Move the Ball: Mark Preston, Pushing the Boundaries in Motorsports and Beyond.
Mark Preston’s illustrious career in motorsports is a testament to his passion, innovation, and leadership. From his early beginnings in Australia, where he developed a love for cars while working on a farm, to his groundbreaking achievements in Formula 1 with Arrows Grand Prix and McLaren, Preston has consistently pushed the boundaries of engineering and technology.
His entrepreneurial spirit led to the rapid establishment of the Super Aguri Formula 1 team, built from scratch in just 100 days. Transitioning to Formula E, Preston played a pivotal role in its inception, leading Team Aguri and DS TECHEETAH to multiple championships. Now, as the Motorsport Director at Lola Cars, he continues to drive innovation with a focus on sustainability, underscored by a new partnership with Yamaha for Formula E.
Mark Preston’s journey is a remarkable blend of technical expertise and visionary leadership, making him a significant figure in the evolution of motorsports.
Lola to enter all-electric ABB FIA Formula E World Championship with technical partner Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. in an agreement to develop and supply high-performance electric powertrains.
The partnership is the first project in the motorsport brand’s bid to re-establish itself as a leading motorsport design and engineering group
Lola will be focusing on sustainable motorsport in three key areas: electrification, hydrogen and sustainable fuels and materials.
Lola Cars has announced today that it is returning to global motorsport in a multi-year technical partnership with Yamaha Motor Company and will enter the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship from Season 11.
The iconic, globally renowned motorsport brand, which has more than 500 championship wins, is working with Yamaha to develop and supply a powertrain to compete in the world’s first all-electric, single seater race series. With track racing deep in the DNA of both Lola Cars and Yamaha, this new technology partnership not only provides an opportunity to join the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship as it moves to the GEN3 Evo platform for the 2024/25 season but also creates opportunities across global motorsport and in the broader zero emissions transportation space.
Mark Preston, Motorsport Director, Lola Cars Ltd “We are thrilled to confirm our entry in Formula E. For us, this is more than just an opportunity to return Lola to the track, it’s also a fantastic platform for technological development.
“Lola Cars has a decorated history of success in chassis and aerodynamic design. This project will allow us to create a unique electrified platform with a software focus at its core to provide a basis for Lola’s wider plans in defining the future of motorsport technology.”
Mark Preston – Motorsport Director – Lola Cars
The partnership is the first of several major projects planned to re-establish the British company as an industry leader in sustainable engineering and motorsport, strategically focusing on three areas of electrification, hydrogen and sustainable fuels and materials.
Till Bechtolsheimer, Chairman, Lola Cars Ltd “We are incredibly excited to be partnering with the Yamaha Motor Company as we enter the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. To be selected by one of the most innovative OEMs in the world to partner on a project of this significance is a testament to the caliber of the team that we have been building at Lola.
“The focus of this project is squarely around technological development in which Lola is fully invested. We see the highly efficient 350 kW electric powertrain that underpins the manufacturer’s perimeter in Formula E, as a cornerstone technology with exciting applications across many forms of topflight international motorsport in the coming years.”
Heiji Maruyama, Managing Executive Officer and Director, Yamaha Motor co., ltd.“Yamaha Motor Company is accelerating the research and development of various technologies that contribute to sustainability. As the technical partner, we hope to acquire more advanced energy management technologies through the highest level of electric racing in Formula E. We also share Lola’s new philosophy of sustainable motorsport and we are very pleased and honored to form this partnership with them.”
Since acquiring Lola Cars in 2022, Bechtolsheimer and his team have been developing their program from a new global headquarters in Silverstone, UK, building on the legacy of the most successful manufacturer of customer race cars of all time.
Founded by Eric Broadly in 1958, Lola Cars has designed and produced nearly 5000 race cars spanning 400 different model types, gaining unparalleled success in motorsport championships around the world, including IndyCar, Le Mans, Formula 1, Can-Am, Formula 3000, Formula 5000, A1GP, Formula Ford and Touring Cars.
