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Downforce and drag levels will reduce, the cars will get slightly smaller and lighter, and the electric part of the power unit will have a greater contribution.

Different performance attributes naturally bring different demands on the tyres. F1 supplier Pirelli is therefore trying to ensure a smooth transition from the current regulations to the next.

The Italian company’s target is to bring tyres that offer similar performance, degradation and balance characteristics to what is currently used.

However, its task has been complicated by the fact that no 2026 cars will be available until pre-season testing next February.

Instead, Pirelli has needed to test its future F1 tyres on cars built to the preceding rule book that are not on this year’s grid.

‘Clearly, we need to understand how the new cars are going to work,’ says Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola.

‘At the moment, we have an estimation. We have simulations coming from the teams. But it’s impossible to test the tyres on track with representative cars.’

To get as close to the performance of the 2026 cars as it can with the existing crop, Pirelli has asked the teams to adapt their current-generation cars into mules.

Five teams have tested prototypes of the 2026 tyres so far: Alpine, Aston Martin, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes. Williams will become the sixth when it joins a session at Bahrain International Circuit in early March.

As usual for tyre testing, the teams are not given details of what specifications they are running on, but their feedback is noted by Pirelli’s engineers and used to inform what constructions and compounds it ultimately goes with.

Pirelli needs to finalise its 2026 tyre constructions by September but Isola expects it to have something that is ‘not too far’ from the final product by May.

‘We have the mule cars, but the aero package is the same as they have now, so the stress on the tyre is probably not comparable to what we will have in 2026,’ he says.

‘Especially because the new cars should not generate so much [drag] on the main straight, so we are expecting higher top speed, but a similar amount of downforce in the corners that is slightly lower, on paper.’

Pirelli is assuming the 2026 cars will not be too different from the current ones with regards to vertical and lateral load in cornering.

‘That is what is important for us to understand: how much energy you are putting into the tyres,’ Isola adds.

‘That means degradation and integrity. Also, to understand the right minimum pressure to give to the teams.

‘There are a lot of question marks, but the final target is to have tyres that are similar in performance, degradation and balance characteristics to now.

‘What we can expect, because of the slightly smaller diameter size and width, is probably a bit more overheating that we need to compensate for with new compounds.

‘The higher pressure is to compensate the vertical load: we need to understand what the vertical load is.’

When Pirelli developed its first batch of F1 tyres for the 2011 season, it had access to a neutral test car, the Toyota T109, which became available after the Japanese manufacturer’s exit from the championship.

No such luxury is afforded this time around. In fact, it’s gone the other way, considering Cadillac is set to join in 2026 and doesn’t have an older F1 car available to run.

Pirelli also needs to rely on the other teams bringing mule cars that give accurate readings on the tyre data.

‘Aston [Martin used the] 2023 [car],’ says Isola. ‘They modified the car to fit the new size.

‘So, there is no change in aero package, but the active aerodynamic [device] is not present. The new [flatter] floor is not there.

‘It’s always a challenge. But a good example is when we moved from 13 to 18-inch tyres and it was a very similar situation.

‘Different cars, different aero packages, different characteristics. In that case, we have used a lot the virtual models of the tyres, together with the virtual simulations of the teams, to correlate what we saw on track with the virtual environment.’

The limitation of real-world testing with anachronistic vehicles means Pirelli relies heavily on simulations.

Teams have been testing their 2026 F1 cars in the simulator for many months now, so the mechanical properties are reasonably well understood.

Pirelli’s virtual models have also got more advanced over time.

‘I believe we did a lot of steps in the right direction,’ says Isola. ‘At the moment, the thermal mechanical model of the slick tyre is working quite well.

‘It’s more difficult for wet conditions. A model for the wet tyre is really difficult to develop because we have little data for correlation.

‘For the slick tyre, we can correlate the data from the virtual tyre to what we see on track.

‘In the virtual environment, there are also some question marks for 2026. Usually, we have different loops for development. We start with a model of the tyre that we supply to the teams.

‘They are using the model in their simulators. They come back to us with feedback, and [using that feedback] we fine-tune the model, and they use the new one, and so on.

‘We have three or four loops during the previous season in order to have better models and to correlate this model with what we see on track.’

The main change for the tyres in 2026 is the reduction of the tyre’s width by 25mm at the front and 30mm at the rear.

Initially, the plan was to also reduce the diameter of the tyres by two inches, however that was scrapped in favour of keeping the 18-inch diameter.

‘The estimation was to have loads that were much lower compared to the current cars,’ recalls Isola.

‘But the reality is that, if you go lower with the loads of the amount that was estimated at the beginning, the lap time was much slower.

‘We are talking about 5-6 seconds slower. This is not what they want. We need to keep a difference between Formula 1 and Formula 2: Formula 1 has to be the most performing car.

‘What I heard is that they don’t want to be slower than more than three seconds per lap.

‘The current estimation… we are not far from current lap times. When we got the data and the targets for the new cars, we simply said, if you go for the 16-inch tyre, it’s not possible to achieve this performance. We [would] need to increase the pressure sky high and the level of overheating will be crazy.

‘So, we suggested to reduce the tyres to try and save some weight and stay on the 18-inch tyre. Not going down with the rim diameter.’

Pirelli’s F1 testing so far

To date, the teams that have been involved in Pirelli’s testing of 2026 slick tyre options have completed approximately 7400km between them.

A further 1500km has been logged on intermediate and wet compounds; all tests have taken place over two days.

Pirelli conducted its first such test in September 2024. It started by focusing on a single car, before increasing its mileage by welcoming other teams to the track in early 2025.

The maiden test at Barcelona involved an Aston Martin AMR23 which completed just shy of 1400km with the team’s reserve driver, Felipe Drugovich, behind the wheel.

The second slick tyre test took place with a McLaren MCL60 at Mugello the following month, but rain limited the car’s running to 619km.

Testing for the 2026 wet weather tyres started at Magny-Cours in November. An Alpine A523 initially turned laps on slick tyres before sampling intermediates and wets on an artificially watered track.

Car mechanical issues on day one limited the mileage, although Jack Doohan still managed to log around 675km.

After the conclusion of the 2024 season and the winter break, Pirelli returned to testing in late January with a visit to Paul Ricard, using one of the French circuit’s short configurations.

McLaren completed 840km, splitting the driving duties between Oscar Piastri on day one and Lando Norris on day two.

Not long after, in early February, Ferrari joined the British team at Barcelona to get its first real-world taste of the 2026 prototype rubber options, using the hardest compounds.

Each team was scheduled to run just shy of 750km per day, with Ferrari sharing out its seat time between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, and McLaren keeping Piastri at the helm.

Between Ferrari and McLaren, almost 3000km was racked up, making it the most productive outing so far from a mileage standpoint.

Another multi-team test was held at Jerez in mid-February with Alpine, McLaren and Mercedes, which swapped in for McLaren for the second and final day. That put another 2470km in the bank.

According to Isola, mule car availability determines which teams run on the prototype 2026 rubber.

Others are set to come along later, although some have said they are unable to produce a mule car until the summer.

For Pirelli, the target is to do real-world testing with constructions that are close to what it believes will be the final product, rather than starting with a wide net and whittling down.

‘We try to reduce as much as possible the number of options with some virtual and indoor tests to assess the tyres’ characteristics,’ concludes Isola.

‘It is much better to go on track with fewer prototypes and test them better, than having a huge number of prototypes and just running three laps on each of them.

‘The idea is that, in one day of testing, you have around four or five different products.

‘Sometimes we have more. But when we start the development of different compounds, we are in the phase of performance runs [and] you can test eight or nine different compounds in one day.

‘But that’s not really the target. The target is to stay in the range of five or six solutions, maximum.’

The post How Pirelli is Developing Tyres for New F1 Cars in 2026 appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

The latest instalment of Beyond the Racecar looks at the British company’s work developing engines for high-performance road cars.

Cosworth is best known for its six decades in motorsport, especially its decorated tenure as a Formula 1 engine builder.

The British company, founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, won a dozen World Drivers’ Championships with the double four valve (DFV) which, in its 1970s heyday, supplied almost the entire grid with Ford branding.

Cosworth is the third most successful engine builder in F1 history, behind only Mercedes and Ferrari, but it has been a decade since one of its engines last appeared on a grand prix grid.

The group is still involved in other motorsport categories, such as the British Touring Car Championship where it supplies the electronics package, but racing is no longer its solitary focus as it aims to achieve long-term success.

Like many motorsport engineering firms, Cosworth has diversified by applying its knowledge, technology and working practices to other sectors such as aerospace, defence and marine.

In recent years, it has gained substantial traction in the high-performance automotive industry too, developing and building engines for limited-edition hypercars such as the Aston Martin Valkyrie, Gordon Murray Automotive T50 and T.33, and the Bugatti Tourbillon.

Those projects, all featuring large capacity, high revving, naturally aspirated engines, have helped give the powertrain side of the business plenty of work for the foreseeable future.

According to Cosworth managing director Bruce Wood, the order book is long enough to keep the production department busy until the end of this decade. That’s the kind of assurance most motorsport companies can only dream of.

Applied history

Cosworth has a history of flitting between race and road, applying its motorsport expertise to production projects to varying extents.

It built engines for the Chevrolet Vega in the 1970s and the Mercedes 190E in the 1980s, the latter enabling the German manufacturer to go racing in the DTM.

However, Cosworth’s most famous road project was the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth of the late ’80s. Its development came as the company was noticing a dramatic shift in the composition of the F1 grid as the commercial position changed.

‘The DFV had been hugely successful,’ recalls Wood. ‘At some point in the 1970s, two [cars on the grid] would be Ferrari powered and the others would all be Cosworth powered.

‘All the grandees of teams that we think of now – McLaren, Williams, Brabham – all ran Cosworth DFVs. That was a great business then.

‘What Keith and Mike saw going into the ’80s was Formula 1 becoming the domain of the car manufacturers. Porsche, Honda and Alfa Romeo came in.

‘For them, it was a marketing exercise. They were looking at giving engines to teams and sponsoring them to promote their vehicles.’

Cosworth quickly realised that, as a company selling engines to customers, it wasn’t going to compete with a road car manufacturer that could offer a team its engines in a more cost-effective package.

Therefore, Cosworth’s dominant share of the grid was bound to get chipped away, and so it did. By 1984, it was only supplying the Tyrrell, Arrows and Spirit teams.

Badge engineering

‘That’s the premise under which the Cosworth Sierra was started,’ continues Wood. ‘Keith realised our business was going to get taken away from us.

‘He put it to Ford: you’ve won the F1 championship [with Cosworth] for many years in a row, but the man on the street has no idea because you’ve never made anything of that.

‘So, why not put the Cosworth badge on the back of a Sierra?’

The project was a resounding success. Cosworth established a new engine build shop at Wellingborough just to produce YBB engines for the Ford Sierra RS, such was the demand.

