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STRAIGHT TALK – PAUL J WEIGHELL Applied science Innovation and the death of downforce. Hopefully


rogress stagnates without innovation, and without progress economies stagnate.


warm tyres for fast first laps happily confirms that technical diversity and innovation are still alive. Few other sporting environments provide any regular innovation, and especially not innovation that may improve the world at large, even if hot tyres perhaps don’t make that grade! Tennis, for example, is no


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doubt as competitive as racing but what does their sport leave behind? Court, racket and balls have not changed dramatically and, even where innovation in materials has occurred, any advances have not been much use to the general public. Sport research is best when


Even where innovation is present, it may become circular, in the sense that it supports only itself. Aerodynamic downforce, perhaps like Tamara Ecclestone’s TV show, is famous for being famous, but serves few needs outside its own small circle. The era of wings has been


it produces something useful and independent of the sport. However, most sports suck in innovation from outside, eg carbon fibre tennis rackets, while motorsport instead sometimes exports the products of its innovation with lasting success. The iconic case of the rear


view mirror invented by a racer rather than a manufacturer illustrates the point that, whilst most people will not have heard of the man who added the first mirror to his racecar, we now all use them on the roads. More modern successes


great fun, but enough is more than sufficient. After nearly 50 years of ‘aero this’ and ‘aero that’, motor racing has surely wandered sufficiently far down the pointless cul-de-sac that is downforce. For readers of tender years, one should mention that before the mid-1960s aerodynamic research was aimed at reducing drag – useful work that led to road car improvements in function and style. Consumer car manufacturers realised they could make better looking cars with lower fuel consumption and quieter noise signatures by paying more attention to aerodynamics. Following the discovery of


include Ron Dennis, who retired from his Formula 1 team to focus on the McLaren corporation that had grown out of the composite business it started using skills and knowledge from their first composite tubs. Recently, Patrick Head announced he was to step down from the Williams team to run their KERS related spin-off. But other than individual


examples, how large a real-world difference can be ascribed to motorsport innovation? American and European


motorsport have very different origins. The European invention


downforce, however, racing engineers parted company with volume car-making engineers, who had no use at all for downforce. The racing engineers then rushed headlong down what has become one of the most pointless design paths in engineering history. The original downforce genie


was let out of the bottle by the 1966 Can-Am Chaparral 2E which, with its monstrous rear wing, cast a long shadow that still hovers like a pall over most classes of motor racing. Worshipped for their innovation, which was nevertheless to become as evil an addiction as heroin, American citizens Hall, Mrlik, Musser and Winchell, under the protection of General Motors, filed the definitive US patent, entitled ‘Aerodynamic Spoiler for Automotive Vehicles’ in 1967.


of the car led manufacturers to test vehicles on public roads. Cars were expensive and unreliable, but their wealthy owners had grown up with horse racing and keenly undertook competitive ‘point-to-point’ events with their vehicles. The car manufacturers realised these events were good for testing and advertising so supported them, while the general public watched freely from open road sides. The Americans had a


Nearly five decades later,


zillions of dollars have been spent on super-computers, wind tunnels and mathematical modelling to make cars stick to the track with downforce created by derivatives of those early ‘Aerodynamic Spoilers’, but it was not only aerodynamics they spoilt. For the fans, increasing


different view. Entrepreneurs ran the cheapest available cars on artificial ovals floored with wooden boards that were already


downforce has meant less interesting racing. Cars cannot approach each other, let alone overtake because they lose front grip in turbulence from the car in front. The Formula 1 situation became so bad that driver skill was substituted by the goal of


T


he revelations (unconfirmed as this is written) that Red Bull use exhaust heat to


else seemed possible. Car manufacturers did add some sponsorship, but their approach was firmly ‘race on Sunday, sell on Monday.’ If there was any track-spawned technical development then little survived the bean-counting journey to US production tin tops, other perhaps than Bumble Bee stripes and glass fibre hood scoops. One can still trace those


enough to warrant additional downforce, for safety or any other reason. In Formula 1 the madcap rush


two radically different starts to motorsport. European fans talk about technical advances and most are prepared to suffer some entertainment lulls for the technical interest and