This partnership continues Lola Cars’ longstanding prominence in Japan. Lola Cars has a long history of involvement in Japanese motorsport, primarily in what is now known as the Japanese Super Formula Championship, winning 13 Championships in two decades from 1987 when it was known as the All Japan F3000. Lola has also notably partnered with Japanese manufacturers to create iconic vehicles across multiple racing disciplines including Formula 1, IndyCar and Le Mans.
Founded in 1958, Lola Cars is the most successful manufacturer of customer race cars of all time and has more than 500 championship wins globally. It is working to become an industry leader in sustainable engineering and motorsport, focusing on three areas of electrification, hydrogen and sustainable fuels and materials. Lola Cars will be competing in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship from Season 11.
In 1999, during my tenure as Head of R&D at Arrows Grand Prix, I embarked on a journey to enhance the performance of our F1 cars. At that juncture, genetic algorithms emerged as the preferred tool, particularly in fast trading software. Despite operating on Silicon Graphics visual workstations, which were relatively powerful but nothing like what is available nowadays, we could conduct many runs. We employed these algorithms primarily to analyse tyre models and seek other optimisation strategies. Interestingly, the learning often highlighted inaccuracies within our models. For instance, a particular simulation model would consistently suggest a 100% front weight on the car, indicating an error in the model that may have caught out a few teams over the years with unrealistic targets! These were the early days of using computers with limited power and brute force algorithms.
When I moved to McLaren F1, I was astounded by the wealth of “embedded knowledge” the team possessed, a term used in MBA circles to mean that they’ve meticulously documented everything. To make this vast reservoir of knowledge more easily accessible to new engineers, I considered implementing an “on-prem” Google server. The idea was that little nuggets of wisdom only known to a few people could be shared across the company. The idea is that knowledge, when harnessed collaboratively, can be greater than the sum of its parts. Now, imagine if we could enhance the learning model of ChatGPT by incorporating this internal knowledge derived from over three decades of racing expertise into speeding up the dissemination of knowledge and ideas (the first version of this article was prepared in May 2023, MS Co-Pilot and Google’s Bard are solving precisely this at the moment).
Fast forward to the Super Aguri F1 team. Our radios were not at the level of the other teams, so we decided to experiment with increasing the quality of our communication with the drivers. We agreed that one solution was to move the pitwall engineering (prat perch) to the air-conditioned, quiet, controlled environment of the engineering truck behind the pits. This increased the communication quality and was a precursor to thinking more about the now standard “Mission Controls” back at base in F1 and FE, where engineers can work in a quieter controlled environment. This decoupling of tasks is a powerful concept. Obviously, “you can’t hammer a nail over the internet,” so specific tasks need to stay on the ground, at the track, but many jobs can be done remotely.
The result was the now famous run in between Anthony Davidson and a beaver while running 3rd at the Montreal Grand Prix in 2007. With engineers positioned in the truck behind the pit garages and Anthony having to dive into the pits at the last minute, the mechanics were left surprised as the TV talked about him coming into the pitlane! An example of the right intent, but not the right outcome!
Another solution to our communication problem was to think about texting. I saw the Technical Director of F1, Charlie Whiting, in Monaco on the morning of the F1 race to discuss solutions. Car communications are restricted to radio, but I argued that if our driver had had a hearing impairment, that would not be entirely fair, hence the need for text-based communications. Charlie agreed to look at a proposal. We never did implement the concept due to the requirement to redesign the steering wheel, but I have continued to think about communications and ideas that might solve problems.
Since I started looking at genetic algorithms in 1999, rapid advances in computing power, including GPUs and TPUs, enabled machine learning to evolve significantly. This computational growth allowed for training complex models on large datasets, leading to powerful AI like GPT-3 and GPT-4 and ushering in a new era of AI innovation. The astonishing rise of ChatGPT and large language models or LLMs is the latest thing and is changing by the week, if not the day at the moment (this article will be out of date by the time you read it potentially, first written May 2023!).