The car appeared on bedroom wall posters and achieved cult status through its usage in touring cars and rallying.

‘We made something like 25,000 engines for the Sierra, followed by the Sapphire, followed by the Escort, over a 10-year period,’ recalls Wood.

‘Cosworth has been through these phases: we were heavily motor racing, then we went to road cars, and then we went back to wholly motor racing.’

There was a brief F1 renaissance for the company in the 1990s, which included supplying the 3.5-litre V8 for Benetton that powered Michael Schumacher’s first title, but it never returned to the halcyon days of the DFV.

Cosworth’s final F1 engine was the 2.4-litre V10 for Marussia’s entry into the 2013 season.

Times change

Heading towards the 21st century, the company’s electronics division, established in 1987, ramped up supplying new control and telemetry systems for IndyCar and sportscars.

In 2014, it launched the Performance Data Recorder with General Motors, enabling Corvette and Cadillac drivers to record and analyse their drives. This was followed in the 2010s by the AliveDrive system.

Meanwhile, the powertrain division’s road car work had morphed into consultancy, stepping away from the higher volume production that had been achieved with the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth.

Instead, it focused on manufacturing engines for clients in small volumes, or provide design advice.

That wasn’t to last forever, though, as the automotive industry took another turn in the 2010s that helped set Cosworth’s current trajectory.

Bespoke engineering

The arrival of the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which was conceptualised in 2016 and manufactured from 2021 until last year, changed the game for Cosworth in terms of how it approached the automotive sector.

The company was contracted to develop a 6.5-litre V12 engine for the Adrian Newey-designed machine, capable of revving to 11,100rpm.

‘It made us realise there was a much better business model for us,’ says Wood.

‘We’re not a consultancy; we now see ourselves as a product business, albeit the products are very low volume, very high value and bespoke.

‘Nonetheless, the Valkyrie engine is a product that has to be fully validated. We deliver it, hot tested, to Aston’s production line where it is bolted into the car.’

Fast forward to the present day and the high-performance automotive market has accelerated to dizzying heights, with ever more expensive cars powered by hugely powerful, yet efficient engines that make a thousand horsepower seem average. Cosworth has been central to that movement.

The Valkyrie, for example, which had design input from Adrian Newey, uses a stressed-member V12 linked to a Rimac KERS battery system that results in a 1140bhp total hybrid power output.

The story goes that the Valkyrie was originally designed to have around 950bhp, but inklings that the rival Mercedes-AMG One would breach four figures led Aston’s then CEO, Andy Palmer, to request an increase.

As it turned out, Cosworth had already exceeded 1000bhp on the dyno, and so it was done.

Aston Martin’s production run of 150 Valkyries, which concluded last November, has given Cosworth plenty of business and put its name as a high-performance engine builder back on everyone’s lips.

The project was a major coup for the company, although Wood admits he wasn’t expecting it to be the genesis of a wider movement.

‘I’d be lying if I said we saw it coming,’ he says regarding the onset of big engine, roadgoing hypercars. ‘I don’t think the world saw it coming, but I think the world changed with the arrival of the Valkyrie.

‘On paper, it was a nice business model because it used every part of the company. But we thought it was going to be a once-in-a lifetime [project] to make the most of.

‘We didn’t really imagine there was enough business out there to make it viable.’

Luxury wheeled goods

On the heels of the Valkyrie, another hypercar project emerged with a celebrated F1 designer behind it.

Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) enlisted Cosworth as its engine partner with records in mind for its recent bursting onto the scene.

Weighing just 178kg, the 3.9-litre powerplant in the GMA T50 is the lightest naturally aspirated V12 available, as well as the highest revving at 12,100rpm.

It is positioned low in the monocoque, allowing for a low c of g and heightened agility. Its size restricts the output to 660bhp, although its high power-to-weight ratio helps to compensate.

GMA and Cosworth further worked on this engine for the T.33 model, which produces just under 600bhp at 10,250rpm, with 90 per cent of the maximum torque available between 4500 and 10,500rpm. Both the T50 and T.33 are limited to 100 units.

At this point, Cosworth knew it had the potential for a sustained business model, using its motorsport expertise to develop high-revving engines for what Wood terms the ‘luxury wheeled goods’ market.

‘It’s got nothing to do with transport, or how you get from A to B, but how you arrive at B,’ he says.

‘They are luxury goods bought for emotion. That is what has driven this move to V12s and extremely high performance.

‘Emotion is driven by our senses – noise, heat, visual appearance – much more than the sensation of speed. It is very hard to get that with anything other than these engines.

‘The Valkyrie arrived and was a new type of car. I think it created a whole new customer base, to some extent. There had been the Bugatti Veyron and things before, but they didn’t really celebrate the engine.

‘The Veyron engine [an 8.0-litre quadruple turbo] was very effective for Bugatti and the whole VW group.

‘It was a great engine, but it doesn’t really stir the emotions. It’s buried in lots of covers and the sound is obscured by the turbos.

‘In my mind, the arrival of the Valkyrie was the first time there was a vehicle in that very esoteric niche that really celebrated the engine.’

Life’s too short

The uptake in electrification suggests that such V12 engines might be anachronisms enjoying one last spectacular hurrah before their consignment to history. But Cosworth clearly doesn’t feel that way.

Wood is adamant that extreme roadgoing hypercars, the popularity of which he feels was spurred by a ‘life’s too short’ mentality brought on by Covid, require internal combustion to sell. This is based on the engine being a celebrated part of the machine, bordering on a work of art.

‘There is no such thing as electric wheeled luxury goods,’ he suggests. ‘By default, it is internal combustion engines.’

Another of Cosworth’s recent high-performance automotive engine projects has involved Bugatti.

Although the Veyron was not Wood’s cup of tea from a commercial standpoint, the new Tourbillon very much is. It is a hybrid hypercar featuring a naturally aspirated, 8.3-litre V16 producing 1000bhp.

The engine has a 90-degree v angle and revs to 9000rpm. Combined with three electric motors, the car’s total output is close to 1800bhp.

Racecar saw one of the Tourbillon’s cylinder heads in Cosworth’s Northampton build shop during a visit to the factory, and it resembled an aircraft engine those daring racers would put in early 20th century land speed record cars.

A total of 250 units will be produced, starting in the next couple of years. That will help to keep the flow of production going after the Valkyrie project’s completion.

The most obscure of Cosworth’s current automotive projects is the Bizzarrini Giotto.

This is a planned hypercar from an Italian sportscar manufacturer that was briefly active in the 1960s and revived under new ownership in the 2020s. Its founder, Giotto Bizzarrini, was a lead designer of the legendary Ferrari 250 GTO.

The Giotto hypercar was announced in September 2023 as an extreme grand tourer with a 6.5-litre Cosworth V12, capable of producing over 800bhp.

Few details have been disclosed since then, although the company – now owned by Pegasus Brands – installed a new CEO last summer.

According to Wood, the engine project is still active from Cosworth’s perspective, albeit at a ‘slow walk’ determined by any progress on the Bizzarrini side.

No Giotto engines have yet been produced, although most of the design work is complete.

Long-term stability

With multiple high-performance automotive projects on the go, where does this leave Cosworth in the longer term? Not returning to F1 any time soon, according to Wood.

‘I think we’re very happy where we are now, because Formula 1 is the domain of the car manufacturers,’ he says. ‘It is not realistic to think that a small independent is going to [enter].

‘Even if a new car company came to us and asked us to do an engine for them – for sure we would be very interested to discuss – but it’s a case of be careful what you wish for.

‘Because, from our experience, it is almost impossible to be in Formula 1 and any other business, because it’s all-consuming.

‘From a commercial aspect, this is the strongest we’ve ever been.’

Today, Cosworth is spread between a dozen facilities in the UK, while its propulsion department operates from the main headquarters in Northampton, employing over 300 people.

This is supported by the electronics group in Cambridge, which has around 120 employees, and the smaller Delta division, which focuses on electric powertrains.

For the propulsion business, growth has been fed by the hypercar projects, but does it envisage expanding further?

‘These programmes tend to be four to five years from first discussing the programme to the start of production,’ says Wood.

‘We start with our simulation, design and analysis, and get on to prototype manufacturing, all of which we do in-house.

‘Then we build and test. Each of these programmes uses every facet of the company.

‘You start out by consuming all our design and analysis resource, and then moving on to prototype manufacturing. Where we are now, we can see production going out a long time, but you have to keep feeding the hopper.’

Wood notes there are ‘opportunities’ to add new business, which would scale things up on the design side. But Cosworth is careful not to be too ambitious with any expansion that might entail.

‘It will become difficult to expand this site,’ he says. ‘Also, the cost of increased infrastructure is huge.

‘Things like dyno cells are at least six or seven million pounds each. We’ve got 10 of them. If we got more work in, what we would probably do is look to run those cells on a double shift, rather than build new ones.

‘We have capacity to do a little bit more, but it’s important not to overstretch yourself. It’s always good to have a little bit more available to you than you really need, and that’s where we strive to be.’

Future thinking

Many industry figures believe the key to decarbonising the automotive sector is to have a mixture of fuel and powertrain solutions, rather than putting all eggs in one basket.

This has thrust the internal combustion engine back into discourse because synthetic fuels and hydrogen can be used to keep present technology going with far lower emissions than standard petrol.

‘Five to 10 years ago, people were saying there was no future for internal combustion engines, and it was all going to be battery electric,’ says Wood. ‘The reality of course – and I think it was always the case – is that there is no silver bullet. It’s horses for courses.

‘There is a place for battery electric vehicles in mainstream transport. There is a place for hydrogen. There is a place for plug-in hybrids. There is a place for internal combustion still.

‘We’re of the view that, in the mainstream market, it will be different technologies for different applications.

‘For the wheeled luxury goods, it will always be driven by internal combustion. But that’s not to say that regulation may require some degree of electrification. It might be that you need a 10-mile electric range for city centres.’

According to Wood, e-fuels are the attracting lots of attention with Cosworth’s automotive client base due to their drop-in nature.

While e-fuels are still too expensive for widespread automotive application, that cost matters less in a market where cars like the Valkyrie and GMA T50 are worth millions.

Cosworth’s Delta and electronics divisions are helping to keep Propulsion on top of such technology, as well as electric drives.

Hydrogen is also something the company is monitoring: it recently converted one of its 10 dyno cells to run hydrogen-fuelled engines.

This has required substantial infrastructure changes to the affected building, as well as high cost.

‘We had to change the fabric of the cell considerably to put in blast walls, so in the event of an explosion it takes out a wall, rather than the whole building,’ says Wood.

‘You have to store the hydrogen outside in a separate bunker. As there should be, there is legislation about how to store it.

‘The mechanics of the cell is very little different, but the fabric, storage and plumbing hydrogen into the building is where the time and money went. It was a bigger upheaval than we thought.’

