Race Tech Issue 162

“IT’S A NIGHTMARE!” Exclusive reaction as WEC teams are sucked into F1 controversy

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I N T E R N A T I O N A L

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Audi, Toyota and Porsche reveal the most complex racecars they’ve ever built

FORGET F1 This is the real revolution!

PLUS The estate car built for BTCC Ligier’s Le Mans comeback

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May 2014 CONTENTS Issue 162

COVER STORY – Page 20

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The energy allowance is per lap, not per race distance, to avoid an economy run”

FORGET F1

This is the real revolution!

ON THE COVER 20 WEC Revolution: The world’s spotlight may have been on Melbourne for the opening round of the new era in Formula One, but the real revolution is taking place in another championship, as William Kimberley reports

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Volume 21 Issue 6 Published April 2014 The next issue will be published in early May 2014 ISSN 1356-2975 SUBSCRIPTIONS Subscriptions from Racecar Graphic Ltd 841 High Road, Finchley, London N12 8PT Tel +44 (0)20 8446 2100 Fax +44 (0)20 8446 2191 Overseas copies are sent via air mail Special offer 12 issues for the price of 10 12 issue subscription UK: £45.00 Europe: €97.50, US/Canada: US$127.40 Rest of World: £75.00

INDUSTRY NEWS F1 fuel flow fracas spills over into WEC; Audi unveils new R18 e-tron Quattro; Toyota leaps into new era with TS040 HYBRID; booming BTCC field vindicates NGTC move; Lada and Chevrolet WTCC cars hit track; NASCAR considers major changes to 2015 Cup cars

FORMULA ONE 28 The post-race controversy at the Australian GP couldn’t disguise a feeling that F1 had just got out of jail!

ENGINE TECHNOLOGY: AIR MANAGEMENT 34 Aerodynamicists and engine departments both demand priority treatment when it comes to ‘air management’ on a new car design. Marco de Luca and Angelo Camerini, former heads of aerodynamics and engines for Ferrari and BMW F1 respectively, reach an uneasy truce to share their expertise NEW CARS 46 NGTC Honda Civic Tourer Multiple champions Team Dynamics will race an estate version of the Honda Civic in the 2014 British Touring Car Championship

54 Ligier JS P2 Nearly 40 years after the famous marque last graced Le Mans, a Ligier sports car has returned to the racetrack

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TESTING: MIRA KINEMATICS AND COMPLIANCE RIG 60 Myriad rigs are harnessed in the development of racecars but, as we discover on a visit to MIRA, the benefits of the K&C rig are less well known

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SPECIAL REPORT ON SUSPENSION TECHNOLOGY 66 We consider some of the latest technical advances in suspension components COMPANY PROFILE 76 We visit Germany to see a composites company that has recorded stratospheric growth in just two decades NEW PRODUCTS 80 A look at the latest products launched in the motorsport sector

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LAST LAP COLUMN 82 F1 on trial: the stakes are much higher than a podium finish when Red Bull’s appeal against its Oz GP exclusion is heard, argues Chris Pickering

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INTRODUCTION Issue 162

The season starts with a bang – or is it a pop?

EDITOR William Kimberley

DEPUTY EDITOR Chris Pickering

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Pat Symonds Andrew Charman John Coxon Steve Bridges Graham Templeman Matt Youson Andy Swift

CONSULTANT EDITOR Mark Skewis

PHOTOGRAPHY LAT

ART EDITOR Paul Bullock

WEB MANAGEMENT

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n March we hosted our first ever webinar and thank to GM Racing’s Jim Covey and Toyota Motorsport’s Peter Hesse, it all went well after an initial inevitable glitch or two. They gave an explanation of what they look for in their suppliers and how companies can do business with them.

They answered openly and honestly the questions put to them by the attendees for literally around the world and the hour long session simply flashed by. The feedback from the attendees after the event was generally very positive.

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ADMINISTRATION/ SUBSCRIPTIONS Vikki Amour

US BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE Debbie Atkerson

SALES EXECUTIVE Mike Norman

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One thing that struck me, though, was just how ignorant a large part of our industry, particularly in the UK, tends to be about webinars. A number of people had not even heard the term before and had little idea what was involved, not realising that here was an opportunity to talk to two people live online that they would normally give their right arm to do. Furthermore, it was free!

However, encouraged by the feedback, we will be doing more in the future.

Maryam Lamond

PUBLISHER Soheila Kimberley

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Taking a more broad view of issues, the ultrasonic fuel flow meter has obviously caused an uproar with the Red Bull disqualification at Melbourne still to be resolved, but as you will read in this magazine, the three sports car manufacturers are awaiting with some trepidation the first race in their championship at Silverstone as they will be using the same technology. I am not going into the whys and wherefores here as there is plenty on that to read inside, but I really hope that things do get sorted out quickly.

One endurance race series that has its own problems is the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship but it seems that following the Sebring 12 Hour race, the Balance of Performance issues that afflicted the Daytona 24 Hours have been more or less overcome. This time it was Ford’s turn to win, the No 01 Chip Ganassi Racing Telcel Ford EcoBoost/Riley DP winning the race. It marked the first win for the Roush Yates-prepared Ford EcoBoost twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V6

racing engine and the first overall victory for Ford power at Sebring since 1969, when Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver won the event driving a Ford GT40 Mk 1 for John Wyer Automotive Engineering.

If there was a downside to the race it was the fact that there were 11 full-course caution periods, one of which lasted over an hour, the pity of which was that it occurred during the time when the only three hours of the race were being broadcast on national TV. There was also another one right at the end of the race leading to a dramatic dash to the flag. It is this sort of manipulation that true sports car racing fans hate and something that IMSA should really address if it is going to keep the fan base and goodwill it has accrued with the merger of Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series.

And finally, we come to the issue of the sound of a Formula One engine and it seems you either like and accept it or hate it, as Bernie Ecclestone evidently does along with Ron Walker, his ally and promoter of the Australian Grand Prix. Evidently, there is talk of the FIA being sued for breach of contract, which is nonsense. I kind of get the feeling this row is being intentionally stoked for reasons that are not particularly apparent.

When anything new is introduced, it always has its critics and naysayers, and such have been the changes in Formula One, including the change in engine sound, it was bound to be on the receiving end of a lot of negative comments, but the sport has to move on. It cannot live on past glories and technologies and if that means the sound of the engine changes, so be it, because the advantages of the new technologies now in Formula One far, far outweigh what has gone before. My guess is that after a few races, this will all blow over and be forgotten, but the advantages gained will stay with us for a very long time, not just in motorsport but also in other industries as well.

William Kimberley EDITOR

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FUEL FLOW FRACAS AND LMP1 TEAM CONCERNS William Kimberley reports on an issue that is causing concern for the manufacturer LMP1 teams

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ONDON, UK: With Silverstone hosting first race of the World Endurance Championship, Race Tech has learnt that there is great dissatisfaction among the factory teams with the ultrasonic fuel flow sensor. Alex Hitzinger, head of LMP1 development at Porsche, had already gone on record stating his concerns about the technology while representatives from the other manufacturers were just as concerned but less vociferous.The misfortune that befell Red Bull Racing when Daniel Ricciardo was disqualified after finishing second at Melbourne due to the team not adhering to the read-outs of the fuel flow meter has exacerbated the situation. “If you base engine mapping or development on fuel flow per lap or energy flow as a whole, you have to have working instruments, and this we don’t have,” said one manufacturer’s representative who

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refused to be named.

Such sentiment is backed up by Red Bull owner Dieter Mateschitz who has gone on record as saying “The fact is that the Federation’s sensor has given inaccurate values since the beginning of the winter tests. We can prove that we were within the limits.”

According to Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing’s team principal, in the team’s appeal against the disqualification, the case being put forward is “we have a sensor that is drifting and isn’t reading correctly versus a fuel rail that we know is calibrated and we know that hasn’t varied throughout the weekend and has subsequently been checked and found to be not faulty and hasn’t moved or varied at all since it was installed on the car prior to the weekend.

“Our argument is very simple - that we haven’t broken the Technical Regulations.

That we haven’t exceeded the fuel flow limit and that the sensor, which hopefully we will be able to demonstrate in the appeal, is erroneous.

“We are bound by the Technical and Sporting Regulations. 5.1.4 of the Technical Regulations says you must not exceed 100kg/h of fuel usage – we haven’t done that. Therefore our view is we haven’t broken the regulations and Technical Directives are of non-regulatory value.”

At a pre-race press conference in Melbourne, FIA race director Charlie Whiting, said that if the 100kg/hr flor rate limit is exceeded, there is no tolerance and drivers will be excluded from the classification. He then said: “We are confident in the meter’s accuracy but it will always be correlated with data we have from injectors to ensure there isn’t a wide divergence.”

Such is the variability in the read-out of the sensors, says a source within a manufacturer’s team, that Formula One teams and the manufacturers in LMP1 are

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MOTORSPORTS PROFESSIONAL

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ABOVE Concerns have been privately raised by the factory LMP1 teams about the fuel flow sensors and their durability in a 24 hour race buying several so that the best ones can be selected. In an LMP1 car, two are fitted in parallel in the feed line to the engine in the gasoline cars and three in the diesels as the regulations require a third sensor is located in the return line in the flowback and any difference is measured. However, while the factory teams can grudgingly afford to buy a number of them, when it comes to the privateers, which do not have the budget, they do not have that luxury.

“The original basic idea to base it on energy is superb and the rules are pointing in the right direction and we know that it’s very difficult to get there, but basing it on a new sensor that has to measure to +/- 0.25% accuracy is extremely hard to do, especially bearing in mind things like temperature changes that can cause variations,” said the source. “It would take a miracle to make it work in such conditions, but if you say it works and in reality it doesn’t, then it’s a terrible situation. The company I work for invests millions of euros in fuel economy systems for our road cars and it knows how it works and to apply it to the race cars would not be a problem, but we are not allowed to do that.”

However, Bernard Niclot, FIA technical director, refutes all this saying: “I think

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we are in good shape with the fuel flow sensor and satisfied with its accuracy. It’s more accurate than the manufacturers can achieve with the injector model. The problem, though, is that this programme has been delayed for many reasons so there may be a few teething issues such as the chemical characteristics of the E20 fuel being used in the series; that we’ll have to try and solve with Gill Sensors, the company that has provided them.”

“Another problem is having only one supplier,” said the source. “We are in racing to find out the best technology but in this case, all other competitors in this area were excluded from the very beginning of the process, and this isn’t the way it should be.

If it leads to a disqualification, not just of one of our cars but of one from any other team, then it’s unfair and a huge problem.

If one of our cars was disqualified five hours after the race, as we saw happen to Red Bull in Melbourne, then I think our senior management board would demand an immediate withdrawal from racing, and that’s a real danger.”

To calculate the specific consumption which is controlled by the FIA there is also a torque meter management process, torque metering being compulsory for manufacturers’ cars. “This is something

that doesn’t work longer than half an hour and starts to drift away from giving a true reading, but the race is 24 hours, so there’s the possibility of huge deviation. It might be in our favour, but on the other hand, it might not and as it’s all recorded, the race stewards will have no option but to react to the readings if they see that the car in question is not complying to the regulations. Depending on the read-out, they may tell the team to slow down if the car appears to be using too much fuel or they may ask it to speed up if the reading’s the other way. So all things combined we can be lucky or we can be very unlucky.

Altogether, it’s a nightmare!”

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Audi unveils the new R18 e-tron quattro Craig Scarborough LE MANS, France: Audi Sport officially unveiled its R18 car at Le Mans, in an unusual ceremony, where the car was driven from the town to the track. The R18 is an all new car for this year, to meet the revised chassis, safety and powertrain regulations.

What was already a well optimised car gains an all new chassis, a larger TDI engine and new safety technology.

At its heart the R18 still sports a direct injection turbo diesel 120-degree V6. Now increased to 4.0 litre capacity and mated to an updated Energy Recovery System (ERS).

new power unit is the siamesed exhaust tailpipe, feeding from the single turbo; the exhaust now splits and blows either side of the tail fin. Completing the powertrain is a revised seven-speed semi-automatic gearbox, again in a carbon fibre case. The lightweight casing being in response to the penalty of their chosen power unit setup, Reinke admitted “It’s always a challenge if you have two driving systems on the car, ERS and a diesel engine.”

Despite major changes to the car width, cockpit, tyre and rear wing rules, the cars aerodynamic surfaces are similar in concept to the 2013 car. Although obviously all

Le Mans especially for the long straights.”

With new passive safety regulations there are parts of the car that have required changes. “We have new safety features which are probably the biggest challenge on the structures side.” Some of these changes also affect the external shape of the car, as Reinke outlined. “There has been an increase in visibility for safety standards, the driver is a bit higher in the car, and the roof line is 20mm higher by regulations.” Plus changes under the skin which are no less important to the car’s design “we have a rear crash structure for the first time in LMP and we have side intrusion panels which are new in LMP”.

Without any regulatory demand Audi has also embarked on active safety initiatives, the key one being their headlamp system.

Having run LED headlamps since 2011, now the eight matrix LEDs in each lamp are aided by Audi’s Laserlight technology. In this

ABOVE It might be called the R18 e-tron quattro as last year but is significantly different in every respect Unlike its competitors, the car runs one type of ERS, with a Motor Generator on the front axle that stores its energy in a cockpitmounted flywheel.

Chris Reinke, head of Audi LMP, explained that a single ERS was a strategic decision. “In endurance you always have to evaluate how much you can gain from the extra risk you can take. Evaluating the complete matrix of options we had available, we opted to take the safe route for this year.” This provides the car with temporary four-wheel drive when the ERS is use.

In this format the car will compete in the 2 Mega Joule category and has a fuel tank restricted 54 litres. As with Formula One, LMP1 will use a third less fuel this year and instantaneous fuel flow will be monitored by a Gill ultrasonic sensor.

Externally the only difference with the

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new, there are some specific changes that are noticeable. Narrower front wheels pods feature a new rear facing exit and the vanes running along the flanks of the car are further revised.

While the rear wing is revised to meet the new rules that allow it to be full width without resorting to the wheel arch bodywork trick copied from Toyota. The rear-wheel pods are narrower in response to the tyres being the same size as fitted to the front axle.

Despite the visual similarities year on year, Reinke is sure there is scope for further optimisation of the aero packages in LMP1.

“The car has much less drag, again to make up to contribute to the efficiency overall of the package. What we see here is a configuration that will be raced at Silverstone. I’m pretty sure we will see on our car and competitors’ car, some changes for

a blue laser backlights a yellow phosphorus crystal lens. This new light source is actively aimed at the corner, to provide better illumination of the apex.

Having tested the system at night during testing at Sebring, driver Tom Kristensen commented. “I was impressed, in the black American night. They are not stronger; they just give me better vision. I can see better where the laser is pointed.”

Kristensen also pointed out that it is not just the Audi drivers who will benefit, but GT cars being overtaken at night will not be blinded by over powerful headlamps. “LMP cars are faster when approaching, so we tend not to flash the lights when we approach the braking point with the Laserlight”. Further aiding safety, Audi also continue to use the rear view video screens in the cockpit in addition to the rear view mirrors.

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10 MOTORSPORTS PROFESSIONAL BELOW Toyota says that the TS040 HYBRID takes it into a new era of hybrid motorsport

Toyota’s leap into a new era with the TS040 HYBRID

William Kimberley COLOGNE, Germany: At the end of March, Toyota Racing unveiled the TS040 HYBRID that it hopes will secure victory at Le Mans as well as claim the World Endurance Championship title this year. It is a car that the Japanese company has labelled as taking it into a new era of hybrid motorsport and represents a major evolution on the TS030 HYBRID, embracing regulation changes that see maximum width reduced by 10cm and a series of safety items introduced.

The new Toyota Hybrid System - Racing powertrain, which boasts 1000ps – 480ps from the hybrid system and 520ps from the 3.7 litre petrol engine, has been developed specifically for the revised WEC technical regulations, which put a particular focus on fuel economy. A 25% reduction in fuel usage compared to 2013 is required, with savings achieved through powertrain, aerodynamics and driving style efficiencies.

Under deceleration, the motor-generators apply braking force in combination with traditional mechanical brakes to harvest energy, which is transferred via an inverter – Aisin AW at the front, Denso at the rear – to the Nisshinbo supercapacitor.

During acceleration, the motor/generator reverses its function, acting as a motor to deliver a 480ps power boost. With the fuel allowance determined by the level of hybrid capacity to which each team commits,Toyota Racing has opted for 6MJ of hybrid capacity per lap of Le Mans.

This move to a four-wheel drive hybrid sees the Japanese carmaker return to a concept that has been part of its racing

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hybrid development since 2007, when the four-wheel drive Supra HV-R became the first hybrid to win an endurance race, the Tokachi 24 Hours.

The chassis has been designed, developed, manufactured, built and operated by Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) in Cologne.

Particular attention has been paid to airflow around the car, both to reduce drag in order to improve fuel economy and to increase downforce, and therefore grip levels to compensate for tyres which are 5cm narrower compared to 2013.

Extensive development in TMG’s wind tunnels has resulted in an aerodynamically efficient design which is also incredibly lightweight thanks to advanced composite design and production processes.

Intensive simulation and calculation work at TMG has refined the TS040 HYBRID, utilising hardware-in-the-loop technology to test individual components based on real track data and powerful calculation computers to optimise designs.

Know-how from the TS030 HYBRID is already in use to enhance Toyota’s road car hybrids and the WEC’s focus on road-relevant technology is expected to see further technology transfer from track to road.

“We are very much looking forward to our third season in the FIA World Endurance Championship when we will fight to achieve our dream of winning Le Mans and the World Championship,” said team president Yoshiaki Kinoshita. “As well as challenging new regulations which make endurance racing the most road-relevant discipline in top-level motorsport, we also have a new competitor. We are looking forward to competing with Porsche, as well as our

more familiar rivals Audi.

“As a team we learnt a lot in our first two seasons in WEC and all this know-how has gone into our new TS040 HYBRID, which is the most technologically-advanced Toyota ever to compete on the track. We consider it very important that our racing programme contributes to Toyota’s wider activities and I am very proud that data, knowledge and technology pass regularly from our racing programme to our R&D colleagues, who are working to make great road cars of the future.”

