Racecar Engineering

Last weekend, I indulged in a multi-faceted motorsport trip to Belgium. It started with a visit to Spa ahead of the fourth round of the European Le Mans Series season. I couldn’t help but admire the sight of LMP2s at full throttle up Eau Rouge: it remains one of the most beautiful things you can see in racing. On the Friday and Saturday, I went to see some friends at Belgium’s other major circuit, Zolder, for the latest edition of a 24-hour race first run in 1977. The GT cars, busy negotiating a grid full of touring car backmarkers, clearly exposed the gulf between the few professionals and the amateurs. However, exactly that mix delivered a very unpredictable race. I then headed for nearby Genk, where the IAME Karting series…

‘We feel we increased the car’s base performance… but we couldn’t get the tyres to last the full distance in a race. I think this was the biggest factor in our lack of results’ Masahiro Ozawa, general manager at R&D Sport While the ‘big three’ Japanese auto makers, Toyota, Nissan and Honda, battle it out for supremacy in Super GT’s top GT500 class, there is a sometimes overlooked fourth manufacturer chasing glory with a factory team in Japan’s biggest racing series, albeit in the second tier. Three years ago, Subaru finally achieved its ultimate goal of winning the title in the series’ lower GT300 division after two decades of trying. That success coincided with the debut of the second-generation BRZ, one of a growing number of models conforming with Super GT’s homegrown…

The Nürburgring 24 Hours is one of the best-attended motorsport weekends in the world, attracting almost a quarter of a million fans to Germany’s fabled Nordschleife, while at the same time retaining the traditions that give it a pleasingly accessible feel. Interest is driven by the combination of a daunting 25.378km circuit with more than 80 turns, a 130-car grid with fabulous variety and huge speed differentials, and a festival crowd atmosphere full of bratwurst and beer. It is held on the Corpus Christi holiday weekend and the German fans take full advantage of their days off work to attend. The ‘N24’, as it is often abbreviated to, is also the favourite race of many a top-level GT driver, even sitting above the 24-hour classics at Le Mans, Spa and Daytona, which…

Christian Menath: You have a very interesting background. Most of the people in the paddock are here because they really wanted to be in Formula 1, but not you. Pierre Waché: No, clearly not! It wasn’t even on my radar to begin with. My family has a scientific background in medicine. They were all doctors. I did my PhD in fluid mechanics and specialised in biomechanics, looking at the effect of blood flow on the radial cells around the vessel. CM: Did you only choose that path because you grew up this way, or were you genuinely interested in the subject? PW: I didn’t know at the time. The opportunity arose when I was doing my PhD. It wasn’t that I liked those topics more than others, I just liked the challenge, and…

There is a broad and very smart balcony area called ‘The Terrace’ that overlooks the factory floor at Caterham’s brand new manufacturing facility in Dartford, Kent. From here, visitors have a fine view of all the activity below, and it’s a scene that will be very familiar to many readers of this magazine. For rather than a production line with whirring robots, this car factory is more like a race shop, with individual bays where skilled technicians build the cars. Consequently, it feels more like visiting a racing team, albeit a very large one, than a motor manufacturer. Perhaps this should not be surprising, for motorsport is at the very heart of this British sports car company. Indeed, Caterham Motorsport now runs five single-make championships in the UK, one of which…

The digital world is on the cusp of taking a giant step forward thanks to a new infrared system that has been developed by British company, IR Kinetics (IRK). The firm, whose executive board includes a Formula 1 team founder, has re-purposed systems used on military aircraft and adapted it to be able to accurately track high speed vehicles, including cars, aircraft and trains, with a short-term view to generating new revenue streams for racing circuits, sponsors and suppliers, and a long-term view to drastically change the world in which we live. There is nothing new or revolutionary about infrared technology, the principles of which have been known since the 19th century. The system merely uses sensors to provide highly accurate data of the location of objects. However, by repurposing the…