Despite the investment, Cosworth doesn’t plan to convert any more of its dyno cells to hydrogen.

The prevailing school of thought in terms of future fuels is constantly shifting and Wood doesn’t think it would be sensible to ramp up hydrogen too much for the manufacturers Cosworth is trying to serve.

‘It’s a real moving target,’ he acknowledges. ‘We’ve had conversations with Gordon Murray in the past about hydrogen; he’s certainly been interested in running a V12 on it.

‘We first started talking about it three or four years ago. At that point, e-fuels were much more in their infancy.

‘Then, quite a lot of people thought hydrogen ICE would be quite a big player in the marketplace, but I think it’s swapped places with e-fuels now.

‘E-fuels are generally regarded as being a better solution because the infrastructure is there, and the one obstacle – price – isn’t really an issue in this marketplace.

‘I think hydrogen has quite a lot to offer with any kind of vehicle where you’ve got a base and you can therefore have a captive supply to control.’

Roots remain

While high-performance automotive is the priority in terms of engine work at Cosworth, that doesn’t mean the department has left motorsport behind.

Aston Martin and The Heart of Racing’s revival of the Valkyrie LMH project came with the job of converting the V12 road engine into a race-ready unit putting out only 670bhp.

These are built in the same room as the production road car engines were.

‘I think it’s important that we always retain an element of racing,’ suggests Wood. ‘Even where the technologies might be different, and so much of what we do now is driven by emissions.

‘The methodology by which we approach work is very much derived from racing. Racing does drive a different mentality and particularly a different approach to programme timing. That has served us well in this move into the hypercar market.’

Most of Cosworth’s current push in motorsport is coming from the electronics department in Cambridge.

It has developed the Antares 8, an electronic control unit series designed to be a ‘single box solution’ for data logging and analysis. This is used by all BTCC cars, as well as the Valkyrie LMH, and has been tested in Super Formula.

At the end of 2024, Cosworth expanded the Antares range to give more options for series and manufacturers operating on tighter budgets.

Cosworth’s motorsport electronics work also extends to data capture for F1 wind tunnel testing and steering wheels, as part of integrated car electronics systems.

The latter programme includes the steering wheels used in all LMDh sportscars, reputed to be some of the most advanced racecars from a software perspective.

Cosworth is, therefore, still at the forefront of motorsport technology, although its position has changed substantially since the early days of Formula Junior and Lotus-Ford Twin Cams.

The engine side of its business focuses less on racing than it did before, but motorsport-grade design and production capabilities will always be part of the furniture.

They need to be, because it is a selling point to those car manufacturers that want to be convinced Cosworth is not just a name from the past, but an active player in the automotive industry’s future.

The post Race to Road: How Cosworth’s Powertrain Business has Evolved appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

The McLaren MCL39 was driven by both of the British team’s full-time drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

It was tested in a black and orange camouflage livery to hide some of the key technical features.

The frontal view shows the continuation of a pull rod front suspension layout, with a larger gap between the two upper wishbones compared with a similar photo taken at last year’s British Grand Prix.

A version of the perpendicular rear wing corner that is visible on the McLaren MCL39 was used towards the end of last season and in a post-season test at Yas Marina.

The image of the MCL39 exiting the garage points to a re-profiled step in the centre of the rear bodywork section, as well as the region around the rear suspension mounting point. A new wing mirror design is also discernible, while the sidepod inlet appears to extend further down.

There is also what looks to be a new vertical element towards the rear of the car, visible to the right of the halo in the frontal image.

Further clarity on the car’s new features is set to come when the McLaren appears at collective pre-season testing in Bahrain on 26th February.

The 2025 season marks the fourth and final year of the current F1 technical regulations.

‘We are excited to see the MCL39 hit the track for the first time at Silverstone Circuit today,’ said McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella.

‘Whilst we finished last year as champions, 2024 highlighted how highly competitive the grid is, which is something that will carry through to this year’s championship.

‘We therefore must keep focused to compete at the front in this tight field. It’s going to be an exciting but incredibly challenging year ahead.

‘The team have worked extremely hard to prepare as best as possible for the start of the season. We learned a lot from our battles last year, so we take this and use it to push our goal for the year.’

McLaren Racing CEO, Zak Brown, added: ‘We must be realistic that every team will have made progress over the winter.

‘Last year highlighted just how much the grid has closed up, which is a brilliant thing for the sport.

‘We believe we have made further steps forward since the championship-winning MCL38 but we won’t know where we sit in the standings until we get into qualifying in Australia.’

Check out images of the McLaren MCL39 below, with photos of last year’s car for comparison:

The post First Glimpse of 2025 F1 Tech as McLaren Completes Shakedown appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

For many years a stalwart of the GT ranks, Aston Martin will be the first manufacturer to develop an LMH racer from a full road car.

It will also be the first to compete with an LMH in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and the United States-based IMSA Sportscar Championship.

Glickenhaus and ByKolles have already raced non-hybrid LMHs in the WEC, but Aston is the first major automotive manufacturer that has met the criteria of both the global series and IMSA to field such a car.

The 6.5-litre, V12-powered competition Valkyrie, which does retain a hybrid element in that it will pull away from the pits under electric power, will be run in both championships by the Heart of Racing team, which has facilities in Brackley, UK and Phoenix, Arizona.

Car development has been ongoing in Europe and the US ahead of the car’s maiden season. Aston Martin says the Valkyrie has completed more than 15,000km of testing.

Tracks visited include Donington Park, Silverstone, Vallelunga, Jerez, Bahrain, Lusail, Road Atlanta, Sebring and Daytona.

Initially touted to race at the 24 Hours of Daytona in January, a decision was taken to delay the Valkyrie’s debut to the first round of the WEC season in Qatar at the end of February.

Two cars will contest the full WEC campaign, which includes Le Mans, while a single Valkyrie will run in IMSA, starting with the 12 Hours of Sebring in March.

At the time of the Valkyrie LMH’s pre-season unveiling in early February, it was not yet fully homologated. To get the car ready for Daytona would have meant signing off before Christmas and building parts over the time-sensitive holiday and New Year period.

Due to performance upgrades being limited in number after homologation, Aston Martin echoed the behaviour of other manufacturers by focusing heavily on nailing the development first time around.

Down with downforce

While the surface of the Valkyrie LMH has remained largely faithful to the production version, downforce had to be shed from the production car to meet the lift / drag targets set by the regulations.

The active suspension also had to be replaced with a passive suspension system, while the Cosworth engine was adapted to run at the significantly reduced power and torque levels demanded by the competition.

It also needs to run lean to reduce the amount of fuel carried, in order to hit the regulations’ energy limits.

The Valkyrie engineering team at Aston Martin Performance Technologies therefore focused on developing everything under the bodywork, starting from the front wing.

‘We have had to redefine the aerodynamics of the car,’ said Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport, Adam Carter.

‘If you look at the car, we went out with great intention of leaving as much of the outward facing surfaces as the Valkyrie [road car] because it is important to represent the Valkyrie wherever possible. 

‘In terms of the repositioning in the performance window, a lot of that is on the underfloor, the front wing area. You also see, as per the other LMH / LMDh cars, there is an amount of work put in place around the aerodynamic stability criteria.’

Large strakes over the roof, on to the rear wing and endplates help to achieve the stability targets for the vehicle in yaw.

Carter would not reveal the difference in downforce between the road and race Valkyries due to the different suspension.

‘The racecar is a passive vehicle, while the road car is a fully active, hydraulic platform car, so it would be unfair to do a comparison because in different conditions the active car has given itself different performance,’ he said.

Of the decision to forgo the production car’s hybrid powertrain layout, Carter was clear: the hybrid would bring unwanted weight and complexity to the programme.

By regulation, if a manufacturer brings a hybrid car to LMH (as Toyota and Ferrari have done) it must feature a front-mounted system which can only be activated over a speed set by the balance of performance regulation.

‘Hybrids come with a significant mass consequence, so to take a car which is also carrying that V12 power unit, which also carries mass trade as well, it becomes a different challenge,’ added Carter. 

‘Also, if you look at the hybrid system on the Valkyrie, it is actually on the rear axle, not the front. So, you are [getting] into different chassis and monocoque concepts, and you are changing the front end which comes with even further mass.

‘If you take the hybrid system and reflect the Valkyrie, the cooling demands different packaging, so you would be packaging the car in a different way.’

A full feature on the Aston Martin Valkyrie LMH, including analysis of its race debut, will appear in the April issue of Racecar Engineering, on sale 7th March. Subscribe today!

The post Aston Martin Reveals Further Details of Valkyrie LMH appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

One major reason was that it marked the first FIA World Rally Championship round since the spec hybrid system was dropped from the premier class.

Another was that Monte Carlo signified the debut of a new tyre supplier in Hankook, the South Korean company replacing Pirelli which held the post for four years.

Perhaps best-known in motorsport for its ongoing supply of the FIA Formula E World Championship, and of the DTM from 2011 until 2020, Hankook arrived in the WRC with relatively little top-line rally experience compared with its Italian predecessor.

However, it wasn’t completely green to the off-road discipline, either. Hankook has provided tyres to Rally2 cars in national series and supplies the ERC4 class of the FIA European Rally Championship.

Nonetheless, stepping up to work with the factory teams of Rally1 presented a substantial challenge that required extensive preparation and lots of testing.

Hankook needed to develop tyres for different conditions that would all be durable and safe when faced with the increased dynamic and aerodynamic demands of Rally1 machinery.

‘The existing rally tyres were originally developed to align with the performance of Rally2 vehicles,’ says Roy Cha, team leader of the WRC tyre development test team at Hankook.

‘However, as Rally1 vehicles feature significantly more powerful powertrains compared to Rally2 vehicles, adjustments were made to adapt the tyres accordingly. This led to the development of revised structures and compounds across all patterns to meet the demands of Rally1 vehicles.

‘In particular, the Dynapro product used in gravel competitions required substantial modifications, as changes to the structure and compound alone were insufficient to manage the power of Rally1 vehicles.

‘To address this, a new pattern, R213W, was explicitly developed for Rally1 vehicles by redesigning the existing pattern.’

Compound interest

Hankook’s WRC range consists of the following products: Ventus (tarmac), Dynapro (gravel), Winter i*cept SR20 (snow) and the studded Winter i*Pike SR10W (ice).

The Monte Carlo Rally saw many competitors use the Ventus Z215, which was available in different compounds, as well as the Winter i*cept SR20 on roads with conditions slippery enough to make the super-soft Ventus struggle.

‘The tarmac pattern is used for both Rally1 and Rally2 vehicles,’ explains Cha.

‘For dry conditions, the Z215 pattern is available in three compounds – hard, soft and super soft. For wet conditions, the [Ventus] Z210 pattern is used with a single compound type.