Could the LLM be trained on a smaller data set and more clearly communicate with a driver? My current understanding of these LLMs is that the better “prompt engineering” fed into the model, with the best context, the better the answers and the more concise the results. If you notice that when you type in a question to Bing now, it first makes the prompt more straightforward, then feeds it to the model. The more you narrow down the context, the better the answer. Here’s a simple example: Me on the prompt line: “Please write a concise radio communication for an F1 driver with bad radio quality to ask them to come into the pit lane for new tyres.”
A silly, small example, but it shows how it can be used. I have seen many times in the heat of battle where we engineers make mistakes. The more scenario planning and fast decision-making possible, the fewer mistakes. For example, ChatGPT could prepare radio communications and pop-up ideas for a race engineer based on preconceived knowledge from listening to “Mission Control” conversations or info coming from the TV!
These are only simple examples, and every day, I am sure you will all think of more. And by the time this article comes out, more API integrations, private learning model implementation and a host of tools have become available. I will watch with interest how this all begins to play out and would love to hear any ideas from engineers!
PS: this article was written with the aid of ChatGPT4
Autonomous technology has the power to redefine driving, both on the race track and in our daily lives, states Mark Preston, Team Principal of the Team Aguri Formula E squad
Autonomous vehicles have been a regular feature in the headlines over the past year as the technology has been refined and global brands such as Google, Apple and Tesla have pioneered their own approaches to commercialising its wide array of applications.
While the technology is in its infancy, the rate of development and investment in this burgeoning market is impressive. The UK government has pledged £100m to the development of the industry, which is expected to create 320,000 jobs by 2030, while both Tesla and Google plan to have their first models on the market by 2020.
However teething problems remain, as highlighted by 14 accidents that Google’s car has suffered in the last six years, in which time is has covered some 1.9 million miles of testing.
Mark Preston, Team Principal of Team Aguri – a race squad competing in the all-electric Formula E series – believes that autonomous vehicles have a promising future, and that motorsport may hold the key to unlocking its full potential.
Showcasing ideas to the world
“Motorsport is a great testing ground. I see Formula E as a prototyping competition for autonomous vehicles and other technologies,” comments Preston.
“It’s a great place to experiment and showcase new ideas, and bring them to the attention of the world in a controlled environment where people can gain confidence that they are safe.”
Preston’s comments aren’t without president. In recent years motorsport has been responsible for the development of kinetic energy recovery and smaller, more efficient engines, which are becoming commonplace in today’s road cars. Other technologies that have a motorsport lineage include four wheel drive, traction control and even rear view mirrors are now considered standard.
While some are hesitant about taking the purity away from motorsport, Preston is quick to assert that applications of autonomous technology need not impact on racing: “We don’t want to take away the skill of the driver, but there are a number of times in a race when technology does not dominate the performance or outcome of the race, such as pit stops and following the safety car.”
“’Follow me’ technology has already been developed by BMW and Jaguar and we could easily have race cars following the i8 safety car in Formula E. The Toyota Hybrid ran completely on electric power while in the pitlane during this year’s Le Mans 24 hours, which could have been implemented autonomously as soon as the driver crossed the pitlane entry line. This could spell the end to unsafe releases, as the pitlane would follow a set of rules.”
Preston believes such an approach will be crucial to increasing public acceptance of such innovations, while promoting new collaborations between academia, race teams and car manufacturers.
Sustainability through autonomy
Team Aguri has formed a partnership with the MobOx Foundation – a ‘living laboratory’ in Oxford that runs studies into the innovative technologies that will shape the future of our cities – to better to understand where such inventions first enter daily life.
“Studies so far, supported by Innovate UK, have shown that dynamic routing and dynamic timetabling in public transport could be enabled by autonomous technology, allowing flexible operations 24 hours per day,” states Preston.
“We all hate poor, unreliable public transport, but with autonomous buses it would be possible to increase the frequency of buses to at least one every five minutes and enable routes that are could alleviate the need for personal transport,” he continues. “Furthermore, autonomous cars won’t just sit in car parks anymore; they will continue on, doing other jobs during the day, instead of waiting on the side of the road, creating better traffic flow.”
While common use of autonomous technology in both public and personal transport remains a few years away, it offers a simple solution to creating greener, safer cities. The first step to its widespread acceptance may very well lie with winning the hearts and minds of the public through its performance on the racetrack.