“The Toyota Hybrid System - Racing has been significantly upgraded due to the challenge of new regulations,” said Hisatake Muruta, general manager, Motor Sports Unit Development Division. “The regulations require a big reduction in fuel consumption but, to remain competitive, we of course want to retain engine power; it is not a realistic option to reduce consumption by reducing power. We looked at various possibilities but the most appropriate solution for us was to increase the displacement of the engine to improve heat efficiency whilst upgrading the hybrid system. We considered bigger hybrid capacity but settled on 6MJ as anything greater, using kinetic energy recovery, had a negative effect on lap time due to increased weight. To recover that amount of energy under braking, the rear motor-generator was not enough so we returned to the four-wheel hybrid concept we developed from 2007 to 2011, before the regulations limited hybrid boost to just one axle. With 1000ps we have achieved very impressive performance and kept the system within our weight targets.

Now it’s time to see what it can do against the competition.”

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Photo: Ebrey/BTCC

BELOW Full field: The grid line-up at the BTCC Media day – the full 31-car entry comprises 14 different models from 11 manufacturers

Booming BTCC field vindicates NGTC move

Photo: Andrew Charman

Andrew Charman

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whichever bodyshell an entrant desires.

The 2.0-litre turbo engines used in the series can be either supplied by TOCA and DONINGTON PARK, UK: The British built by Swindon Race Engines, or built by Touring Car Championship (BTCC) has the entrant to a strict TOCA specification. unveiled a record 31 car grid for its 2014 These rules have seen the entry for season. The field, that stretches across 14 the 2014 championship, the first to be models from 11 different manufacturers, exclusively run for NGTC cars, include is being seen as a firm vindication of the a diversity of manufacturer badges BTCC’s decision in 2011 to break away exceeding the best years of the BTCC’s from the increasingly expensive Super 2000 renowned Super Touring era in the mid regulations used by the World Touring Car 1990s, when 10 manufacturer teams spent Championship, and to produce its own Next ever-increasing budgets, eventually causing Generation Touring Car (NGTC) formula. the collapse of the formula in 2000.

These regulations were designed to slash In the 2014 series all but two teams, costs by means of mandating a full range Honda and MG, are independents, of standard components, which could despite each entrant being required to be supplied as a complete kit by series buy one of the new TOCA BTCC licences organisers TOCA. The resultant cars are (TBLs) for 2014. These offer teams a effectively standard chassis mounted within three-year guaranteed entry but also commit them to running at every championship meeting. TOCA intended to issue 30 TBLs but eventually agreed to add one extra.

Speaking at the launch of the series at Donington Park, TOCA series director Alan Gow said that the long-term value of the NGTC ABOVE Hot topic: A ‘tidying up’ of the front-end regulations has seen the Fords, cars and the TBL among others, reverting to grille layouts closer to their road car inspiration

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system had been proven, and quoted as an example driver Adam Morgan, who is debuting a Mercedes A-Class this year having raced a Toyota Avensis last season.

“The Mercedes is made up mainly of internal parts that came from his car last season, whilst Lea Wood will now be using the Toyota shell previously raced

by Morgan,” said Gow. “This car and its parts originated from one of the first NGTC machines used in 2011, which is testament to the way the rules have allowed some teams to join the championship that wouldn’t have been able to previously.”

Speaking to Race Tech, BTCC technical director Peter Riches said that the durability of the NGTC has contributed greatly to cost savings. “The car doesn’t need maintenance – you’d throw away the front uprights on a Super 2000 car every other meeting, but I’ve got people using uprights for a third year, others using wheel bearings for two seasons. And, of course, with less to maintain you need fewer people during the week, so you have lower labour costs.”

Riches also confirmed that there had been very few changes to the regulations over the 2013-14 off-season, adding to the stability for teams. Among alterations that have been made are a clarification of the flat floor rules. “The way they were originally written measurements were difficult to take at the circuit. Now measurements are taken relative to the race car whereas originally they were to the road car.”

The one significant change has been a tightening up of the regulations with regard to front-end cooling. Some teams had been cutting holes in the front of their cars to increase airflow to to the radiator, which Riches said was largely as a result of the rules not being sufficiently specific.

“We’ve had a big purge on making them (the race cars) look more like the road cars – in the initial rules we didn’t write enough words, and Alan (Gow) was getting unhappy with what some of them were doing in this area,” said Riches.

“Some also were removing badges, not wanting to run manufacturer recognition because they weren’t getting any money from the manufacturer concerned, so we cleared all that up – the rules now state you must keep all the manufacturer ID and the grille must look like the one on the road car.”

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Lada and Chevrolet WTCC cars hit track

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BELOW The Russian Lada team is heading into its second full season this year since its World Touring Car Championship return in 2012 with 2012 World Champion Rob Huff joining two-time British and European champion James Thompson

Photo: Lada Sport Lukoil

PARIS, France: The number of World Touring Car Championship manufacturers running cars to the new-for-2014 TC1 technical regulations has doubled with Lada and Chevrolet being unveiled and tested in recent weeks.

The Lada Granta TC1 was revealed at Magny-Cours in France by the all-British and highly experienced driving team of twice BTCC champion James Thompson and 2012 WTCC Champion Rob Huff.

The team was then able to complete a full two days of testing with the car and has continued its test programme ahead of the opening round of the WTCC at the Circuit Moulay El Hassan in Marrakesh, Morocco on 13 April.

Meanwhile the first two of the six TC1 Chevrolet Cruze cars being built on a customer basis by Wellingborough, UKbased RML have been shaken down and delivered to their teams, Campos and ROAL Motorsport. Although Chevrolet no longer has any financial input into the Championship, it has still supported the homologation of the Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1.

Ron Hartvelt, RML’s director of motorsport, admitted that the timeline for the project had been incredibly tight and he was immensely proud of everyone involved in producing the car. “That this shakedown was successfully completed to the schedule we predicted back in October is a testament to the talent and dedication of the whole organisation – of course we would have much preferred a proper test and development programme before handing the cars over, but we are confident that the customer teams will do a good job.”

Unlike Chevrolet with the Cruze, though, Ford has not homologated the Fiesta that Onyx Race Engineering had planned to run in the series. All cars need to be homologated by the manufacturer to compete in the championship.

Meanwhile the Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T, SEAT León WTCC, SEAT León TDI

and BMW 320 TC have all had their waivers renewed by the FIA Touring Car Committee to compete in the TC2 class.

The legacy Super 2000 cars used between 2011-2013 have a number of performance balancing waivers in place which take

BELOW First of six: RML’s customer-build Chevrolet WTCC car is now undergoing testing Photo: RML

Andrew Charman

into account various issues with the three models. However, the Cruze, which is by far the newest of the last generation of Super 2000 cars, is recognised as being far more competitive than the SEATs and the BMW which were developed back in 2005-2006. No waiver requests were filed

by Honda Racing Team JAS or Lada Sport for their 2013-spec cars.

This type of balance of performance has been phased out for the new generation of Super 2000 cars which will compete in the TC1 class.

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Drivers get hot over new NASCAR qualifying

Photo: Todd Warshaw/NASCAR

Andrew Charman

ABOVE Rush hour: NASCAR’s new multi-car qualfiying system, seen here at Phoenix, has vastly changed pitlane activity

DAYTONA BEACH, FL: NASCAR has been forced to make changes to its newfor-2014 multi-car qualifying procedure on safety grounds. The single-car two-lap system used by the sport for many years has been abandoned this season in favour of a European-style group format, which will be used across all the sport’s national series.

On tracks of more than 1.25 miles in length all cars – 43 in the top-level Sprint Cup – now run in a 25 minute session, after which the 24 cars posting the fastest individual laps advance to a further 10 minute period. This reduces the number to 12 which then set the top 12 grid spots over a final five minute session.

Short tracks of under 1.25 miles use a two session format, the first of 30 minutes and the second, comprising the fastest 12 cars, run over 10 minutes.

However, the new rules initially did not allow the use of cooling units in the pits, and when the format was first tried at Phoenix and then Las Vegas, there were several examples of near-misses as cars on flying laps came across others driving slowly to try to cool their engine between qualifying runs.

Following the Las Vegas qualifying, several

drivers critcised the procedure as dangerous.

Brian Vickers stated that he had been running around the bottom of the track to cool his engine with other cars passing him at speeds 170mph faster. “It’s the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in racing,” he said.

So before round four of the Sprint Cup in Bristol on 16 March, NASCAR changed the qualifying procedure. Cool-down laps are now banned but cars are permitted to return to the pits and have a single cooling unit inserted through one of the hinged flaps mounted on the bonnet to prevent cars rolling over in a spin.

Two crew members are allowed into pitlane to carry out this process, but they are now permitted to raise the bonnets or plug in a generator.

NASCAR’s vice president of competition and racing development, Robin Pemberton, said that revisions to the format were expected.

“The qualifying is new to all of us and as we have said over the past several weeks, we are looking at it from all aspects,” he said.

“We believe this will only enhance and improve what has demonstrated to be an exciting form of qualifying for our fans, competitors and others involved with the sport. Moving forward we will continue to look at it and address anything else that we may need to as the season unfolds.”

NASCAR considers major changes to 2015 Cup cars William Kimberley DAYTONA BEACH, FL: Wholesale changes could be coming the way of NASCAR’s Sprint Cup cars next year. According to NASCAR vice president of competition and racing development Robin Pemberton, a reduction in horsepower will be mandated along with aerodynamic and tyre changes.

At this stage it is unclear just what is being determined but rumours have it that the engines will lose between 75 to 100hp, bringing them to around 800hp at most tracks. Topics under discussion include a reduction in engine displacement and even throttle body sizes. The intention is to extend engine life rather than cut speed.

In an exclusive interview with FOXSports.

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com at the end of March, he stated that there had already been a number of meetings with Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota on how to implement these changes but that no decision or consensus had yet been reached.

“It’s as much getting more use out of engines as it is (reducing) horsepower,” he told FOXSports.com. “They kind of feed off of each other. There’s no guarantee horsepower may or may not do anything for the quality of racing, but it will allow us to do other things.

“It’s not fully appreciated the fact that we’ve had the same engine for basically 25 or 30 years and it’s at 850 or 860 horsepower, where it used to be 500 – and we are at the same race tracks where we used to run 160mph but we’re now qualifying at 190 and running 213 going into the corners.”

ABOVE Robin Pemberton has told FOXSports.com about some radical ruel changes that could be coming to the Sprint Cup cars as early as next year

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Safety upgrades for IndyCar’s Dallara chassis INDIANAPOLIS, IN: The IndyCar Series has announced a raft of safety upgrades for its Dallara DW12 car, principally aimed at offering drivers improved side impact protection. The cockpit area is to gain new carbon fibre panels both on the inside and outside. These will be combined with the existing Xylon anti-intrusion panels and according to IndyCar will increase structural integrity in a side impact by some 60 per cent. A ring of carbon fibre will also be added to the cockpit opening, and the headrest modified to reduce buffeting of the driver’s helmet on road and street tracks.

Panels mounted either side of the driver’s thighs are to be made from an EPP (Expanded Polypropylene) foam in future instead of the

IN BRIEF A new British race car constructor is offering members of the public a unique way to become involved in a project to develop, build and run a sports car which aims to compete at Le Mans in 2015. Through its interactive open source website, www.perrinn.com, students, schoolchildren, fans and engineers will, for the first time, have access to every element of the racing project including drawings, CAD model and even financial budgets. With everything from livery design and team wear right through to driver choice, suspension and aero data available on line, Perrinn myTeam’s pioneering approach will enable everybody to contribute no matter what their experience. So much data about the car will be available that it will even be possible to 3D print a model of the race car or download a version of the car to drive on the PC or simulator.

After teaming up in 2013 to help Sebastien Loeb smash the record time for the Pikes

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current carbon, and the rear wheel pods used on road courses are to be strengthened.

The changes will altogether add around 10lb in weight to the rolling chassis, and will be mandatory for all cars entered in the Indianapolis 500 in May.

Peak International Hill Climb, Peugeot Sport, Total and Red Bull have joined forces again to develop a car for the 2015 Dakar Rally. It will mark Peugeot’s return to the event after an absence of 25 years.

The joint venture between Renault and Caterham to produce a new lightweight two-seat sports car has been scrapped.

The plan was to launch a joint model under the Alpine and Caterham brand names. It is understood that Caterham does have other plans to proceed with developing a sports car while Alpine has confirmed that its car will be launched in 2016. It is unlikely that the two cars will now share the same architecture and powertrains. Rumour has it that tensions between the two companies due to delays in the project and a minor redesign sought by Alpine led to the two falling out.

Powertrain specialist Swindon Engines has opened a division in France following the buyout of the Cupissol Moteurs which specialises in the maintenance and testing of rally engines. The new, French-based Swindon

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Commenting on the changes, IndyCar president of competition and operations Derrick Walker said that racing is always an evolution. “The rules change and there are things you’ll do this year because you never saw them last year.”

IndyCar is also considering introducing power steering – chassis manufacturer Dallara has been commissioned to research the use of a steering damper and expects to be testing with one in the near future.

operation will be managed

by Oliver Volpi, who comes to Swindon with 10 years’ experience as a Project Manager at Sodemo Moteurs.

Dallara has begun to wind-tunnel test a scale model of the IL15 chassis that in 2015 will become the mandatory car for the Indy Lights series – the main feeder category to IndyCar. The building of a prototype will follow the testing, with the official unveiling widely expected to take place during the Indianapolis 500 meeting at the end of May. Dallara’s existing Indy Lights car has been used by the series since 2002.

The organisers of the Indianapolis 500 have expressed their potential support for an extra ‘Garage 34’ entry in the race for experimental vehicles, along the lines of the Garage 56 available at the Le Mans 24 Hours and first used in 2012 by the Nissan DeltaWing – rebuilt as a sports car after failing to win the chassis replacement competition for IndyCar. Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles added, however, that IndyCar has made no formal approach to the Speedway on the subject.

Cosworth is reported to be ready to become the third engine supplier to IndyCar if a manufacturer is willing to form a partnership with the company. Existing engine suppliers Chevrolet and Honda have publicly stated their desire for a third manufacturer to join the series and fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Lotus last year, and Cosworth has a design ready for the 2.2-litre turbocharged V6 IndyCar engine.

And finally…

NASCAR owned up when a caution was apparently called without reason three laps before the end of the Sprint Cup race at Bristol on 16 March.

A cloudburst within minutes of the cars slowing for the caution prevented a restart to the series’ green-white-chequer rules, and Carl Edwards was declared the race winner, after which NASCAR admitted that an official on the flag stand had accidentally leaned on the switch that manually overrides the caution lights, causing them to illuuminate.

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FORGET F1

Photo: Audi

This is the real revolution!

The world’s spotlight may have been on Melbourne for the opening round of the new era in Formula One, but the real revolution is taking place in another championship, as William Kimberley reports

W

HEN Bernard Niclot first spoke of the brave new world in endurance racing in June 2012, there were many heads being shaken and scratched. What did the proposed regulations mean? Was it going to destroy a championship that had been gathering steam over the previous decade? What would the fans make of it?

As with anything that pushes the boundaries, there was real consternation about what the future would hold.

Now, 22 months later, the dust has hardly settled, but the manufacturers have been busy and the cars are ready to take to the grid at Silverstone, the first round of the new-look World Endurance Championship. It’s a grid that at the front end will be dominated by Audi, Toyota and new entrant Porsche, all arriving at different solutions as to what they

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hope will be a winning car.

2014 will see diesel (Audi) pitched against petrol (Porsche and Toyota), three different storage solutions – batteries (Porsche), flywheel (Audi) and supercapacitor (Toyota) – and manufacturer cars running to a trio of conflicting hybrid allowances (Porsche 8 MJ, Toyota 6 MJ and Audi 2 MJ). And that is the result of what FIA technical director Niclot and his colleagues at the Automobile Club de l’Ouest set out to achieve – variety and a technologically open formula.

Take Audi. While there is no change in the name and the R18 e-tron Quattro appears to be a development of last year’s car, it could not be further from the truth. As Audi Sport boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich says, it represents a completely new generation of Le Mans prototypes and is the most complex racecar ever built by the manufacturer.

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COVER STORY

LEFT The R18 e-tron Quattro looks like a mere development of last year’s car but, beneath the surface, the entire hybrid drive system has been developed again from scratch

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Fundamentally, Audi is remaining true to its principle of racing with its well proven diesel V6 that is integrated with two hybrid systems. A Motor Generator Unit (MGU) recovers kinetic energy at the front axle during braking events, which flows into a flywheel energy storage system. Regenerative braking will continue to play a big part in recharging the electric drive storage system.

The electric turbocharger is aligned with the flywheel energy storage system so it is possible to feed the electrical drive system when the TDi’s maximum boost pressure is met. When the car accelerates, the stored energy can either flow back to the MGU at the front axle or to the innovative electric turbocharger, depending on the operating strategy.

As we went to press, Toyota had just revealed that its normally aspirated V8 will boast 1000 ps – 480 ps from the hybrid system and 520 ps from the 3.7-litre petrol engine. Its TS040 will be all-wheel drive, with a hybrid system mounted on both front and rear axles.

The drive system in the Porsche 919 Hybrid is based on a 2.0-litre V4 petrol engine that is both compact and lightweight. A structural component of the chassis, it can reach a maximum engine speed of approximately 9,000 rpm. It features direct injection, a single turbocharger and thermodynamic recovery capabilities. The compact unit outputs around 500 hp (373 kW).

Two different energy recovery systems harness energy to replenish the batteries and provide power. The first is the innovative recovery of thermal energy by an electric generator powered by exhaust gases; the second hybrid

ABOVE The 919 Hybrid is the most complex racecar Porsche has ever built Photo: Porsche AG

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system is a motor on the front axle utilising brake recuperation to convert kinetic energy into electric energy.

Both Porsche chairman Matthias Müller and Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, head of Audi Motorsport, have endorsed the new regulations, Müller saying they were the reason that encouraged his company to return to LMP1. “Crucial in the development of the Le Mans prototype were the newlycreated and revolutionary racing rules for this class as they relate to energy efficiency. In 2014, it will not be the fastest car that wins the World Endurance Championship series and the 24 hours of Le Mans, rather it will be the car that goes the furthest with a defined amount of energy – and it is precisely this challenge that carmakers must overcome.

