Ask any engineer involved in motorsport about the real strength of a data acquisition system and they will say it is not the data itself but the quality of the analysis of the information logged. Whether you use a budget machine or one that can accept up to 1000 channels of high-speed data doesn’t make any difference; the real challenge is to understand what is being recorded and how to use that information to change the car, ultimately to make it go faster. At the simplest level, the...
Now that there is a single tyre supplier in Formula One, there is no longer a tyre war. Teams cannot produce their own tyres or request customisation of the compound or construction. Yet tyres are one of the biggest performance factors that the teams are able to influence. Tyres are of course critical to lap time in Formula One, and with the recent trend for high-degeneration tyres, this importance is growing. Sauber’s Willem Toet in his Lanchester lecture to the Royal...
The world of race transmissions has changed substantially over the past 20 years or so. Although the geartrain cluster may fundamentally be the same, with only relatively small improvements to the gear teeth profile or material, the main developments would seem to be mostly around the gear change itself and the speed of gear change. And while developments to the gear cluster saves weight or improves reliability, those to the speed of gear change save time – arguably a far more...
Imagine the scene: I’m driving a rally car at competitive speeds along the narrow, twisting country lanes of Yorkshire, England. When braking hard for the downhill, hairpin bend ahead, suddenly the electrics fail. Confronted by total darkness without even the glow from the dashboard to guide me, if ever there was a time when I needed a fully functioning wiring loom, this is it. Fortunately, however, something tells me to take my foot off the brake pedal, and full lighting is restored....
To many, the thrill of balancing steering against throttle opening while cornering hard is what motorsport is all about. That feeling of keeping a racecar at the edge of its performance envelope and only inches away from potential disaster may satisfy the most basic primeval instinct, but between driver and oblivion there is a web of maps and algorithms that is becoming more complex as time goes on. At its simplest, the throttle pedal exists as an air valve; opening and closing according...