Motor sport education: Ensign project

in 2022 f1 rips up the rule book and we

will see the new generation of an f1 car

which is a ground effect car the last

time we saw those

on an f1 car was the early mid 1980s

well what we're trying to do i think is

unearth what's been one of the best kept

secrets in motorsport

a reputation as f1's innovators team

lotus debuted the first ground effect

aerodynamics at the opening round of the

1977 season in argentina

having been the pioneers of aerodynamics

with their winged cars a decade

earlier the lotus 78 had

side pod skirts body work extensions

which dropped to the track surface

from the car's edges when lowered

the lower air pressure created

underneath the car

gave them huge amounts of downforce

without the drag that comes with wings

but it was discovered rather than

designed

when the team attached card to keep an

experimental side pod design in place in

the wind tunnel

the unexpected amounts of downforce

pitched their developments down

a completely new path the other teams

quickly took notice and the skirts were

widely copied

beginning the ground effect era

40 years on we're going to go back to

ground effect so i thought what a

wonderful opportunity to be able to

document the ground effect card provide

all the data for that that's never

actually been

available anyway um and then compare

that

to the 222 car we're introduced last

year to

robert fernley through our vice

chancellor um and he

obviously made it quite clear he got a

series of historic cars he would like to

do something with

and then we decided we needed to start

do something as a student study

so we got involved in the aerodynamics

project which was really to reverse

engineer the ground effect car to

understand

how the aerodynamics work you know we

started off by looking at how do you

how do you improve advanced performance

engineering for young people

and get them more involved and more

excited and then we linked it with the

industry and these things take time but

the industry's just so behind this now

it's phenomenal

motorsport has been very good for me

over the years i come from a very modest

background and i ideally wanted to see

if we could get the university to a high

profile

and also provide the support for the

kids here we've got

industry and education working

absolutely in partnership so students

get

full full exposure to the industry which

is great for them

when i came here a year ago to look at

these facilities i was just

absolutely astounded as to the quality

and the fact that very few people knew

about it

and you know with george um being quite

a good pal

we looked at how we could help him

really promote this as

becoming one of the go-to places for

motorsport engineering

it's grown and grown from that so here

we are now literally getting the car

ready to go testing at anglesey

next week with johnny herbert then to go

and race it down at bruns hatch in

august so

all of this has been happening during

lockdown it's been somewhat quite

intense quite crazy

it's been fantastic for the students to

get the practical side of this

so what i'll be driving today is this

enzyme

180b which was raced by mark zura

elisio salazar in the 1981

world formula one championship mark

finished fourth in

brazil and sixth in monaco uh alicia

finishing

sixth in uh zanville so it's not a bad

car

jim crawford he drove it bob fernley ran

the car from uh force india

and this is the car that we will be

driving and thank you bob for

allowing us to happen it's nice to see

my name finally

uh back on an f1 car but how are we

going to sort of see the two generations

the difference between those two well as

you can see with all these sort of

stickers all over the car from the front

wing they're actually underneath the

floor

all the way back through the body work

and finally on the rear wing

we've got 250 sensors that will be

reading all the aerodynamic data

that we can analyze to see the

difference between the two generations

of an early 1980s car

to the new rules for the 2022 formula

one regulation so it's gonna be

fascinating to see

the difference between the two tell us a

little bit about the whole project

because obviously it's bolton university

that's a big important part of this

journey we're on yeah and what we're

trying to do johnny is give the

students the opportunity to understand

ground effects so effectively

originally they were going to come out

next year you know they're now delayed

to 22

but the last time i ran this car in f1

format was was in 1982 so we're 40 years

on

um which is quite a remarkable

achievement really when you think about

it

we've resurrected a 40 year old car to

be able to do this test

what it means now is the students can

understand the initial

conceptual ground effects that were done

in the 80s 70s and 80s

and then we can compare them to what's

going to come out in 22.

