial conception to the finished product.

Andretti Autosport is one of the most successful teams in IndyCar Series history. The team has won the Indianapolis 500 twice and has three IndyCar Series championships. In its continuing goal of excellence, it reverse engineers full-size race car parts to improve the accuracy of the team’s wind tunnel models.

Like Pratt & Miller, Andretti uses the Laser ScanArm as both a portable CMM and a surface scanner. One of the many jobs the ScanArm is used for is verifying the position of aerodynamic parts on the race cars. The team is able to take highly accurate measurements of points on non-planer surfaces to improve the repeatable location of aerodynamic features. This enables them to increase the detail of wind tunnel modeling and once they find improvements there, they use the ScanArm to verify parts are scaled up and installed on the car properly.

“Ultimately, if we can increase the consistency of our race cars, we can learn faster,” says Tino Belli, Andretti’s technical director. “The faster we learn, the better our chance to gain performance advantages and win even more races.”

For teams like Pratt & Miller’s Corvette Racing and Andretti Autosport, competing is about winning and the FARO Laser ScanArm is part of that. As race teams, their real product is how they race. Using advanced technology like that provided by FARO gives them a competitive edge. <


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MEASUREMENT SYSTEMSFARO’s products are enabling teams to gain a competitive edge by using the latest measurement technology to reduce development time and eliminate design and build errors

FARO’s solutions empower race teams like Pratt & Miller to dramatically reduce their measuring time and eliminate design and build errors. Portable measurement and imaging solutions include point-to-point contact instruments, non-contact imaging scanners, and computer-aided measurement software. All are designed to provide improved solutions for inspection, alignment, surface modeling, reverse engineering and rapid prototyping, reconstruction, and documentation. These state-of-the-art devices allow for more complex measurements than can be achieved using traditional tools and techniques.

Pratt & Miller uses FARO solutions as they take their automotive programs from concept to reality. Their total design team uses the most

Engineers at Pratt & Miller (top)and Andretti Autosport (above) use FARO equipment for measurement

“THESE DEVICESALLOW FORMORE COMPLEXMEASUREMENTSTHAN CAN BEACHIEVED USING TRADITIONAL TOOLS”


For more than 30 years Mussett Engineering,

based in Norwich, UK, has been successfully investing in engineering, product development and producing precision components for a diverse international customer base in a broad range of business sectors.

Established in 2007, Mussett Composites has quickly become very successful at supporting a multitude of race teams within the UK. Its greatest strengths are the ability to diversify and deliver upon demand.

Brian Alexander, composites manager, started with a blank canvas when he formed the composites company. Alexander has 15 years’ experience in the motorsport industry, from shop floor to management, working for teams such as Arrows F1, VW, and the Audi and Bentley Le Mans teams. His knowledge of

ContactBrian Alexander, composites manager, Mussett CompositesTel: +44 1508 522500;Web: www.mussett.co.uk

completion. Then seeing it work on track.

“That’s where my heart is – out there in the thick of it,” enthuses Alexander. “At the same time, I understand the manufacturing processes and the importance of the demands of a successful race team. To ensure total customer satisfaction, Mussett is able to move as rapidly as the race world requires.”

Beyond four wheels, Mussett Composites also specializes in the marine, telecommunications, subsea, and sports industries. Proving its diversity, it has recently developed a full-carbon Yamaha m1 replica, bringing MotoGP-derived technology to the public arena. In 2009, it contributed to an electric motorcycle for the Isle of Man TT.

Since 2009, Mussett Composites has been heavily involved in the new FIA Formula Two Championship, supplying components and subassemblies made from both metals and technically advanced composite materials. The work has included development and spares support packages. Alexander’s hard work recently received testimony from Giles Butterfield of MotorSport Vision for the support that Mussett gave F2 during the 2009 season.

The company is also at the heart of bringing high-tech engineering and industry back into East Anglia. Alexander is proud to be working alongside Lotus Racing, supplying the new team with short-lead-time, fast-turnaround parts.