The 919 Hybrid is our fastest mobile research laboratory and the most complex race car that Porsche has ever built.”

developed in motorsport that then transition across into production cars.

Another of the six key points was that he did not want the new rules to lead to an economy run where fuel strategies became dominant, with teams holding back to conserve fuel and so on. The solution was to “give” each manufacturer an allowance of energy per lap of Le Mans that would be monitored live. In other words, the manufacturer or team could not run slowly at any point in the race to conserve fuel as

the energy allowance is per lap, not per race distance. If the FIA stewards see that a car is not meeting its allocation after three laps, they have the right to apply penalties.

At the time of writing, each manufacturer was waiting to hear back from Niclot and his colleagues who had still to issue the energy allocation. They had not done so because they were still waiting for the homologation papers from one of the key players.

Formula One’s brave new world got off to a controversial start in Melbourne,

TECHNOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP

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ABOVE Toyota’s TS040 features a maximum power of 1000 PS: 480 PS of four-wheel-drive hybrid boost in addition to the 520 PS 3.7-litre petrol engine. The car was launched at Paul Ricard at the end of March, but work on the project had commenced as far back as November 2012

Photos: Toyota

Ullrich warms to a similar theme.

“The LMP sports prototype class is ideal for demonstrating Audi’s efficiency technology in racing. This category has systematically evolved into a class of technological leadership. The world’s most complex race cars are developed for it.

That the efficiency targets in LMP1 racing largely match the requirements for current and future passenger cars perfectly fits Audi’s claim and commitment.”

Such endorsements must be music to the ears of Niclot. One of the six key points when drawing up the regulations was to enable manufacturers to demonstrate and develop innovative technology that was relevant to road cars.

“Our aim was to give the manufacturers as much technological freedom as possible so that every manufacturer could come up with and develop different solutions that they believed were the most suitable for them,” says Niclot. His belief is that current production car hybrids use kinetic energy recovery systems that while suitable for urban driving, are completely inefficient for long distance and highway journeys and that exhaust gas technology is the way forward. It is very expensive for road car manufacturers, but he hopes that as it is a suitable technology to develop for racing cars under the new regulations, it will be one of those technologies

RIGHT Under deceleration, the motor-generators apply braking force in combination with traditional mechanical brakes to harvest energy, which is transferred via inverter (Aisin AW at the front, Denso at the rear) to the Nisshinbo super-capacitor. During acceleration, the motor/generator reverses its function, acting as a motor to deliver a 480 PS power boost

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where the fuel flow meter fracas saw the Red Bull driven by Daniel Ricciardo thrown out of second place. Subsequently, Red Bull is known to have been in contact with at least one of the WEC’s big three manufacturers, with whom it shared its fears over the accuracy of the fuel flow metering technology. But if F1’s experience suggests a bumpy ride might lie ahead, Niclot is convinced that when it comes to endurance racing, everything is in place.

ABOVE & BELOW Porsche’s 919 is based on a 2.0-litre V4 petrol engine working in tandem with two energy recovery systems

FUEL FLOW SENSOR “I think we are in good shape with the fuel flow sensor and satisfied with its accuracy,” he says. “It’s more accurate than the manufacturers can achieve with the injector model. The problem, though, is that this programme has been delayed for many reasons so there may be a few teething issues such as the chemical characteristics of the E20 fuel being used in the series; that we’ll have to try and solve with Gill Sensors, the company that has provided them.”

One of the things that Niclot and the FIA want to avoid is the perception that

Photos: Porsche AG

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they are favouring one ICE technology or solution over another.

“We don’t want one type of fuel to have an advantage over the other due to the rules,” he says. “That’s why we need an equivalency of technology and not performance.”

The energy allowance will be in force until

ABOVE Porsche’s innovative V4 features turbocharging, direct injection and an energy recovery system for the exhaust gasses

after this year’s Le Mans when it will be reviewed by the FIA. “We want to avoid any question of sandbagging,” insists Niclot. “If we see that a car manufacturer has made a false declaration, there will be some heavy penalties, so I’m sure there won’t be any problems. We will look at the cars again during Le Mans and apply any changes that will then stay in effect for one year until next year’s race.

“This balance of technology will be applied every year but it allows a manufacturer to benefit from any gains they might have made for a year, but after that everything is recalibrated to make things equal. This way it stops any one ICE technology leaping ahead and causing others to become obsolete. Ultimately we want to avoid any one technology becoming dominant.”

Cost was another key point that Niclot and the FIA wanted to address but he knew it was going to be a very challenging task, because it is not only a question of regulations, but

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ABOVE Energy consumption per lap will be strictly restricted also a consequence of the competitive level of the championship: the higher the competition, the higher the costs. However, he says that it will become the focus of FIA/ ACO attention after Le Mans this year. “One possibility is to look into the life of different components,” he says, “but we have really to find a more innovative approach to this cost reduction question. These are things we have to discuss with the manufacturers.”

While the cars will look the same as last year’s, they have been subject to a number of modifications, partly on the grounds of safety – another key point – and also on the grounds of modifying the aerodynamics.

Body width has been reduced from 2,000 mm to 1900 mm and the height has been increased by 20 mm to 1,050 mm. The lower overall width of the car results in a slimmer underfloor, while the cutouts for the front wheels can feature an alternative shape. The tyres themselves are also slightly slimmer. Total weight has also been reduced to 870 kg for hybrids and 850 kg for

conventional cars in LMP1.

The cars can now have a proper front wing with optional flap rather than a diffuser, which means that this part of the bodywork will now lend itself to easier modification to suit the various racetracks.

In the past, it was necessary to produce different bodywork assemblies.

changes with the new regulations. Each car now has to have anti-intrusion panels made out of Zylon. Another new feature is the crash box, a CFRP structure located behind the transmission that has to be fitted at the rear.

Wheel tethers, that connect the outer assemblies of the front wheel suspension with the monocoque and those at the rear with the chassis structure, are mandatory for the first time. Each of the two tethers required per wheel can withstand forces of 80 kN, which equates to a weight force of eight metric tons.

More important, though, have been the changes to the driver’s position. The aim has been to improve visibility, the driver now sitting higher up and in a more forward position.

“This was very important as we didn’t want

DRAG REDUCTION “Our aim in reducing the width of the car from two metres to 1.9 metres and the other measures we’ve introduced was that we wanted to reduce the drag and also go in the right direction with aero stability without transforming the look of the cars,” says Niclot. “It was important to us that the cars still looked basically the same as before and that the car manufacturers did not come up with any strange designs looking for aerodynamic advantages.”

When it comes to safety, there have been some discreet but fundamentally important

BELOW The FIA wants to see more privateers in LMP1. This is Rebellion’s proposed R-One prototype, which is being built by ORECA

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27

a repeat of those accidents we’ve seen in the past,” says Niclot, “and so we have made the position a bit more vertical with the head being a bit higher. We have also increased the gap between the helmet and the top of the cockpit and have specified that all the areas where the driver’s head is likely to make contact are made of a specified foam covered by two plies of Aramid fibre/epoxy resin.”

One area that remains the same as previous years is lighting. In the recent past there has been an incremental leap forward in lighting technology with more and more LED lights being used in motorsport, reflecting the tidal wave of such technology coming onto road cars. While it has been the subject of confusion and debate with some ASNs, the FIA is quite clear that such lights in motorsport are perfectly acceptable. What needs to be addressed in the future, says Niclot, is the way to control them, but that is something for the future.

ABOVE The flow of energy and amount of energy for ERS systems are specified by the complex set of rules

Photo: Toyota

PRIVATEER PLIGHT

ABOVE The technology is complex for the engineers, but the intention is for the WEC show to be easy for spectators to follow

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Cover Story-WEC 2014.indd 27

One thing that Niclot would like to see are more privateers in LMP1, especially as a chassis developed for LMP2 can also be used in LMP1, but he acknowledges that a lack of engines is a handicap. “However, I think the main problem is that each of the three categories – LMP1, P2 and the GTs – all have a limited number of cars per category and if you consider that between the three manufacturers there are already eight cars in LMP1,it’s a problem. So this is something we need to think about as it’s our wish to have more privateers. They are very important to us, so we have to find a way. Their whole raison d’etre is to race while manufacturers use it for marketing reasons and therefore come and go, as we have seen in all forms of motor racing over the years.”

When it comes to LMP2, Niclot does not want to rock the boat as he is very happy with its stability. “It’s in good shape as a category and is not something we need to modify very soon. It’s important to us that those manufacturers in the category have a good market and the chance to sell their cars and develop new ones.”

Above all, though, and the sixth key point, is that the spectators have to be satisfied with what they see on the track; they must not be confused by the technology or artificial strategies. “While the regulations are very complex for the engineer,” he concedes, “for the spectator the race will be easy to follow.”

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I

S IT possible to have a triumphal anticlimax? If so, the 2014 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park certainly qualifies as a prime example.

After mass pre-season doom-mongering, and race director Charlie Whiting being asked publicly to describe the procedure if all 22 entrants exploded, 15 cars from nine teams took the chequered flag in Albert Park.

Of the seven who didn’t make it, two were eliminated in a first corner collision. Only five succumbed to power unit problems. The sky, it appears, is not falling.

Whiting, incidentally, confessed there really isn’t a procedure for dealing with a grand prix suffering 100 per cent attrition.

On reflection he decided a red flag would probably we in order: “I think that would be the only option,” he said. “We’d just simply stop the race – because there wouldn’t be much of one, would there?”

On Sunday evening in Melbourne, benefiting from a full 307.574 km of

hindsight, that line of questioning seemed more than a little hysterical; four days earlier the prospect had seemed, if not rational, then certainly not outside the realms of the possible. The pre-season had demonstrated amply how complicated a piece of machinery the 2014 Formula One car really is.

Underneath form guides and rose-tinted perception, the real story of testing in Jerez and Bahrain was one in which no team enjoyed a particularly good winter programme or arrived in Melbourne confident of getting both cars to the flag.

The Mercedes runners clearly had the better of the pre-season but even they suffered plenty of failures and downtime. If their pre-season was viewed as a success, it was only so in comparison to the lacklustre performance from Ferrari and the waking nightmare of anyone running a Renault engine – though testing never fully answered the questions of whether Renault had

Photo: Coates/LAT

28 FORMULA ONE View from the paddock

WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM MELBOURNE? The post-race controversy at the Australian GP couldn’t disguise a feeling that F1 had just got out of jail! Matt Youson reports from the paddock BELOW Golden years? The V8 engines had become simple to diagnose, easy to replace...

Photo: RenaultSport F1

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FORMULA ONE BELOW Team principal Christian Horner caught in the glare of the media spotlight over Red Bull’s disqualification in Melbourne. Behind the headlines of the fuel flow meter controversy, the Australian GP can be judged a surprisingly successful event for the reigning world champions

RIGHT ...The complexity of the new Power Units had teams and mechanics worrying about circuit curfew times as they strove to get the cars out on the track

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fundamental problems or simply a longer snag list than its competition.

The answer isn’t necessarily straightforward: yes, engines were experiencing more problems than their dependable V8 predecessors but in many instances the villain of the peace was not a fundamental flaw but rather a tricky installation problem. Over the years, the V8s had become simple to diagnose and easy to replace. The new power units were anything but. Relatively trivial problems were enough to send drivers scuttling back to the hotel, leaving crews to contemplate an all-day (and possibly all-night) strip down and rebuild.

This was still an issue in Australia, with the common consensus being anyone having a power unit failure in FP3 would not be participating in qualifying. Some teams, however, are confident this won’t be a problem for the long-term. So does that suggest the long hours are simply a question of unfamiliarity – or are the new power units genuinely complicated?

“It’s a bit of both,” says Toro Rosso sporting director Steve Nielsen. “Normally it’s a problem early on in the season because the car is new and we’re still learning about it.

This year the car is new, we’re still learning about it and it’s fantastically complicated compared to what we had before.

“I suppose the easiest way to describe it is to think of it as a car with two engines.

There’s the petrol V6 and the electrical engine. Everything on the latter is entirely new: how it interacts with the petrol engine is new; the way the battery recharges is new; the systems, the wiring, the pipework and the cooling are all items that simply weren’t on the car before. It’s not just different, it’s Photo: RenaultSport F1

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completely new.

“That, coupled with the usual new car learning, means the time to do anything has jumped: gearbox, suspension, engine changes – everything takes longer than it did before. Tasks that would have taken 30 minutes last year are taking two hours or three hours because the systems and the integration of the systems are so much more complicated. Add to that the usual early season issue of not having enough parts and it’s easy to see why cars spent so much of testing in the garage.”

Toro Rosso had a good start to its campaign with both cars finishing in the points. But Nielsen is adamant that this is only the start of the process and getting garage crews back to their usual level of competence is liable to be a long and drawn-out affair.

“Consider something like changing a gearbox, for example,” he says. “In the past, if we felt changing a gearbox was taking too long, the usual approach would be to do a time and motion study, complete with a time-delay camera and someone taking notes. We’d study the results, maybe arrange tasks in a slightly different way and win the time back. At the moment we’re

still in a situation with the 2014 cars where everything is so new, we’re nowhere near doing anything like that. There are so many other much bigger problems to deal with that we haven’t even begun to think about refining processes.

“Remember we had the V8 for eight years and the V10 before that was very similar: the way the car was put together didn’t change for many, many years. A lot of the guys in our garage – in all the garages – have only ever worked that one way in Formula One. Now, of course, everything is different.”

CALAMITY The ultimate example of just how different things really are can be witnessed at Lotus, Toro Rosso’s Renault stable-mate. Both E22s failed to finish in Albert Park, succumbing to power unit problems. They’d struggled to get onto the track during practice, so their DNFs were no great surprise. For a team that won the Australian Grand Prix a year ago, this was a poor return – but the real extent of the calamity is perhaps better demonstrated by the fact they regarded it as something of a success. “In a way, it was a pretty positive day,” said driver Romain

Grosjean. “I expected to do around 15 to 20 laps in the race after all the issues we’ve had this weekend, and we managed 45!”

Lotus arrived in Melbourne chronically short of winter mileage. Having elected to miss the first winter test, a litany of mechanical, electronic and software issues restricted it to (a generous) 238 laps across the eight test days in Bahrain – easily the lowest aggregate of any team.

“I think it’s a steeper learning curve than we expected,” confesses Lotus technical director Nick Chester. “We were late with our car and Renault Sport were somewhat late with the power unit as well – that’s meant there just hasn’t been as much preparation done as we would like. We’re still trying to catch up.”

In common with several teams, Lotus identified cooling and exhaust performance as its most concerning issues during testing.

“The whole layout of the car is very, very different,” says Chester. “The cooling packaging is massively different and, of course, so are the exhausts. Now they’re connected to a turbo rather than floating to the back of the car, there are many more reliability problems to contend with, exacerbated by the fact they run hotter

Photo: Ferraro/LAT

BELOW Grosjean’s Lotus E22 is passed

by Perez’s Force India. The team’s plight at a race it had won 12 months earlier was indicative of F1’s upheaval

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32 FORMULA ONE View from the paddock

as well. There are many more engineering challenges in making a reliable car this year – and there’s an awful lot more to learn.”

Beyond reliability, the next challenge of 2014 is driveability – but issues with the former necessarily hamper development in the latter. “We ran the V8s for a very long time and understood all of the responses really well,” says Chester. “We knew how to map the gearshift; we knew what the driver could expect. The engine now has totally different responses that we have to learn about, while also learning about the car around it. We also have a car that’s very different in race trim to qualifying trim when you’re running more fuel. There’s an awful lot to learn and it’s simply mileage you need to get on top of it.”

Lotus, in essence, has been left to complete its development programme in the public arena of the early season grands prix. It is, acknowledges Chester, asking a great deal of its drivers. “We did turn up [the power unit] for some runs during pre-season but we only got a few laps. The difficulty now is this makes the car very different to drive.

ABOVE Gill Sensors’ Ultrasonic Fuel Flow Meter, mandated for F1 and the WEC, was at the centre of the post-race storm

The driver is going into the corners 20 kph quicker and can’t easily locate his braking points. We need mileage now to get the drivers used to driving these cars. But also to make sure we can hone our operations – getting mapping and switch settings configured properly so the driver has a car doing what he wants it to do.”

RED BULL FINDS ITS WINGS World Champion Red Bull Racing was another Renault team that (provisionally) failed to trouble the scorers in Australia – though its circumstances were very different, having had Daniel Ricciardo start and finish the race in second position before

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BELOW Down but not out? Red Bull Racing endured a traumatic pre-season test campaign

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33

The fixes aren’t something that takes a matter of minutes to make. You know it’s going to take a while to get the new part and that you’re doomed to endure some misery in the interim”

ABOVE & BELOW Vettel found himself in an unaccustomed position in the pack, but his team-mate’s podium finish (below) suggested reports of Red Bull’s demise had been greatly exaggerated

Photo: Getty Images for Red Bull

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subsequently being disqualified over the contentious issue of fuel-flow rates. Red Bull’s pre-season travails were equal to those of Lotus but having attended all 12 days of testing, it was further down that path. Nevertheless, its ability to have both RB10s running at full power during practice, getting one to the chequered flag, and appearing to be genuinely competitive wasn’t something that appeared at all likely when testing concluded.

Red Bull insists its turnaround wasn’t entirely out of the blue – though the shrugs and faint smiles from the garage suggest nor was it entirely predictable. “I think it was pleasant – hopefully it wasn’t too much of a surprise,” acknowledges chief designer Rob Marshall.

“We did struggle a lot in pre-season testing but mostly the problems were the sort of reliability issue that you suffer with a new design. The fixes aren’t something that takes a matter of minutes to make. You know it’s

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going to take a while to get the new part and that you’re doomed to endure some misery in the interim. That’s just the way it is.”

Like Lotus, Red Bull wasn’t in a position to study performance in Bahrain – though by the time of first practice in Australia, it had an RB10 sufficiently reliable to begin that process. “[Friday] was the first time we made a setup change to the car,” admits Marshall.

“Most of our testing has been done without even checking things like cambers and toes, let alone changing them – once all four wheels were screwed on, it just went out to accrue more mileage.

