http://www.racecar-engineering.com/news/ca...ak-preview.html

Windtunnels aren't excact either, and their running has been limited to ro slow speeds. seeing as they don't have much time or money, this could be a good route to follow. instead of spending the money on windtunnel verification, model manufacturing etc. they can hire actual people with ideas.

they developped a Le Mans prototype using only CFD: Acura ARX-02a. Don't know if it was very succesfull.

It's quite close, pace-wise, to the diesel behemoths on the tracks used by the ALMS where they raced together (particularly Sebring and Road Atlanta).

that rear wing looks like the media stand at lords

There's an interesting documentary on the development of the Acura ARX-02A called Project LMP1: Acura’s Next Challenge.

I'm curious if Wirth will use a similar approach to developing a F1 car.

thanks, watching the documentary right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCcjanQhCuU...feature=related

There are quite a few cars designed with the aid of several wind tunnels that have not been exactly succesful either.

How serious is that article and/or how serious is Wirth being about this preview?

That's the exact same picture that has been on the holding-page at manorgp.com since the team was announced back in June.

Designing a car without a windtunnel is going to be a mammoth task, and one which will require a lot of 'trust' in the software being used. CFD is the main tool used in F1 for development but the windtunnel is necessary to confirm certain flow behavior, for example tyre wake position/behavior. Even more importantly, the WT is necassary to 'map' all the parameters associated with a certain aero configuration (i.e. what happens if i have a small change in yaw? what about roll? tyre slip? steering angle? headwind? crosswind? camber? toe? changing the front flap? list goes on and on...). When you perform CFD runs, the result you obtain after several hours represents just one 'point' in the massive map of settings mentioned above. It will take a lot of computational power, manpower, and patience to get these things mapped while you could gain the same results with good confidence within a days work at the tunnel. Part lead-times are also fairly short because of the widespread availability of rapid-prototyping facilities. And after you have mapped your car in CFD, your results could be wrong because you never tried to confirm the validity of your CFD results before showing up on Feb 1 at your first test with a shiny full-size car! Anyways, I expect plenty of flow-viz

Agreed. It was okay on the Acura, but when you include open wheels the task becomes 10 x harder!

Apparently this is WirthResearch's working model:

But not as disastrous as the Lola, which was like, 10 seconds a lap slower

That picture is pretty old. Bigger on their website:
http://manorgp.com/

And I reckon the ALMS cars, with extreme ground effects can attain downforce much easier than an aero sensitive F1 regulation car.
I predict a driving roadblock next year.

BMW never let down wind tunnel, they even had the best one, albert 3 was only accelerating the process.

Guerrieri will have the priority for a Manor seat until November 10th. This is an important change from the original December 5th date. Anyway, if rumours are true, in the next days he could have got enough budget to secure at least the test driver role (and race next season in Super League I guess, as the people there wants him back next year)

Ground effects "as such" (venturi tunnels) vanished along with Group C. Now it's down to rake angle influencing the diffusers, but the floor is basically stepped flat like in a late '94-spec F1 car. (Check out the Stephane Ortelli crash video from Monza 2008 and you can clearly see the undertray before it's torn off the car)

Viva Ant!

I put this in the Silly Season thread a couple days ago, but it belongs here too:



I've also read that Carroll, Klien and Davidson too are being considered, in another portuguese website (Sportmotores). Not sure why neither site mentions Guerrieri.

"Booth wants 2 rookies" wasn't a very good translation by myself, what they really say in the article is "Booth's team isn't going to hire any experient driver and instead plans to make their debut with two young drivers". Why exactly, I don't know and it clashes with the news about the interest in Klien and Davidson.

And given the most recent news about Senna having a deal with Campos, I'd bet against him ending up here.

Senna was linked with Lotus too...

I guess next month we will have more certainties about this...

They're designing their first ever F1 car without a single run in a wind tunnel?? If they are anywhere near the established teams it'll be a miracle.

There was a good renault podcast a few months ago featuring their head of aero and their head of CFD, basically it transpired that whilst CFD is improving a lot the WT is still essential in designing a competitive F1 car at this time. Try and find that podcast, it's really interesting.

I'm reasonably certain that you'll be hard-pressed to find someone in the paddock who knows more about CFD than Nick Wirth since he's only using that program. I suspect he might have been one of the people to develop it from the outset.

I suppose Manor have to hope that Wirths talents have improved since he came up with the CDG, although F1 never benefitted from it I believe Mr Wirth did.

There are many people in the paddock who know more about CFD than Nick Wirth. That's why they still use wind tunnels. This approach is doomed to fail.

From an email that got passed around the office this week:

I sincerely hope Christian Klien gets a shot. I've always considered him to be immensely talented.

Mario Theissen thinks so.

"Willem Toet, head of aerodynamics for BMW-Sauber, said in a statement: "Thanks to Albert 2 we can calculate more variants and more complex models which, in the end, results in an advantage on the stopwatch."

Once the components have been designed, they are tested on a 60 percent model in the team's wind tunnel.

Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport director, said aerodynamics have a crucial influence on the performance of modern Formula 1 cars and CFD and wind-tunnel work complement each other.

He added in a statement: "Unlike other teams, we are not planning to build a second wind tunnel but will continue to bank on the consistently expanding potential in this [CFD] area."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000...39285346,00.htm

I knew I'd seen that before, perhaps this guy ( double6) works in your office. Some interesting comments on there regarding CFD.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.a...ge...&mid=0

Nick Wirth attempted to get the CDG wing introduced in F1 on the back of a few dodgy CFD results.