so what it's doing is it's allowing them

to get into

ahead of the game if you like in terms

of where formula one is going

so that when they come to the job market

hopefully they're current

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um

yeah the first impression it's just

where

these wheels are so close to my chest

compared to what i'm normally used to so

we sit so far

forward in one of these cars and

initially

you always want it to be sort of on your

chest on your shoulders the rotation of

the car

and it sort of initially turns in with

understeer but then it really picks up

quite a lot of grip

as you pick up the speed in the grip

starts to develop but then it actually

goes out of my chest towards the

steering wheel which i don't want

because that means it's then becoming a

bit

pointy on the front 30 days

so

the positioning of the car on the exit

seems to have more flow more flow to it

and what about the initial turning is

that it's okay that hasn't probably

changed massively

i just feel that when i do go in on

those slower medium

it's probably still too much of the

understeer

but it's constant through the corner

what that's saying to me

from where we are now until we do the

final test is it that

actually we're we're not far away from a

ride point of view

probably i would come up five mil at the

back of it i'm sitting here now looking

short performance

yeah move your center pressure yeah

moving forward

normal connect and yeah

that's correct just correct yeah

so what have we been doing today well

we're doing a lot of constant speed

running something they still do

today um and that really sort of means

that when we go down the main street

there will be a set speed

that i have to stick to all the way down

the straight and then that just gives

a much better reading of what is

happening underneath the car

so we sort of started with a car sort of

quite flat we then

went down a little bit on the rear end

did the same thing once again and then

for the last change we actually then

went up on the back and what that

does and what i can feel in the car is

sometimes when the air is going

underneath the car

it's detaching so when i'm going through

a corner i can actually start to feel a

bit of a sort of a numb

uh patch where it's under steering but

actually then i can't really feel where

the back end is and that's normally

where there's a bit of a detachment

underneath the floor so that's something

we'll be able to sort of

look at more importantly that's what we

can see the difference between

this 1980s car to the 2022 cars

another interesting test that we did

today is one of these a 1980s brake duct

well actually it's a 20 20 brake duct 3d

printed

from the 1980s now you've got the rear

wing

and obviously you want that to be as

clean as you possibly can to get all the

air that it can on it to create the

downforce

but of course these are mounted right in

front of it

so the amount of air that's been taken

away from that wing

we don't really know a modern day

formula one car it's all enclosed

inside the the rim of of the wheel so

we've took it off we gave it a run we've

got all these sensors on it

so we should have a good idea of the

difference between an 80s brake duct and

a 20

22 brake duct but bob now we've sort of

collected all this data

what's the next step well the next job

for us is that we've done

as you know we've done three ride height

sweeps effectively

and we've done 15 laps per sweep in

different areas

so we've got enough data now to be able

to send all that back to the university

they will then be able to use that as

the cut to correlate

the cfd work because the cfd should tie

in with what we've done here today

it's all reverse engineering and that

i feel like is almost as big of a task

as creating a car from scratch

because one side will be close to

another but it won't be exactly the same

but it's it's definitely a task and a

challenge but

it's rather exciting to be part of it

i'm on

tires bodywork and fuel

so if they need the tire change

front first guy on the line fuel

then body works or if one of the sensors

would still fall off something like i'll

put scott just to read things like that

yeah the students working on this

project are also involved in other

projects so

em for example um is also working um

or has been working last year and this

year with the british touring cars

i'm emily platt and i'm a second year

student at the university of bolton

i'm the front-end mechanic but i've also

been working on the scanning side of the

vehicle as well beforehand

it's been quite interesting to do and

i've been able to then link that into my

university work as well

so it's been able to boost my grades is

it interesting to be studying

ground effects yeah it's very

interesting to me because um

it's one of those things that they had

an idea of what they were doing and they

had a general idea of what made it fast

and what made it more effective

but they didn't nearly have as much

technology in the tools that we have

today

so it's interesting to see

the development of what they could have

done and small tweaks that

could have made it ten times better what

would have made it ten times worse that

they

either didn't know or had to find out

through manual methods it's interesting

this positions the students at the

premier part of the industry

students who've had track experience

working on aerodynamics like this for f1

cars

they're often ready they're ready to go

into the industry and that's what people

say they want these days they don't want

people who are theoretical they want

people

practical who can go on the track add

value straight away to the team

finally the time has come it's

qualifying day

we had a little bit of practice

yesterday had a few issues with the gear

linkage

so i wasn't able to get the gears but

the guys

the crew from bolton university

were working until one o'clock last

night to get the car prepared

gearbox feels absolutely perfect now

if you look at the anglesey program it

was it was almost textbook yesterday was

challenging

the guys got home at one o'clock in the

morning that's what they've got to learn

working at a couple uh issues with gear

selection

and therefore um wore a few dogs in the

gearbox but

all back together now and johnny's happy

so i'm happy so now it's time for

me to get this on and let's go qualify

wish me luck everyone

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okay at druids a little bit of

understeer there graham hill understeer

still pushing a flat

so i'll have to wait to get on the power

certies

probably not that bad actually so i

probably said that's okay

good job right bob that was better

yes was better yeah it's a lot further

over to the left so it took a bit of

time to

adjust it's too sharp initially

uh mid corner exit we still got that

same

same problem uh that hasn't gone away

yes and what it also does when the tire

gets hot you get

a loose rear end when you break

instability yeah that's about it i

suppose

the main thing is we've got the laps in

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yeah

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great experience you know this sort of

classic racing is something i've seen

from afar but to be involved with it and

it's just lovely to be involved with a

car like this from 1981

uh ground effect car but it's physically

very very hard no power steering like

the modern day

drivers have but uh great to have the

old sort of stick shift back in i love

all this

heel and toe and flipping the throttle

getting into gear when it needs to be

done

normally of course you've always got a

team around you i have exactly the same

thing

but of course it's from the university

of bolton and those students

who i have to say have done a really

good job the car mechanically hasn't

really had any issues whatsoever the

brakes always very very hard

and the preparation is very good at the

same time but just the whole crew

really good for them why because it's a

great experience for them to run

a race car but a formula one car as well

so it's great for the university and

grateful

for the guys and girls are actually on

board with this wonderful project