Racecar Engineering invited Craig Porley, an experienced Race Engineer to this year’s Formula Student UK competition. Porley has spent the last 12 years race engineering in BTCC alongside full time engineering jobs at Red Bull Racing and Xtrac. Having never been before, here are his thoughts on the competition and the bits that surprised him most. I found myself in a fairly unique position at Silverstone for this year’s Formula Student (FS) competition, in that I had never been before. Not particularly unique you may say. However, a 40 year old with 20 years working in the motorsport industr ..read more

The next generation of Motorsport Engineers begin their Advanced Motorsport Engineering MSc Masters at Cranfield University. Ryan and Jose from this year’s cohort debrief us on the first few weeks.  Week 1 As we settle down in our new environment we look back and realise how time actually flies. It is a blur! Leaving the comfort of home to study abroad for a year involves a lot of preparation and comes with a degree of anxiety. However, the excitement of receiving our Cranfield University acceptance letters, helped us all through these changes and we couldn’t wait to start! With students ..read more

High-performance additive manufactured thermal solutions provider, Conflux Technology, says, ‘If a picture tells a thousand words, holding a Conflux Technology 3D printed heat exchanger in your hand tells many.’ Here are the top comments motorsport engineers say when observing a Conflux additive manufactured heat exchanger: 1. THE LEVEL OF DETAIL ‘With one look, it’s apparent what is achievable with a Conflux CoreTM. You can see the level of detail and delicate structures capability; the fins, the thin walls, the complex geometries that additive manufacturing is known for.’ Conflux Technology ..read more

Like any other sport in the world, developing the equipment in motorsport is an effective route to getting ahead of the competition. As with other sports, typically, technical convergence occurs as understanding increases. However, the 2022 Formula 1 season hasn’t seen the convergence some expected before this era started. So, how does such a physics-driven problem create so many different design options? Could the answer be philosophy? More specifically, could it be the philosophy of those that guide the technical groups and their relationship with the physics at play? I spoke to the technic ..read more

Formula 1 is set to maintain the DI V6 turbo hybrid power units for the foreseeable future. However, after extensive discussions with the current and some intent OEMs, the next generation, set to arrive in 2026, will contain some crucial recipe changes. One of the most significant is eliminating the turbocharger shaft-mounted e-Turbo-style heat energy recovery system (H-ERS). The H-ERS is a motor-generator unit mounted on the turbocharger shaft of a Formula 1 internal combustion engine. The unit converts the heat energy from the exhaust gases into electrical energy. The electrical energy is t ..read more

Late last month, I attended the launch event of the forthcoming E1 powerboat series in Monaco. As Technical Director of a team working towards fielding an entry in the championship when it launches in 2023, it was a particularly important event for me on many levels. The E1 Series is, in its own words, “the world’s first and only electric powerboat racing series., established to create an exciting, competitive racing platform to promote sustainable electric watercraft and reduce the environmental pressures being placed on the ocean, rivers and lakes.”   It has ambitions to do a lot ..read more

This is my first Blog post for Racecar Engineering Magazine – it’s nice to have the opportunity to engage with readers on a more personal level and leave the heavy and sometimes intense technical writing to the side for a minute. As some will already know from my usual articles, I’m an engineering consultant, and I work primarily in the motorsport space.  I like it here for many reasons, but aside from an affinity for fast-moving vehicles, it has a much broader appeal for me as an engineer. There aren’t many areas of science that aren’t relevant in the design of a well-engineered vehicle ..read more

The rhetoric across the motorsport world at the moment is that we must fight racism, it isn’t diverse enough and that this needs to change. It’s safe to say that the upper echelons of motorsport, such as MotoGP and Formula 1 are, as James Alison, Technical Director of Mercedes Formula 1 team put it, “just nerdy white blokes”. So, what is it in particular about the higher echelons of motorsport that mean that this is the case? Motorsport is a complex amalgamation of business, sport and technical exercise. Like any other sport in the world, in racing there is a way to get ahead of the competiti ..read more

Divila’s racing career spanned 60 years where he competed in over 2,600 races, working for 46 different teams Never in the history of racing has there ever been a person better at sniffing out good coffee than Ricardo Divila. Like the rest of us he could be found lurking somewhere near either an Italian team or tyre company at a race track if his team had been remiss enough not to bring a proper coffee machine itself. Even when he wasn’t connected to a team but was at a track just to scan and search for a new way to get to Le Mans to try to win it he still knew enough engineers and team membe ..read more

Thoughts from Daytona It’s fair to say that the 2019 Rolex 24 at Daytona was an astonishing race. For the first time in history the race was red flagged twice due to the most extreme weather conditions ever seen at Daytona. The continued torrential rain eventually lead to the 24 hours finishing 10 minutes early. Amid all this carnage was Racecar Engineering’s Editor, so what did he think of the event, other than wishing he had purchased a larger umbrella…?  Keep up to date with all the latest motorsport technology with a Racecar Engineering subscription There is something irritating about ..read more