Virtual Realities

With simulation techniques becoming ever more sophisticated and accurate, the digital design and testing of racecars is a burgeoning reality.

Winning any race at the pinnacle of motorsports, be it a Formula 1 grand prix or the 24 Hours of Le Mans, requires the best design of car, constant development of that car, and an ongoing ability to optimize it for any given set of circumstances.

That’s always been a given, but how those goals are achieved has seen a fundamental shift in recent years, with a greater reliance on virtual development tools now absolutely essential.

In the rarefied strata of F1 and the World Endurance Championship’s LMP1-H ranks, and to a lesser extent in other blue-chip series, the process of creating a car, building it and testing it at various tracks to quantify the product is antiquated. Instead, there’s a massive reliance on digital packages and processes that have moved big chunks of learning and exploration to data churned out from server farms hidden from sight.

As technology marches on, races and titles are now won and lost by successful efforts in the digital realm before the first wheel is turned and throughout the season, as much as by anything accomplished at the track. This odd development – where driving, design and engineering talent alone is not enough to win – rewards those who embrace everything that computer-aided design (CAD), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), finite element analysis (FEA), simulation and driving simulators have to offer.

“They’re amazing in simple terms,” says Wirth Research founder Nick Wirth, whose company specializes in digital services. “They’ve had a huge role in our company since 2006, and they’ve been pivotal in development for our more important cars.”

CAD, CFD and FEA have been regular tools for constructors and teams to use since the 1990s, followed by the spike in simulation use and, recently, the growth in multi-million-dollar driving simulators. Both forms of simulation – with and without drivers in the loop – represent the greatest areas of digital racecar advancement.

“The simulator is basically limited by the quality of models it’s running,” Wirth explains. “It will be running models of the car, the suspension, the aerodynamics, tires, tracks, track conditions, etc., and it’s only as good as the information you put in.

“Take a qualifying run simulation at Indianapolis as an example – very often you’ve got a head wind going into Turn 4 and a tail wind into Turn 2. Regardless of anything else in the simulator, if you don’t have your environmental model right, the wind angle and speed in this case, you won’t accurately predict the car’s behavior and speed. It just won’t be right. And aspiring to get every little detail like that right just goes on and on forever.”

The constant advancements in these digital tools have transformed what most teams attempt during testing and practice sessions. With most of the guesswork removed by simulations prior to the car turning a lap, teams are often seeking confirmation of what the simulation said to expect, rather than sending out their driver without a clue on what they will find. As simulation tech gets better, the familiar term “testing” could soon be replaced by “verifying” once teams get to the track.

“If you make a change on a racecar – raise a spring, change a tire pressure, whatever – what we try to do in simulation is get all of those changes to affect the behavior of the car in as similar a way as possible to the real racecar,” Wirth explains. “People are successful to varying levels. I can’t go into exactly how successful we are with our simulation, but I’m satisfied with where we are…

To read the full story, you'll need the Fall 2014 issue of RACER magazine: The Technology Issue. Take a video tour of the issue...