‘For gravel patterns, we plan to use two distinct patterns to account for the differing performance characteristics of Rally1 and Rally2 vehicles, with each pattern offering two compound options: hard and soft.

‘In finalising the specifications, durability performance was the top priority, followed closely by achieving a balanced performance between grip and mileage.

‘With no prior experience supplying large quantities of winter rally tyres for major competitions like the WRC, establishing a studding process for winter rally tyres and ensuring consistent tyre quality presented a significant challenge.

‘To address this, we maintain ongoing communication with studding companies and conduct thorough tyre inspections at every stage of the process.’

At every WRC round, each of the three Rally1 teams – Hyundai, Toyota and M-Sport – gets a dedicated on-site tyre engineer from Hankook who inspects tyre data during the rally.

Those technicians will be overseen by a chief engineer, while each of the support categories – WRC2, WRC3 and Junior WRC – will have their own Hankook advisors too.

Cha estimates that Hankook’s on-the-ground support staff will number around 30 people on average. This includes fitters, weather crews, operators and marketing personnel.

Testing programme

Hankook ramped up its testing of the 2025 WRC tyres last February. The programme lasted around 10 months and visited eight countries, covering all the conditions the cars will face in anger.

According to Cha, more than 2000km was covered during these tests. He says the Rally1 manufacturers had ‘nearly equal mileage shares’ ranging from 500 to 700km.

The manufacturers appeared generally supportive of the tyre options that Hankook narrowed down on during its test programme, although engineers from two of them have suggested durability on gravel could be one area in which to seek improvements.

‘I think every time you change tyre manufacturer it’s a big challenge,’ says Tom Fowler, technical director at Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT.

‘In rally, we have a lot of different tyres. To characterise all the performance differences between them is quite a big job. We believe we’ve done really nice work on that, so we’re quite happy with where we’re at.

‘In terms of the specifics of Hankook, the range of performance between different surfaces has some variability. Some areas were quite okay very much from the beginning of their first tyre they showed us.

‘On tarmac for example, and snow in Sweden, the tyre is perfectly within the range of what we know from other manufacturers, so no issues.

‘The gravel surface has been a bit more challenging in terms of durability. It is one of the biggest challenges of rally overall, making tyres last long enough on gravel rallies, that is something which is still being worked on and improved.

‘It’s more a wear topic: it’s not a fundamental issue of the tyre. It’s just that the amount of wear that is seen with that type of car on that type of surface over that distance, is more than would suit the itinerary of the current WRC.

‘The key point is that in some areas, everything is as needed from the beginning, and some others need a bit of work. But that’s normal.’

Development path

Throughout the development of the new WRC tyres, Hankook and the FIA held meetings ‘almost every week’, according to Cha. This was to monitor the progress of the test programme and ensure all manufacturers were getting enough time with the different options.

‘After Hankook Tire won the final tender in December 2023, developing WRC Rally1-specific tyres for all surfaces within a short timeframe posed a significant challenge, akin to a race against time,’ Cha adds.

‘Beginning with the Winter i*Pike vehicle evaluation for ice rallies in February 2024 continuing through November, we conducted a total of 17 vehicle evaluations to verify tyre performance and durability, ultimately finalising the specifications.

‘Typically, we prepared three to four evaluation specifications and conducted assessments by performing evaluation tests in the morning, followed by long-run tests in the afternoon for the selected specifications.

‘After conducting evaluations on various surfaces, we thoroughly analysed the collected data and conducted internal discussions to identify the most suitable specifications.

‘Following this, we finalised the specifications for each tyre through meetings with the FIA.

‘Such rigorous process was carried out to optimise tyre performance and durability.’

Last year’s uncertainty over whether Rally1 cars would continue to use hybrid systems occurred during the thick of Hankook’s development programme.

Ultimately, last November, the FIA dropped the 100kW hybrid system after a change in its maintenance procedure led to more batteries being taken away for service, leading to fewer available parts and concerns over increased costs.

In response, the FIA reduced the minimum car weight by 80kg and introduced a 1mm smaller turbo restrictor worth around 15bhp to maintain a similar power-to-weight ratio for safety reasons.

‘With the removal of the hybrid system, both the weight and power output have decreased,’ says Cha.

‘As a result, the risks related to tyre durability, such as wear and punctures, have been reduced.

‘However, since WRC1 drivers represent the top class, the reduced vehicle weight will allow them to tackle the stages more aggressively.

‘Therefore, from an overall tyre performance perspective, we assess that this has resulted in a slight increase in the safety margin.’

Regulatory shift

Hankook’s WRC supply contract is valid until the end of 2027, which is set to be the first year for new regulations aimed at increasing the number of cars fighting for overall wins.

The FIA revealed its plans for WRC 2027 last November. It will first prioritise internal combustion engine vehicles, but has left the door open for builders to bring electrified and hydrogen solutions in the future.

Road car manufacturers and smaller constructors, which the FIA calls ‘tuners’, will also have more flexibility in design, meaning new styles such as SUVs and bespoke prototypes could appear.

What impact will this have on Hankook, considering the new rules are slated to arrive during its WRC contract?

‘As flexibility in vehicle design expands, we are mindful of the potential for vehicles with even greater performance capabilities than those currently available,’ recognises Cha.

‘In particular, we are paying close attention to the possibility of hybrid systems making a comeback or the introduction of vehicles equipped with EV powertrains.

‘However, to our knowledge, only the rough outline of the vehicles has been defined at this stage, and the specific specifications for each manufacturer’s vehicle have yet to be finalised.

‘Therefore, once each maker’s vehicle format, including the drivetrains, is more clearly defined, we will be able to discuss future tyre development plans.

‘While it is still too early to outline specific plans for the future at this point, we plan to proceed with tyre development to deliver dynamic competition.

‘This will involve optimising tyres as soon as the design framework for vehicles built under the new regulations becomes clear.’

For now, Hankook is very much focused on working through its maiden WRC season. Monte Carlo presented an encouraging starting point, but there are still many more stages and surfaces to go.

For more about how the Rally1 manufacturers adapted to life without hybrids can be found in the latest issue of Racecar Engineering. Subscribe today!

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In part four of Beyond the Racecar, we explore how the mining industry has seen the potential in motorsport to help advance its decarbonisation efforts 

What does a 400 tonne, 37mph mining truck have in common with a 0.8 tonne, 220mph racecar? More than you might think.

The mining industry is responsible for approximately two to three per cent of global CO2 emissions, generating between 1.9 and 5.1 gigatonnes per year. That’s around 8500 to 22,500 times more than Formula 1, which has a carbon footprint of 223,000 tonnes, according to the championship’s latest impact report.

‘Currently, Fortescue’s mining operations emit approximately 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere,’ says Tim Strafford, managing director of motorsport and chief innovation officer at Fortescue Zero, the technology arm of Australian mining giant, Fortescue.

‘That gives an indication of how energy intensive mining is, which is why we are moving forward with an extremely ambitious decarbonisation programme.

‘However, displacing mature fossil fuel powertrains with an electrified solution in a commercially-viable way is extremely difficult.

‘This is why motorsport is so relevant to mining: racing pushes the boundaries of efficiency and tries to achieve the highest performance with the least amount of energy.

‘Mining needs to be as efficient as possible as well, so all the ingredients that are pushed to their limits in motorsport directly translate to improving the business case of decarbonising the mining industry.’

Hunting efficiency

Fortescue’s plan is to eliminate its scope 1 (direct) and scope 2 (indirect) terrestrial emissions from its Australian iron ore operations by 2030, and in 2022 committed 6.2 billion dollars to the cause.

Alongside this investment, in 2022 Fortescue acquired the Formula E and LMDh battery supplier, Williams Advanced Engineering, to help facilitate the transfer of electrification knowledge. WAE was then renamed Fortescue Zero and relocated from Williams’ headquarters in Grove to a new campus near Oxford Airport.

‘Over the generations in motorsport, we have seen batteries evolve from only having enough energy to complete half the race, to now finishing the race with the ability to regenerate half of that energy,’ notes James Herring, managing director of the Heavy Industry Division at Fortescue Zero.

‘This means the battery can be much smaller. This ability to pack the most amount of energy into the smallest space possible is what we need for our mining trucks.

‘Although these vehicles are massive, it is still a major challenge to get the energy needed onboard within the space available.’

With a typical mining truck around 6m high, you may be surprised to hear someone say that space is limited. However, consider that a fully loaded mining truck can weigh as much as 400 tonnes, and requires around 2MW of power to move.

To deliver this power via a battery requires hundreds of cells, resulting in battery packs up to 2.8MW in output and 21 tonnes in weight.

These massive powertrains, combined with the ethos that every kg needs to be utilised for payload, is why mining companies across the globe are on the hunt for efficiency.

Motorsport mindset

‘We have the same cultural mindset as motorsport; every second counts,’ explains Herring.

‘These mining trucks operate 22 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whenever these vehicles stop moving, productivity drops and the business stops making money.

‘So the more efficient our vehicles, the more they can carry and the longer they can operate before downtime. That’s why we are relentlessly chasing improvements in efficiency; to boost productivity and therefore reduce the all-important total cost of ownership.’

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is something of a religion in mining. It is a financial estimate of the direct and indirect costs associated with the purchase and running of a mining vehicle throughout its lifetime.

The cost of energy, labour and maintenance are all considered in the equation, as well as the expense of productivity losses due to downtime.

Downtime refers to whenever the vehicle cannot complete useful work, either because it is undergoing maintenance, is delayed, or is refuelling / recharging.

A low TCO represents a vehicle that is either cheaper to run or extremely productive, while a high TCO indicates a vehicle is either expensive to operate or less productive over its lifespan.

To ensure profitability, every effort is made to reduce the TCO, and the best way to achieve this is by maximising efficiency, whether that be energy efficiency, mechanical efficiency or operational efficiency.

When operating a fleet of 250 vehicles 24/7, even the smallest of gains can scale to a substantial benefit.

Cost reduction

Electrification is not just an effective route to decarbonisation, but also a tactic to lowering the TCO of a mining truck.

Recent reports suggest that switching a typical mining haul truck from diesel to electric can reduce its TCO by as much as $2.5 million. This is down to a combination of fuel savings – which typically make up more than double the up-front cost of the vehicle – and maintenance costs, which are estimated to be 50 per cent less due to fewer moving parts.

‘One of the parallels between mining and motorsport is both require high power,’ says Joris Pezin, product manager at Echion Technologies, a battery start-up.

‘Hybrid and electric racecars need high power to quickly charge the battery under regenerative braking and discharge the battery during acceleration, while electric mining vehicles need high power to move the large payloads they carry.

‘To design a high-power cell, the trick is to minimise resistance wherever possible. This naturally leads to a longer cycle life of the battery.

