Walt
1st April 2013, 08:00
Does anyone actually think this is a good idea?
These cars are designed by people with years of experience designing race cars, in wind tunnels that cost multi-millions of dollars, and take several seasons to accurately correlate with CFD and/track data. I’m not aware of any US university that has a tunnel that is even close to the standard required to do the job properly. Sure they could us some of the commercially available tunnels, but do they have a clue what the cost would be. Ten years ago the cost to rent a well respected tunnel in the US was $1100 per hour! This program needs probably two weeks of testing, plus another week of final mapping. That doesn’t include the cost of all the parts that will have to be made to be evaluated which don’t come cheap!
The idea that they will be guided by the team race engineers is, I’m afraid, a huge misunderstanding of the process of designing a car. Admittedly there are a few race engineers who have design experience at this level, but the vast majority don’t. Designing a car and engineering one at a race track are two very different functions. I feel this shows a naivety that is completely consistent with most of the decisions that have come out of Indycar recently.
Having said all that regardless of any performance results they could hardly design a car any uglier! Except that most of the parts that make this car so awful looking aren’t (or at least weren’t) available to change.
A lost fan becoming ever more disinterested . .
Ian
These cars are designed by people with years of experience designing race cars, in wind tunnels that cost multi-millions of dollars, and take several seasons to accurately correlate with CFD and/track data. I’m not aware of any US university that has a tunnel that is even close to the standard required to do the job properly. Sure they could us some of the commercially available tunnels, but do they have a clue what the cost would be. Ten years ago the cost to rent a well respected tunnel in the US was $1100 per hour! This program needs probably two weeks of testing, plus another week of final mapping. That doesn’t include the cost of all the parts that will have to be made to be evaluated which don’t come cheap!
The idea that they will be guided by the team race engineers is, I’m afraid, a huge misunderstanding of the process of designing a car. Admittedly there are a few race engineers who have design experience at this level, but the vast majority don’t. Designing a car and engineering one at a race track are two very different functions. I feel this shows a naivety that is completely consistent with most of the decisions that have come out of Indycar recently.
Having said all that regardless of any performance results they could hardly design a car any uglier! Except that most of the parts that make this car so awful looking aren’t (or at least weren’t) available to change.
A lost fan becoming ever more disinterested . .
Ian