Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i Racecar Engineering

‘This year, it will be very much more what we intended it to be originally: an overtaking tool, rather than a lap time generation tool’ Sam Riches, technical director at TOCA Lap records are set to be broken in the 2025 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) season. This year’s cars are over 50kg lighter, following the removal of the spec, 48V, Cosworth hybrid system, but have lost none of their power. In pre-season testing, this helped produce lap times that unofficially beat the qualifying lap records at Brands Hatch, Croft, Snetterton and Donington Park. It was solid evidence that this year’s crop of cars could be the fastest the BTCC has ever seen. They are also some of the greenest, using a new fuel made with sustainable bio…

By the end of the 1950s, the front-engined racecar was dead, or at least dying. In Formula 1, mid-engined Coopers and Lotuses were winning, while sportscars were changing to engines behind their drivers and enjoying success. Despite this, it was still not quite clear whether a rear-mounted engine was essential in a well-designed sportscar. In the midst of this debate, a car appeared that challenged the emerging trend: the brilliant, and immortal, ‘Birdcage’ Maserati. The creation of the Birdcage was evidence, if it were needed, of the astonishing resilience and creativity of the Officine Maserati in the late 1950s. This was the company that created the 250F grand prix car that helped Fangio to his 1954 and 1957 world championships, the beautiful and successful 300S sports racer and the incredible…

Part of the cost saving was in the reduction of development opportunities… but that does not mean development has stood still When the FIA and the ACO were mapping out the Hypercar concept for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), they looked at bringing down the cost of competition from the old LMP1 era. There, hybrid and car development ran out of control, with budgets so large that few manufacturers could even consider entering the competition. The Hypercar class, specifically the LMH regulations within it, saw manufacturers build their cars from the ground up. It was designed to be around one tenth of the cost of competing in LMP1. In truth, that was an ambitious target, and budgets today are estimated to be around one third of the previous era.…

Korean luxury car manufacturer, Genesis, has confirmed it has completed a successful first firing of its engine, which will compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2026. The event took place late in February 2025 and was critical to the success of the programme as the cooling requirements have yet to be set within the ORECA chassis in which the engine will sit. Any delay in the engine development would impact the design and subsequent testing programme for the car, and that then threatened to impact Ford’s preparation, with the Blue Oval also believed to have settled on an ORECA chassis for its entry in 2027. The V8 engine, essentially two of Hyundai’s four-cylinder WRC engines mated, has been produced in-house by the Hyundai team that has built the…

Five races into its best season to date in Formula 1, the Haas team had scored 19 points. Five races into the current campaign and the American-owned squad had eclipsed that figure by one. Of course, it is too early to dare predict whether Haas will match its personal best fifth-place finish in the World Constructors’ Championship from 2018, but it is currently dicing with a resurgent Williams for that position, and the numbers look inviting. What is certain is that the Haas VF-25 has sprung from the gates quicker than its VF-24 predecessor did 12 months ago, when the team finished seventh. If Haas does remain a top five candidate as the 2025 season unfolds, it would be remarkable considering the disastrous opening race the team had in Australia,…

Quiz any professional racing driver about starting off in motorsport, and the chances are 10 to one that karting will be referenced somewhere along the way. Indeed, every Formula 1 champion of the past 30-odd years first twirled the wheel of a kart in anger, before progressing up the ladder by way of F4, F3 and F2, or the equivalent formulae of the time. Saliently, single-seater series are not the only categories to benefit from karting. Touring car, GT and endurance racing grids all feature alumni who starred in this grass roots discipline before rising above their peers. Clearly, karting provides a perfect grounding for youngsters wishing to pursue asphalt circuit-based racing. Hence why virtually every major motor racing centre features a kart facility of some sort, whether it’s indoor…

Composites have formed the backbone of racecar construction for the past four decades and are also making it into mainstream automotive applications. The reality is that, while motorsport is a significant user of composite materials, particularly carbon fibre, its use pales into insignificance when compared to other industries, especially aerospace. For this reason, many of the new developments in the materials and processing technologies come from sectors such as this. Carbon fibres are produced by the controlled oxidation, carbonisation and graphitisation of carbon-rich organic precursors in fibre form. The most common precursor is polyacrylonitrile (PAN), although fibres can also be made from pitch or cellulose. By varying the graphitisation process, either high-strength fibres (processed at about 2600degC) or high-modulus fibres (processed at around 3000degC) can be made, with those of…

The FIA has held its first meeting to discuss the financial governance of the new Formula 1 powertrain regulations that are coming in 2026, and future regulations that are due to be implemented in 2031. Hosted in Bahrain, the meeting gave consideration to adopting normally aspirated engines that use sustainable fuel, in a bid to reduce the overall price of hybrid engines. The meeting, chaired by FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the CEO of FOM, Stefano Domenicali, and FIA single seater director, Nikolas Tombazis, was attended by representatives in person and via video conference from Audi, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains. This is the first in a series of meetings designed to set a stable path through what can only be described as turbulent times,…

Nikolas Tombazis was born into a cradle of creating and achieving extraordinary things. His grandfather climbed mountains in the Himalayas in the 1920s and his father, Alexandros Tombazis, was one of the most famous architects in Greece. It seemed only logical, then, that young Nikolas might climb to the top of his chosen profession, too. The field he pursued was design, specifically Formula 1 cars. The FIA’s current single seater director spent many years of his life helping develop some of the fastest and most successful machines to have hit the track. Tombazis contributed to winning 15 drivers’ and constructors’ titles at Benetton and Ferrari, rising through the ranks from junior aerodynamicist to chief aerodynamicist and then to chief designer. ‘My father let me do what I wanted,’ recalls the…

‘When you look at the top echelons of the sport, if we’re approaching the same sort of speeds, then we also need to be approaching the same safety standards’ Nigel Redwood, managing director at Revolution There was a time when the first thing you’d look at after a car had been on track with a driver new to it were the lap times. These days, if you’re operating in the burgeoning track day scene alongside your racing commitments, it’s the expression on the driver’s face that matters. If it’s a broad smile, then it’s a job well done. That’s the view of Phil Abbott, co-founder of Revolution Race Cars, at any rate, and it’s understandable when you hear the UK-based constructor sells up to 75 per cent of…

Projects to improve driver safety in Formula 1 are typically the result of internal development, but the latest testing to reduce driver fatigue in hot climates comes from compact cooling devices, which first found widespread use in NASCAR. For example, Chillout Motorsports offers a wide range of systems that are deployed in a variety of racing series, ranging from grass roots categories to top-level sportscar and stock car racing, and now the company’s components are finding their way into F1. Driver cooling systems might be one of the few examples of racing technology working its way up the ladder, rather than trickling down. Ice-based cooling vests first saw use in medical settings, and were eventually adopted by amateur racers looking to bring down body temperature while wearing fire suits. Over…

The world of GT racing has faced challenges in the past, with escalating costs and manufacturer involvement driving away the core customer base, yet the category is currently enjoying an incredible purple patch. GT3 is the premier category in many national championships, as well as the international GT World Challenge events and the DTM. It is a sub-category in the World Endurance Championship and other Le Mans Series races around the world and, consequently, could be counted as the most successful rule set ever created for racing. There are thousands of GT3 cars racing around the world and manufacturers have flocked to it. The GT World Challenge alone boasts 10 competing manufacturers, and there are more in other series. However, the architect of GT racing, Stéphane Ratel, has long prophesised…