HERE THEY COME… “[In Australia] we started to make the odd setup change. There’s a way forward now just from getting the car optimised around where it wants to be. On top of that we’re continuing aero development and, of course,

there’s an awful lot of performance to be unlocked in the engine as we find out what it is capable of delivering. We’re attacking on all fronts but the engine really is the most obvious one. Getting that up and performing as it should, will be a big step.

“We’re still scratching the surface of what [the RB10] is capable of, I think. We and Renault have been working very hard to fix problems and get the car talking to the engine and the engine talking to the car in a way that will make it all perform more coherently. There’s certainly a lot to do.”

One thing in Red Bull’s favour is the growing perception that, powertrain wobbles aside, the car it’s constructed for 2014 appears to tick all of the right boxes.

With in-season tests forthcoming, the actuality of Red Bull admitting to being hopelessly undercooked for the seasonopener but still capable of putting a car on the front row and a driver on the podium is something to cause a few sleepless nights in Motorsport Valley and Emilia-Romagna.

It, like every other team, has insisted 2014 won’t follow the usual pattern and a proper representation of the true order won’t be forthcoming until much later in the season.

The teams with Mercedes engines appear to be in the box seats for now but you can’t rule out a Renault – or for that matter, Ferrari – revival as the season progresses.

Of course if Red Bull was able to turn things around and win a fifth consecutive Constructors’ title it would have to go down as its greatest triumph. But for the start of F1’s supposed new era it would also be something of an anti-climax.

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34 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

T

Air-charging rule Atmospheric Turbocharged

ALK about “air management” in motor racing, and two groups of expert defend their ground fiercely as they go head-to-head: aerodynamicists and engine people.

In fact, the performance of both aero devices and the engine unit is strictly dependent on how the atmospheric fluid is managed. This harsh reality obliges the two contenders to compromise with a sort of forced cohabitation in a very small house, with both seeking desperately to have as much room as possible. Both fight their corner in order to deliver the best they can; in short, to take the best “breath” ever!

Inevitably, the relationship between them is an uneasy one. But this internal competition is part of the game and ultimately helps maximize the overall car performance. The aero gurus would absolutely be ready to use 100% (and more, if this was possible) of the available air-volume to wet the bodywork in order to generate their preferred aero forces; the engine guys, meanwhile, are always tempted to archive as the “rest of the car” everything outside the inlet-engine-outlet domain. In this never-ending competition I always struggled to precisely indicate who should take the ultimate responsibility for the cooling system, but this is a different story…

I had the good fortune to serve in motorsport for a long time in different formulas, hence dealing with lots of regulation formats and collaborating with many engine experts. One of them, Angelo Camerini, a

FIGURE 2

BREATHING EXERCISES Aerodynamicists and engine departments both demand priority treatment when it comes to ‘air management’ on a new car design. Marco de Luca and Angelo Camerini, former heads of aerodynamics and engines for Ferrari and BMW F1 respectively, reach an uneasy truce to share their expertise former head of engine R&D in F1 with BMW and race engines department manager for Fiat, has also contributed to this article.

I had the opportunity to collaborate with him and to develop winning cars competing in the most important GT championships of the last couple of years. I’m glad and honoured to benefit from his expertise for this Race Tech feature, which aims to offer a useful recap on the guidelines on how the air has to be managed for the engine to maximise its thrust without hurting the aerodynamicists’ work. The fact that we can still work together today suggests that a good compromise can always be found!

C T

This article will refer to the rule constraints presented in Figure 1 (opposite) that combine the two major air-duct formats (free/restricted duct) with two possible ways for air-charging (naturally-aspirated/ turbocharged engines). Figure 2 (below) shows the correspondent inlet-duct-engine schemes. In either case, what happens upstream of the engine-duct is the same.

But the design of the duct itself needs to be optimised to suit the individual engine.

Initially, we will cover the fundamentals relevant to the simplest case of a naturallyaspirated engine fed by an unrestricted duct.

Subsequently, the consequence of adopting

C T

Restricted

Free Air-inlet rule

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Air-charging rule Atmospheric Turbocharged

ENGINE TECHNOLOGY

2014 F1 formula

LMP formula

Pre-2014 F1 formula

GTE formula

Free

FIGURE 1

Complete engine power formulation

Fuel mass flow-rate Air mass flow-rate Fuel conversion overall efficiency Engine volumetric efficiency Air density Fuel lower heating value Stoichiometric air/fuel ratio Actual air/fuel ratio divided by stoichiometric value Total engine swept volume Engine revolutions per minute Factor to take into account four-stroke engine cycle

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Air-inlet rule

35

Restricted

a turbocharger will be briefly discussed. Because this step reflects how F1 cars have changed from last year to the current season, this feature inevitably refers to this formula. In following articles we will explore the remaining cases of restricted duct combined with both naturally-aspirated and turbocharged engines, as is the case in other competition formulas such as GTs and Prototypes.

Engine-wise, the simplified ‘2D’ scheme of Figures 1 and 2 should be completed by a third dimension dealing with the thermodynamic cycles and/or power supply options (Otto or diesel cycle, possibly coupled with hybridisation). But these aspects do not represent a significant variable for the aim of this work – at least not until the engine cases for which breathing is not a need, as in an all-electric Formula E car. This example is obviously excluded, although air management could be necessary in this case too, in order to properly cool components.

A brief recap of the physics to support your reading is presented in the equation below. The aim of this is to highlight which physical variables influence the engine power output:

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36 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

By this principle the pressure of the air-volume under our consideration can be sensibly increased compared to its “free stream” value if one could find an efficient way to transform its kinetic content (the term between squared brackets) into additional pressure by decelerating the air-volume. If the process is such that the temperature does not change, the air density will increase proportionally to pressure, with immediate benefit to engine power as equation 1 teaches us.

As we will see, this sort of “pre-compression” of the air is completed both in free-air first, with negligible temperature change, and inside the engine duct which engineers devote great attention to in order to insulate from the heat generated by the powertrain to not affect the static density-raise. By this mechanism, the “air charge” is still at a temperature close to ambient and (almost) slowed to a halt before entering the engine, hence its pressure is raised to the maximum level one can achieve without resorting to a turbocharger. The benefit in terms of power is tangible if compared to an arrangement whose design does not permit this recovery.

The downstream stagnation zone generated by this mechanism can also be seen as an accumulator from which the engine can still “breathe” air during very fast RPM rise, with benefits in terms of engine response. In fact, during sudden decelerations from high speeds, air is brought almost to rest inside the air intake anyway, thus converting its kinetic energy and increasing density

as previously explained. Working as a buffer, this helps the engine a little during subsequent acceleration.

The graph shown in Figure 3 is derived from the information in equation 2. The kinetic-term (in the square brackets) would be in the order of 5% of the static pressure for an F1 car at a speed of 320 kph. Say that 85% of this is finally converted by the pressurerecovery mechanism: according to equation 1 this means about 30 HP of “extra” power for a N/A engine with 750 HP of peak-power on the dyno. But, as for everything requiring work, this result is not for free: “pumping” air inside the engine-duct is done only at the expense of the drag of the car. In other words, the engine has to dedicate a fraction of its power to make this “stationary compressor” work. However, for a well-designed bodywork, the price to pay is minimal, hence the net gain is such that it justifies all the efforts required to optimize the system.

Density increase above ambient %

This relationship basically tells us that, everything being equal, the deliverable power is directly proportional to the ability to introduce as much air mass as possible into the combustion chambers in order to maximize the quantity of fuel burnt for each engine cycle. This is the ultimate mission of the breathing-system we are looking at here!

A second equation helps us to understand how the air pressure would rise when the fluid decelerates due to an obstacle in its path.

(It is also valid in the case of acceleration around bodywork but we are not interested in this effect here.) If the air velocity reduces in a way that can be assumed to be a ‘losses-free’ mechanism, one could consider the following equation to be valid:

FIGURE 3

Car speed kph

STATIC Pr RECOVERY EFFECT Power ‘bonus’ thanks to the static pressurerecovery mechanism for a naturallyaspirated engine delivering its ‘dyno’ peak power of 750 hp at different car speed

Dyno peak power = 750 hp Recovery efficiency = 0.85 Ambient temperature = 20°C Ambient pressure = 1000 mbar Ambient density = 1.19 kg/m3

The third equation is the well-known law of the conservation of the mass. By applying this principle to our case we have to accept that the entire stream-pipe (i.e. the “tube”, part of it being in freeair, inside which the air digested by the engine is flowing from the “undisturbed” upstream condition onwards) is regulated such that the following rule is always respected along it:

Evolution of the species RIGHT Early F1 cars had to ‘breathe’ in disturbed air (right), with air intakes and ducts only being adopted in the seventies (middle). Initial shapes were clearly far removed from the detailed optimisation of the modern F1 car (far right), which profits from long hours spent with CFD calculations and testing both in the wind tunnel and on the dyno

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ENGINE TECHNOLOGY

In our case, the “constant” is dictated by the engine that, at the end, works as a volumetric pump: the amount of mass of air that is needed by the engine, hence flowing inside the stream-pipe, is a function of its speed (RPM) and its displacement for a given volumetric efficiency. This is fundamentally true but, as we will see in the following articles, if the duct is restricted and sonic-flow is eventually reached at the “duct-throat”, the mass flow rate won’t increase any more, irrespective of the engine’s capabilities. This is the reason why in some formulas, like GTs and Prototypes, cars are required to adopt restrictors as a method to control engine power.

Concerning the stream-pipe in free-air (see Figure 4, showing a typical pre-2014 F1 arrangement), the superimposed red-coloured curve qualitatively shows the recovery mechanism. The conservation of the mass leads us to write:

The density would not change significantly if compared to flow velocity and stream-pipe section, hence one could legitimately

FIGURE 4

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Engine Tech-Marco de Luca.indd 37

37

remove it from both sides of equation 4. What is left tells us that along the stream-pipe the (mean) velocity and cross-section should vary such that their product remains constant. While the velocity at the open end of the duct (V1) is fixed at the undisturbed upstream end (it corresponds to the car’s velocity), the pipe cross section (initially A1) changes along the length of the duct. Vice versa, at the inlet the mean velocity V2 will adjust to respect the conservation of the mass of the stream-pipe crossing the fixed A2 section.

The same principle is valid inside the duct: its diverging nature will decelerate the air even more (by “imposing” a gradual cross-section increase), i.e. recovering pressure from the kinetic content that is still present at the inlet after a “physiological” pressure drop due to local flow acceleration around the leading-edges.

Air-ducting, however, is a very delicate exercise. Firstly, because the flow is always reluctant to follow an imposed divergence if this is not carefully designed. On top of this, please consider that the engine-duct is also aimed to “curve” the mass flow-rate because the engine, for obvious reasons, has a horizontal inlet and is located as low down as possible inside the car. This double design-target (diverging and turning) is known as a very challenging task by any insider: turning flow is very sensitive to the adverse pressure gradient generated by the section increase of the duct, hence the risk of causing separation is high. Engine people would not forgive you!

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38 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

This is one of the reasons why, in some layouts, the first highcurvature part of the duct is accompanied by a moderate divergence that rapidly increases right before the engine filter, whose blockage helps maintain the attachment of the flow to the final part of the duct despite the abrupt increase of section (see Figure 5).

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 5

Last but not least, it has to be recalled that any fluid flowing inside a duct experiences a pressure drop as shown in equation 5, where Vmean is the average flowing velocity, μ the fluid viscosity, L the duct-length, and R the radius of the “circular equivalent” duct-section.

Accordingly, the recovery can be negatively affected if the duct, despite diverging, is either too narrow or too long. It also says that viscous losses are predominant in the duct-section right behind the inlet (higher speeds, smaller sections), that hence remains the most critical sector of the duct design.

As we noted, the stream-pipe in free-air is common to every engine arrangement equipped with a front-facing duct. In that respect, its behaviour merits some consideration be given to the dependency of the combination between the engine-speed and the car-speed.

Qualitatively speaking, Figure 6 illustrates the two extreme situations in terms of A1/A2 ratio (steady-state conditions).

TABLE 1

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Case 1 (which Figure 4 refers to) is the typical situation in which the designer would give priority, when sizing the engine-duct, to optimising the “power-demanding” high-speed racing phase.

In fact, if the inlet is correctly sized, a pre-compression in free air is ensured due to the progressive deceleration of the air while approaching the engine-duct. Also, reduced velocity at the inlet means low inlet losses and permits the air to start negotiating the engine-duct with reduced mean velocity, with benefit as far as the viscous-nature distributed losses are concerned.

Case 2, by contrast, is the classic scenario we are faced with at low speed. The inlet is inevitably smaller than what the engine would like to have for this specific racing condition. As a consequence, the undisturbed section of the stream-pipe is bigger than the duct-inlet, hence the mean airspeed progressively increases before negotiating the duct: no pre-compression in free air can be obtained.

This means that, if the speed of the car is very low (the race start being the most limiting case), the pressure reached at the engine-entry can be even lower than atmospheric because the kinetic-recovery completed inside the duct would be too small to compensate for the adverse upstream effects. But all this is acceptable because an excess of power is generally available at low speeds, hence an under-optimised system is easily tolerated. Also, low car speed means that flow velocity at the duct-inlet is not excessive, hence local losses are not too severe for this case.

Table 1 offers real values of A1/ A2 ratio referred to in a naturallyaspirated V10 F1 engine fed by an unrestricted duct, the inlet of which ranges between two typical extremes for that period.

Data clearly shows how the case 1 condition is the predominant situation during the “mission” of a well-designed racing car.

As should now be clear to readers, inlet and duct design are the result of a challenging compromise between power and aerodynamics needs.

Aerodynamicists’ DNA pushes them to optimize bodywork “blockage”, hence minimum

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40 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

FIGURE 7

Correct behaviour

Bad behaviour due to inlet too large

Bad behaviour due to bad inlet profile

Correct behaviour

Bad behaviour due to inlet too small

Bad behaviour due to bad inlet profile

inlet size is their strong request with potential engine-duct issues as in the “bad” case 2 scenario (excess of miniaturization). By contrast, engine guys would love an inlet on the “big side”, this affecting the external aerodynamics as shown by incorrect design for case 1. An adaptive inlet would be a nice item to have, wouldn’t it?

The design of the duct-inlet, on top of defining its correct area value, is a very delicate exercise requiring detailed and meticulous local shaping. Figure 7 gives simplified schemes for good and incorrect design. One of the consequences of a bad inlet shaping is the recirculating flow region caused by separation (the zones coloured red) that may occur either internally or externally. Between the two cases, if the duct is not excessively big, case 1 is fortunately less exposed to the risk of contaminating the engine-duct by flow-separation. The latter would be very detrimental for the engine power, due to the lack of recovery and additional losses.

Aerodynamics-wise, flow-separation on the external part of the inlet may cause undesired effects (both locally and in terms of the behaviour of aero elements that would be affected by the losses) that the aero community finds hugely annoying…

In both cases, however, “bad behaviour” is sometimes just unavoidable, above all during transient or side-wind. For instance, consider the first phase of a heavy braking manoeuvre: right before nulling the

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engine air demand and hitting the brakes, the system is in “full” case 1 condition.

The abrupt cutting of the engine is the equivalent of dealing with “infinite” inlet size in the case 1 scenario, generating flow trouble on the external part of the inlet if its design is not robust enough, i.e. unable to manage this peculiar transient flow.

Similar considerations are valid for the opposite transient, in which the car speed is very low and the power demand is at the highest level (the traction phase after a hairpin or, at the very extreme, the race start). These situations may lead to a “suffering” engine duct as for the second scheme of case 2 in Figure 7. Fortunately, as

we already said, the excess of power would normally cancel the consequence of this temporary flow issue.

But flow issues around the inlet can also be the result of a deliberate action. This strategy generally belongs to the aerodynamicist who has permission from the engine people to freely shape the external surface of the inlet.

Proper design can “switch” the flow from being attached to separated at a specific combination of car speed/engine-RPM. A clear example of this opportunity being exploited was seen by the experiments with inlet design conducted by Lotus in 2013. In such an arrangement the two side ducts aim to feed only the aero devices. The behaviour

RIGHT Flow issues around the inlet can sometimes be provoked as part of a deliberate strategy, as with Lotus F1’s passive Drag Reduction Device

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42 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

of these aero devices is a direct function of the mass flow-rate delivered by these secondary ducts, which would drastically drop if the flow around the main inlet separates.

IMPACT OF THE NEW TURBO ERA How would our breathing line change if the naturally-aspirated engine is downsized and turbocharged, as we have seen with F1’s rules transition from 2013 to the current season?

Well, three fundamental aspects have to be considered: a) the modified conditions in terms of air mass flow-rate; b) the predominant role of the dynamic air compression now obtained through turbo machinery versus the static pressure-recovery; and c) the modified “mission” of the duct now mainly aimed to feed a rotary machine.

With regard to the 2014 F1 engine, the two parameters that primarily govern the maximum amount of air mass flow-rate, i.e. peak-revs and swept volume, were reduced by nearly 17% (from 18,000 to 15,000 RPM) and 33% (from 2400 to 1600 cc), respectively. If we now suppose that the car speed does not massively differ from last year, as it seems, one would expect to see much smaller duct-inlets on the 2014 cars to maintain similar case 1/case 2 stream-pipe scenarios during the racing mission.

In fact, everything being equal (and assuming ηvol = 1,15), the engine formula would appear to return peak air mass flowrates of 0.50 kg/sec and 0.28 kg/sec for the 2013 and 2014 engines, respectively: nearly a 44% reduction. Can this be true?

No, I’m afraid…

An “indirect” and simplified approach to get the right numbers at max-power regimes can be obtained by comparing the thermalrelated (i.e. excluding any contribution from the electrical engine) peak power delivered by the 2.4-litre N/A engine of 2013, about 750 HP at 17,500 RPM, with what is claimed for the 1.6-litre turbocharged unit of 2014, in the order of 600 HP in a rev window

between 11,000-13,000 RPM. (In fact, the new rule imposing a 100 kg fuel limit should invite tuning the engine to reach the peak power at regimes quite below the allowed limit.) The fundamental equation 1 is still valid anyway, and its manipulation leads to the following rough relationships:

with F =1.6 or 1.9 for max-power reached at 13,000 RPM or at 11,000 RPM for the 2014 engine.

