Value added

If you thought motor racing was just driving in circles very fast then think again, because technology developed within the sport also brings major benefits to the wider world – from the battlefield to the supermarket

- ANDREW COTTON

If you were to write down the basic criteria for designing a racecar and then developing it to stay ahead of the competition, it would be quite a short document. Racing cars are built to a specific size and weight, and they have a singular purpose; to win races. They are created to be as light as possible, as efficient as they can be in finding the perfect balance of power against downforce, and to make the most of whatever technologies are available.

But there’s a bit more to it than that. Designers and development engineers must also push the boundaries while staying within the regulations to produce a winning car, and it is this desire to stretch what’s possible, to build, prototype, test, and race innovative ideas that sets the racecar designer and engineer apart.

Crucially, speed is of the essence, and we are not talking about lap times here. Turnaround times for the development of new ideas is critical to success in motor racing. If competition occurs every two weeks on average (or even more regularly in NASCAR), then teams have to be adaptable and capable of rapid prototyping, development, analysis and delivery of reliable parts within a tight time-frame.

The sport is thus always full of new ideas that can be transferred far beyond just the modern cars that we drive out on the road – though that particular crossover still exists, of course. The internal combustion engine (ICE) has been the bedrock of our mobility for more than a century, but this has now changed and we are looking for other fuels and other sources of power to keep us mobile. Key to everything, though, is efficiency, and while that seems obvious when looking at power to weight ratios and downforce figures versus drag, it takes only a small step of the imagination to take that philosophy into other areas of life.

Battle tactics