Wow, what a weekend! Amlin Aguri’s first win in the FIA’s first fully electric championship! It is an amazing feeling to get a result after all the work put in by the team over the last three years.
“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.”
Plus it takes a lot of work to start a new team in a completely new championship – but it’s worth it when all the effort is rewarded! Many people have asked what we did to get to the front, what has changed, how did we do it?
The build up to the race win really started after all of our troubles in Punta del Este.
The series test, on the Sunday after the Punta race, was the first time that Antonio (Felix de Costa) and Salvador (Duran) really had a chance to test the car after Antonio had missed much of the pre-season testing and the first race in Beijing with BMW DTM duties. This, coupled with the fact that race weekends are so short which restricts running, means that when you haven’t got the car in the “zone” it is extremely difficult to do anything meaningful with regard to setup or finding solutions.
Our race pace has been quick from the beginning with Takuma setting the fastest lap in Beijing. So what we were looking for was time to get a proper qualifying setup and thereby increase our race pace accordingly. You must remember that if we hadn’t had an issue during the pit stop in Malaysia, then Antonio could have finished in the top five and potentially on the podium. The engineers worked over the break between Beijing and Putrajaya and then over Christmas before Punta to get our models and understanding of the car to a point that we could validate this understanding during the Punta test. The result was a fastest first sector on the final run of the day before a Red Flag which showed that we were going in the right direction for the next race in Buenos Aires.
Antonio arrived in BA with a quietly confident attitude focussed on making the best of our great Punta test and determined to have a great weekend: everyone arriving on a high and following through is a good indicator of the picture of the weekend.
So how did the weekend go? Well in Free Practice 1 the car was quick straight of the box. There was good work carried out during the session, getting everything done that was on the plan; another good step. Some cars were running maximum qualifying power; hence the large gap at the front of the pack but P9 was respectable, showing of potential to come.
Then in FP2, it was maximum at- tack, our final preparation before qualifying and we were immediately quick with our final position of P3 only 0.4s off the leader which showed that our ultimate potential for qualifying and race performance was within reach.
Qualifying is always a lottery. Antonio drew Q1 while Salvador was in Q3. The elusive Q4 without red or yellow flags is the name of the game with a rubbered-in track and potentially better track temperatures, but we made the most of the quicker car and got ourselves in the top 10. Antonio felt it was better to aim for a top 10 position and wait to see how things went in the race instead of necessarily going for pole and having a problem. Starting P7, 0.5s from pole position showed again that we were in the right place for the race.
The race was quite chaotic, but Antonio and Salvador drove sensibly, both overtaking a number of drivers and making the best of battles going on around them. As the race went on we had a great pit stop which resulted in gaining positions for Antonio and a safety car which caused some confusion with everyone waiting for the screens to update with the final order to be clear.
As we moved up the leader board it became more and more stressful for everyone in the garage as there was more to lose with each increment Antonio gained! By the time he was in a podium position, the tension was showing on everyone’s faces! And as each problem happened on track we were increasingly on the edge of our seats! Salvador was also making up places and looked like he would get into the points as well.
At that stage we could see that Antonio had plenty of battery life left over and
he was therefore in a great position to push all the way to the end of the race and catch Nick Heidfeld before the chequered flag. When the drive-through came for Nick we almost couldn’t believe it, we just had to hold our breath and bite our nails till the end of the race.
Some people might say that there was some luck involved, but you can bring up many old adages about finishing first that you must first finish, and that goes for every element of the car, our team work, the car setup, the drivers’ management of the car’s batteries, the control systems, our pit stop practice and also how the other teams run their cars. Every part of a team is important and we have proven in previous races that we too could have technical problems such as electronic control systems with Takuma at the first race and pit stop problems that cause issues.
Were we lucky?
Luck is when opportunity meets preparation,and we certainly had the pace to take the opportunities delivered to us over the weekend.
Whats next? Miami, where we should make some improvement on all aspects of the team operation, the car setup, our race strategy and some driver training. We have the pace and now it is a matter of building on success and doing a better job at each race and chipping away at the championship points to move ourselves up the grid. After all we love a challenge; otherwise we wouldn’t have entered such a unique and brand new championship!