Deliberately, the density of the air is still present in equation 6. In fact, while N/A engines would deliver air-density fractionally above the atmospheric value, turbocharged units have to deal with the important temperature increase of the air crossing the compressor, the typical efficiency of which is around 70% (hence the work is not entirely reflected in the pressure), this having a significant impact in terms of air-density. As we know, the intercooler would work to remove as much heat as possible from the air-charge compressed by the turbocharger to maximize its density before being finally digested by the engine. While doing this, the intercooler should also ensure minimal pressure drop – that’s why its dimensions are normally quite generous in racing applications as shown by the impressive Figure 8!

Some numbers still related to F1 cars: in normal conditions,

Thermal engine

FIGURE 8

Intercooler

Graphic: RenaultSport F1

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44 ENGINE TECHNOLOGY Marco de Luca

ABOVE The switch to 1.6-litre turbocharged engines changed the designers’ ‘mission’ for 2014

FIGURE 9

Graphic: RenaultSport F1 44

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pressure, temperature, and density of the air at the compressor inlet are 1000 mbar, 20°C and 1.2 kg/m3, respectively. As seen, more or less this is the scenario at the inlet of a naturally-aspirated engine, also including the “modest” effect of the static pressurerecovery. But look downstream of the compressor instead, i.e. upstream of the intercooler, and the air figures hugely change: 2500 mbar, 145°C, and 2.1 kg/m3. Then, we can guess that a good intercooler would be capable of lowering the air temperature by 90°C at the expense of 50 mbar of pressure drop.

As a result, the air is digested by the engine with 2450 mbar of pressure, 55°C of temp, and 2.6 kg/m3 of density. Hence, compared to ambient conditions, an increase of density of 2.2 times is obtained at the

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The peak power mass flow-rate of the 2014 engines is reduced by only 20-25% if compared to 2013” of mbar above the free-stream vs 2014 F1 turbo unit that is “limited” to 1500 mbar of over-pressure! Nonetheless, the duct shaping still has to follow the fundamentals described above, as far as its first part is concerned at least. Figure 9 shows a 2014 F1 engine feeding-system. A schematic 2013-like duct is superimposed (red dotted lines) on the 2014 unit, showing how the system would be shaped if the engine was naturally-aspirated. It is evident how the first part of the duct is still designed following the principles described in this article (divergence > low losses and P-recovery).

The second part, however, is now a concept to basically link the duct “plenum” to the compressor, paying lots of attention to feeding the compressor in the best possible way (see Figure 10).

So far we have dealt with the problem of how best to introduce air into the airbox, but that’s only part of the story.

Inside the airbox, because of the unsteady

nature of the internal combustion engine’s operation, the air is not standing still, but the sudden and often strong intake actions of the many cylinders propagate strong pressure waves inside the airbox.

This is something that has to be analyzed primarily for the N/A engines, as there might be conditions where the air intake process is hampered by ‘impaired’ conditions for particular cylinders.

ADVERSE EFFECTS In other words, after having made sure that air is properly introduced inside the air duct and the airbox, by making the previouslyexplained mechanism of static or dynamic pressure recovery work as well as possible, engine people must be sure that no adverse effects are present in the airbox. In a future article we will shed some more light on the unsteady gas dynamics that play a role for engine “air breathing”.

FIGURE 10

expense of 30°C of temperature increase. To understand the positive impact in terms of power, please consider that a N/A 1600 cc engine revving at 13,000 would only deliver about 380 HP, with a bonus of around 15 HP of extra power offered by the static recovery mechanism…

The power-based simplified approach also leads us to estimate that, thanks to the turbocharging, the peak power mass flow-rate of the 2014 engines is reduced by only 20-25% if compared to the 2013 isoconditions figure, not 44%. This explains why the duct-inlet sizes visible in F1 cars of this year are only marginally smaller than last season.

And what about the rest of the duct now feeding the turbocharged engine? As it has shown, its ability in terms of “static” pressure-recovery is not comparable to what the compressor can offer: few dozens

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46 NEW CARS NGTC Honda Civic Tourer

Multiple champions Team Dynamics will race an estate version of the Honda Civic in the 2014 British Touring Car Championship. Andrew Charman finds out more

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Photo: Ebrey/BTCC

T IS a surprise to find, on arriving at the Team Dynamics workshops, that the most successful team in recent British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) history works out of one of the smallest workshops Race Tech has been to. And in 2014 the irony becomes a little more pointed as the squad competes for its fourth successive Teams title, in one of the most competitive BTCC seasons for decades, in what is now one of the longest cars – and an estate.

Mention of the E-word immediately sparks memories of the quirky but unsuccessful and much-derided estates that Volvo used in its debut BTCC season in 1994, as

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detailed in our sidebar.

But as we discover on talking with Dynamics team manager Peter Crolla and technical director Barry Plowman at the team’s Pershore, Worcestershire, base, racing the Civic Tourer (to give the car its proper title) is not such a wild idea.

It stacks up, especially for marketing reasons, while the actual build has not been the major undertaking that one might think.

In fact, the Tourer is just one example of the versatility encouraged by the BTCC’s highly-successful Next Generation Touring Car or NGTC regulations. They have resulted, as we will see later, in a

record 31-car grid for the 2014 series that encompasses an unprecedented 14 different models from 11 manufacturers, of which only two – Dynamics Honda and MG – can truly be regarded as works teams.

The idea of racing Honda’s Civic Tourer came from Dynamics driver and threetime BTCC champion Matt Neal. Matt’s father Steve, the team head, has admitted that with the last three BTCC titles all won

by Hondas, there was a fear of Red Bull F1-style boredom setting in. That would risk the factory’s continued backing for the BTCC team, particularly with Honda due to begin an F1 programme in 2015. The team needed to keep Honda enthused.

Studying the Tourer road car, set for release in early 2014, added feasibility to the concept. It is built on the same platform, with the same wheelbase, as the hatch, so this would not be a blank-sheet-

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of-paper project.

A green light was first needed from Honda. “Matt got our marketing company to draw up a visual of it and what started as a wild idea looked really impressive on paper,” says Crolla.

“So when we put it to Honda, they thought it was quite far-out but saw it as a really good way of marketing the Tourer in a year that they don’t have any other new sports-based projects – the NSX sports car and Type-R performance version of the Civic are both scheduled for 2015.”

With the backing secured, the team was immediately allowed access to the road car to determine what would need changing. There are several differences between the shells of the hatch and Tourer, for example

in the roofline, but the essential elements were concentrated behind the centreline of the rear wheels, principally an extra 230 mm of length and 28 kilos more weight.

“While we had effectively the same specification as the hatchback variant, we were going to have to save weight as we went along,” says Crolla. Plowman adds that the team faces extra challenges in weight distribution on its cars because of the very different sizes of its drivers – the much taller and more stocky Matt Neal brings with him 20 extra kilos compared to Gordon Shedden.

IMPACT RESISTANCE The weight also needed to be more effectively distributed from its

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Team Dynamics NGTC Honda Civic Tourer suppliers Bodyshell

Honda of the UK Manufacturing

Engine preparation

Neil Brown Engineering

Pistons Omega Gearbox Xtrac Clutch

AP Racing

Pedal box

AP Racing

Steering rack

Titan Motorsport

Steering motor

DC Electronics

Subframes

GPR Motorsport

Suspension

GPR Motorsport

Dampers Penske Brakes

AP Racing

Air jack

AP Racing

Fuel tank ATL Electronics Cosworth

What started as a wild idea looked really impressive on paper” ABOVE Team Dynamics has gone the Tourer route (right) in a bid to depose a car that the team built for Pirtek Racing, and which took Andrew Jordan (middle) to the 2013 BTCC title

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VARYING THE THEME While built to the mandatory NGTC specification, Dynamics had used a variation of its previous engine from the BTCC’s Super

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ABOVE The Tourer at rest following its first runs at a very wet Rockingham circuit

The other estate THE BTCC Honda Civic Tourer launches exactly two decades after the last wagonshelled car raced in the BTCC, when Volvo announced its arrival in the series with a pair of 850 Estates run by Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR).

Honda will be hoping not to replicate the performance of the Volvos, which proved difficult for drivers Jan Lammers and Rickard Rydell to understand, and which never looked like challenging for race wins – the best results a pair of fifth places.

Most dismissed the estate as a publicity stunt – at the time Volvo was keen to counter a reputation for dull cars driven by elderly occupants. A far more competitive 850 saloon arrived the following year, winning its second race and almost the title.

There are conflicting stories as to who conceived the plan to run an estate.

TWR’s Andy Morrison and Andy King both lay claim to the idea, but Volvo had already built an estate race car that it was testing in Sweden.

The resultant BTCC cars were far more advanced than outsiders recognised, notably in the way the engine was repositioned for the best weight balance, thanks to the cavernous size of the engine bay – the driveshafts sat ahead of the block and such major repositioning was soon followed by other BTCC teams, in the process bumping up the costs of competing in the series.

TWR is thought to have achieved a close to 50-50 front-to-rear weight balance on the cars, and even the shape of the estate

body was not a universal flaw. This was a period before aerodynamic add-ons, and the estate’s aero figures were better than the saloon, producing less lift. But the car was cumbersome and the drivers found it less than keen to change direction.

Even if there had been plans to run the estate for a second season, it was killed – by aerodynamics. Alfa Romeo’s clever circumnavigation of the Super Touring homologation rules, by launching a limited edition road car with an aerodynamic kit in the boot, allowed it to run wings and splitters in the championship, and forced the BTCC rule-makers into permitting aerodynamics for 1995.

However the new rules mounted the rear wing in an imaginary 150 by 150 mm box ahead of the rear bumper, which had to be invisible when viewed from the front of the car. This made fitting a wing to the estate impossible – one of the BTCC’s odder entrants had had its day…

Photo: LAT

concentration in the rear, and a major change was to completely remove the boot floor, installing a carbon crash box in its place. “The hollow nature of the Tourer rear end is potentially susceptible to impacts – we’ve kept the exterior crash structure the same as on the hatch, but now there’s this big internal carbon crash structure too,” says Crolla.

Plowman hopes that this could negate one disadvantage of the hatch resulting from the inevitable contact-prone nature of touring car racing: “A problem with last year’s car, with its metal boot lid and short stubby chassis legs, was that if it got whacked up the back, as happened to Matt at Brands Hatch, it pushed everything onto the wheel.

There will be a lot of metal to fold now before it gets to the carbon box.”

The other signature change was to aerodynamics, with a major shift in the aero balance. “Airflow over the car is effectively hitting the rear wing straight off the roof, whereas previously it would go off the roof, travel down the rear screen and then have to navigate the wing,” says Crolla.

Rear wings on NGTC cars are effectively cosmetic. TOCA mandates a position for the wing on each specific model, after testing a standard road car with the wing mounted on it in the wind tunnel at MIRA in Warwickshire.

The aim is to achieve downforce on the wing of 27 kilos for a given speed, after which teams are permitted to increase the wing’s nose-down angle by two degrees, or three degrees nose-up – a range of five degrees in total. While a very small level of adjustment, for the Tourer this would require Dynamics rewriting the settings book for all of the nine circuits the BTCC visits.

A baseline of the NGTC regulations is that the vast majority of components, from rollcage to front and rear subframes, suspension and the like, are specified, so one can effectively load a 2013 chassis into a different body shell. The layout of the Tourer is identical to the hatch, the build of which was described extensively in Race Tech 134 in December 2011. “Nothing in the car has changed,” says Crolla, with the exception of the shell – and the engine.

Photo: BTCC.net

48 NEW CARS NGTC Honda Civic Tourer

ABOVE TWR attempted to counter Volvo’s image for producing dull cars when it introduced the estate to the BTCC in 1994. Its handling, unfortunately, was anything but dull for the drivers

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ABOVE It’s all change in the engine compartment too: Honda’s desire for the team to run an i-VTEC unit led to Neil Brown Engineering designing a new engine 2000 era. But with Honda promoting its VTEC variable valve timing technology in its road cars, there was a strong desire for the race unit to follow suit. Dynamics’ contracted engine supplier, Neil Brown Engineering, has therefore built new VTEC units for the team.

According to Crolla, with the S2000 engine such technology was no benefit: rpm levels never dropped low enough for the VTEC to be effective. “With the turbo-based NGTC unit, however, when exiting many corners you are better off being in a higher gear with less revs, using the torque. This is where the TOCA engine (supplied by Swindon Engineering to TOCA’s specification for teams who don’t wish or can’t afford to do their own engine building) scores massively.

“We’re quite fortunate in that the Honda base engine is very strong and the VTEC lends itself to adapting to this application.

Photo: Andrew Charman

Photo: Andrew Charman

50 NEW CARS NGTC Honda Civic Tourer

ABOVE The airflow over the rear of the Tourer is very different to the hatch, a challenge considering TOCA mandates the positioning and shape of the rear wing

It’s our tenth year with Neil Brown and he knows that for us performance is the priority above anything else – the guys there are always thinking about the next step, the next evolution.”

Crolla believes that the team benefits from looking after its own engine preparation: “If you can afford to do it and you have a strong base engine from the make, then it’s definitely an advantage to build your own – with the TOCA engine the spec is set, you pay your money and you get what you are given, but it is a very good engine and at a good price.”

TESTING TIMES The first Tourer was ready for testing at the end of January and with so much replicated from the hatch, few difficulties were probably expected in setting the car

up. But the first runs proved otherwise. They were conducted at a very wet Rockingham Speedway and in a perfect world the team might have preferred not to combine them with the media launch of the Civic Tourer road car, and a necessity to spend much of each day’s run giving passenger rides to journalists, this writer included. Particularly as Neal and Shedden immediately reported that the car was quite difficult to drive.

“The dynamic of the car was changed by a lot more than we thought it would be,” Plowman admits. “Cold weather testing always brings out a lot of oversteer but while the old car was very forgiving on the rear, giving a warning when it was about to go, we found on our early tests, especially in the wet, that the Tourer gave no warning – it just went.”

Matt Neal concurs: “It felt like you had a couple of wheels and tyres loose in the Photo: BTCC.net

NGTC: The interchangeable car THE success of the BTCC’s NGTC rules package is firmly demonstrated not only in the 31 cars in the entry, but the variety of them, with 14 models from 11 manufacturers.

As well as the Honda Civic Tourer, new shapes on the grid include an Audi S3, a hatch version of the Chevrolet Cruze to join the existing saloon, and a Mercedes A-Class.

The Mercedes, built by Ciceley Motorsport for Adam Morgan, was much quoted by series head Alan Gow during the media launch, as an example of the cost-effectiveness and durability of the NGTC format. Morgan raced a Toyota Avensis last year, but as his family runs a Mercedes commercial dealership he wished to switch to the A-Class for 2014. All parts were transferred from the Toyota, and the Avensis shell then sold on to form the basis of a car for new entrant Lea Wood.

“There are 700 hours involved in preparing a shell and putting the rollcage in, but after that the dry build of the car took just three days,” says Ciceley Motorsport’s Norman Burgess. “The beauty of NGTC is that all the corners, brakes, suspension are exactly the same, so using the NGTC kit TOCA supplies, the car build time is very short.

“A new kit costs £120,000, but it’s all the same parts; there have been no significant upgrades so it was easy to transfer it out of last year’s Avensis into the Mercedes.”

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Photo: Andrew Charman

ABOVE The Wix Racing Mercedes A-Class, new to the championship in 2014 and already producing much positive comment, is a prime example of the flexibility of the NGTC regulations LEFT The TOCA-spec engine installed in the Wix Racing Mercedes. Built by Swindon Engineering, this unit has been widely praised for its flexibility Subscribe +44 (0) 208 446 2100

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52 NEW CARS NGTC Honda Civic Tourer Photo: BTCC.net

BELOW Matt Neal gets to grips with the car that is sure to grab the most attention in a packed BTCC field this season

boot and rolling around – when you turned into the corner, whether slow, medium or high speed, it would suddenly break away, and it wasn’t slippy-slidey, that you could catch. It was very nervous, very twitchy.”

The new engine also caused both Neal and Shedden issues. “The VTEC gives us no more top-end power but more mid-range, which is what we need with this car,” says Neal. ”Neil Brown has done a fantastic job over the past few years of making the power of our engines very progressive, dialling out the turbo lag, but now it’s gone more like I understand the TOCA engine is, more of a switch, so trying to work with that has been a challenge.”

He admits too that there might be, initially, a slight mental adjustment required to driving the Tourer: “In the rear-view mirror it looks a long way back; perhaps it’s a psychological thing.” With

RIGHT The extra rear space of the Tourer is not needed for componentry so the boot floor was removed and replaced by a carbon crash structure, fulfilling twin aims of weight saving and damage limitation Photo: Andrew Charman

Photo: Andrew Charman 52

ABOVE Team manager Peter Crolla and technical director Barry Plowman are masterminding the development of the Civic Tourer

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extensive pre-season testing, however, progress has been made: “Three or four weeks ago I thought, ‘What have we done, this is going to be proper hard work’, and I still think it will be less forgiving than the hatch to drive – that was more agile, changed direction better.

“This car has other attributes, however. We made a breakthrough at Brands, found a couple of sweet spots, things that worked that didn’t work on the hatch. Every time we go out with the car we learn more about it and the engine.”

CROWDED TRACKS The Dynamics team will face a bigger challenge than ever this season – the NGTC rules package that has smoothed the way to running a Tourer has also contributed to the biggest grid seen for many a year, despite a TOCA requirement to guarantee participation in the full season before gaining one of the new ‘Touring Car Licenses’ now required to enter the series.

The series has also managed to attract its greatest-ever spread of marques, but without more manufacturer entries and the consequent ramping up of costs that killed the Super Touring formula at the end of the 1990s. The effectively spec chassis is the secret. With a host of common components, teams that might previously have bought cars are instead building their own, and some – notably the Wix Racing Mercedes detailed in our sidebar – are already looking as competitive as the traditional front-runners.

The quantity and variety of cars is good news for series technical director Peter Riches, and vindication of the cost-focused ethos behind NGTC. “If you go back to the last year of Super Touring in 2000, we had nine what I call works cars and one private Nissan, and we believe the budget for that was about £25 million,” Riches says.

“This grid of 31 cars you could probably say totals between £15 and £17 million. Even the top teams are spending only around £1.4 million and many teams are spending a lot less.”

Neal, the only driver to race constantly in the series from the start of the Super Touring era, through Super 2000 to today, believes the regulations have worked very well: “They’ve taken a struggling grid with S2000 cars and costs that were spiraling again, and brought it right back into check, and suddenly you’ve got twice as many cars on the grid.