‘So, although cycle life is not as important in motorsport as it is in mining, a well-designed, high-power cell for motorsport will have low degradation, which in turn makes it suitable for mining where cycle life and range are extremely important.’

Range question

So, if electrification is such an attractive alternative to diesel, why is it taking mining companies so long to make the switch?

Well, similarly to road cars, there are question marks over the range of current battery technologies and how long they take to recharge.

A typical diesel truck needs to refuel once a day, which takes 10-20 minutes. An electric mining truck needs recharging three to five times a day, which can take two to three hours each time.

This longer downtime impacts significantly on productivity and is why some companies remain hesitant to electrification.

To combat this problem, there has been a recent surge in the development of fast charging technology. This is where a cell is capable of recharging at a rate of 5C.

In the case of an electric mining truck, this can cut recharge times down to minutes, whereas typical lithium-ion cells that can only recharge at 1C can take several hours.

The key to achieving this high C rating lies in the chemistry of the battery itself.

‘When a battery charges, ions move from the cathode to the anode,’ explains Pezin. ‘These ions diffuse into the microstructure of the anode’s material where they are then stored, increasing the chemical potential energy of the anode, charging the cell.

‘However, during fast charging, these ions need to diffuse into the anode around five times faster than standard charging. If you had two cells with identical power-to-weight ratios, but one was fast charged and one was slow charged, they would have the same number of ions, as this is what determines the energy within the cell.

‘It’s just that during fast charging the energy released from the cathode per second needs to occur around five times faster.’

Anode materials

Currently, the most common anode materials are graphite and lithium titanate (LTO), both of which have a compact crystal structure.

Consequently, there is limited space for the ions to diffuse into, which slows the rate of diffusion, causing a build-up of lithium deposits on the anode. This is known as lithium plating and it can trigger short circuits, as well as reduce the capacity and life of the battery.

‘It’s similar to cars searching for a space in a car park,’ explains Pezin. ‘If the car park is already full, it’s more difficult to find a space, and this creates a build-up of cars outside.

‘Whereas materials with open crystal structures, such as our niobium-based XNO, have plenty of space that the ions can access from any angle. So the anode fills up with ions much more quickly and uniformly.’

Furthermore, the abundance of space due to the open crystal structure of XNO means the ions cause minimal damage as they diffuse into the anode. This reduces degradation and extends the life of the cell.

Echion tested this in the laboratory and found that XNO retained 80 per cent capacity after 5000 cycles, while typical lithium-ion cells retained 80 per cent capacity after only 2000 cycles.

Therefore, batteries equipped with XNO not only achieve double the cycle life of standard batteries but can also fast charge in under 12 minutes.

It’s no surprise, then, that this material is now being integrated into batteries for mining trucks, marine vessels and other heavy-duty applications.

Charging developments

As well as a redesign of the battery internals, fast charging also requires an overhaul of charger design.

To accommodate the high power necessary to fast charge an electric mining truck, Fortescue has developed its own 6MW chargers, capable of recharging a 3MW mining battery in under 30 minutes.

‘To fast charge these vehicles, we need to operate at 1500V and, currently, there are no chargers that can cope with that high voltage,’ explains Herring. ‘So, we had to develop our own charging solution.

‘Our 6MW chargers are monstrous and weigh around 40 tonnes each. That’s a bit different to the typical 300kW super chargers used to charge a Tesla.’

When dealing with such high-power inputs, the wattage available from the local grid infrastructure also needs to be considered, especially in the often-remote locations where mines are located.

‘It’s all about delivering as much power as quickly as possible, because if a truck is charging, it is not doing useful work,’ adds Strafford.

‘However, you need to deliver it in a way that is not constrained by the grid, as the grid is not necessarily able to supply you with a sudden impulse of charge.

‘That’s why we’ve integrated energy storage into our chargers as well. The energy buffers into the charger and then we can deploy this boost of charge into the truck within a 30-minute window.’

Elysian fields

As well as innovative anode materials, software can be another tactic to help the battery store the phenomenal amount of current delivered during fast charging, without suffering degradation.

Fortescue’s Elysia battery intelligence software, which was originally developed in motorsport, does exactly that.

‘Elysia understands the physics going on inside every cell of a battery,’ explains Strafford, ‘so it can calculate the optimum charge profile to go from the current state of charge to the desired state of charge in the fastest time possible.

‘This may sound simple, but this charge profile dynamically changes to maximise the charge rate, whilst managing all the thermal and chemical requirements.

‘A mining battery and a motorsport battery are essentially based on the same physics, but the software and charging technology we originally developed in motorsport is now allowing us to cut the recharge times of mining trucks from several hours to minutes, without affecting the capacity or life of the battery.’

Elysia continuously monitors the health of a battery through a combination of digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI).

By optimising the efficiency, power, range, charge profile and safety of cells, specific to their chemistry, it unlocks battery performance and, in some cases, can increase battery life by 30 per cent.

Confirming the technology’s relevance to automotive, Jaguar Land Rover has opted to integrate it throughout its new generation electric vehicle range.

‘When trying to win a race, you need a strategy that is optimising towards achieving the best race result,’ highlights Strafford.

‘It’s not that dissimilar to mining because, holistically, you’re optimising to achieve the highest payload within the shortest time, which is influenced by a whole heap of factors and trade-offs.

‘Fundamentally, you are trying to achieve the best outcome based on the operational decisions that you’re making along the way.

‘Our 10 years’ experience of capturing data in motorsport and developing the software is now enabling us to get what we need out of the hardware.’

Herring concludes: ‘The mining industry in most people’s minds is this old, boring, dirty industry that just digs stuff out of the ground. But the technology being deployed in mines across the world is now extremely advanced.

‘For example, the majority of these giant trucks are fully autonomous, run remotely by large control rooms 200kms away from the mine itself.

‘We are already operating full EVs in the field and have successfully tested hydrogen prototypes.

‘As we continue to decarbonise our industry, the intel we are gathering from motorsport around energy efficiency and optimisation is directly translating to our mining vehicles.’

Gemma Hatton is the founder and director of Fluencial, which specialises in producing technical content for automotive and motorsport engineering clients

The post Motorsport’s Role in Decarbonising the Mining Industry appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

Mission H24, a project backed by Le Mans organiser the ACO, has been exploring hydrogen fuel as a low-emission solution for endurance racecars since 2018.

The H24EVO is the third car to be built under the initiative; its technical details were first announced without a car name in October 2023 and the vehicle design was publicly unveiled at Le Mans last year.

The initial plan for the LMP3-based H24EVO was for it to run on hydrogen stored in gas form, like its predecessors the LMPH2G and the H24. It was to have two storage tanks with a combined capacity of 7.8kg.

The gas was to be injected into a fuel cell stack, where an electrochemical reaction would generate electrical energy that the single, rear-mounted motor could use to power the wheels.

Now, the hydrogen will be stored as a liquid, with the car’s developers targeting 11-14kg of fuel on board.

This, they estimate, would enable the H24EVO to run for 40 minutes, increasing the range by 10 minutes from what was projected when the concept was launched over a year ago.

One major reason for switching from gas to liquid storage is that the latter has a greater power density, meaning increased power from the same size of fuel cell.

The liquid density of 71kg/m3 at 1bar is close to atmospheric pressure, whereas hydrogen gas is compressed to 40kg/m3 at 700bar.

However, a challenge of storing the hydrogen as a liquid is that must be kept at extremely low temperatures, around 254degC, compared with 20degC for gas. The liquid also needs to be evaporated to be used as a gas in the fuel cell.

The cell is set to generate electrical energy in the way that was first announced. It will contribute some of the generated energy to the motor, but a 400kW, 3.4kWh battery will help the car reach its stated 650kW (870bhp) maximum output through regenerative braking.

Mission H24 is targeting a track debut for the H24EVO in the first half of 2026, which is a year later than originally planned.

The car’s functions will be controlled through a McLaren Applied VCU and it will run on Michelin tyres that will soon be adopted by the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA Sportscar Championship’s top classes.

‘We’re facing a pioneering and sustainable challenge to create zero-emission automobile racing and the mobility of the future, with the deployment of the hydrogen solution,’ says Bassel Aslan, Mission H24 technical director.

‘After demonstrating the potential of gaseous hydrogen, we’re embarking on a new challenge: introducing liquid hydrogen into racing.

‘With an experienced partner in the field of on-board liquid hydrogen storage, and with all our partners, we are starting an exciting and promising collaboration.’

The supplier for the liquid hydrogen storage tank is to be confirmed. OPmobility, formerly Plastic Omnium, was down to supply the gas tanks but was not listed as one of the project’s partners in a recent press document about the updated car.

The ACO is set to welcome different types of hydrogen technology to Le Mans, including fuel cell cars and vehicles that run on hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engines.

‘After introducing gaseous hydrogen to the racetrack, MissionH24, with the H24EVO, is now embarking on a crucial new phase with a dual challenge: to engage liquid hydrogen in competition and to rival the competition from conventional combustion engines,’ says ACO president Pierre Fillon.

‘This mission is essential to achieve zero CO2 emission in motor racing.’

For more information about the H24EVO’s development, check out the March issue of Racecar Engineering, which includes an exclusive interview with Mission H24 innovation director, Bernard Niclot.

Subscribe to reserve your copy!

The post Le Mans H24EVO Hydrogen Racer Switches to Liquid Storage appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

But the military comparison is far more than allegorical, as many racecar engineering firms have made big strides in the defence sector.

In part three of Beyond the Racecar, discover how the UK motorsport industry challenged and improved some of the British Army’s technologies.

At first glance, the motor racing and defence industries might not seem to have that much in common.

After all, the purpose of a racecar is to drive as fast as possible, over a given course, for as long as required, while the primary objective for military vehicles is to deliver tactical advantages on the battlefield that do not necessarily include speed.

Look a little deeper, though, and there are a number of disciplines in motorsport – most obviously an ability to innovate and problem solve at pace – that can have a positive effect on defence programmes.

Crossing the divide

As the CEO of B2B marketing agency, Chamois Consulting, Jamie Clarke has a number of client companies that have crossed the divide between motorsport and defence.

It was in the 2000s, however, while working in procurement in the British Army and then joining defence company, Supacat, that Clarke first witnessed how motorsport companies could make a positive contribution in the defence arena with their involvement in urgent operational requirements (UORs) for UK armed forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Basically, the MoD [UK Ministry of Defence] had problems in Afghanistan with all sorts of kit because it was being used in ways it was never designed to be used,’ Clarke explains, noting that a particular issue arose with the introduction of the Jackal patrol vehicle in 2008.

‘Jackal had an extra nearly two tonnes of armour put onto it, and it was never designed to carry two tonnes of armour. If you then reduced your payload by two tonnes, that was okay, because you replace payload with armour, but obviously the guys weren’t doing that.