Being a successful supplier to prestigious automotive and motorsport programs, Mussett understands the dynamics of the sector and is able to consistently meet customer expectations. Its approach to customer service is as exacting as the components it manufactures. Its success relies on the pride it takes in its customer service, helping to make Mussett Composites the growing business it is today. <


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COMPOSITE EXPERTISEA focus on quality and service, has made Mussett Composites a trusted component supplier to the FIA Formula Two Championship and Lotus Racing

the race industry meant that he was able to create a facility that offers an ideally suited environment and engineering team for the manufacture of each specific part. With its composite and engineering capabilities, Mussett is able to supply a one-stop-shop, from conception to design, through research and development, to production.

Mussett’s technological capabilities, along with its stringently trained, highly skilled and motivated workforce, means that it is able to provide a comprehensive range of development, prototyping and production services. Although the company ensures the lowest unit cost, its products are always tailored to meet individual customer needs.

Alexander’s greatest enjoyment comes from being able to see entire projects through from conception to

Preparing a part for the autoclave (top) and a finished product (above)

“TO ENSURE TOTALCUSTOMER SATISFACTION, MUSSETT IS ABLE TOMOVE AS RAPIDLY AS THE RACE WORLD REQUIRES”


Berndorf Band, a producer of steel belts for

automotive testing applications, has recently been raising its profile in the automotive development community.

“In the 1980s we started with the manufacture of the first high-strength stainless steel belts for tire testing,” explains Heinrich Garherr, key account manager of Berndorf Band’s Automotive Testing division. “New demands from the automotive industry and extensive research and development at Berndorf Band led to an extended product range, such as wide belts for flat-track test stands in wind tunnels and heavily loaded wheel-drive belts. Steel belts from Berndorf Band are even widespread in Formula 1 racing, where speeds of up to 300km/h (186mph) demand steel belts

ContactBerndorf Band GmbHTel: +43 2672 800 0;Fax: +43 2672 84176;Email: [email protected];Web: www.berndorf-band.at

for instance, are welded together longitudinally in order to achieve widths of over 1,500mm.

As far as surface quality is concerned, a slightly rough, cold-rolled surface offers a sound basis for automotive testing applications. However, ground surfaces can also be provided, as well as any other surface quality that may be required. Some applications even require special coatings on the belt surface. Berndorf Band has years of experience in applying such coatings, which can be put on to both new and used belts.

When it comes to service and maintenance, Berndorf Band has adopted a comprehensive approach in order to provide optimal support for its customers even during operation. This extends from special repair equipment and methods, to customized training sessions imparting Berndorf Band’s specialized knowledge of steel belts and practical experience.

The spectrum of maintenance services ranges from on-site inspections and repairs to general overhauls at the factory in Berndorf, Austria, including the replacement of worn-out coatings. The company’s ultimate objective is always as far as possible to restore each belt to mint condition. It is therefore quite possible for a belt to be overhauled several times during its lifetime.

“For over 20 years now, Berndorf Band has been the world’s number one in the development and manufacture of steel belts for automotive test applications,” Garherr concludes. “Now we are looking forward to meeting the demands of our automotive customers, both in the present and the future. Tradition, innovation, and providing customers with high-end products and outstanding support underpin our slogan of ‘continuous reliability’.” <


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with extremely accurate running properties.

“We attach tremendous importance to materials and their characteristics, as high belt speeds, short belt lengths, and compact configurations with small deflection drum diameters mean a high level of tension coupled with high dynamic loading,” he adds. “This is why Berndorf Band exclusively uses top-quality, high-end materials like NICRO 52.6.”

Berndorf Band manufactures steel belts in a variety of sizes. Steel belts for automotive testing applications are available in lengths of about 1.5m upwards, 200mm wide, and 0.3mm thick. In practice, lengths of over 20m, widths of over 3m, and thicknesses of up to 1.0mm are now commonplace. Steel belts like those required in Formula 1,

“NEW DEMANDS FROM THE AUTOMOTIVEINDUSTRY ANDEXTENSIVE RESEARCHAND DEVELOPMENTAT BERNDORF BANDLED TO AN EXTENDEDPRODUCT RANGE”