“Technical innovation and engineering history”


used for bicycle racing. The ovals were short and enclosed by tall wooden fences so that organisers could charge for entry into what was billed as pure entertainment. From the start, the American


motor race was an entertainment business. The racetrack was somewhere to corral people in order to sell them food, drink, souvenirs, insurance or whatever


of the work on ‘negative lift’ has been wasted, as no consumer car gets to travel on public roads fast


more downforce for better lap times. For what purpose? No one cares about lap times. People pay to see sport entertainment from close competition, not a line of cars hoping to overtake at some artificial, rule-induced pit stop. Every penny and every second


advance is a key component of any business”


one of the most pointless design paths in


racing purity gained from a set of identical rules for each car. Americans, however, talk more about entertainment values and are prepared to emasculate technical advances and sporting ‘fairness’ for edge-of-seat family entertainment, complete with burgers, fries and autograph- signing drivers with big grins. It is common for US racing


on a following car can be flattened to decrease drag and increase speed sufficiently to overtake the car in front. Crucially, however, the leading car is not allowed to use DRS to defend against the move. So pernicious an evil has downforce become then that motor racing has stooped to adopt an asymmetric sporting rule that only applies to a


to achieve pointlessly faster lap times, including the double whammy of a secondary cul-de-sac development in the form of downforce generated by ground effect, came at the expense of recognisable competition, and so caused the FIA to search for a solution. Mr Ecclestone helpfully suggested artificial rain to reduce grip, but the FIA eventually decided on the now familiar Drag Reduction System (DRS), where a rear wing


Enough is sufficient How large a real-world difference can be ascribed to motorsport?


to enforce different rules for different cars, often at only a few hours notice, to keep performance as equal as possible at the finishing line. A pole-sitter finishing a minute out in front would likely signal national outrage in America, but receive a standing ovation in Europe. The European system has arguably led to more technical is a converging field of interes only to motor racing, and not to the wider business community from which motor racing receives its cash. The best motor racing developments are those with divergent possibilities that help spawn widespread business activity. McLaren has a spin-off business using composite skills and Williams has a transmission spin-off business, but few, if any, outside of motor racing will want to buy ‘downforce’ as a product. In refreshing contrast, the


mirror, one can list drag reduction through aerodynamics, fuel injection, tyre life and grip development, active suspension and anti-lock braking systems, as well as ride and handling science. All of that appears to have been developed far more in Europe and made available on road cars at a time when American products were notorious for solid axle, leaf spring suspension, squealing tyre material, poor brakes, poor fuel economy and dreadful, almost undamped, ride and handling. Technical innovation and


energy conservation systems of KERS / ERS have already taken root and caused widespread non-racing investment at firms like Flybrid, Ricardo and the like. These are fruitful development areas that can seed new UK firms to help the economy, conserve energy and hopefully re-kindle a technical engineering interest in motor racing that seems to have been drained by the search for, aptly named, down-force. It is no surprise that the king


Apart from the rear view Europeans back technicial innovation; Americans prefer the show The downforce genie that started it all – the 1966 Can-Am Chaparral 2E


advance is a key component of any business, and motorsport should not forget that. Pressure from marketing managers, public relations and media advisers to relegate our sport to a cash cow entertainment where paddock motorhomes house more innovation than the racecars must be held at bay or we could lose a technology-based business worth billions.


January 2012


following car, whereas previously the FIA has taken pains to ensue sporting rules apply equally to all cars. To compound matters, the DRS antidote has no useful road car equivalent either, although its inverse – raising a wing to create drag for emergency braking – is being seriously researched. The wider problem with


downforce development is that it innovation and to more of that innovation being applied to road cars. The American system seems to have spawned little, if anything, to improve their road cars and, if one stretches a point, it might be arguable that the lack of innovation in US motor racing was partially responsible for the decline of what were once the three biggest companies in the world – GM, Ford and Chrysler – now beaten hands down by clever little imports bristling with technical innovations, some of which were certainly developed within motorsport.


of downforce, Red Bull’s Adrian Newey, is thought by many to have compromised his own 2011 Formula 1 KERS system in order to make a better aero package. It is moves like that which cause the author to fervently hope that the legacy era of Mr Newey et al, brilliant though it was, is now drawing to a close. The future of motor racing needs to be about competitive performance, driven not by a plethora of wobbling wings that other cars keep tripping over, but by the most intelligent team and driver application of primary energy.


February 2012 • www.racecar-engineering.com 7 5


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