‘So they were running around in a seven-tonne truck at 11 tonnes with all their battlefield payload on and then wondering why the brakes were failing, and they were having to basically change the brake pads every day. They were just crumbling and falling apart because they were running the trucks so heavy.

‘UORs meant it needed to be developed quickly,’ Clarke continues, ‘but most defence engineering companies can’t operate that quickly, and the key part we found was that motorsport, as an industry, recognised the so-called requirement to cross the start line. Meaning you can design the very best solution in the world in the motorsport industry but, if you are three seconds late, you’ve missed the start, and it’s no use whatsoever to anybody.

‘The motorsport industry, as a sort of collective organisation, is used to working to strict deadlines, but most companies are not.’

In the case of the Jackal’s braking problem, a rapid solution was provided by braking system specialist, Alcon Components, which at the time was largely focused on motorsport.

‘They basically came in and re-designed the whole braking system, bespoke to the vehicle, delivered, tested and certified very quickly indeed,’ Clarke recalls.

‘They replaced the discs, calipers and pads, and they put a twin-caliper solution onto each hub on the front axle, so you effectively doubled the braking system, but the efficiency and the reliability was multiples of that.’

Bridging the gap

Such fixes to British Army equipment might well have continued to proceed on an ad hoc basis if it were not for the Labour government of the time appointing Lord Paul Drayson as the UK MoD’s defence procurement minister in May 2005.

A renowned petrolhead, Lord Drayson likes to drive fast and find solutions fast, so he inevitably felt frustration, and then disdain, when confronted by the somewhat glacial pace of MoD procurement processes.

Nick Wills, who is now defence development director for the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA) but was serving as the commanding officer of the British Army’s Armoured Trial and Development Unit when Drayson was appointed, notes that when appointed Drayson was also serving as president of the MIA, so a link already existed from motorsport to defence.

As Wills recalls, Drayson ‘had a conversation with Chris Aylett, CEO of the MIA, saying, “Well this is crazy. I can be at the Nürburgring, doing some tests on my car. I can find there’s a cooling issue and ’phone up whoever and tell them I’ve got a cooling issue, and then, a week later, they’d have completely re-designed the whole cooling system and I’ll be testing it at Brands Hatch. While as minister of defence procurement, I feel like I wouldn’t even get the phone answered in three weeks, so what can we do?”‘

Wills then describes what he characterised as ‘the most dysfunctional lunch you could ever imagine in the House of Lords’ where, on one side of the table sat the CEOs of major defence companies such as BAE Systems, opposite race team directors and other senior figures from motorsport.

From that initial meeting, and a subsequent series of showcases, where representatives from defence and motorsport gathered to discuss the problems at hand, the MIA’s Motorsport to Defence (M2D) initiative was launched in 2007, aimed at helping motorsport companies engage with the defence industry and maximise the business opportunities between the two.

A symbiotic relationship

The M2D initiative is not simply about helping the British Army with its mobility problems in times of need; it is designed to develop a truly symbiotic relationship between the two industries.

‘We’ve worked with multiple motorsport companies to help them into defence,’ says Clarke says of his clients at Chamois, ‘because they’re starting to recognise that motorsport is a fairly chunky, hard sector to be in – low volume, high price, difficult specs that vary – whereas defence tends to be longer term, slower programmes, but with higher volumes and better revenue. It can put a real slice of security into the business plans for these motorsport companies.’

‘At the bottom line, it’s the same laws of physics, it’s just making sure you’re answering the question,’ adds Wills. ‘Motorsport engineers are competitive engineers: they really want to do stuff better than someone else.

‘Generally speaking, if you’re a tier one or tier two supplier and you’re still in business, it’s because you’ve delivered on time; you’ve done what you needed to do. So what you get is a supply chain very focused on time and quality delivery, with competitive engineers at the bleeding edge of materials technology.’

In some early M2D cases, in fact, it was a lack of latest-generation technology in defence platforms and suppliers that led to motorsport companies being called in to provide optimised solutions.

Wills recalls one situation when, as part of one of the M2D showcases, a couple of specialised motorsport cooling companies were taken up to a BAE Systems armoured vehicle production site in Telford and asked to look at a radiator.

‘They took one look at this radiator, which was essentially 1950s bus technology because no one had really challenged it before, and the charge air cooler for the turbo. Literally, two weeks later, they came back with something that was 50 per cent better in efficiency for the radiator and 75 per cent better in efficiency for the charge air cooler.’

Composite crossover

Even though the technology in the latest defence platforms tends not to suffer any more from using such obsolete components, the motorsport industry still has technology and capabilities that are either not resident in the defence sector or are only just beginning to be. This has led to motorsport companies firmly establishing themselves within the supply chains of numerous defence platforms.

As a leading composite manufacturer for the motorsport industry, for example, West Sussex-based Global Technologies Racing (GTR) makes a large quantity of the major composite components required by a significant number of Formula 1 teams.

At the same time, the company’s GTR Composites division makes the carbon composite seat backs for Martin-Baker ejection seats, composite aircraft components for the AW101 Merlin helicopter, composite housings for flotation and life raft systems on the Sikorsky S-92 and has produced most of the composite-protected crew pods for the British Army’s Foxhound patrol vehicles.

Williams, which has a 50-year pedigree in F1, established Williams Grand Prix Technologies last year to offer a range of capabilities in the areas of platform dynamics, advanced materials, simulation and modelling, instrumentation and data analytics, and high-performance AI and machine-learning computing outside racing, with defence a key part of the company’s plans.

Incorporated in September 2019, the Silverstone-based Digital Manufacturing Centre (DMC) has moved its state-of-the-art metal and polymer additive manufacturing (AM)-based engineering expertise beyond motorsport to a number of other sectors.

In September 2024, DMC joined armour manufacturer and vehicle integrator, NP Aerospace, in working on Project Tampa: the MoD’s initiative to exploit the potential of introducing AM, otherwise known as 3D printing, into its supply chain.

Project Tampa is a five-million-pound initiative designed to explore how AM can be used to print parts for weapons and other military equipment on demand, reducing excessive lead times for parts to be delivered, and even potentially allowing parts to be printed in theatre, shortening the UK armed forces’ overall logistics chain.

The technology also has the potential to improve platform availability among legacy military vehicle fleets by 3D printing obsolete parts. As an example of its capabilities, DMC has already shown it can rapidly produce parts for the rear step and door latch assemblies of the British Army’s Mastiff and Ridgeback vehicles.

This year, Alcon (the company behind the Jackal braking system fix) is celebrating 15 years of providing braking solutions into the defence and security sectors. The company’s business in these fields has grown by 500 per cent during that time, with its defence customer base alone now including BAE Systems, QinetiQ, Patria, Supacat, JLR, Babcock and Jankel.

In June 2024, Alcon announced its latest generation, full service, brake-by-wire technology to the defence sector, offering a range of bespoke and off-the-shelf braking solutions for both autonomous and crewed defence and security vehicles.

Automotive engineered

Shoreham-based engineering firm, Ricardo, which was founded in 1915, has a long heritage of straddling both the defence and automotive / motorsport industries. In the 21st century, the company worked on motorcycle engines for BMW, as well as engines for McLaren supercars and F1 machinery.

In 2010, the MoD selected the Ocelot, a vehicle developed by Ricardo and US company, Force Protection, to replace the British Army’s fleet of Snatch Land Rovers, while the Foxhound protected patrol vehicle, which entered service in 2012, was automotive engineered by Ricardo under contract to General Dynamics UK.

Ricardo has also worked with other militaries around the world. In November 2021, it was selected by South Korea’s STX Engine to develop a clean-sheet power unit for use in heavy duty military vehicles such as the K9 self-propelled howitzer.

Ricardo also established a dedicated business called Ricardo Defense for its work in the United States. In 2020, Ricardo Defense teamed as a strategic partner with GM Defense and won a contract to provide the latter’s Infantry Squad Vehicle to the US Army. It also received a US Army contract to install its Dismounted Soldier Communication System on three brigades of M88 armoured recovery vehicles.

The Ricardo Defense offshoot was sold to Proteus Enterprises and Gladstone Investment in late 2024 for US$85 million.

In 2015, what was then Williams Advanced Engineering, now Fortescue Zero, was awarded a contract by General Dynamics UK to bring its F1-bred technologies and capabilities to provide a core infrastructure distribution system for the British Army’s family of Ajax tracked armoured fighting vehicles (AFV). The company used its F1 expertise in data analytics and systems integration to provide the Ajax AFV family with an advanced electronic architecture.

WAE also worked with BAE Systems on at least two defence projects. In 2018, they linked up to explore collaboration in a range of areas, including virtual and augmented reality, aerodynamics, lightweight materials and battery technology that could power solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and more.

Then, in 2020, WAE and BAE explored how battery management and cooling technologies from the motorsport industry could be exploited to deliver efficiency and performance gains in the design of future combat aircraft.

Shropshire-based casting specialist, Grainger & Worrall, which has a global customer base that includes several F1 teams as well as Tesla, Lucid, Porsche, McLaren, Maserati, Bugatti and Aston Martin, offers innovative casting expertise to produce lightweight, motorsport-quality castings in both aluminium and compacted graphite iron.

That expertise is now deployed on a range of large-scale military sand-casting projects, including production of tank turrets, engines, gearboxes and driveline technologies for military applications.

Rapid deployment

Since its incorporation in 2000, Oxfordshire-based precision fabrication and thermal management system specialist, SST Technology, has gained a reputation for developing and supplying exhaust systems, heat shields and thermal management solutions for motorsport disciplines including F1, IndyCar, touring cars and sportscars, as well as rallying.

Now, the company’s experience with thermal management technology, together with expertise in the design and manufacture of complex exhaust and pipework / ducting systems, is making significant inroads into the defence market.

Lifeline Fire and Safety Systems, a market leader in motorsport fire suppression systems, has also diversified into the military market.

The Coventry-based company has taken its racing-focused systems and further developed them to provide crew compartment fire suppression for British armoured vehicles such as the Warrior – a tracked infantry fighting vehicle – for which the time from initial enquiry through to development, manufacturing and appearance in action was just six months.

Lifeline’s involvement in defence started with supplying fire suppression systems for the British Army’s Mastiff protected patrol vehicles when they were first deployed to Afghanistan in the 2000s.

More recently, the company was selected to provide the fire suppression systems for the British Army’s future fleet of Challenger 3 battle tanks.

While the UK arm of US company, Moog, is known for supplying miniature actuation systems for F1 machinery, its actuation and stabilisation systems are today being used for multiple military applications, including turreted weapon systems, ammunition handling systems, precise missile steering mechanisms and near-silent actuation on submarines.

Adapted technology

Banbury-based motorsport and advanced engineering group, Prodrive, which has a rich heritage in rallying and sportscar racing, has also established a footprint in the defence sector in recent years.