WIND TUNNEL STEEL BELTSAustrian specialist Berndorf Band has carved a niche in the supply of thin steel belts for automotive test rigs and moving-floor wind tunnels, including high-speed F1 facilities

Steel belts (top) are used as moving ground in a wind tunnel (above)

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The pco.dimax high-speed camera system

presents a new opportunity to record high-speed image sequences at an excellent image quality. Sophisticated new firmware turns the pco.dimax into a camera system that is free of session referencing, due to its correlated double image (CDI) technology. According to the EMVA 1288 standard, the pco.dimax is perfectly suited for high-speed measurements because of its linearity and dynamic range. At the same time, the color processing associated with the low-noise and high-dynamic range of the system facilitates its application in the TV/

High-speed image recording

LiFeBATT, has launched an automotive-grade

CANbus battery management system for hybrid- and full electric vehicles.

Working with some of Europe’s largest vehicle manufacturers, LiFeBATT’s new battery management system can connect directly to the vehicle’s CAN backbone and provide the latest hybrid and electric vehicles with a fully featured integrated battery management system. The system has three levels of safety, protecting the battery, vehicle and driver, in the event of a fault or accident. LiFeBATT has over 20 years’ experience with electric vehicles and battery systems, ensuring the system meets, and often exceeds, industry standards for safety.

The CANbus interface provides the key battery

CANbus battery management system

Vehicle Procurement Program, LiFeBATT battery systems have been designed and built to ISO9001 standards.

In motorsport, LiFeBATT systems are used in TTXGP electric motorcycle racing, Formula Student Class 1A, and several WRC rally vehicles in place of the standard starter battery, saving up to 10kg over the lead-acid equivalent. <

information – state of health, state of charge, voltage, current- and full-system parameters, maximum discharge current allowed, etc – continuously updating every 20 milliseconds. With full control over the high volt contactors and the battery systems cooling/heating requirements, the LiFeBATT CAN interface, with its GUI setup software, means that prototype development time is reduced and relatively inexpensive, as users do not need a CAN engineer to make changes to the settings.

LiFeBATT battery systems are available in both power- and energy-type cells. Voltages up to 1,000V and 500kW of power are fully developed and tested in vehicles across Europe. A supplier to the UK Government’s Low Carbon

ContactIan Goodman, director, LiFeBATT LtdTel: +44 1702 527883;Fax: +44 1702 520178;Web: www.lifebatt.co.uk


006

broadcasting area. The high resolution of 2,016 x 2,016 pixels enables 1,279fps, which can be increased to 2,470fps if a full HD resolution of 1,920 x1,080 pixels is required or even further to 153,500fps over smaller areas. The camera has a primary image memory of up to 36GB, enabling six seconds of recording time at full speed. It supports IRIG B time codes and has a variety of trigger options, which are useful for everything from automobile safety tests to fast-flow visualization with particle image velocimetry (PIV) systems. It comes with three data interfaces, Gig-E, USB 2.0 and a camera link, to allow for convenient connections to

computers. A variety of different sequence, single-image and stop triggers is integrated. If used in a stereo set-up (see picture above) a high-speed 3D evaluation of the observed event is possible. <

Contactwww.pco.de or www.solving3d.com


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pco.dimax high-speed cameras in a stereo setup on a lightweight but rock-solid stereo bar, facilitating the recording of images for a 3D, high-speed-motion analysis

LiFeBATT’s new CANbus battery management system

High-level technicians and engineers are

required by teams to stay ahead of the competition.

Staffordshire University in the UK offers a specialist technology course covering all aspects of motorsport management and technology. The university has excellent industrial links with the motorsport industry, enabling students to spend half the course working with different race teams. The experience gained in the course places students in an ideal position

for a career at all levels of motorsport.

This 16-month course offers a balance between technical skills and practical experience. This is achieved by the university’s strong partnership with local race teams. Students work full-time with different teams, and spend a race season with them gaining practical experience of vehicle design, race preparation, team logistics, mechanics – all aspects of running a race team.