Following my last column I have been very interested in the questions that we are being asked in our pre-race press conferences, especially at Buenos Aires where they are big fans of motorsport. One of the most common topics was, ‘how will the technology find its way into the world?’ The best example I could see was the bus rapid transit system they have in the city which is a great example of where electric drive, regenerative systems and wireless charging will find its way quickly into practical everyday applications.
You should remember that Uruguay generates 45% of their electricity from hydro
with a target of 90% in 2015 coming from renewables. The intermittent nature of some renewables will benefit from the “Energy Cloud” that will be created when more electric vehicles connect to the network and allow off line storage in the night for solar and during low wind conditions for wind.
Reprinted from Mark Preston’s column Racing to the Future in Motorsport Monday
A year from now, climate negotiators representing countries worldwide will be in Paris. They hope to finalise international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change. Success will depend heavily on economic policy, and the new technologies to usher in a carbon light world.
“Unlike treaties of the past, the Paris agreement needs to speak as loudly of economic transformation as it does of carbon emissions targets,” said Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President. The Bank wants new clean technology investments. It wants energy efficiency, performance standards for vehicles and clear economic remit for change.
Motorsport seems an unlikely partner in all this. But the silent technologies being developed in Formula E are ideally placed to put the Bank’s vision on the ground. The Formula, a hotbed for excitement and intrigue, is also a key testing space for sustainable batteries, systems and futurist thinking.
Amlin Aguri racecar driven by Antonio Felix da Costa in Punta del Este, December 2014
“The future I see is for energy companies to become energy carriers,” says Preston. He has 12 years top level motorsport experience with Arrows, McLaren and Super Aguri F1 teams. Electric motors and reimagined transport are central to his vision. It involves carbon-light urban mobility in the cities of tomorrow.
“Fuel, batteries, hydrogen; they are all just carriers of energy. The energy is just stored in a number of different forms. Each has relevance to future transportation and we are working on all within SAFE Racing Technologies, our technology company that support the Amlin Aguri Formula E racing team.”
Finding more reliable energy storage is key. Preston believes legislation is a strong force to help. “If one mega city in China changed its rules to have zero emissions in the city, this could support three new, sustainable electric car companies, all using futurist batteries and storage tech.” he says.
“I think one of the reasons this hasn’t started yet is because the local companies are not quite there with the technology, so the government won’t start until the local companies can support. This is where Formula E comes in.” Motorsports has traditionally driven development in clutches or computer controlled suspension. Now it provides a testbed for advanced EV technologies.
“Once one city does EV successfully, it is possible to start a snowball effect with cities such as Los Angeles perhaps trying again; they tried in the 90s if I recall,” says Preston. In another shift in sustainable thinking, he explains how Formula E is exploring parallels between energy and cloud-based computer systems.
“When software is based in the cloud, individual upgrades in server speeds or software tweaks see all users on the system benefiting immediately,” he begins.
“I think the same could be true of our electrical grid. Today we have coal fired powerstations, but as soon as one of them is upgraded the whole system would be simultaneously. The concept is the ‘Energy Cloud,’ as some people are beginning to call it.
“As more renewables come online, this energy cloud is naturally and automatically upgraded. When more energy carriers connect to the smart grid, and electric cars plug in, the intermittent nature of some renewables is dealt with automatically by the Smart Energy Cloud.”
In this way, cohesive cloud systems could alleviate shortfalls in solar or wind power through scale. “Some more radical ideas could be carbon sequestration at the source of the power generation,” Preston continues.
Returning to the Formula E circuit, he hopes to see static batteries, ready at each race track one month before the race. These would be charged using solar and other renewables, from the smart energy cloud ready for use on race day.
“After the race they would be used for legacy projects; emergency power backup systems for hospital and schools. Cars need only be one part of the modal mix. The design will have longevity. I see Formula E providing a showcase for technology to encourage early adoption of new ideas by making the technology cool and relevant.”