“It’s as tough to get in the top 15 of this championship as anywhere else, and for us it is going to be a tough season. We said we wanted to be competitive right from the start but you will need luck too – 31 cars qualifying for the first round on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit is going to be chaos…”

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54 NEW CARS Ligier JS P2

Chris Pickering reports as a magical brand returns to the racetrack

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T’S QUITE possible you won’t have heard of Onroak Automotive, at least not by name. But this young French company, located just yards from the Le Mans paddock in Technoparc des 24 Heures, was one of the most successful manufacturers in global sportscar racing last year, picking up a string of high-profile victories in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s LMP2 category. And now it’s the brains behind the Ligier brand’s return to motorsport with the striking new JS P2 coupe.

Behind the scenes, Onroak Automotive is the manufacturing arm of reigning LMP2 FIA World Endurance Champions OAK Racing.

The team swept to victory last year with a Morgan-branded car, which could trace its mechanical roots back to the old Pescarolo 01 prototype. And in much the same way the presence of the Ligier name on the new coupe is largely a branding exercise, born of an agreement between OAK proprietor Jacques Nicolet and the legendary French racecar constructor.

Where the Ligier JS P2 differs from the Morgan LM P2 is that it’s largely a cleansheet design. The car has been developed entirely in-house by Onroak Automotive’s engineering team, led by technical director Thierry Bouvet, and the design office

run by Nicolas Clémençon. The two cars will run alongside each other at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year, but it’s hoped the coupe will also gain a foothold in North America in the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

According to Bouvet, a closed-top car is virtually a requirement for the US market: “A lot of it comes down to the preference of the gentleman drivers. At the moment nobody in the US is running an LMP2 car with a roof – the only coupes out there are the Daytona Prototypes. Plus, a lot of the drivers prefer to have a roof over their head as a safety feature. I know of at least one driver who can’t actually race an open car for insurance reasons and I think we’re going to see all LMP cars moving towards

Photo: DPPI

LIGIER’S LE MANS COMEBACK

ABOVE The shakedown test marked the return of a Ligier sports car to Le Mans for the first time in nearly 40 years

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this layout eventually.”

The Ligier isn’t likely to be alone. A number of other manufacturers are known to be moving towards a coupe configuration, but it’s the first of the current crop to make it to the track, and it will probably be one of only a handful to race before 2015.

There were a number of other reasons for choosing a coupe design, but not all of them are straightforward. The common assumption is that adding a roof provides an immediate aerodynamic benefit, particularly at circuits like Le Mans where drag reduction is paramount, but it’s by no means a foregone conclusion. Adding a bubble canopy does indeed smooth out the flow over the cockpit, reducing turbulence and improving the coefficient of drag.

At the same time, however, it leads to a significant increase in frontal area that can more or less negate these benefits if it isn’t properly managed.

Similarly, driver changes become a whole lot more complicated with doors and a roof in the way. While a full pit stop takes upward of 30 seconds, the ACO rules dictate that drivers must be able to exit the car in under seven seconds in an emergency situation.

The regulations also state that medical teams need sufficient space to remove a driver’s crash helmet while they’re strapped into the car. And then you have issues like demisting and temperature control that require the use of an air conditioning system on a closed-top car. Even engineering the doors and hinges adds weight to the chassis and potentially

raises its centre of gravity.

“We will find out how the performance compares when we do a bit more running.

There may be a small advantage, but the decision to go for a coupe was largely led by safety and appearance. We wanted to be able to offer the choice between open and closed car to our customers,” comments Bouvet.

A FAMILY AFFAIR Of course, there’s also an element of platform-sharing at work. Coupes, as a general rule, cost more to build than their open-topped equivalents, simply due to the extra materials and complexity involved.

Consequently, the Ligier JS P2 carries over various parts from the Morgan LM P2 and shares its fundamental tub with the forthcoming Onroak Automotive LMP1 that’s still in development.

“Although it was a clean sheet exercise we didn’t want to bring in too many unknowns where they weren’t necessary,” says Bouvet. “Parts and assemblies that we knew to be reliable, like the Xtrac gearbox, have been carried over.”

Under the current LMP2 rules, the complete car – less engine, but otherwise

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complete with wiring loom, data logger and sensors – must be sold for no more than €370,000 (roughly £310,000 or $510,000 US). Even with a smattering of tried and tested components, it’s quite a challenge to develop a competitive LMP2 to that sort of price, Bouvet explains: “The thing is that the level of racing in LMP2 is going up every year. If you look at the lap times from Le Mans – which is usually the main reference – the rules have stayed the same, but the cars are going quicker and quicker.”

In 2011, there were 12 teams on the LMP2 grid at Le Mans and the pole time was a 3:41.5. Skip forward to 2013 and the entry list had swollen to no less than 22 cars, with the fastest posting a 3:38.6 in qualifying.

With increasing interest in the category, the teams and drivers are having to up their game, reckons Bouvet: “The standard of the pro drivers in LMP2 is getting higher, but at the same time the gentleman drivers are a lot closer than they used to be. A couple of years back a gentleman driver could be four seconds a lap off the pro’s time and that was fine, but now it’s a lot more difficult. Attention to detail is becoming very important and the level of competition is going up.”

These days it all comes down to the

ABOVE Guy Ligier (right) in conversation with OAK proprietor Jacques Nicolet at the JS P2’s first run. There is, says, Nicolet, a real magic surrounding the legendary brand name

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56 NEW CARS Ligier JS P2

ABOVE A tubular steel ‘A-frame’ is used to help support the production-based engine details, says Bouvet, with chassis and powertrains that are all pretty evenly matched: “There’s no one magic ingredient. It’s a question of everything coming together in terms of the drivers, tyres, reliability… Last year with the Morgan we didn’t have a single issue during the course of Le Mans, so it really was a sprint race for the whole 24 hours.”

Under the skin, the JS P2 is typical of the new breed of LMP2 cars. The core structure is a carbon fibre monocoque with the familiar double wishbone suspension setup, with torsion bars on the front and coil springs on the rear; both ends use twin pushrodactivated dampers. Following common practice in LMP2, the steering is electrically assisted, with a

ABOVE The JS P2 spent time in the RUAG scale model wind tunnel in Switzerland

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purpose-built motorsport unit from Japanese company KYB. The JS P2’s 18-inch wheels come from Italian specialist OZ Racing. Tyre choice is down to the individual teams, although Oak Racing’s test car uses Dunlops. While most of the LMP1 designs have now moved to equal tyre sizes front and rear, the LMP2s – Ligier included – still run more rubber on the rear. The brakes, however, are 15-inch Brembo discs all round.

Like their LMP1 counterparts, the LMP2 engines are run as a stressed member of the chassis. The use of production-based powerplants does, however, place greater emphasis on the role of the supporting tubular steel ‘A-frame’ or bipod at the side of the engine.

On offer at the moment are three different powerplants. First up is the 3.6-litre naturally aspirated Judd HK engine that powered last year’s Morgan LM P2. It’s based on the BMW S65-series V8 that’s found in the E92-generation M3 road car, with the same aluminium alloy block and cylinder head. Next comes the Nissan VK45, another naturally aspirated 90-degree V8, this time displacing the best part of 4.5 litres and consequently breathing through a smaller restrictor.

According to the manufacturers’ figures, this gives the Zytek-developed

Nissan engine more torque (570 Nm plays 406 Nm), while the Judd is said to have more outright power (‘approximately 500 bhp’ as opposed to a conservatively stated ‘450 bhp’); both tip the scales at 145 kg.

For a slightly different option, there’s the twin-turbocharged 2.8-litre HR28TT V6 from Honda Performance Development (HPD). Developed from the Japanese firm’s J35 production engine and closely related to HPD’s IndyCar units, it’s thought to produce around 450 bhp, breathing through a pair of 28.3 mm restrictors. All three options are fed by the same 75-litre ATL fuel tank.

Designing for a range of different powerplants helps to keep your options open, but it also complicates matters, explains Bouvet: “It’s harder to package things neatly if you’re using more than one engine. Some things like the bell housing can be changed to suit the individual installations, but you still have to allow the space for different sizes of engine.”

In particular, this manifests itself in the cooling. The two naturally aspirated engine options share the same basic cooling configuration – similar to that used on the Morgan.

For the turbocharged HPD engine things change, however. Not only is there the intercooler to consider,

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58 NEW CARS Ligier JS P2

EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES Aerodynamically, the JS P2 is relatively conventional. There’s the same high-nose design that you’ll find in most modern prototypes, with additional winglets inboard of the front wheel pods and a characteristic set of ‘nostril vents’ positioned on the nose.

Downforce comes from a twin-element rear wing, as well as front and rear diffusers, plus a set of diveplanes at the front.

Part of the aerodynamic development work was done in CFD, but the team also spent a lot of time in the scale model wind tunnel at RUAG in Switzerland. Working in a cost-capped formula like LMP2 places even more emphasis on choosing the right tools for the job. “CFD and wind tunnel testing both cost money so we tried to optimise the use of each to get the most out of our development costs,” notes Bouvet.

Both the TUDOR series and the World Endurance Championship visit a wide variety of circuits, so it’s vital that the car is adaptable. Le Mans, for example, with its long straights and fast, sweeping corners is quite different to any of the other tracks used in global endurance racing, with the possible exception of Daytona.

Consequently, the Ligier comes with two different aero kits: a standard high downforce setup intended for the majority of

Photo: DPPI

BELOW The JS P2 is the first of a new crop of coupe designs to make it to the track

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the circuits and a low drag ‘Le Mans special’.

In either trim, Bouvet expects the performance to be relatively similar to the open-topped competition in LMP2. A bigger question looms over the Daytona Prototypes that the car ABOVE & BELOW The JS P2 is the new standard-bearer will find itself up against in for the Ligier brand. The marque finished second the last the newly-unified TUDOR time it raced at Le Mans, with the JS2 in 1975 (below) series, however.

Omens from the first race at Daytona weren’t entirely encouraging for the LMP2 runners, but Bouvet is not especially concerned: “I don’t think anyone was surprised to see that the DPs were quicker at Daytona. At tracks like Long Beach, with tight corners and lower speeds, the LMP2 might be a better OAK Racing has already confirmed it will be package. I have to say that IMSA’s technical department is up against a very difficult task. taking one of the new Ligiers to Le Mans, alongside the existing Morgan LM P2, while I know how tricky it is to balance different Thiriet by TDS Racing is also understood to cars over the season.” have its name on the list for a JS P2.

Even if the TUDOR scrutineers do end Photo: LAT

but the main radiators – mounted in the sidepods – have to grow to keep up with the extra cooling demands.

up grappling with this unenviable task for a little longer, you can be sure that parity will eventually come. Onroak Automotive hopes to be selling cars into the US in time to capitalise on that, but ahead of that the orders are already starting to trickle in for the rest of the world. The works team of

HUMBLE ROOTS Just days after our conversation with Bouvet, the car takes to the track for the first time.

Fittingly enough, its debut takes place at Le Mans, albeit on the 2.57-mile Bugatti circuit, rather than the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe (rather inconveniently occupied by normal traffic at this time of the year). The Ligier covers more than 60 laps over the course of the afternoon with no significant issues, leaving the team encouraged by its progress.

Also present at the track is 83-year-old Guy Ligier. “This is a very emotional moment for me, and it’s also a great pleasure to be here with the whole team for the shakedown of this car which has got off to a promising start,” he says. “Now we have to begin the development phase. Of course, there’s much work to be done, but today the team’s proved that we have a great base.”

All being well, in a couple of months a car bearing his company’s name should line up on the grid at Le Mans for the first time since 1975. The last time that happened – coincidentally also with a coupe named the JS2 – the car finished second in class. Maybe this time OAK Racing can go one better?

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60 TESTING MIRA K&C Rig

I

T WAS 18 years ago, on April 4 1996 to be precise, that I first encountered something called the Kinematics and Compliance rig, of which up until that time I had remained blissfully ignorant. It was on this day that, as the editor of Automotive Engineer, I was attending the grand unveiling of one at MIRA by Richard Parry Jones, who at the time was flying high at Ford.

From what I could understand of it, it was a device that prodded and poked the car’s suspension so that vehicle dynamics engineers could understand what was going on, but that was about all I knew. At

isolation, steering and handling.

The SPMM allows vehicle K&C characteristics to be measured quickly, reliably and with repeatability. After loading the vehicle it is subjected to a variety of forces and displacements by precisely controlling the movement of the centre table and the wheel platforms. The resulting wheel displacements and wheel platform load variations are accurately measured and used to calculate the vehicle’s K&C parameter values automatically.

As one of MIRA’s vehicle dynamics project engineers who spends a great deal of his time

movement. It is through the measurement of all those different properties that we can get a suggestion of what the car is going to do when it goes on the track. We don’t aim to replicate exactly what it does when it’s out on the track because there are so many things happening concurrently on a moving car, but by simplifying all the forces and displacements and applying them individually, we can look and see how the suspension reacts and from that get an idea of the performance of the car.”

Dabbs quickly corrects any misunderstanding that tyres play an important role in this. He continues: “All the wheel-side forces are reacted by the tyre, so the peak longitudinal, lateral and aligning loads are dependent on the amount of grip on that tyre. Also, the tyre inflation pressure is important to ensure that the suspension

Myriad rigs are harnessed in the development of racecars but, as William Kimberley discovers on a visit to MIRA, the benefits of the K&C rig are less well known the time, it was aimed squarely at the car manufacturers as they obsess about how a car feels to the driver through the steering wheel and the seat of his or her pants. A racing application was not even on the horizon.

Fast-forward 18 years, though, and with the late Tyrrell Formula One team having blazed the trail, it has now become an essential tool in the development of a racing car. Not just in Formula One but also lower formulae, including touring cars and GTs. So what is it?

To paraphrase from Anthony Best Dynamics, the British company that supplied the rig in 1996 and is now in the process of delivering a second one this summer, the Suspension Parameter Measurement Machine (SPMM) is used to establish accurately the kinematic characteristics of a vehicle’s suspension and steering system geometries, and the compliance characteristics of the suspension springs, anti-roll bars, elastomeric bushes and component deformations. Knowledge of these characteristics is an essential aid for suspension engineers wishing to establish a thorough understanding of the vehicle’s performance in terms of ride, impact

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on the K&C rig, David Dabbs told me how it works in practice.

“Under each wheel, the wheel stations are used as the ground surface for the car.

When we run a kinematics test we displace the vehicle by moving the centre table in bounce, pitch and roll motions. Mounted on each wheel are string encoder ‘kites’ that give wheel position, toe, camber and caster, so all of the wheel locations can be measured and analysed as the vehicle moves through its suspension range.

COMPLIANCE “The other aspect to the K&C rig is compliance, which is a measurement of the deflection of the steering and suspension when forces are applied. We displace the tyre laterally and longitudinally to impart loads into the wheels. We can also replicate pure aligning torques where we rotate the wheel pad under the tyre to measure the change in toe angle.

“This is all about applying loads to the suspension in different ways, which we can monitor and see how they affect the wheel

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TESTING

is at the correct position for the ride height used during testing. We can measure some static properties of the tyre, such as its stiffness or its contact patch migration, but apart from that it wouldn’t be reasonable to consider the tyre as behaving like it does on the track.”

Nor is the chassis being measured, as Dabbs explains: “Fundamentally, the rig assumes that the chassis that is fixed to the centre table is rigid. However, this is obviously not the case, so we use additional encoders attached to the chassis so we can quantify its stiffness in this particular load regime. The engineers can then see how much the chassis flexes and subtract that out of the results.”

Then there’s also the element of finding unexpected results for whatever reason.

“Sometimes a team will not get the result they expect, but we can quickly change the test to investigate that a little bit further,” says Dabbs. “A typical example would be a lateral test where the results display a non-linear section in the data. We can quickly repeat the test or even change the test configuration within a minute or so and examine it in greater detail. The teams can change parts on the car very quickly too as the rig is easy to work on and can be used to move the car into the most useful position. After changing the parts, we can re-run the test and check for differences in the results.”

As cars do not only go in a straight line, it is important that the rig can apply steering inputs. To get round that, a motor is attached to the steering column and driven to apply different steer angles and again look at the wheel positions through that range.

“So, for example, you can quickly determine the ratio

ABOVE RIGHT & BELOW The Suspension Parameter Measurement Machine in action. The F1 teams don’t hold a monopoly on testing: the development of tin-tops, DTM cars and rally machinery have all been shaped by the results achieved on MIRA’s K&C rig

between the steering wheel angle and the angle that the road wheels are turning to,” says Dabbs. “In addition, there are many more complex things happening during steering inputs, but we can output all the measurements and investigate what is really happening in fine detail. For example, the measurement of contact patch position during steering inputs is very important so that the feedback to the driver can be quantified, giving him the confidence he needs in the car. It’s also very important for our automotive customers as the steering wheel is where people get some of their initial feeling about a car’s behaviour.

F1 CUSTOMERS “All the data that comes from the 150+ channels can be displayed live and is then followed by the postprocessing to generate the derived data, which takes only one or two minutes. This very quickly produces a report of standard plots for a summary picture of the whole car. When we’ve got a Formula One team in, it’s a bit of a balance between maximising the test time and examining the results as they are produced.

“The general form for a Formula One team is that we run each test, provide the data file to the team’s engineers and then they post-process it with their own software. Quite often they will then send that straight back to the factory where the suspension engineers and designers will immediately

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analyse it further. This is particularly important at the start of the year when confirmation of the car’s design is so critical and when there’s also track testing taking place.”

In terms of suspension systems, one of the main differences between road and racecars is the suspension joints, with the spherical joints and flexures in Formula One cars leading to the suspension being very stiff laterally and longitudinally. “The resulting small deflections are very important to the control of the wheel and the response of the tyre,” notes Dabbs. “In road cars a mix of spherical joints and rubber bushes are used since there is a greater requirement for ride, impact isolation and noise reduction. The bushes are tuned throughout the development cycle to find the best compromise between ride and handling using facilities like the proving ground we have here at MIRA. Isolation and noise reduction are not important in a racecar, so the engineers focus on making sure the suspension provides a predictable response to the drivers’ inputs and at a range of speeds.”

