Racecar Engineering November 2018

Five years ago one of the Racecar columns I wrote was a collection of statistics and some conclusions drawn from it. It talked about the direction of the auto industry and motor racing, and basically stated the growth period was over, we had passed peak car and it was all on the way down. It did get a lot of retorts, mainly from people I knew in the industry, and reproaches about being so pessimistic. My rejoinder was that it is not being pessimistic, just logical, and because racing is something I love, it did concern me that the direction the sport was being obliged to take did not make me feel comfortable. The escalating cost of going racing just reflects the general zeitgeist of the world, which is changing…

There is always a degree of amusement, albeit sometimes bitter-sweet, to be had this time of year in Formula 1 as driver announcements for the next year are made. First prize has to go to McLaren’s team principal, Zak Brown, on Stoffel Vandoorne’s mooted forced move to Torro Rosso for 2019. ‘I’d take him in a heartbeat,’ he said – having just sacked the guy! Apart from the obvious question ‘so why are you getting rid of him?’, there is an inference that what’s not good enough for McLaren is nevertheless more than good enough for the Italian team. While appreciating that Brown is talking-up Vandoorne to assist him in staying in F1, could he not see the irony in his statement? Honesty is in short supply in the shark…

The quartet of manufacturer WRC teams have it all to play for as the World Rally Championship heads to the forests of Wales Rally GB in October. With three rallies to go at time of writing, both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships could well go down to the wire on November’s final round in Rally Australia. And it’s not all about the drivers; it is also a battle of constantly evolving technology, as our annual appraisal of the top four cars will show. Ford Fiesta WRC Sebastien Ogier’s M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC arrived at Rally Finland in July with a substantially revised rear end. Aimed at improving the car’s aerodynamic performance, it had been developed in Ford Racing’s Dearborn wind tunnel by M-Sport chief rally engineer Chris Williams, together with…

There is a quote, incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill, that appeared on the internal staircase of the Williams F1 motor home recently. It reads: ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.’ It’s a sentiment that sums up the 2018 season for Williams. With nine world championships and 114 race wins under its belt this team certainly understands success, but considering that it has only won a single race in the last 14 seasons, and that 2018 looks likely to be its worst ever world championship campaign, this is also a team that now also understands failure. Yet at the start of 2018 it was clear that Williams believed it was about to turn around its slump. The team had achieved a…

Chassis In house carbon fibre monocoque. Power unit Mercedes-AMG F1 M09 EQ Power+. Internal combustion engine: 1.6-litres, 6-cylinders; bank angle 90-degree; 24 valves; max rpm ICE 15,000rpm; max fuel flow rate 100 kg/hour (above 10,500rpm); high-pressure direct injection (max 500bar, one injector per cylinder); pressure charging single-stage compressor and exhaust turbine on a common shaft; max rpm exhaust turbine, 125,000rpm. Transmission In-house aluminium casing with eight forward speeds (plus reverse) electro-hydrualic sequential shifting, carbon multi-plate clutch. Suspension Double wishbone all round with pushrod actuated springs (front) and pullrod actuated springs rear. In-house dampers. Cockpit 6-point driver safety harness with 75mm shoulder straps and HANS system, removable anatomically formed carbon fibre seat. Cooling system Aluminium radiators for water, oil and ERS fluids. Centreline cooling. Steering In-house power assisted rack. Brakes Carbon/carbon…

It is not only Williams that has struggled with the floor of its car in 2018. At the Italian Grand Prix one of the Haas VF-18s was disqualified for running with an illegal floor. Ahead of the summer break it had become clear that a number of teams had interpreted a regulation relating to the shape of the leading edge of the front splitter differently to the FIA. The rules state that the outer corners must have a 50mm radius, but some teams, including Haas, exploited what they felt was a loophole allowing them to claim that outer parts of the splitter were in fact parts of the barge board and did not have to comply with the 50mm rule. A technical directive was issued outlawing this practice which gave…