Such Formula E technology might feature in tomorrow’s cars, trains or buses, depending on market dynamics. Preston points out that F1 flywheel technology is finding its way into buses at the moment. “Routes to market can take different paths. Formula E will develop technologies to push overall electrification of the transport industry.”
Widespread takeup for EV may well need direct wireless charging, which Preston discussed at a recent sustainable transport forum in Cologne. “Many bus projects are up and running where a bus will charge at every stop on its journey, effectively giving it limitless range using an electric drivetrain.
“Formula E is developing battery charging, packaging and programming of usage patterns. We are set to really showcase what a cool and interesting thing electrification of vehicles is.”
Jim Yong Kim believes decarbonising energy sectors over time, while maintaining energy required for development constitutes a challenge no developed country has faced in its history.
“Getting to net zero emissions before 2100 will require a continuing shift in the direction of our energy portfolio, to support energy access for all and increase investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency,” he said.
“It will require continued support for clean transportation and building low-carbon, livable cities, particularly in the fast-growing cities of the developing world, where development today will lock in growth patterns for decades to come.”
Such green transportation may seem light years from the race tracks of Putrajaya or Uruguay. But perhaps, as electric race cars whizz quietly around, the answers are coming.
Momentum is everything in motor racing and the unveiling of the new Formula E race car at the Frankfurt Motor Show shows this exciting series is beginning to gather some serious pace.
By all reports electric vehicles (EVs) have been all the rage at the event further indicating the motor industry’s preference to develop eco-friendly cars. You only have to look as far as BMW’s impressive i8 to see what impact EVs are going to have on the future.
From my standpoint, Formula E in particular will shape all kinds of major technological advances in the next five to 10 years – most of which will affect in someway how we as humans approach mobility in true megacities like London and Tokyo.
It’s only around the corner when every black cab you’ll see in London will be running electric or hybrid and the city (expect for screeching brakes on just about every bus, car and truck) will be quieter and almost pollution free.
While the first year of the Formula E series will see all 10 teams compete using the same Spark-Renault SRT-01E, I think we’ll really start to see benefits of the series once teams start developing their own cars.
Having a top driver in the first year might snatch the title, but what will count going forward is how teams devise solutions to out-develop each other in specific areas such as battery control, cooling efficiency, power optimization/management and my personal favorite (once 4WD is introduced) 4WD torque vectoring.
Critically, this can give teams the chance to monetize what they’ve created and translate that outside the garage. As we’ve seen at McLaren in recent years their focus has grown strongly on increasing the output of their premium sports cars which draw on the team’s F1 expertise and technology.
With the right minds focused on the drawing board there is a plethora of cutting-edge technologies and systems that can be developed in Formula E and translated to the everyday person living in a modern day metropolis.
Reducing anxiety range in electric road cars will most probably be one of the first problems solved through Formula E. Battery development will progress at a lightning speed and it won’t be long until this makes its way to the consumer.
Tesla’s 90-second battery change is also an interesting step forward. If Formula E can harness and translate this then the proposed ‘car change pitstop’ could quickly be a thing of the past as drivers pit over a battery plate and have a fresh cell loaded within 20 seconds – effectively replacing the petrol pump.
What is exciting is that this is all technology that can realistically filter down to the average eDriver – someone who relies on mobility and wants it to be in an eco-friendly and sustainable form.
Formula E will start us thinking about ‘mobility as a service’ which can help drive more efficient and sustainable transport. It will enable us to build new business models to ease the cost of EVs for the average person and this is all done through racing the best part of motorsport!
The series will certainly be a spectacle and crucially it gets right to the heartbeat of cities like Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aries, Los Angles and Rome with street circuits likely to attract thousands of onlookers.
Formtech created a vision of EV when they launched the E1 atFrankfurt’s IAA Motorshow in September. The research study provides the base for a number of concepts in lightweighting technology using composites, high-end materials and machining.
Formtech’s EV started out as a concept for the companies CEO Franz Hilmer, “I wanted to develop a car that would provide me with a second vehicle that I can use to commute to work, but be stylish and provide the basis to exploit the technologies that Formtech is developing in lightweight materials, high-end precision manufacturing and other technologies.”