“The main reason for using K&C is to validate the models that we use to predict the performance of the new car,” says Jonathan Marshall, head of vehicle science at Sahara Force India F1. “There are two main benefits at the start of the season: the first is to ensure that we achieve the targeted improvement in suspension performance over the previous year’s car; the second is to identify any issues.

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“All of the work that goes into the design of the suspension for a new car is aimed at putting the tyre into the best operating condition relative to the road surface. This work falls into two primary areas. The first is kinematics, which covers the definition of the arc that the hub would traverse relative to the chassis if all of the components were infinitely stiff. The second is compliance, which specifies how far from that arc the hub moves under real world loading. The combination of these two disciplines results in different trajectories for the hubs relative to the sprung mass in different types of turn, and in the different phases of each turn.

“The target hub trajectories come from an understanding of the performance envelope of the tyres, and this can vary from year to year. The tyre suppliers give us tyre model parameters based on data from their flat belt tests. However, we rarely have a tyre model in which we have full confidence during the design of the new suspension, and so some decisions have to be based on heuristic knowledge. The process also has to be iterative for the same reason,

ABOVE MIRA’s David Dabbs attaches encoders to plot wheel position both through the design phase, and also through the season itself. 2013 was a good example of a season during which teams had to reconsider their suspension geometry in order to deal with changing tyre performance and wear characteristics.

“The compliance side can be broken down still further. While we often aim to minimise how far from a target kinematic characteristic the hub strays, we may also tune compliances to provide an effect that can’t be achieved by kinematics alone. The changes in wheel orientation from kinematic effects are entirely dependent on displacement, while compliant

All the data that comes from the 150+ channels can be displayed live”

effects are also dependent on loading. So for example, for the same rear ride height (ie hub in the same position relative to the chassis) you could have a different amount of toe-in for braking and traction, by tuning the stiffness of the various suspension legs and fixtures.

“So there are two aspects – trying to use the compliance to put the tyre where you want it in different turns phases, while also trying to mitigate the fact that every structure that you manufacture has a finite stiffness. The rig allows us to put the vehicle in a large variety of operating conditions that mimic different on-track situations, to see how the suspension responds.

“A typical set of tests would cover a range of loading conditions that we identify from historical track data. We aim to cover the limits at the extremes of what the car sees across low, medium and high speed circuits, and we look at a variety of corner types at each circuit. We have some quite slick software tools that allow us to complete this type of data survey efficiently. In years when the regulations change significantly, such as 2014, we also use data from predictive lap simulations of the old and new cars to try to

BELOW A standard road car will output over 500 graphs of suspension properties; a racecar tested in multiple configurations could triple that figure

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64 TESTING MIRA K&C Rig

understand how the loading conditions are likely to differ from previous seasons.

“When the conditions we’ve identified are applied to the suspension on the rig, the kites attached to the wheels allow us to measure accurately what happens to the orientation of the wheel under those loads.

Individual tests are tailored to highlight specific suspension characteristics. We look at the car kinematically with the normal springs and anti-roll bars fitted, so that when load is applied the wheel traverses its normal arc relative to the car. We can measure the change in camber, caster and a number of other variables as the chassis table moves vertically, with the wheel pads held in position.

“In order to look at compliances in the system, we fit solid dampers (metal rods of specified lengths that set the suspension to positions corresponding to a given loading condition) in order to effectively lock out the inboard system. We then apply the loads again. Obviously, in this condition the measured displacements are much smaller, as they capture the compliance in the suspension links, uprights, bearings and fixtures.

“We also use our own potentiometers to measure displacements at various

intermediate positions in the system between the axles and inboard load reaction points, to assess what proportion of the installation stiffness comes from each part of the linkage.

This allows us to validate what we did with our models, such that year on year our predictive capability improves. It can also help us to identify weak points in the system, and hone in on the source of any discrepancy.

“It doesn’t happen very often that our predictive tools are far off but sometimes you do pick something up. It’s almost unheard of to find a major issue but you might come across a case where the system is a few per cent stiffer or more compliant than you expected. The physical test data that we get from the rig effectively supercedes the predictive model. The information goes into a number of the software tools that we use; for example, it will be used in the lap simulation used by the Vehicle Science, Race Engineering and Aerodynamics groups. The output of those simulations become more and more accurate because the model is itself more accurate.

“At this time of the year with a new car we are trying to build up as detailed a picture as we can. It’s very much an iterative process – prediction and then test and then

refine the prediction so that the following year when you predict again you are more likely to get it spot-on straight away. In fact, the K&C test comes quite late in that process of refinement, because it requires the full vehicle. Our system-level predictions will already have been improved based on stiffness tests of individual components in our R&D facility back at the factory.”

SHIFTING SANDS Marshall alludes to shifting sands when developing a new car, but this year it is completely different when pretty well everything on the car has changed due to the new regulations. “For example, the new powertrain layout has altered the available packaging space for all of the teams,” he says.

“This is then compounded by the increased complexity of the engine ancillaries brought about by the cooling requirements of a turbocharged engine with a more significant regenerative capacity.

“Finally there are the modified aerodynamic regulations. There has been a lot of focus in the media on the changes at the front of the car, but from a packaging perspective, the rear end has represented

BELOW K&C testing helps Force India validate the models it uses to predict the performance of its new car

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BELOW A change in tyre performance and wear characteristics forced teams to reconsider their suspension geometry halfway through the 2013 season more of a challenge for the design staff. We have had to think carefully about where the components are going to be located, and so the inboard suspension has changed significantly for most teams. There have also been some changes to the load paths through the outboard suspension.

“When the system has changed so significantly, what the K&C data provides is increased confidence in the design direction that we’ve taken. As I said, we are very fortunate because our stress and analysis department has a great deal of experience and the predictions we get from them are very good, but there’s no substitute for validation.

“When we do find a change from the previous car’s data that’s bigger than expected, what we’ll probably do is take that data and run some dynamic simulations using multi-body simulation tools. We’ll then look at the potential performance effects of the change, and assess whether the effect is positive, negative or insignificant. It’s not often that the measured data is different from the predicted data to the extent that there’s a huge performance effect, but knowledge of how the car will respond to load allows us to react, possibly with a design modification, or maybe with a small change in our setup direction.

“It might also drive a design change for next year’s car. We’ll look at performance during the season and try to correlate areas where we think we are strong or weak against all the data that we get from our different tools, including K&C rig, 7-post rig, component test rigs and the driver in the loop simulator.

We might think that in a high-speed corner our inside rear wheel camber isn’t where we want it to be. Some of that is kinematic and some of it is compliance, so we might choose to modify our suspension layout accordingly.

When we go through the design process for next year’s car, decisions will also be made about which joints in the suspension we need to focus on increasing the stiffness of, or which joints we can modify to give a compliant effect that would help orientate the wheel in a more favourable way.

“So the K&C test data feeds into next year and is included in our models so that all the predicted and analytic work that we do during the season becomes ever more accurate. It can have an influence in areas downstream that you might not immediately think of. A really good example would be the pre-event work that we do in the run-up to

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each race. We’ll look at the sensitivity of the car to (for example) a range of fuel loads, rear wing levels and, this year, levels of energy recovery and release in our quasi steady-state lap simulation. We can assess the effect those parameters might have on lap times, fuel consumption and tyre degradation.

KNOCK-ON EFFECT “You might think that those results would be insensitive to kinematics and compliance, but they are not. For example, the performance of the car at the limit is dependent on the camber of the tyre, and you might find that the sensitivity to wing level can be affected by the loss of a quarter of a degree of camber.

Although this is an extreme example, what I’m trying to illustrate is that if you have an inaccurate representation of the suspension then it has a knock-on effect on other parameters and sensitivities in your simulation work. This is why we are so keen to ensure that the model is properly validated.

“Of course, while we measure the orientation of the hub, we’re really interested in what’s happening to the orientation of the tyre to the road surface. The tyres are on the car on the rig because we need a medium through which we can apply the loads to the suspension. But it’s also useful to apply loads through the contact patch because if you were to apply them directly at the hub then you would have to calculate

what combination of forces and moments are equivalent to the contact patch load.”

As mentioned, MIRA is now in the process of commissioning a second rig. “We are taking delivery of it in August and expect it to be online in the last quarter of the year,” says Dabbs. “We are currently doing eight or nine shifts a week compared to our budgeted five, so there is already a good business case to have a second rig. The new one will allow a bigger and heavier range of vehicles and include a moment of inertia facility.”

Dabbs also wants to spread a wider net in the motor racing world for the K&C rig.

While already used by GT manufacturers who understand the virtue of just such a tool in the development of their car, he believes that its very sophistication can put smaller teams off.

“When it comes to LMP teams, for example, teams often prefer to use empirical test techniques, running the car on a track using a test driver. While I can understand this, the value of putting a car on the K&C rig could be exceptional in performance terms, but it requires a more analytical approach to vehicle testing in order to reap the rewards.

It’s not as expensive as some people think and while the quantity of data that’s produced can be overwhelming – a standard road car will output over 500 graphs of suspension properties, while a racecar tested in multiple configurations will double or even treble that – we do offer a consultancy service to help teams understand what is going on.”

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66 SPECIAL REPORT Suspension technology

IT’S NOT VOODOO, BUT IT’S CLEVER! Chris Pickering considers some of the latest technical advances in suspension components

V

EHICLE DYNAMICS is sometimes portrayed as a black art; a mysterious world where automotive engineering and voodoo merge into one mystifying whole. The reality, of course, is rather different. From the fluid dynamics at work inside the damper, to the spring-mass systems found in the suspension and tyres, there’s some elegantly pure engineering at work.

Driven by changes in regulations and the ever-present urge to find a competitive edge, this technology is evolving faster than ever. This month, our Special Report takes a look at some of the latest advances in suspension components from the companies on the front line of the industry.

Penske Nowhere is the market re-shaping itself quicker than in Formula One, where the most radical rules shake-up in a generation has left virtually no part of the cars untouched.

At first glance, you might not expect the largely powertrain-focused changes to have a great effect on suspension. But the reality is that the operating environment has changed considerably. Temperatures of 150°C-200°C are not uncommon around the new Formula One powerplants, while the pressure to reduce weight is growing now teams have more complicated energy recovery systems to package.

When the 2014 regulations were first announced, damper specialist Penske Racing Shocks kickedoff a massive development study on new materials and technologies to meet the challenge of higher temperatures and then-unknown vibration effects.

New fluids were developed to combat damper fade and ensure consistent performance at high temperature, but the biggest challenge turned out to be controlling stress levels and getting the required durability from the components. “We looked into magnesium and other materials for the body of the shock, but you really need something that maintains its strength better at high temperatures,” comments Penske technical director Jim Arentz. “High temperature aerospace aluminium alloys are used internally for the seal housings and pistons, while the shafts are made from titanium.”

The company has also invested in a range of different coatings to reduce friction and improve durability on the

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Photo: IndyCar

BELOW Penske’s inerter technology has been transferred from Formula One into IndyCar

moving parts, along with new seals to cope with the increased temperatures.

“We basically had all these new technologies in development two years ago to ensure we did not skip a beat when our teams hit the track this year in Jerez,” says Arentz. “With all the new systems on the cars this year, we knew our teams could not afford to deal with damper problems.”

All the signs from the start of the season are that Penske has succeeded, but it’s not been straightforward. Fortunately, the new materials have given the teams a little more leeway, explains Arentz: “With normal aluminium alloys you would see a reduction in strength at this sort of temperature. The teams are running very aggressive safety factors so what they’ve tended to do is design the damper around a normal 7075 alloy and then substitute in the new material for extra safety margin.”

Most of the heat is concentrated around the powertrain and the loads vary from front to rear, so it’s not unusual to run different damper design on either end, he explains.

What’s more, packaging is a constant issue on Formula One cars. Access can be quite fraught at the best of times and until

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recently there had been a trend towards dampers with no adjustment at all – the logic being that you might as well save the weight of the adjuster mechanisms if you had to remove the damper to get to them.

Now, however, it’s starting to creep back in as the race engineers grapple with the demands of the new cars.

Many of the features that Penske develops for Formula One ultimately trickle down to the company’s other products, explains Arentz. A good example of this is the inerter technology that the firm has developed in conjunction with Professor Malcolm Smith of Cambridge University. Once the preserve of F1, it’s now seen on everything from motorcycles to drag racers.

The basic premise behind Penske’s mechanical inerter is quite simple. Movement of the damper shaft is used to drive a set of spinning weights via a ball screw. This stores energy from the tyre and the suspension, smoothing out oscillations that would be beyond the range of a conventional damper.

“Large accelerations going through the tyre carcass can distort the contact patch,” Arentz points out. “The inerter basically counteracts those accelerations, providing a

more uniform tyre contact patch and more consistent tyre behaviour.”

Essentially, it adds an extra dimension to the suspension control. While springs are sensitive to displacement and dampers are driven by velocity, the inerter responds to acceleration. At a constant shaft speed there’s very little force required to overcome friction and keep the weights spinning; it’s only when you try to accelerate the shaft (and hence the weights) that a significant amount of effort becomes involved.

Recently, Penske has also introduced an adjustable ‘breakaway clutch’, which can momentarily decouple the inerter under high loads. Originally conceived as a means of protecting the inerter against things like kerb strikes, race engineers quickly discovered it could also be used to tune the device’s behaviour.

“Adjusting when the inerter blows off allows you to engineer different effects in the dynamic response of the vehicle,” Arentz explains. “Changing the points that the clutch engages and disengages allows them to be more aggressive with the inertance level, where previously it would have been a bit too harsh for the driver.”

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68 SPECIAL REPORT Suspension technology

Hyperco The search for that elusive competitive advantage is seeing changes in the way springs are developed too. While the materials often remain the same – usually ultra high tensile steel or titanium wire – the desire to optimise each individual application has seen a surge in the demand for custom springs, explains Hyperco general manager Kelly Falls.

“Whether it’s NASCAR, sports cars or openwheelers, a lot of teams are now coming to us with specific criteria rather than buying springs off the shelf,” he says. “It’s interesting to see the variety of requests. We work with some of the best teams out there and you can get very different requirements from two teams, both of which turn out to be race winners.”

This demand is primarily driven by packaging. Being able to specify the length and diameter of the spring sometimes opens up new mounting options that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. It can even lead to an aerodynamic benefit if it allows tighter packaging around bodywork or aerodynamic

devices. And, of course, smaller springs tend to be lighter for a given construction.

The starting point for a custom project is usually a list of requirements covering things like load capacity, travel and spring rates. From there, the Hyperco engineers attempt to optimise the design for each rate, reducing mass where possible and improving performance.

as such it may be possible to use a lighter construction with fewer coils or a smaller wire diameter.

Consistency and durability are vital.

High-quality springs don’t tend to ‘settle’ over time in the way that some of the cheaper offerings can; providing they’re manufactured correctly and matched to the right application, their operational life

We always joke that people should start with the impossible and we’ll work back to something that can be done” Falls encourages engineers and designers to be ambitious: “We always joke that people should start with the impossible and we’ll work back to something that can be done. If we can’t meet one of the criteria we’ll speak to the team and say, ‘How about we make it slightly longer in free-length?’ or ‘What if it was a little larger in diameter?’”

Often the technical regulations play a part.

For example, if the rules specify a minimum free-length then the spring no longer has to be designed to withstand coil bind, and

is more or less indefinite. Most have the potential to go on until changes in the car or the regulations render them obsolete, but Falls recommends changing them every few years to take advantage of the latest technology: “We’re always trying to evolve the product line. If you look at our standard catalogue springs today they all offer lighter weight or greater travel than they did, say, five years ago.”

Of course, coil springs aren’t the only answer. Even well into the 21st century

BELOW There has been a surge in demand for custom coil springs

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the leaf spring is alive and well in certain applications (most notably the Chevrolet Corvette). And recently, Hyperco has been hitting the headlines for its carbon composite bellows springs. These use a stack of composite discs arranged in either series or parallel orientation, placed concentrically over the damper.

This arrangement offers a number of advantages over traditional coil springs.

The rate can be varied simply by altering the total number of elements or their orientation (or combinations of the two). Perhaps more importantly, Hyperco claims the carbon composite bellows springs work out at around a third of the weight of a steel coil and half the weight of an equivalent titanium unit. Clearly this is a useful weight saving by any standard – particularly where outboard springs are concerned – but it also helps to reduce the inertia of the spring.

The carbon bellows springs aren’t without their challenges, however.

Typically they require more free-length and a bit more diameter compared

to an equivalent coil spring. They’re also best suited to high rate, low displacement applications, which may require the use of different suspension ratios to provide the correct wheel rate.

“If a coil spring has been truly optimised for a given application, we can’t just go in there and replace it likefor-like. Ideally, we need to be in early at the design stage to allow enough packaging space,” says Falls. “But sometimes if a steel spring hasn’t really been optimised for a given application, we can do a straight swap. The SCCA D Sport racers, for example, turned out to have spring rates that were wellsuited to a carbon spring without any modification or re-packaging. There are other occasions where a steel spring has been very carefully optimised, and without a retrofit we can’t just shoehorn in another assembly.”

Nonetheless, Hyperco’s idea is starting to gain momentum. The carbon composite bellows springs have been tested in applications ranging from circle track to Moto GP and a number of teams are now making the switch.

Aurora One thing unites all suspension systems: whether your wheel travel is measured in feet on a trophy truck or fractions of an inch on a Formula One car, it all comes down to movement. That means it’s imperative that the various suspension components are free to pivot or rotate as required.

In motorsport the job of providing this freedom usually falls to rod ends and spherical bearings, and these tend to divide into one of two categories. Firstly, there are two-piece items that simply consist of the main body of the assembly plus the ball.

Here, the body is formed around the ball, creating an integral raceway. Typically this method is used for low-cost bearings and one of the limiting factors is the geometric conformity between the ball and raceway.

The other common option is a three-piece rod end. In this case, the bearing portion starts off as a separate part, essentially cylindrical on the outside, which is formed around a ball much like it would be in a two-part design. The bearing is finished machined so that when fitted into the

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main body, the edges of the race are then moved, using a press, into chamfers in the body, locking it into position.

The benefit of this three-piece construction is that the race can be made of an entirely different material to the body, subject to different treatments, or lined with a PTFE/fabric self-lubricating liner.