On completion of the course, students may choose to either

Foundation degree

ContactTo find out more aboutStaffordshire University and the courses on offer, please visitthe website: www.staffs.ac.uk


009

study for a further eight months to achieve a BSc(Hons) in Motorsport, or opt for 12 months of study to achieve a BSc(Hons) Automotive Technology, or BSc(Hons) Motorsport Technology. <

In virtually all motor racing series there is

a large amount of equipment transported from race to race, particularly booms, hose assemblies and compressed air cylinders used for air-jacking, wheel changing, tire inflation, pneumatic valve charging and other low/high-pressure applications. These could all be performed in a more efficient, cost-effective way with a portable system.

CES Europe Ltd has designed and developed pitRunner, the first in a family of products to meet these needs, tackling the most important of all applications: air-jacking and wheel changing in the pressure-cooker pitstop environment. Developing the system with Sumo Power in GT1 has seen it succeed in challenging performances both on track and in the pitlane; even with the new pitstop regulations regarding wheel changes. PitRunner has contributed to several impressive podium finishes, speeding up wheel changes by some seven seconds. Of course, this all still relies on an efficient pit crew all playing its role and embracing the product.

The system benefits from design input by pitstop crews. Advantages include: constant high flow to any Paoli wheel gun; light weight – the whole package fits into a holdall; air technology to achieve up to 15 wheel changes on a 1in-drive gun; protection on the quickly detachable bottle, cage and regulator, so the operator need only wear the comfort harness ready to react to a pitstop call; FIA approval in GT1; and Paoli endorsement (renamed nutRunner). All harness materials are UK-made and are moisture-resistant.

Portable pitstop equipment

ContactTony and Oliver Giles at CES Europe LtdTel: +44 1295 279558;Email: [email protected];Web: www.ceseuropeltd.co.uk


008

Sumo Power using pitRunner equipment from CES in FIA GT1


The quality of design and usability, as well as properly rated and certified products, are vital with high-pressure air-delivery systems. CES only uses properly accredited, tested and certified components. A full manual and spare-parts listing is supplied with each unit. <


INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

Japanese tire maker, Yokohama, celebrated

its 100th FIA World Touring Car Championship race during the 10th round of the season on July 4 in Portimão (Portugal).

Yokohama’s involvement with the WTCC started in 2006, when the Japanese rubber company was appointed the Official Tire Supplier. That maiden season also saw Yokohama’s support to the Independents’ Trophy.

This long-term partnership with the WTCC will continue for the next two seasons, until 2012.

As one of several initiatives to highlight this special moment in Portimão, the WTCC cars sported a ‘100th

race’ logo on the windscreen strips and race number plates, and the parc fermé was given a special look for the occasion.

“First of all, we, The Yokohama Rubber Company, would like to take this

Japanese tire supplier Yokohama celebrated its 100th WTCC race with a birthday cake on the grid

100-up in the WTCC

100 WTCC races shows the level of commitment of this valuable partner. We are delighted to work with Yokohama in a successful partnership and its involvement has led to a lot of interest, especially in Japan.” <

opportunity to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to all the parties involved in the World Touring Car Championship, such as FIA, KSO, Eurosport, as well as each manufacturer and team, for their continuous support and kind understanding to our Yokohama tires,” said Shigeo Komatsu, general manager, tire global product planning division, Yokohama Rubber Co Ltd.

“It is our great honor to celebrate our 100th race of WTCC here in Portimão. We are proud of our quality in both ADVAN racing tires and service, and promise to maintain the high quality into WTCC and other racing series as much as possible. Finally, we hope WTCC will continue for a long time and obtain a prosperous future all over the world.”

Marcello Lotti, general manager of KSO, added, “Yokohama’s participation in

ContactYokohama Europe, Monschauerstr. 12, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany;Web: www.yokohama-online.com


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In 1975 I helped Alfa Romeo win the world championship for makes,

driving the 33 TT 12. Alfa hadn’t won a world title since Fangio in 1951, so alongside the huge personal satisfaction at winning the championship was a satisfaction in Alfa Romeo winning.

