Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2019 i Racecar Engineering

One of the more obvious changes in the DTM this year is the arrival of Aston Martin, which has stepped in to fill the void left by Mercedes’ departure at the end of the 2018 season. The car is based on the Vantage, but a late decision on rubber-stamping the programme left the team with very little time to prepare, and the outfit that’s running the DTM car, R-Motorsport (which is developing the Aston Martin in conjunction with ex-Mercedes team HWA) now says that it is behind schedule in terms of the ideal development time-frame ahead of the first race of the year. ‘The development team received the confirmation of the project late, and only started development work on October 22,’ says HWA’s technical director Hubert Huger. ‘They had 85…

Formula 3 was once a core part of the international motor racing scene, with most nations having competitive championships. But in recent years interest in the category began to dwindle, with national championships seeing shrinking grids, and the international series drivers opting to race in GP3 instead. When the once great British F3 series was suspended a few years ago alarm bells started to ring at the FIA. Change was needed, and ultimately GP3 morphed into FIA F3 International, while a new class for national and regional championships was introduced called Formula 3 Regional (F3-R). It’s the creation of this latter category that has given Japanese constructor Dome its chance to return to F3 after a long absence. ‘The key aim of this project is that it is Japanese customer…

Norbert Singer was convinced that a 935 could be created that would be capable of winning Le Mans outright For GT racing, the 1970s were simpler times. The use of terms like balance of performance, sandbagging or waivers were still a thing of the future. Homologation was the key word then, and a level playing field was created by a minimum weight bracket that was related to the size of the engine. Manufacturers could request an exemption to be made, but unlike today’s waivers, these could then be applied to all cars. So engineers with a knack for reading and the gift of creativity were clearly at an advantage. Perhaps the most talented of these engineers was Porsche’s Norbert Singer. Singer had been responsible for the all-conquering 934 and 935,…

Team Penske enjoyed a long spell at or near the top in CART-sanctioned Indy car racing as a constructor and, for the most part, the sole entrant of its own cars, taking its first series title in 1979, with further titles in 1981-’83, ’85, ’88 and ’94. Penske Cars in Poole on the south coast of England was responsible for the design and build, engines aside, and Team Penske ran the cars out of its Reading, Pennsylvania base in the USA. The well-resourced F1-style operation thus enjoyed the luxury of being able to design and engineer its cars for just its own drivers rather than a number of customer teams. But after those five titles in the 1980s, only one more as a constructor followed in a dominant 1994 season…

Racecar’s wizard of sim does the maths to help explain one of the trickiest vehicle dynamics properties of them all – non-linear motion ratios One of the most difficult things you will ever deal with in racecar vehicle dynamics is non-linear motion ratios. With linear motion ratios, calculating what the car will do in terms of load transfer and pitch behaviour is easy. But when we move to non-linear motion ratios things become very messy, very quickly. Fortunately there is a way through the jungle. Here I’m going to revise an article I did two years ago on this matter and fix up some mistakes and omissions. Since that time I’ve added some data acquisition channels to ChassisSim that will greatly aid in our understanding of what is going on…

‘When we applied the Supra’s shape to the 2020 regulations we found that there was a really big drop off in performance’ It has taken almost a decade of negotiation but in October and November the GT500 class of Super GT and the German DTM will come together for a pair of challenge events. The first event will be held in Germany and will see a single racecar each from Lexus, Honda and Nissan take on the entire DTM field, then a few weeks later at Fuji Speedway the entire DTM field and the entire GT500 grid will come together for a two-race, six-manufacturer shootout. This will be the final step towards the creation of the long promised Class 1 regulations which Super GT will, mostly, adopt for 2020, and…

‘It was a late decision to build the new car, it is normally a good five to six month project’ The introduction of new machinery into the British Touring Car Championship is always welcome, and never more so than when it marks the return of an old favourite. So when it was announced that champion team West Surrey Racing (WSR) was switching from the BMW 1 Series to the new version of that BTCC stalwart, the 3 Series, it went down rather well. But this was no easy task for WSR. The decision to make the switch wasn’t made until October 2018, giving the team a very short time-frame. It started its design work based on the CAD files from BMW, but the actual physical job of building the racecars…

The automotive industry is currently facing a period of great change as various legislation will force the vast majority of production cars to be hybrids or EVs within the next decade. Other legislation will see the remaining combustion engines limited to ultra low emissions. At the same time consumers demand that their new cars are spacious, safe, comfortable and come equipped with advanced and high quality entertainment and navigation systems, all things which add considerable weight. Hybrid systems also have considerable weight penalties as well as an increase in complexity, which in turn adds further weight. Meanwhile, for cars fitted with combustion engines the regulations are also getting ever tighter, and for 2021 the European Union has set a stringent fleet-average CO2 target of 95g/km for all car manufacturers. This…

The DTM has finally brought its engine, chassis and aero regulations within touching distance of the Japanese Super GT GT500 rule set, which before too long should see the likes of Audi, BMW and newcomer Aston Martin lining up to take on Super GT stalwarts Toyota, Nissan and Honda, if only in standalone events to begin with later this year. It’s a mouth-watering prospect. But the DTM has had to make some major changes to bring this about. This includes the new 2-litre, 4-cylinder turbo engine, which has meant the weight has gone down by around 35kg due to the new architecture, with a reduction of 50kg overall in the minimum weight of the car – now 986kg without the driver. A fuel restrictor, rather than a flow meter for…

Toyota has put the Supra at the heart of its motorsport activity and it is likely that a number of competition versions will appear in the near future. Perhaps surprisingly, the first official racing version of this car is running in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, but this is clearly just the tip of the iceberg, as the Japanese brand has been dropping heavy hints about a number of other Supra projects. In 2018 a Supra-based LM-GTE specification concept racecar was shown off at the Geneva Motor Show, but this really was little more than a design study. Based on a pre-production chassis the show car was built using a few genuine parts, but with no real intention of ever taking it on track. Indeed, the car was not even fitted…

Because it’s tucked half a world away from the centre of the racing action in Europe and the USA, New Zealand has a long history of ingenuity, often coming up with solutions that match or even exceed the best on offer anywhere else. Couple that with world class manufacturing skill and you get products like Mimirbox. Mimirbox is the brainchild of Darren Conway, a keen karter and former weapons engineer with extensive experience implementing major military and commercial systems. Conway recognised that the number of volunteers willing to donate their time at circuits is dwindling, and many existing volunteers are retiring. Without theses volunteers circuits have to choose between the high on-going costs of paid officials and marshals, or implementing technology based solutions like Mimirbox – named after Mimir, a…