CAR and Driver - March 2017

photograph by CHARLIE MAGEE

Formula E

batteries

Electric racing suffers

from a somewhat

amusing handicap:

Formula E cars lack the

endurance to run a full

race, so the drivers

must stop halfway

through and hop into

fresh cars with

topped-up 28-kWh

batteries. All that may

go away by 2018,

however, as the next

generation of lithium-

ion racing packs

rolls out.

060. FEATURE. CAR AND DRIVER. MAR/2017

Racing’s

Little

WE STILL THINK OF R ACING

as the pointy spear of automotive

development, where new ideas are

tested in a freewheeling, cost-no-

object arms race. It’s a romantic

notion, though, and somewhat out-

dated, as racing isn’t what it used to

be. The age of rulebook tyranny has

descended, in which the goals of

improved safety and reduced cost

take precedence over ever-higher

speeds. Indeed, today’s rulemakers

spend more time trying to slow cars

down than speed them up, and they exert their dominion with picayune chassis and

engine guidelines. The 2016 FIA technical regulations governing Formula 1 cars run to

90 pages; regulation 5.11.1 limits the number of spark-plug firings per combustion event

to five, et cetera and so forth. The series then forces uniform electronic controllers onto

the teams as embedded spies to ensure compliance. Electronic stability controls and

active aerodynamics, now common on road cars, are almost universally banned in racing,

meaning a Porsche 918 Spyder is closer to technolog y’s sharp end than most race cars.

Considering that the field of the dazzling 1967 Indy 500 featured everything from

pushrod engines to overhead-cam V-8s to one very fast turbine, today’s racing, by com-

parison, is tied to the technological post. And yet, the racing community is still pushing,

and ordinary drivers will eventually benefit. Carbon fiber came from aerospace, went into

race cars, and can now be found in BMW road cars, among others. Likewise, battery and

power-control technolog y being explored in racing will have direct application to the

coming wave of electric vehicles, and tires never stop evolving. Today’s pet racing tech-

nologies might not be as sexy as a turbine car fielded by guys wearing STP pajamas, but

they may ultimately prove more relevant to the cars we buy in 20 years.

Here are some examples:

1

2

We peek inside the black

boxes of racing’s new-

est technologies to find

out what’s in it for us.

by Aaron Robinson