As well as engaging in a programme to investigate and develop a chassis / suspension system for 8×8 military vehicles, in May 2010, the company announced it had adapted the torque control technology used by Subaru in the FIA World Rally Championship to give military vehicles increased capability over rough terrain, while at the same time making them easier and safer to drive.

Lastly, Swiss mechatronics solutions provider, Stäubli, which has a UK arm based in Telford, has found that the fluid and electrical connectors it has developed to withstand the rigours of motorsport are equally applicable to a wide range of defence platforms.

The long list of motorsport-to-defence crossovers is, of course, not comprehensive.

Research for this article, for example, confirmed more than one instance where UK prime defence contractors are currently working with motorsport companies on major platform and weapons programmes where the details of the projects could not be discussed in the public domain.

Conclusion

As the MoD strives in its endeavours to make UK defence procurement more agile and responsive, both in the incorporation of new technology and the addressing of future operational demands, it will no doubt continue to benefit from the expertise and capabilities that the UK’s front-running motorsport industry has to offer.

Meanwhile, companies whose original footprint and interest was firmly placed in the motorsport sector will continue to find benefit from the alternative lines of revenue the defence industry has to offer.

The post Which Motorsport Companies are Involved in Defence? appeared first on Racecar Engineering.

Part two of Beyond the Racecar uncovers how motorsport engineering companies were integral to the launch of a bold, new electric powerboat championship.

They may be worlds apart in terms of the surfaces they race on, but there has been crossover between four-wheel motorsport and boat racing for many years.

In the 20th century Henry Segrave, Malcolm Campbell and Donald Campbell set outright speed records on both land and water. Kaye Don, an accomplished racing driver, achieved the latter.

In 1958, Briggs Cunningham, the American sportscar constructor and driver who twice finished fourth at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, won the America’s Cup as a skipper. There was also the original ‘Flying Finn’, Timo Makinen, a three-time Rally GB winner who triumphed in the inaugural Round Britain Powerboat Race in 1969.

More recently, Formula 1 technical expertise has filtered into sailing as Mercedes engineers have imparted their wisdom to the INEOS America’s Cup team. Last year, a new electric powerboat series called E1 held its inaugural season with some familiar faces.

Sanctioned as a world championship by the UIM (Union Internationale Motonautique – powerboat racing’s equivalent to the FIA), E1 is the latest string in the bow of emission-cutting series chaired by Alejandro Agag, coming after Formula E and Extreme E.

Being water-based, it is further removed from its four-wheel siblings in many ways. But motorsport engineering and working processes were vital in getting the new series up and running.

All-star line up

E1 held its first race off the coast of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in February 2024. That formed the start of a five-round season contested between eight teams, all of which were fronted by famous faces from the wider worlds of sport and entertainment.

Team investors included seven-time Superbowl champion Tom Brady, 22-time tennis Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal, ex-Formula 1 driver Sergio Pérez and actor Will Smith.

The multi-lap races were contested over approximately 8km between up to four boats. Driving crews consisted of one male and one female pilot, who took turns to compete. The format, with its qualifying stage leading to semi-finals and a grand final, was designed to be easily understood by racecar and general sport fans alike.

All E1 teams are given the same, 7.3m long watercraft, the RaceBird, developed by British marine start-up, SeaBird Technologies, which counts Agag as one of its investors. Capable of 93km/h (50knt) on its hydrofoils, the vessel is powered by a 150kW Helix electric motor feeding off energy released by a 518V, 35kWh Kreisel Electric battery.

Both companies will be familiar to Racecar Engineering readers for their motorsport involvement, as will McLaren Applied, which provides the electronics and control software. SeaBird integrated these systems, and the powertrain, into the boat, which was designed with input from marine specialist, Victory Marine.

Motorsport connections

While Agag is the recognisable face of E1, the person at the helm on a day-to-day basis is chief executive, Rodi Basso. An ex-Ferrari and Red Bull F1 race and performance engineer, Basso rifled through his motorsport address book to help put the tools in place for E1 to launch.

‘There is a personal element of comfort zone,’ explains Basso. ‘Before launching the championship, I was very much in the world of electronics and data intelligence.

‘Given the specific requirements of the boat, I went very straightforward to suppliers and partners I knew I could trust in terms of delivering in a short time and matching our key performance indicators. In the marine industry, there is no supplier of these fields at the level of automotive and motorsport.’

That is not to say the series was naïve enough to ignore marine specialists for certain areas where their capabilities could be beneficial. Marine companies were central to the design of the foil and outboard, both alien components to racecar folk. Navico provided specialist navigation equipment and course charts through its Simrad and C-MAP brands.

The E1 powerboat is, therefore, an amalgam of motorsport and marine specialists, with the former taking a leading role in the powertrain and vehicle control departments.

Woking-on-Sea

Considering Basso’s past role as McLaren Applied’s motorsport business director from 2016 to 2019, the Woking-based company was perhaps an obvious partner to sign, though its selection came after a review of several candidates.

McLaren Applied is supplying its VCU-500 control unit and data logger to E1. It also provides the software tools required to generate the control applications and analyse both live and recorded data, including its Advanced Telemetry Linked Acquisition System (ATLAS) and McLaren Control Toolbox (MCT).

E1 was an early adopter of the VCU-500 when it was under development. It is now a commercially available product used by several teams in Formula E, as well as the Mission H24 hydrogen sportscar demonstrator, among others. The VCU found in E1 is the same hardware component used in motorsport, with the only difference being in the software capability. There is also an obvious difference in environment.

‘Although the VCU is IP rated for protection against water ingress, in E1, the unit is put inside an additional carbon box with the rest of the electronics, so it’s got an extra layer of protection,’ says Josh Wesley, motorsport product manager at McLaren Applied.

Wesley was SeaBird’s head of engineering throughout the RaceBird development and the 2024 season opener, before switching back to his previous company after the Jeddah event.

‘One reason to go for a motorsport unit was that we needed something that was robust and would work in harsh environments. Broadly, its use is very similar. It’s just controlling slightly different things – propeller instead of wheels, foils and rudders instead of steering. From the powertrain point of view, it is almost identical in its use to that of an electric motorsport car.’

Running on a 64-bit operating system, the VCU-500 is the brain of the RaceBird, controlling functions of the battery, inverter, sensor processors, display items, throttle mapping and more.

It predominantly controls these using CAN (Controller Area Network) bus communication networks. There can be several CAN bus networks in a single vehicle, connecting various control units for different areas of the boat. The RaceBird has eight of them.

Controlled environment

‘All of the main devices on the boat are controlled via CAN,’ confirms Wesley. ‘This means there is a very large number of parameters available for both analysis and control, and managing these is critical.

‘With the McLaren Control Toolbox software and Model Management suite, adding new devices to the CAN network, building the software to communicate with them, ingesting the vast amount of data and using it in control strategies is straightforward.’

According to Wesley, using MCT was critical to E1 powerboat’s development, allowing new software strategies and functionality to be developed and rolled out to the VCU swiftly, with new versions often being deployed throughout a test. This kept the pace of development high and both software and hardware development in sync.

‘The real benefit of the VCU is that it can be used not only for control, but also for data logging and telemetry,’ Wesley adds. ‘Logging is data that’s recorded to memory and telemetry is data over the air that you’re viewing live. Telemetry devices allow you to stream data which, during development, we used every time the boat ran, for monitoring of the safety systems and the battery.

‘We could then talk to the pilot on the radio and tell them if they need to stop, or if there is an issue on the boat. It’s a lot more difficult to go and recover a boat when it’s stopped. You can’t just put it on a truck like with a car, and the VCU allowed us to monitor systems and prevent us being stranded on the water with an issue.’

Battery development

E1 reached out to Kreisel Electric in early 2021 about using its battery technology in the RaceBird.

The Austrian firm works in both motorsport and marine: its activities in the former have included developing batteries for the electric RX1e class of the FIA World Rallycross Championship and working with Compact Dynamics on the FIA World Rally Championship’s hybrid system. Kreisel also develops battery systems for electric pleasure and commercial boats.

‘E1 batteries benefit from similar requirements [to racecars] in terms of cooling performance and ability to deliver high C-Rates [charge and discharge currents], while at the same time keeping cell temperature within the limits for this type of application,’ says Markus Fürst, mechanical design engineer at Kreisel Electric. ‘The result is a small, lightweight battery with high performance.

‘The carbon housing of the battery was a major challenge. Any changes in battery volume or space requirements would impact development of the entire boat. The RaceBird vessel was developed in parallel with the battery.’

The E1 battery has a nominal voltage of 518V, a capacity of around 37kWh and weighs 246kg. For context, the RaceBird tips the scales at 1100kg, the carbon fibre chassis alone being almost 900kg of that. Kreisel uses cells with high power density, rather than high capacity, because they have a high performance-to-energy density ratio.

Safety-wise, four water entry sensors are built into the battery to detect the presence of liquid. There is also a conductivity sensor in the cooling circuit that detects water intruding into the dielectric battery cooling fluid.

A battery management system (BMS) monitors data from the battery and generates warning signals when errors occur. Developing the battery for E1 has proven a useful crossover activity for Kreisel.

‘Being the battery supplier for E1 provides a lot of knowledge from performance battery behaviour under extreme conditions,’ says Fürst. ‘This helps us to evolve our technology requirements. Commercial and pleasure craft boats are different, so a different type of module is used for these applications, which has different safety features and requirements in terms of performance and lifetime.’

Batteries are charged by the Qube, a DC charging station from QiOn designed to be robust for use outdoors, and transportable. It has an output of up to 80kW, although the RaceBird doesn’t use all that available power.

‘Simply for the sporting format that we have, we don’t need to go to those levels,’ explains Basso. ‘This is also helping the battery life. We can charge the battery in 40 minutes without affecting the sporting format. Our autonomy is for approximately half an hour.

‘We need to consider that every session is in the region of 12-15 minutes. Every two or three sessions, we need to recharge. The good news is we don’t need to recharge fully, we can top up and keep going.’

Mercury rising

The E1 electric motor and inverter are situated at the rear, where the outboard normally sits on a standard powerboat. Typically, an outboard consists of three parts: the powerhead, housing the engine sat above the water, the connecting mid-section and the lower section, featuring the waterborne propellor.

For 2024, the E1 motor and inverter were integrated into a standard internal combustion outboard provided by American powerboat company, Mercury Racing. This used the mid-section and gear case of Mercury’s outboard, minus the six-cylinder petrol engine.

Integrating the electric powertrain into the ICE outboard was one of the major design challenges, partly because it was not originally built to run with a rear foil.

‘It was based on a commercial application, so the level of loads and duty cycles the outboard was seeing, was completely new, and maybe sometimes too much,’ explains Basso. ‘But we have been working very closely with Mercury to fix everything.

‘So far, we are pleased with what we are running. Mercury has the biggest order book of outboards worldwide, so it was just unbelievable [they contacted E1] because in August 2021 we were little more than a PowerPoint. It has been a great collaboration, and we are working on the future as we talk.’

