Racecar Engineering May 2016

Prime wildebeest steak in Kyalami and tapas at Jarama If you spend a lot of time in race paddocks you develop a routine of searching for what is available to prop up your caloric necessities. This is commonly called food. Cordon bleu chefs at lavish VIP suites now assuage the needs of the few in F1 paddocks, while the team members are adequately nourished. But it was not always so. One of the nightmarish memories that still sends shudders down my spine is of the most horrible concoction – worthy of being included in a culinary section of Dante’s Inferno – which was offered at a British circuit some years ago. For some reason it was called a ‘burger’, yet it was in fact a grey patty of some minced matter, probably…

The arguments against refuelling – primarily safety and cost but also that it will not change the status quo – just do not stand up to examination The intellect of Einstein is not needed in working out why F1 is going through the series of domination-by-one-team scenarios that have prevailed for the past six seasons, causing understandable disquiet. Given the (way too-restrictive) technical regulations resulting in almost identical car and engine specifications, one-make tyres for all, cars that are arguably too easy to drive and incredibly reliable, plus – above all – the adoption of the enormous power of digital technology including very accurate simulation, can it be a surprise that when one team gets all the key elements in place better than its rivals it will be almost unbeatable until…

Ultimately, Porsche opted to run the same chassis for a second season, and develop the car through 2016 Porsche took a huge step forward between the 2014 and 2015 season with its 919 Hybrid, accelerating an 18-month battery development programme to complete it in just six months, and developing a new chassis. It led to victory at the Le Mans 24 hours, the company’s 17th overall win and first since 1998, as well as the World Endurance Championship title. For the 2016 season, the development programme is not as dramatic. The WEC manufacturers tend to carry the same chassis over two seasons and Porsche is no exception. The 919 Hybrid has the same monocoque as in 2015, which already featured a compromise in terms of the packaging around the battery system. The…

One advantage of this system is that it provides a degree of redundancy; if the MGU-H fails, the ICE is still able to run as normal It was pure coincidence that the opportunity to interview the architects of the two most successful hybrid racing programmes to date, and to find out how they achieve this under the radical F1 and LMP1 regulations, occurred within two weeks of each other. Having talked to Mercedes HPP’s Andy Cowell (see April’s Racecar V26N4) it was an even greater coincidence to meet him again on the plane to Stuttgart as I made my way to meet with Alex Hitzinger, Porsche’s LMP1 technical director at Weissach. By the end of the visit it had struck me that perhaps this latter meeting was not such a coincidence,…

The use of the Mercedes power unit had a major impact on the layout of the rear end of the car, necessitating a change to almost everything from the driver back When the Manor team filled the back row of the grid at the Australian Grand Prix it was in many ways business as usual. From its foundation in late 2009 as Manor (later Virgin and Marussia and then back to Manor again) the team has always occupied the lower reaches of the field. But when in the opening part of the Melbourne race one of the two Manor MRT05s raced its way up to 14th on pace, it was clear that something had changed. The team collapsed financially before the end of the 2014 season and that looked to be the…

IndyCar opened its new season with numerous technical changes in place for its Chevrolet- and Honda-powered Dallara DW12s. A variety of season-long updates for the 13 rounds of road course and short oval events were unveiled, with special aerodynamic allowances for the three events held on large ovals, including the Indianapolis 500. There are also bespoke updates expected for the 100th running of the Indy 500 this May. On the engine front, IndyCar’s homologation table allows a wider range of development to Chevrolet and Honda. With 2012’s introduction of its 2.2-litre twin-turbo V6 engine formula, the series has alternated development years, with 2014 and 2016 targeted for more ambitious implementations. ‘It is definitely an interesting year because some of the things that they have opened up have not been opened since…