Designers: Satoshi Nakamura, Tomas Beres, and Rafael Gross, were given the brief to develop a number of concepts, “The chosen concept of the E1 came from the idea that a secondary car; where the customer already owns a vehicle, and considering an eco-friendly alternative especially designed for short commute, with the capacity to carry 4 passengers, should be simple and take full advantage of the electric drive train. The limited top speed and range will create a lighter, more efficient vehicle, perfect for a second car. The design features a short overhang at both ends to create maximum capacity within the given wheelbase dimension. The side surface wraps around to the front and rear end, creating a sense of security and strength to the overall form. “, said Nakamura.
“The future of EV’s will be based around a number of game changing technologies”, says Mark Preston, ex-F1 designer, “I forsee a change in the way EV’s are perceived with lightweight carbon composites and vehicle dynamics technology such as torque vectoring driving exciting new areas of customer interest. We created the research study in order to create a platform from which Formtech can develop these new technologies and provide solutions for all areas of EV development”.
The Formtech E1 forms the basis of further development studies by Formtech into the exciting new area of EV’s. Further studies will be released from Formtech that follow up on the beginnings created with the E1. “Formtech is committed to working towards the future and welcomes discussions with interested companies and investors from the green sector“, says Hilmer.
As a follow on to my blog last year where I discussed how randomness drives excitement in F1, the first few races of 2011 certainly provided some interesting racing with KERs, DRS and Pirelli providing a set of variables that the teams have not yet completely mastered.
However as I was watching the German GP recently I noticed how the number of different tyre strategies is starting to narrow.
It is inevitable that the engineers will eventually remove some of the biggest unknowns in tyre prediction. It was interesting to hear Mark Webber comment that Sebastian had mastered the tyres more quickly than he had. As the teams simulators start to match the reality of the track, drivers like Mark will be able to experiment back at base to coach themselves to make the best use of the tyres. At this point the number of variables will again narrow reducing randomness in strategy.
In fact the German GP gave a few more ideas about how the teams might be combining the simulators with drivers and strategy software. The first hint came when Alonso said over the radio that Webbers tyres were starting to drop off and requested an update of the strategy to reflect this change. This shows that the teams models are starting to get quite accurate but they still need an empirical “trigger” or tipping point where the driver helps to recognise a change in the tyres that the engineers can use to re-correlate their models real-time. Once this correlation has been done the strategies can be updated with more accurate information for predicting forward.
The cold track temperatures at the German GP seemed to favour the McLarens and they were able to predict the change point of the tyres for last stint to perfection. If the tyre performance curve can be mapped accurately there should not be any benefit from what people are calling the “undercut” as this performance anomaly should be accounted for accurately in any strategy software: leading to no advantage or randomness. Lets see how their models fair in the hotter temperatures in Hungary.
The DRS works in combination with the randomness generated by the tyres. Theoretically if the fastest car leads from the front there should be no need for DRS. But, as the tyres provide unpredictable performance variations on each car and with each driver the DRS allows cars to pass each other should one team/driver be lucky enough to find themselves with a different performance envelope in the race in comparison to qualifying.
Again, as the tyres become more understood the randomness of the race vs qualifying performances will become less and DRS will become less of an exciting tool.
Hopefully the tyres change at a faster rate than the teams can match with their understanding!
Getting ready for another lap of Autodromo do Algarve
Leaving pitlane
I had a visit to the Autodromo do Algarve, Portugal, in between Christmas and New Year to say hello to Paulo Pinheiro and the team and see what new things the circuit has introduced since I was here for the A1GP race earlier in 2010.
Although I have know the team at the Autodromo since before they started building, I hadn’t had a chance to do a few laps: I got a chance this week.
If you haven’t ever experienced the circuit, you should. With many blind corners and rises, it’s quite a fun track to get to know. I only had a few laps in a BMW 5 Series GTR and I was hooked. OK, I am a long way from being flat onto the main straight and also completely dedicated through some of the blind corners, but I could have easily been convinced to stay all night and keep perfecting it! Maybe next time…
