Racecar Engineering July 2017

Liberty Media will expect its investment to pay off in five years The 21st century has been a rather ho-hum century so far. Not much good news anywhere; the wholesale crumbling of institutions, the probable runaway change in the world’s environment leading to a wholesale die-off of entire species, possibly even our own. The collapse of democracy is not entirely impossible and the bright hope of the Enlightenment is dimming. Theocracy is raising its head and so are rabble rousers everywhere. One is even president of the most powerful nation on Earth. But against all this we can see a small bright hope, at least in motorsport, for racing is now under new management at its highest level. Hooray! We shall have a new, modern, social media aware management that shall bring motorsports…

Form should follow function in racing, it’s true, but going back over time it is often also true that the best racecars are among the most pleasing to the eye Television aerials and coat hangers are just a couple of the uncomplimentary descriptions applied to this year’s crop of new and wobbly F1 aero appendages. It’s not surprising that the comments are so derogatory. Equally numerous are the complaints regarding the shark fins that have sprouted on the engine-covers. As they are so unpopular, make the cars more sensitive to side winds and are not a structural part, it wouldn’t require much effort of will among all concerned to just agree to get rid of them, immediately. Partly due to the above, and the return of complicated bargeboards which, together with Christmas-tree…

If a technology wins at Le Mans, at Porsche there are no more questions asked about its viability To those outside endurance racing, and particularly those involved in Formula 1, Porsche’s involvement in the World Endurance Championship makes little sense. Why would you spend a Formula 1 budget, an estimated €150m, to compete in the WEC, which has just one race that really returns value on investment, the Le Mans 24 hours, while Formula 1 delivers that same investment more than 20 times per year? There are a few responses to this argument. One is that Le Mans is a special race, and the fact that it is just once a year gives it the kudos that demands such a big investment. The other is that there is a large cross-over of…

Porsche may not have won either of the two opening rounds of the World Endurance Championship, but the team goes to the Le Mans 24 Hours in confident mood having run only its low downforce kit at Silverstone and Spa, and yet still gained a podium at both races as well as a wealth of experience with its Le Mans package. New regulations this year have forced manufacturers to reduce the number of kits to two for the season, low downforce intended for Le Mans and high for other tracks in the WEC. However, Porsche took the decision to concentrate on its Le Mans kit despite Silverstone being suited to a high downforce package and to delay its ‘kit two’ until after June’s 24-hour race. The headline change to the LMP1-H regulations…

‘You go to Dallara and there are rows of chassis, they stand them on end, like the guards at Buckingham Palace’ When Gene Haas announced that he was going to enter F1 it was immediately clear that the machine tool entrepreneur was going to do things differently. Eschewing the traditional route of building all but engine and transmission, Haas and his team principal Guenther Steiner decided to take advantage of a discrete change in the rules, and build the minimum amount of bespoke components allowed, namely monocoque, front crash structure and bodywork. Everything else would come from Ferrari and would be largely identical to that used on its own racecars. Yet even those bespoke Haas parts were outsourced somewhat with the team forming a partnership with Dallara in order to help manufacture…

The DTM has drafted new regulations to help reduce the budgets and spice up the action Superficially, the DTM has been in a good place in recent years. In BMW, Mercedes and Audi, it’s had three prestigious manufacturers involved, while it’s enjoyed championship battles that, more often than not, gone down to the wire, producing tense conclusions. Yet, despite all of the above, criticisms regarding the on-track product and also that familiar motorsport bugbear of rising costs, have forced the series to draft updated regulations to help reduce budgets and spice up the action. Meanwhile, the three manufacturers have, for their part, also looked to cut costs, and have opted to drop from running eight cars each to six, reducing the car count to 18 – its lowest since 2011, when only…