Racecar Engineering April 2022

Surely this is the most nerve racking, yet exciting time for F1 design teams in years? The long-awaited new breed of Formula 1 cars being revealed as I write do, actually, present quite major differences in appearance, even if camouflaged to some extent by the launch liveries and acknowledging the desire for retention of secrecy concerning some features. The ridiculous and hugely costly to develop bargeboard arrays have been banned, and the 2022 cars look sleeker and less bizarre as a result, if not quite as stunning as the futuristic images doing the media rounds a couple of years back. Ironically, however, the most radical and important design features – bearing in mind that these are responsible for at least 50 per cent of the overall car downforce – are the…

The most aerodynamically influential part of the 2022 Formula 1 cars is the all-new floor, marking the return of ground-effect cars to the sport The 2022 Formula 1 World Championship cars turned a wheel for the first time at the Circuit de Cataluña on 23-26 February this year. It was here the new era of the sport began, and the teams got to grips with their new machinery, designed to all-new chassis and aerodynamics regulations. The 2022 technical rule book defines a specific flow field and wake pattern for the car’s aerodynamics to follow – a vast departure from all generations of Formula 1 before it. The rules also limit the number of aerodynamic devices teams can put on the car. Because of this, teams are forced to be more efficient in…

At the end of the second day, it was already clear that porpoising was a major feature during the first running of the new cars. First glimpse of the new generation cars on track clearly showed that the teams need to spend time setting up the cars to control this phenomenon. There is not long for them to do so as the second test is mid-March, one week before the opening round. At vmax at the end of the straight in Barcelona, 300m from the corner, and therefore 150m from the braking zone, I watched as the cars visibly struggled to maintain a stable aero balance, with the floor hitting the ground. Additionally it appears at first glance to make a difference whether or not the DRS is open. Teams were running…

Performance is a multi-faceted word in Formula 1. It can be associated with lap time, driveability, top speed, tyre degradation, downforce, power unit output and efficiency, overall reliability, component stiffness, aerodynamic drag, resource efficiency in cost, time, energy and much more. ‘The IT team here at McLaren is a lean group, but our role is to ensure we provide platforms, technology and tools that the various teams within the Formula 1 group need to be as efficient as possible’ Edward Green, head of commercial technology at McLaren The various areas of performance can all influence each other, so measuring depends on the data collected and the type of analysis undertaken. Each Formula 1 car carries around 300 sensors, which collectively produce 1.5 terabytes of data throughout a race weekend. For a race…

The ultimate goal of the programme is to have a driver who performs at their optimal level for the entire duration of their stint behind the wheel, and recovers quickly enough that they can do so multiple times There are two organic elements to a racecar that can directly affect performance and which, particularly in endurance racing, need to be replaced regularly. One is the tyres, which degrade and ultimately cost performance, or risk failure. The other is the driver, who similarly degrades over time behind the wheel, and runs a real risk of crashing. While much is known and studied about the tyres, and indeed the car is set up to extract the maximum from them before they expire, very little has been published about driver performance, particularly in long-distance races. A…

It is well known that Sportscar drivers can race longer through their careers, which commonly is put down to a lower level of downforce, and therefore less requirement for physical strength. However, there is more to the phenomenon than that. While endurance racing has been trying for years to move away from the idea that it’s an old drivers’ home, and looks instead to build a younger driver roster, the ability to continue long into a driver’s 40s at the top level can’t be denied. Medically speaking, an older driver might rely more on cognitive skills to keep them quick, rather than physical strength, and there are plenty around with the skills needed. ‘Let’s say there’s an infinite number of grey matter neural connections you can have,’ says Ferguson. ‘If you start…