Consequently, it’s possible to get a closer, more precise fit between the ball and race, while opening up the possibility of lighter

ABOVE Aurora Bearings’ high-quality rod ends materials for the main body.

Generally speaking these processes are fairly well established for high-quality rod ends, explains John McCrory, racecar

ABOVE Hyperco’s carbon composite bellows springs are starting to gain a following

product manager at Aurora Bearings: “There’s a lot of interest in top-level motorsport as well as aviation in improving frictional characteristics. People are looking for a lower, more consistent breakaway torque and lower friction under movement, but the problem is that every attempt to improve these seems to sacrifice performance in other areas. Sometimes they result in a lower load capacity; other times, a reduced operational life or less compressive strength in the liner versus the benchmark AS81820 MilSpec. It’s been tough for the industry to find that breakthrough.”

Where the market has changed is the introduction of a number of low-cost alternatives to traditional spherical bearing technology and manufacturers. Here, McCrory strikes a cautionary note: “You can have two products which, on paper, come with the same load capacity, but that says nothing about the process controls, the geometry between the ball and the race, the makeup of the liner and so on. The danger is you buy a less expensive joint and you end up replacing it several times over the course of a season.”

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The author, who has been involved with suspension design and development for race and high-performance road cars for more than 40 years, writes about the evolution of suspension systems over the decades.

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72 SPECIAL REPORT Suspension technology

JRi A few years ago JRi Shocks hit the headlines with an active damper system called the CASVP1. Designed for track testing and 7-post rigs, each of the four electrically-controlled dampers could be programmed to represent a huge range of different passive or active damper characteristics without any need to make physical changes between runs. The system has since gone on to prove its worth in both motorsport and the automotive industry, but it’s fair to say it’s not for everyone; a single set will cost you the best part of $200,000. Now, however, JRi is bringing electrically-adjustable shock absorbers to the mainstream.

The new JRide system allows independent adjustment of compression and rebound on all four dampers using a push-button console or even a wireless smartphone app. It uses solenoidcontrolled proportional valves to open and close bleed jets inside the dampers. Opening up these valves allows progressively more fluid to bypass the piston, reducing the damping effect, while closing them forces more fluid through the main piston and firms up the damper.

“We’ve taken the most important benefits of the CAS-VP1 and applied them at a much more affordable level,” comments JRi Shocks technical director Jeff Ryan. “The JRide won’t get down to a single pound of damping or a sevenmillisecond response time like the CAS-VP1, but a full set of four dampers and a TFT screen interface starts at around $5,000, so it’s nothing like the same expense.”

The main obstacle to any sort of electricallyadjustable suspension has traditionally been

regulation. In a lot of top-end road racing disciplines the technology has been relegated to test sessions or banned entirely, but Ryan believes it’s time to reconsider: “When electronic suspension was banned in most formulas the costs were so high that only the richest teams had access to it, but we’re trying to show that it’s not that expensive any more.”

Currently the JRide system is totally passive, but something as simple as the built-in accelerometer on an iPhone could be used to turn it into a semi-active setup. What’s more, the weight increase over a traditional damper is pretty modest – typically 15 to 20 per cent, says Ryan.

JRi is also developing a manifold that will allow the solenoids to be removed and replaced with manual adjusters. As a result, it should soon be possible to tune the compression and rebound damping during testing using the JRide system, then remove it entirely for events that don’t allow such technology.

At this point you might question the need for electrical adjustment.

After all, unlike the hugely expensive VP1 system, JRide doesn’t allow you to adjust anything that couldn’t be done with a conventional mechanical adjuster. But what it does have the potential to offer is faster adjustment with no requirement to manually access the dampers. Perhaps more importantly, the damper settings can be fed directly into the car’s data logging system for a traceable record that can then be analysed lap-bylap or even corner-by-corner.

BELOW & RIGHT The new JRide system has been trialled for a number of applications

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74 SPECIAL REPORT Suspension technology

Supashock

ABOVE & BELOW Supashock’s technology is showcased in the popular V8 Supercars series individual car will perform over bumps at Bathurst or going through the Maggotts/ Becketts complex at Silverstone, for example.

With the correct data we can actually predict lap times and make virtual adjustments prior to making the actual physical adjustments or changes. In part it is this technology that has propelled suspension technology forward for us in particular.”

Supashock tailors the damper curves specifically to the vehicle and its racing

environment. This is done by measuring all the parameters of the particular vehicle, which are then fed into the simulation program. From that three different plots are generated: a heave plot, a roll plot and a pitch plot, which together enable the creation of the initial damping curves for that particular vehicle. The output is then run in tandem with another race simulation program which looks at variations in the vertical load and contact patch for the tyre.

Photo: Bloxham/LAT

Suspension specialist Supashock is perhaps best known in its home market of Australia, where the Adelaide-based company is an officially approved supplier to the V8 Supercars Series. Recently, however, it’s started to make waves globally, with a well-known Formula One team understood to be testing the firm’s products, alongside a host of factorybacked GT teams.

According to Supashock owner Oscar Fiorinotto, advances in materials and machining technology have made a real difference over the past few years. “Quite simply we now have the ability to create a product that has response, thermal stability, weight and packaging qualities that were unachievable until recently,” he says. “Processes such as CNC honing and grinding with incredible accuracy, as well as particular surface treatments, allow tighter tolerances and higher levels of efficiency than we’ve seen before.”

Commercial director Tim Possingham describes the company as a boutique service: “Our dampers are specifically engineered for their application and we run sophisticated vehicle simulations, including lap simulations, for a number of circuits across the globe. We can simulate how an

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76 COMPANY PROFILE UBC

KAIZEN APPROACH PAYS DIVIDENDS A number of composites companies have carved out successful businesses in motorsport, but William Kimberley went to Germany to see for himself one that has recorded stratospheric growth in just two decades

I

T MIGHT have been luck or more likely foresight that saw Ulf Bräutigam start a business specialising in carbon fibre in his garage. At that time, the material was by no means mainstream and any component or structure made out of it was extremely expensive. Naturally such considerations did not concern Formula One teams that had already seen in it a material that was both light in weight and extremely resistant to impact, but to the rest of the world outside aerospace, it was an exotic material that was economically unviable, found more in research labs of universities.

It would take at least another dozen years before the material was going to make its way into things like bicycle frames – albeit pretty special ones – baseball bats and even the linings in swimming pools.

As it so happened, Ulf was in the right place at the right time.

“At the time that carbon fibre was being researched by academia, contacts my father had with some universities led him to look

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into it to see what it offered,” says Yves Bräutigam, Ulf’s son who has now been in the business for the last eight years. “As he was in motorsport, he started producing some parts for Formula Three. Although they were hand-made in his garage, the teams that bought them could immediately see the benefits, and as word of mouth spread, so did his business.”

the acquisition of its first autoclave. “Soon after it was installed we then bought our first milling machine as we needed to produce the moulds in-house for flexibility and confidentiality,” says Yves. More machinery meant more people being employed.

Coinciding with this investment was the growth in the client base which had expanded from supplying a few Formula Three teams to providing products for the AMG DTM teams. At the same time UB Composites started to supply Sauber F1 and then the Toyota F1 team.

“This really was the breakthrough for us,” says Yves. “We had Sauber F1 as a customer for two years in 1999 and 2000 and then Toyota for nine years until it withdrew from Formula One at the end of 2009. It was a relationship from which we very much benefited with its kaizen philosophy.”

He then recounts how good his company’s internal auditing process became through working with the Japanese manufacturer, culminating in securing ISO 9001 certification: “Normally this accreditation is required at the start of a job and it takes a long time to get it. The trouble with it is that most companies usually put all their effort into just getting

Motorsport is part of the company’s DNA” Very soon, Ulf’s company doubled in size when he recruited someone to help him, still in the garage at home. It was not long, though, before he was looking for premises to move to, such was the increasing volume of business.

Locating in a small town just over 20 miles north of Stuttgart, the next huge step for this business in its first flush of youth was

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COMPANY PROFILE

77

and the way it functioned, but it worked and we still produce it.”

Another example of a tough job was producing special engine parts. “We always had only two or three months to work on finding and developing best solutions, but we met the target and were able to deliver the carbon fibre parts in time and best quality.

“There aren’t many companies in the world quite like UBC. We are flexible because we are able to supply parts starting from design or simulating construction tooling, right through to producing the carbon fibre parts under one roof.” the certification but the processes we already had in place due to working for Toyota meant that we already had it.”

UBC, though, is more than just a parts supplier as it has a design department that researches some of the products it is commissioned to make. Yves gives the example of a carbon fibre gearbox that was one of the

company’s most challenging tasks to date.

“It was a question of understanding the stresses on the casing and components so we could produce something that was robust enough while at the same time being light enough. It was so very challenging because we had to take into account vibration, friction and temperature

ULTRA-MODERN There is no question when walking around the plant just how impressive it is. Nothing is given away from the outside or even when you enter the reception. Not until you walk around the facilities do you see just how

ABOVE & BELOW The exterior of UBC might be smart, but it barely hints at the sophisticated processes and technology within

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78 COMPANY PROFILE UBC

comprehensive it is. It is not just the three autoclaves nor the five milling machines, but the way that everything is so organised, light and spacious with an ultra-modern feel to it, complete with the whoosh of electric doors opening and closing everywhere.

While motorsport is part of the company’s DNA, it also works in the automotive, aerospace and bicycle industries as it has spread its wings to meet demands. “UBC is working in the automotive industry, which is a big part of our business, and in aerospace but motorsport is important for us to be there where the development is, where there are new materials,” says Yves.

“What is also good about it is that the test results come back very quickly and if there

ABOVE & LEFT Having commenced the production of composite components in an era where the technology was largely the preserve of academia, UBC’s world class facilities now accommodate three autoclaves and five milling machines

are any problems, they have to be sorted out immediately. We are so deeply involved in the development and have such good test results.”

That motor racing still retains a special place can be seen by the display products in the reception area. One such is a Formula One nosecone.

Yves describes the process: “Typically, at the start of every contract we hold an internal company meeting that includes discussions with experts in their field, specification sheets, requirements catalogues with the first solution statements created to fulfil the customer’s requirements to the full. During this process, a complete timeframe plan is produced which constantly accompanies the part in production. Due to our experience, the individual processes can be very accurately planned.

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“Based on requirements such as function and design, feasibility and cost, a fibresuitable compatible part is sketched out on paper. These outlines are the foundation for the CAD construction with CATIA V5.

“We determine the material thickness using our experience in weaves and fibre types and sandwich materials and then we go ahead with an FEA simulation. This step is extremely important for structural parts as it enables the best possible combination of safety against failure and lightness in the component. Finally a detailed documentation of the production is produced, not only for the mould-making but also the laminating book which clearly states how the part is to be laminated and defines which materials are to be used.

“The master patterns are then machined from the cast pattern block material, with

moulds laminated from the master pattern to later produce the component. In the cutting room a material kit is cut from various resin-impregnated carbon fibre weave, the so-called pre-preg that is precisely laid into the mould. It’s crucial to know the orientation and thickness of the pre-pregs.

Honeycomb structures and reinforcing foams are additionally laminated to the carbon fibres which produce a multi-layer laminate material system that totally fulfils the requirements of safety and light weight.

“The completed laminated component is then ready for the autoclave curing process in a predefined pressure and temperature to combine the single layers into a permanent laminate. A special team de-moulds the components for the next process, with holes drilled where necessary, and the contours are CNC-machined for the following processes.

Then in the assembly process, further carbon parts or metal inserts are inserted.

The component is then finally weighed and measured with a 3D co-ordinating machine.”

Looking ahead, Yves foresees the company remaining in motorsport.

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80 NEW PRODUCTS

Torque of the town

Reels on wheels

NEW from Helix Autosport comes a 215mm diameter twin-plate clutch and flywheel kit for the 2.5-litre Audi TTRS. Consisting of a lightweight billet steel flywheel, an aluminium clutch basket, two cerametalic driven plates and a set of high tensile fasteners, the kit is capable of handling an unprecedented level of torque.

Helix tell us that one North American customer is reliably subjecting the new kit to upwards of 860 Nm (634 lbft), with the official rating set at 880 Nm (649 lb ft).

Weight reduction is another advantage. The diameter of the clutch has been reduced significantly from

PIT equipment specialist B-G Racing recently unveiled its new multi-function Folding Utility Work Station.

The work station features a high-mounted tray designed to hold a small selection of tools, a paper roll holder, a waste bin bag holder and an area for a 300mm x 400mm Euro bin to be fitted in order to store consumables.

Manufactured from high-grade mild steel with a durable silver grey powder-coated finish, the unit is fitted with 75mm diameter wheels to provide ease of movement around the garage or workshop. Its folding design also helps to keep storage space to a minimum.

the standard (240 mm) item, shedding mass and lowering inertia. In total, the multi-plate racing kit now weighs 12.8 kg (28.2 lb) - a reduction of some 30 per cent over the production item.

The increased torque capacity has been achieved partly by the use of a stronger diaphragm spring, but there’s only so far you can go down this route before pedal effort becomes an issue. Consequently the number of driven plates has been increased from two to four, giving more friction surfaces for the clutch to work on.

Finally, sintered cerametallic paddles complete the set, with an increased coefficient of friction.

Radical solution Light fantastic GOODSON Tools & Supplies for Engine Builders has expanded its dry magnetic inspection range with the addition of a high-visibility green fluorescent magnetic powder, now available in 1 lb, 5 lb and 25 lb containers.

“Fluorescent crack detection powder has been around for years but what sets this powder apart from the others is how bright it is, even under normal

lighting conditions. Put a black light on this powder and cracks just pop,” comments Chris Jensen of Goodson Tech Services.

THINK of AP Racing and the first thing that springs to mind is brake and clutch hardware. But now the firm has developed its own brand of high temperature brake fluid.

At 340°C (644°F) the new Radi-CAL R4 brake fluid is said to boast the highest dry boiling point of any fluid on the market. It’s also designed to offer improved lubrication and prolonged life for the metal components within the brake system.

The R4 brake fluid is inspired by AP Racing’s RadiCAL range of high-performance brake calipers. It is compatible with DOT3 and DOT4 brake fluids, however for maximum performance, AP recommends purging the system completely before refilling.

Viper valves VIPER Performance has developed a one-way fuel system check valve for Bosch fuel pumps. The valves are machined from billet 6061 aluminium and come with AN DASH 6 or DASH 8 threads that are compatible with Bosch pump fittings. They are available in a choice of blue or black.

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82 LAST LAP With Chris Pickering

F1 on trial The stakes are much higher than a podium finish when Red Bull’s appeal against its Oz GP exclusion is heard

I

FIA-homologated fuel flow sensors, which Red Bull argues was not reading accurately.

As a result of alleged discrepancies in the official sensor’s readings, the team decided to use its own internal fuel flow model to ensure it remained within the 100 kg/hr limit.

It didn’t take the stewards long to notice on the telemetry that Red Bull’s idea of a legal flow rate differed somewhat from their own.

They contacted the team and asked the engineers to reduce the flow rate, but this apparently was ignored, despite a technical directive issued before the race that stated the homologated fuel flow sensor would be used as the primary measurement of checking and enforcing the rules.

It is, in some respects, an open and shut case. But the one thing that seems clear is that Red Bull did not intend to cheat. To cheat is to do something you will hopefully get away with, and the chances of that were non-existent in this case, even before that mid-race conversation with the stewards.

Think of it instead as a protest.

There’s no doubt this was a ballsy move on

Photo: Getty Images for Red Bull

MAGINE, for a second, a giant can… full to the brim with an innumerable quantity of worms and teetering on the most precarious of edges. The Formula One season kicks-off in Melbourne with perhaps the most hotly-anticipated opener in the history of the sport. A young, talented and very likeable local driver battles his way onto the podium with a car that based on pre-season testing form probably shouldn’t have even made it to the finish. And then he gets disqualified for a highly contentious technical issue.

Can down. Worms all over the place.

Clearly this must be a gut-wrenching experience for Daniel Ricciardo, who stands to lose his first ever Formula One podium, despite being cleared of any personal blame by the FIA. But it also taps into a far bigger problem that stretches beyond even F1.

Just to recap, a short time after the race in Melbourne, the FIA issued a statement claiming that Ricciardo’s Red Bull RB10 had exceeded the 100 kg/hr fuel flow limit set out in the technical regulations. This figure was based on readings from one of the standard

ABOVE Daniel Ricciardo starts his journey to the Albert Park podium. Now it’s Formula One that’s walking – along a tightrope

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Red Bull’s part. Behind closed doors, I suspect a lot of powertrain engineers sympathise with the team’s grievances. At the same time, for the new fuel-based formula to work, the FIA has to be seen to enforce it rigorously and that means some sort of independent measuring system. Letting the team off, even if the sensor was deemed to be at fault, would set a very dangerous precedent.

WEC GOES WITH THE FLOW Of course, it’s not just a Formula One issue.

From this year onwards LMP1 teams will be given a fuel allocation per lap. Breaching that allowance could result in anything from a stop-and-go penalty to total exclusion from the race. Senior engineers from several teams are understood to be very unhappy about this, having apparently experienced problems with the sensors themselves.

You can imagine the furore if a major manufacturer was to invest hundreds of millions in a Le Mans programme only to have its victory overturned on a technicality.

So where do we go from here? Some would argue that motorsport should ditch the fuel flow-rate concept altogether, but that would go against everything the manufacturer teams are trying to achieve with increased road relevance and improved fuel efficiency. Simply limiting the outright quantity of fuel would still allow the engines to burn it at a great rate when conditions allow – for example after a prolonged period of fuel-saving behind the safety car. It could also lead to a rather artificial situation where certain drivers would have to slow down and concede places at the end of the race in order to eke out their fuel reserves – surely a more contrived situation than the one we have at the moment with the fuel flow sensors (or indeed last year’s issues with tyre degradation)?

Ultimately, the best solution may be the one we have currently. Motorsport’s reliance on technology puts it in the enviable position that many potential disputes can – in theory – be solved by unequivocal data. Red Bull’s experience at the Australian Grand Prix perhaps casts something of a question mark over that idea, but the fact remains that in virtually every other sport the decision would fall to a human referee: one inherently fallible individual, whose interpretation of the rules may or may not tally with that of the players. And in those instances, the referee’s decision is final.

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