Table of contents for May 2026 in Racecar Engineering

At Honda, eras change fast. The Japanese marque’s radical Civic Type R-GT challenger, which made its Super GT debut two years ago, proved short lived, not quite matching the lofty standards set by its predecessor, the NSX-GT. Now, the somewhat awkwardly proportioned, five-door, GT500 car has been consigned to the history books, replaced by the new HRC Prelude-GT. It’s an altogether more dynamic looking machine, conceived with one goal in mind: to beat Toyota and Nissan and deliver Honda a long-awaited first GT500 title since 2020. Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) first revealed the Prelude-GT to the world not long after its roadgoing cousin went on sale in Japan, in September of last year. A two-day shakedown was undertaken at Sportsland Sugo and, at time of writing, the car was about…

Few motorsport disciplines leave as lasting imprint on the mind as Top Fuel drag racing. The explosion of power that reverberates through one’s body can be recollected many years after the event. Top Fuel dragsters produce somewhere around 12,000bhp from their 500ci (8.2-litre), fuel injected, nitromethane-fuelled V8 engines, but that prodigious power output is next to useless if it can’t be almost instantaneously converted into speed. The conversion is only possible using specialist tyres capable of handling loads that would make most circuit racecar engineers wince. In simplistic terms, it is a combination of the power and the tyres that enables the chromoly steel tube frame chassis of a Top Fuel car, and its driver, to reach up to 343mph (552km/h) on a 1000ft (304.8m) course in under 3.7 seconds.…

The news is hard to avoid. British company, Dynisma, has this year signed to become the official simulator partner of Stellantis Motorsport, and has delivered its state-of-the-art DMG-1 device to Rodin Motorsport’s new Driver Performance Centre, and its DMG-X to TU Graz for advanced driving simulation. The company’s range of simulators is set to expand further still this year, with a new entry-level platform designed to bring the same patented F1-derived motion technology to a wider range of motorsport programmes, in the hope of further expanding the company’s reach. Dynisma was founded in 2017 by F1 driving simulator engineer, Ash Warne, who previously led the simulator development programme for McLaren for nearly seven years, before moving to Ferrari as senior vehicle dynamics engineer. In this time, Warne realised that the…

BMW has confirmed its M3 Touring estate car will compete in next month’s Nürburgring 24 Hours, run by Schubert Motorsport. The practical road car was launched in 2022 and revealed as a racecar as an April Fool’s joke in 2025. However, the concept was so well received by fans that BMW turned the joke into reality. In just eight months, the racecar was developed on the platform of the M4 GT3 EVO, although the bodywork is 200mm longer, including the rear wing, and 32mm higher than the saloon version. The cars are otherwise technically identical…

Everyone is talking about it. Active aerodynamics has been one of the dominant technical themes of the 2026 Formula 1 regulations. After 14 seasons, the drag reduction system (DRS) has finally been consigned to history, replaced by a far more ambitious concept: fully integrated active aero operating at both ends of the car. The principles are already well known, so the question is no longer what active aero is, but how teams are choosing to implement it. Initially, the technical picture appeared to be converging. Most teams arrived at pre-season testing with relatively conventional mechanisms, refining hinge positions, rotation axes and flap kinematics in search of marginal gains. But then Ferrari arrived in Bahrain. What the team brought with it – quickly dubbed the ‘flip-flop’ rear wing – immediately reignited…

The flame still burns. Although Honda officially ceased its GT3 programme with the NSX in March 2025, the car still exists, and development has continued. Not by the factory, but by an independent race team based in northern Italy. Nova Race, hailing from the small town of Jerago con Orago, not far from Monza, has been fielding NSX GT3s in the Italian GT Championship since 2020. In 2023, it expanded onto the continental stage, giving the manufacturer its GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup debut. They were fun years for Nova, whose members revelled in their idiosyncrasy: the Italians who ran Hondas. But winds of change were blowing. New, more advanced GT3 cars had been arriving on the scene. By contrast, the Honda made its debut in 2017, and has…

The Eagle was born from a disastrous Indy 500 for Goodyear, in the early stages of [the] tyre supply war ‘Racecars are neither beautiful nor ugly; they become beautiful when they win,’ Enzo Ferrari is quoted as saying. There is a truth to that, but he was wrong about the Eagle Mk1 Weslake. This car was beautiful long before it was driven to victory in the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix by Dan Gurney. It was only the second ‘American’ car ever to win a grand prix, the first being a Duesenberg in France in 1921. It was also the first American car to win an F1 race outside of the Indy 500. Not only was the Eagle aesthetically pleasing, and constructed from exotic materials, its 3.0-litre V12 must also have…

It is very difficult to obtain an engineering edge in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) these days, due to restrictions on the allowed componentry. In the interest of managing costs to maintain a healthy grid, the series mandates several common parts, including the turbocharger, gearbox, braking system, ECU, rear wing profile, subframes, fuel and tyres. Different engine builders are permitted, but they must all provide a 2.0-litre, direct-injected, turbo four. Aerodynamic characteristics are hard to improve once the road car shape of the racecar’s shell has been chosen. Progress in most areas is made through optimisation of the details, and tuning the car to meet the driver, and circuit’s, needs. It is why rival teams should be very interested when the chief engineer of the Ford squad says its…

Motorsport is full of unusual vehicles, whether it’s a big-winged Pikes Peak hillclimber, a drag race funny car or a 750 Formula special. But it’s in the world of 4x4 Trials that you find the very weirdest of competition car creations – machines like Lee Pritchard’s Venom. It may be rather strange looking, but this self-built racer is an extremely effective device; Pritchard has won the All Wheel Drive Club’s (AWDC) UK Trials Championship for the past four years with it. So clearly it works. The Venom is what’s known as a Prototype (more commonly within the sport a Proto), which is the top class in the discipline, and Pritchard generally, but not exclusively, competes in the AWDC’s five-gate trial events. These are similar to Sporting Trials (see RE V34N6),…

Formula 1 in 2026 appears, on the face of it, to be a battle of the power units, with Mercedes gaining an early advantage. However, behind the scenes, the new regulations continue to push the boundaries of materials science and manufacturing technology. In an interesting twist, there has been a resurgence for steel as a viable option for parts where, in the past, it was considered too heavy. Of course, steel has always been present in F1, and all other racecars. Its presence just tended to be minimised. Parts like crankshafts have been made from nitride, steel forgings for decades and, for such highly loaded parts, it is still the only material that cuts the mustard. But as higher strength steels have been developed, and manufacturing techniques have advanced, in…

Opel will replace fellow Stellantis brand DS Automobiles on the FIA Formula E World Championship grid next season, in line with the arrival of the new Gen4 car regulations. The move will see the end of an 11-season stint in the electric series for DS, which joined back in 2015-’16. DS first aligned with the Virgin Racing squad, before entering a partnership with Techeetah that yielded a pair of drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles. It then switched to Penske in 2022-’23. After the current Formula E season ends in August, the company will focus on its new venture in SailGP. ‘We are now taking a new step by orientating our partnership strategy towards SailGP, a unique laboratory of innovation where technological performance and emotion meet,’ said Xavier Peugeot, DS Automobiles CEO.…