Elaborating further on some of the technical hurdles of integrating the internal combustion outboard, Basso says:

‘We couldn’t touch the rear foil because it was not a self-standing component. It was there to balance the front foils, and we needed to keep the balance as it was. This is a matter of hydrodynamics and loads.

‘We discovered we had three components that needed to be reinforced. They were designed for a thermal engine and had some mechanical characteristics that were not suitable for our solution, so we had to re-shape parts.

‘It was a matter of structural engineering and reinforcing some mechanical parts until we got to the point that the whole outboard was enhanced and more robust, so it is now serving the purpose.’

Foil’s gold

The RaceBird is a foiling craft, so it uses dynamic principles that have been around for over a century.

Foiling was explored in the early 1900s. A notable pioneer was Enrico Forlanini, who mounted foils on ladder-like struts attached over the side of his boat at Lake Maggiore, where E1 has its technical headquarters today. Another was Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone.

Foiling is the act of lifting the boat’s hull into the air as it gains speed, freeing it from the drag of the water. A foil is essentially an underwater wing and shares many physical principles with its aerodynamic cousins used in aviation and motorsport.

The wing’s hydrodynamic shape guides water rapidly over the top surface, creating a low-pressure area above that surface in accordance with Bernoulli’s Principle, whereby pressure decreases as fluid speed increases, and vice versa.

The imbalance between the high-pressure zone underneath the foil and the low-pressure zone above it generates enough lift for the hull to breach the surface. This results in the striking sight of a hydrofoil boat that seemingly flies above the water, only connected to the surface by thin stilts.

The dedicated E1 foils were designed by Caponnetto Hueber, a naval consultancy with America’s Cup experience, which used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to map and test the hydrodynamic properties.

The foil design was then built to print by Milan-based ERF, before going to SeaBird for assembly and integration with the rest of the boat. It was, therefore, an area in which marine companies were leaned on more heavily.

Trim and lift

E1 drivers can make live set-up adjustments to the foil’s angle of attack and the height of the outboard.

The latter involves raising and lowering the outboard relative to the boat’s body. The higher the outboard, the closer the boat sits to the water. Such set-up changes are made on the fly during races and are useful when following another boat’s disruptive wake.

‘Generally, you can either be slow and stable or fast and unstable,’ says Joe Sturdy, team principal at Team Brady and an ex-Red Bull F1 power unit engineer. ‘If you change the lift, your trim window changes as well, so you have to play with them both; it’s risk vs reward.

‘You can be quite unstable and quite fast but drop off the foils more often, which means you’re starting from a high-drag phase of acceleration more frequently throughout a lap. Or you can try to be slow and consistent, staying on the foils the whole time and acting with that medium level of drag throughout the lap.’

According to SeaBird Technologies’ chief technical officer, Nathan Baker, the E1 powerboat operates ‘almost on a knife edge’ that requires constant adjustment.

‘That’s why there is a lot of involvement from the pilots in setting the height of the rear foil and trimming it,’ he says.

‘There is a great deal of skill involved in that as you have to anticipate water conditions and adjust accordingly. Those who can do that are smoother and faster.’

Driver crossover

It’s not just technology that has been transferred from motorsport to E1. Many of the pilots have racecar experience, though the switch from ground to water has required some re-calibration.

The field includes 2019 FIA World Rallycross champion Timmy Hansen, former Nissan GT3 ace Lucas Ordoñez and Extreme E driver Catie Munnings. There is also Emma Kimiläinen, a race winner in W Series, who together with her powerboat racer teammate, Sam Coleman, won the inaugural E1 title.

According to Kimiläinen, adapting to the RaceBird was straightforward: ‘The steering wheel is from a formula [racecar],’ she says. ‘The seat is a rally seat. The space is like a formula cockpit. Everything from that perspective, including my driving position, is like a racecar.

‘The driving itself, however, is pretty different, physically. It doesn’t require a lot of turning power. Quite the opposite. You need to have silk gloves on and be gentle with the steering, like karting. So it does have motor racing similarities, but in a different [way].’

The racecar driver’s ability to feel the car through their body is not lost in E1. Additionally, understanding when to adjust the foil’s angle requires similar intuition to controlling a racecar’s balance.

‘This is the first vehicle where I can set up the whole vehicle during the time I race,’ Kimiläinen adds. ‘Basically, if you’re not doing anything, you’re doing something wrong. It is very important to constantly read the water, the conditions and be aware of other boats’ wakes.’

In motorsport, tyre performance changes over the course of a race event as track grip increases, but there is no such evolution in E1. This was one of the main learning areas, and battlegrounds, in season one.

‘When you’re doing A-B-A testing of different set-up options, you can piece together what happened to the track in the time you’re doing the test,’ highlights Sturdy, ‘whereas in this, the water can change within seconds. For example, in Jeddah qualifying, there was one lap where Emma was, for what seemed like no reason, five seconds slower than another lap. It is purely down to water conditions.’

When assembling a fresh team for E1, Sturdy and his co-team principal, Ben King, made the decision to go for the best of both worlds. Their approach paid dividends as Team Brady won three of the five rounds en route to the title.

‘When we were trying to piece together this team, we took mechanics who had a split of experience,’ explains Sturdy. ‘Some were working in endurance racing, but one of our mechanics has worked in F1H20, the very top level of powerboat racing, so we’ve got these different perspectives coming together.

‘We’re trying to move powerboating in a slightly different direction to what we’ve done in the past, trying to bring across some of what we’ve learned in F1, Formula E and WEC, and apply it to this new machine we’re working on.’

Right on time

One of motorsport’s greatest exportable strengths is its ability to meet tight deadlines.

This skill came in handy when E1 was determining the component suppliers. It is also why SeaBird enlisted engineers with racecar experience, not just for their knack of doing things quickly and accurately, but for their connections in the agile motorsport supply chain.

SeaBird aims to use E1 as a platform to showcase its sustainable powerboat technology that it hopes to introduce to the wider marine market.

‘We have a number of people from different backgrounds, whether it’s aerospace, automotive or motorsport,’ says Baker. ‘We’ve had engineers from Red Bull and Toro Rosso within the group.

‘We’re very lucky to have that mentality and approach to designing and engineering a product. It leads to a completely different mindset when it comes to how fast you can do something, or what level of detail you go into. The attitude is that we’ll get it done, one way or another, within that timeframe.’

The RaceBird’s first shakedown took place near San Nazzaro on Italy’s River Po in July 2022. The inaugural season was targeted for 2023, but that plan was scrapped in favour of more testing, as the development team understood how to run the electric powerboat on foils and how to use the control systems.

During this time, motorsport expertise was especially useful in validating the SeaBird for safety. Comptech Engineering, a British company specialising in motorsport bodywork, was contracted to carry out non-destructive testing and inspections. Real-world crash testing was not part of the UIM’s homologation requirements.

‘We don’t have the skill set in-house, but we are using the same skill sets and people that Formula 1 are using, to make sure our loaded components are behaving themselves,’ explains Baker.

‘It’s ultrasonic testing or Eddy current testing, depending on whether it’s a metallic or composite structure. We’re also monitoring the fatigue of components and how things degrade. We have zero historical data, unlike an F1 team, which has decades of information to fall back on. [Comptech] brought their equipment to us and did the scanning, inspections and quality audits for us.’

Voyage of discovery

The first season of any new race series is almost guaranteed to be a rollercoaster. It was no different for E1, starting with shipping the boats to Jeddah in time for the opening round.

This was complicated by Houthi missile and pirate attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which caused severe disruption to international shipping. The Jeddah event had been pencilled in for January but ended up taking place a month later.

‘In Jeddah, we had a lot of mechanical issues because the boats were finally being driven at the limit,’ adds Basso. ‘Technically, as you would expect, it has been a challenge. We had so many things on our list to be improved, and that we did improve.

‘Even at Como at the end of August, we still had some mechanical failures because of the specific circuit layout, but we managed to cope because we had the right number of spares, and we added some reinforcement to the parts.

‘Being a racing vehicle, naturally it goes through a lot of stress and strain. You need the right approach to cope with this at the very last minute. This can be stressful, but having racing people on board, we knew that was the case, so we were ready and reacted quite well.’

The weeks leading up to the inaugural race were extremely busy. McLaren Applied and SeaBird held education sessions, including two days of ATLAS training, so teams could understand how to use the electronics and hydrodynamics. There was a small amount of seat time for the pilots, but most substantial running only took place at the first race.

‘Leading up to Jeddah, we had a team in Italy pretty much full-time getting pilots up to speed,’ confirms Baker. ‘We were using Prototype 2, which accumulated a lot of hours as our fleet leader. If we were spotting issues, we were generally spotting them on Prototype 2, and then trying to fix those, mainly through software.

‘We’ve got a complicated, Formula E-on-the-water-style system. We were navigating the challenges of when the pilot does something, and the boat reacts in an unexpected way. A lot of those were resolved before and during Jeddah and have definitely been resolved since. Leading up to Jeddah was a huge learning curve and a huge test for us.’

Going forward

E1 is not going to be every motorsport fan’s cup of tea. But even sceptics might appreciate that it has only been possible thanks to the role of motorsport engineering. It has also benefited from the groundwork laid by the pioneering electric racing series, Formula E.

‘It’s things like Formula E and EVs that have started moving the industry in a direction to where it’s a low enough barrier financially, with lead times, that you can actually go and develop an electric racing boat,’ says Baker. ‘In the future, things like the RaceBird will help speed up development for the rest of the industry. It’s a nice passing on of technology from one sector to the other.’

Basso prefers to avoid comparisons between E1 and Formula E because he wants it to stand on its own two legs (or foils) and forge its own path. His vision includes making E1 a place where companies can test and showcase their technologies. In the shorter term, he would like to see the boats go a bit faster, and to increase the battery capacity and output, although he notes the current foil design is limited to around 70knt (129 km/h).

‘We have taken the state-of-the-art in that [motorsport] industry and put it into our boat, putting together fantastic players and suppliers,’ says Basso. ‘We had to marinate the solution, which is an integration issue that we have so far overcome. In the meantime, having the state-of-the-art from motorsport allowed us to accelerate electrification in the powerboating industry by at least 15-20 years.’

While the motorsport industry was clearly integral in bringing E1 to the water, Basso would like the dynamic to shift as the championship becomes more established.

‘We want to build partnerships and technology campaigns in order to be the driver of the future,’ he concludes. ‘So, instead of inheriting from motorsport and high-end automotive, I would like to be the test bed for future technologies, so all the other industries involved in mobility will have the chance to learn and see what is achievable. It is a mission, and a must, for the racing industry.’

The post How Motorsport Helped the E1 Electric Boat Series to Launch appeared first on Racecar Engineering.