I shared a TT with Jacques Laffi te, Jochen Mass or Jacky Ickx, with Henri Pescarolo and Derek Bell in the sister car. Between us we won seven out of the eight world championship races we entered that season. There was real rivalry in that team in ’75, everybody wanted to win. There were no team orders, but the rule was that if we were both up front then we were to hold positions for the last half-hour of the race. It wasn’t much of a problem, because one car was usually faster than the other.

The cars were run by the Willi Kauhsen Racing Team. There were a lot of strikes

within Alfa at the time, which back then was government-owned. The Kauhsen setup was just a front to move the attention away from Alfa, just like Ferrari F1 and NART at the end of the 1964 season. They could have called it anything; it was a [factory] Autodelta team in all but name.

The TT had a very short wheelbase and you sat with your feet in front of the front wheels. I found it easier to drive than some of the other drivers because I’d driven the 2-liter Abarth sportscar, which had a similar driving position. But it was not pleasant to drive. It was a bit like driving an articulated truck, because you were sitting so far forward. With the car pivoting behind, you got different inputs to other cars.

Not everybody could make it go fast. It’s very diffi cult to experiment when you’re so exposed, because if you crash, you’ve had

it. It wasn’t particularly forgiving either: if you lost front-end grip, that was it, you were going to hit something.

I also won my second Targa Florio in a TT in 1975. The Targa Florio was the supreme test for a motor vehicle, but there was zero margin for error. It was far more likely that a driver would make a mistake than the car have a problem, although I did have a driveshaft failure on the Ferrari 312PB in 1973. The team hadn’t reckoned on so much suspension movement and got the driveshaft measurements wrong.

My fi rst Targa Florio was in 1963 in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Zagato, and I ended up in a fi eld on the fi rst lap! But that was the only time I did that, I learned my lesson. I am lucky to have a photographic memory, so I see a track once and remember it. I started in hillclimbs, where you really have to remember every turn. <

ARTURO MERZARIO SPOKE TO GRAHAM HEEPS

...having zero margin for error

I REMEMBER...

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Free online reader enquiry serviceFIND OUT FURTHER DETAILS ABOUT THE ADVERTISERS IN THIS ISSUE ONLINE AT:


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John Force

Team owner/driver, John Force Racing

Keith Saunt

Chief operating offi cer, Lotus Racing

Marc Schramm

Team co-owner, Black Falcon

Interviewed

JULY 2010









Effi ciency drive

Setting new standards in LiFePO4 technology

LiFeBATT/ LiFeTech Lithium Iron Phosphate battery modules are equipped with advanced management systems to monitor and balance each cell to ensure optimum performance. LiFeBATT batteries are a safe, powerful and reliable energy solution offering a low maintenance, cost effective and environmentally friendly solution.

LiFeTech Energy Inc is headquartered in Taiwan and a subsidiary of global conglomerate the Panjit Group. LiFeTech is one of the Worlds’ leading developers and suppliers of High Performance Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) battery systems, under the brand names LiFeBATT and LiFeTech. LiFeTech Energy Inc is fully licensed by the patent holder, Phostech Lithium Inc.

The LiFeTech XPS battery systems are specifi cally designed for rapid prototype development to meet the demanding and stringent requirements of the automotive OEM. The scalable modular system allows for custom design, in series production, of batteries from 12V to 800V, in any capacity. Suitable for use in a wide range of applications and specifi cally for EV, Hybrid and PHEV applications. From Scooters to Cars and Trucks to Buses, including marine applications, both electric drive and hotel services.

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See our product in action at TTXGP Electric Motorcycle Racing and Formula Student Class 1A

... steel belts from Berndorf Band!

Fast ... ... faster ...

Berndorf Band GmbHA-2560 Berndorf, AustriaPhone:(+43)2672-800-0Fax: (+43)[email protected] www.berndorf-band.at

Steel belts from Berndorf Band have been used for automotive testing applications for many years.

It began with tyre test belts, leading to the construction of wide rolling road belts for wind tunnel testing.

Speeds of almost 300km/h and the need for extremely accurate running properties place exceptionally high demands on steel belts.

Berndorf Band is the leader in the development and manufacturing of high-speed belts. This results in

and performance of our products.

35646747 professional motor sport world july 2010

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