A1 Team Malaysia has just taken delivery of its new A1GP Powered by Ferrari car and the hard work now starts in earnest, preparing for the testing session and the race season ahead. The car is a fusion of advanced safety measures and ultra-modern technology. In this feature we take a look under the skin of the car to find out just how it is made.
In essence it’s down to the technology. The A1 Team Malaysia car, as with all the A1GP cars, is made up from hundreds of different components and all 22 teams have exactly the same ones. From wheel hubs to rear wing assemblies, brake pads to tyre warmers, every team is issued with the same kit. So unlike other motor racing formulas, no team has a technical advantage. Is it just down to the drivers’ ability?
Driver skill is undoubtedly very important, but it’s more than that. While the drivers make the biggest bit of difference, the technical set-up of the car (literally how those identical components are put together and the settings on them) dictates how well the car handles on the circuit, and ultimately how quick it is.
Technical strategy makes A1GP the team sport it is. While the ability of the driver is crucial for outright glory, so is the talent of the team back in the pits.
Over the three seasons of the World Cup of Motorsport, there have still been teams that have traditionally run consistently up the front, and those that haven’t. All teams have used a variety of drivers, and while some countries have a stronger driver pool to choose from, putting the trends in form solely down to the driver ability would be an over simplification of the crucial behind-the-scenes team dynamics that makes A1GP so special.
While the tools are the same, there is a myriad of ways to use them. In the same way that artists Jackson Pollock and Monet both used paint for their creations, they both were able to make strikingly different use of them.
There is an infinite amount of adjustments you can make on an A1GP car. Although every team has the same pieces of equipment, the way they can be bolted together can have a completely different effect on the car. The secret to making an A1GP car work is to be able to operate the tyres correctly. The tyres are the only thing that are in contact with the road and that’s what gives a car its speed.
A racing tyre is effectively just a spring. The rubber walls on the sides make it act like one, and the A1 Team Malaysia engineers are controlling how that spring works. They can make the tyres become very hot very quickly which you need for qualifying so they work well on the first flying lap. They can adjust the car to make the tyre generate the heat on the out lap, so the tyre is giving the ultimate performance on the second car lap for qualifying. But they don’t want to be in the same configuration for the race because the team needs to be able to make the tyres last the whole distance.
Every adjustment, every piece of equipment that is changed is designed to make those four tyres operate as its best for the optimum length of time. It is anticipated that there will be a new tyre manufacturer for the season ahead and with both car and tyres an unknown quantity for all the teams, they will have their work cut out anticipating the right set up.
Julian Randles, Team Manager, A1 Team Malaysia, explains, “Looking ahead to the new car and new season, there’s plenty of work to be done before we hit the track. We’ll be given some data from testing and from the tyre manufacturer and at that point we can start some initial calculations. We’ll also have wind tunnel data, which we’ll use in our preparations, but this can only be verified when we’re on track. The engineers can theoretically calculate the best settings for the springs and dampers to the best out of the tyres, to try and achieve balance and find the ‘sweet spot’.
“The driver feels the effects of these efforts in the grip that the tyre has on the track. He’s feeling that through his feet and hands, and through his seat. The aim is to have the highest level, and most constant, contact patch load between the tyre and the track, to produce best grip levelif . Getting the balance right is one of the hardest parts of the engineering process and there’s only been a few teams that have got it right most of the time. And it differs for every track, so if the team gets it right at one, it doesn’t follow that we’ll get it spot on for the next.”
But an A1GP car is a complicated piece of kit. There are hundreds of different adjustments that can be made on a single component, and when something is changed, this has a knock-on effect on another part of the car.
This is why there is a constant honing of a car’s set-up to try and find the optimum balance and compromise to make it go quicker.
Combine that with the changing track and weather conditions over the course of a race weekend, from the subtler things such as a slight increase in temperature to the stark changes such as heavy rain, and well, it’s a constantly moving feast.
We are talking about 100 different parts that need to be adjusted. A lot of the adjustments are in quite small quantities. Half a millimetre makes quite a difference on the ride height, and the team makes adjustments in half to one millimetre increments. If, for example, they move the back of the car up a millimetre, they are not only changing the weight balance of the car, they are also adding a lot of rear wing onto the car because the angle changes. They are then changing the aerodynamic balance of the car. There are a lot of numbers that these highly skilled guys have to jumble around to make it work and come out correctly.
The amount of combinations is just unbelievable. For example, they can adjust the way the spring works by controlling the damper – there are 39 clicks just on one of the valves on the damper. There are two lots of those valves and then another adjuster of 24 clicks.
Every time A1GP goes to an event, the cars go faster and faster and lap times improve. Every minor detail of every lap and every set-up change is recorded and stored by A1 Team Malaysia, as do all of the teams. Graphs are plotted and drivers meticulously analyse where they can improve, and comparing this with data from a previous year if available.
There is a certain window in which the car works, so the Malaysian team will have already used data analysis software before coming to the race to predict their initial settings, and from that point on they simply fine tune and develop it further.
The science of motor racing is an art in itself and the infinite variables offered by the car keep the excitement in the racing and keep challenging the engineers. But there is one crucial element on the car that can also be adjusted – the driver. They all have different styles, and different ways of having the car set-up so it can handle just right for them.
The technical set-up of the car is just as much a crucial factor as the lengthy behind-the- scenes decisions that go on to decide which driver can be called up next. Those decisions made by the talented people in the pits could be just as crucial for Malaysia when we take our next A1GP victory – so spare a thought for them in your victory dance.