When a few tunnels tried to replicate his results, they got no agreement with what his CFD results predicted.

There are other ways around that. Manor may not have a wind tunnel of their own, but that not mean they won't be using one. I'm sure they'd be able to rent one out; after all, Honda built three of them.

In the Radio Le Mans interview Wirth said "windtunnels are so old-fashioned" and said his superdupercomputer is 3 times faster than BMW's. He said they have over 100 design stuff, he really seems to believe CFD is the way to go... may be he has some reason to believe in it. I'm sure they will verify the results in a tunnel, it's quite a brave decision!

Turbulence models are getting much much better but I still question the decision to fully design an open-wheel racer using a virtual enviroment.

The Acura Ax-01 was also fully CFD designed, though then again the car was based on the LC75 I believe. Over the years the package would have been constantly refined... The main and huge advantage of CFD is that it will give Nick quick answers to questions, they will learn various concepts pretty quick as opposed with a windtunnel enabling a much more efficient development process. Then again, this all assumes the CFD is 100% accurate 100% of the time.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6879641.ece

Interesting article.

I wonder if that's the bank John Booth made contacts with to sponsor Guerrieri...

News

Guerrieri keeps working to get a seat with Manor next season. A British bank will put half of the budget asked by Booth if Guerrieri's manager Julio Gutierrez manages to get the other half. He held talks with a USA bank, but they come to nothing. He also held a meeting with arab sponsors which showed some interest and will take a decision in 10 days. Some of his contacts had a meeting in Argentina with YPF, but they said they will only continue sponsorin in Argentina and that Repsol takes the international part, so no chance for Esteban to be supported by them (and I guess no chance for López either, who was supposed to be supported by YPF...) There's a possibility for a province government (San Luis maybe?) to sponsor him, but there's nothing substantial yet. And they still have a meeting to come with Barry Walsh who's been working the whole year to find the money to somewhat enter F1 next year, and if he does, Guerrieri will be his Nº1 driver. Things are very difficult to find enough financial support, but in the meantime he will be returning to WSR this weekend with RC Motorsport, and still has the last SLF race in a couple of weeks.

Looking at the current crop of drivers without a seat for next year I'd go with Nick Heidfeld or Jarno Trulli plus Adam Carroll. Looking at GP2 results the name that keeps popping up is Lucas Di Grassi: 2nd in 2007, 3rd in both 2008 and this year.

So this weekend has been mooted for a long time now as when the Virgin/Manor tie-up is announced.

I'm assuming it will be, as nothing has leaked out to suggest the deal has gone sour.

I wonder though at the value of this team and how far they are going to go. Although Wirth Research have taken on one or two staff (supposedly related to the F1 project) it still doesn't look like Manor have, or perhaps have no intention of doing so. The theory is that the cars will be constructed in Bichester by Wirth and Manor will run the operations side. I wonder if this means the mechanics and tech people will come from Wirth and strategists (plus backroom support/admin staff) at Dinnington. Or perhaps neither and the whole entry has been a front for someone else to take their grid slot.

There are one or two people on this forum living in the Sheffield area - does nobody care to have a blast over to Dinnington and see if they have actually begun construction of the extension to their premises on Manor Road? They submitted planning permission (the resulting decision from the council hasn't been announced as far as I know), but did they ever have any intention of following through with the work?

Of the other new teams, it is fact that Lotus have been recruiting basically since their entry was announced, USGP does seem to be making progress, Campos I know nothing about.

It's funny how this forum is dominated (in terms of the new teams) in talk about how USGP won't make it to the grid, but at least we get updates from that team, it seems to be a given that Manor will turn up in Melbourne yet (at least until the Virgin announcement happens) they have seemingly made no progress beyond being granted an entry.

The 'sneek-preview' of their car (as seen in this thread) was an utter joke as the alleged design that was released was just the picture that they have had on their website holding page for months. That went up days after their entry was announced, yet they claim months later that this is the design of the car they've been working on for months?

An announcement may quieten my doubts, but none of it is adding up at the moment.

Manor secured planning permission in September and I think that work started on the extension earlier this month.



http://www.rothbiz.co.uk/2009/07/news-710-...bmit-plans.html

When Manor secured entry, John Booth told the Rotherham Advertiser:



http://www.rothbiz.co.uk/2009/06/news-636-...orsport-to.html


I hope this helps.

Lloyds are reportedly taking a share (not a sponsorship deal) in Manor. They were recruiting 50 local people for the Dinnington base.

Apparantly they have planning permission for anouther 6000 sq ft. The current facility is 8500 sq ft. I dont know how that compares to other F1 teams though. I've spoken to my dad who knows where it is (although it has a Sheffield postcode, it is technically not in Sheffield) and he says its massive.

It doesn't get mentioned that much in the local newspaper, thats because they are generally only bothered about football, ice-hockey, speedway and obviously at a certain time of the year snooker. That may change come next year. Also if they sign any big names in then it will probably make a headline-ish.

Other than that I'm afraid I cant tell you anymore than that atm. As I'm currently off sick with a broken foot and a sprained foot, I cant nip down and have a look. Once I'm healed I'll see if I cna get chance to go and see the facilities and report back with any news.

Yeah, always found it odd that people constantly rag on about USF1 and Lotus, despite the fact that they've actually shown quite a good deal of progress. Whereas I've heard practically nothing at all about Campos and Manor. Probably boils down to the fact that it's European based teams vs teams based around the USA and Malaysia (although I think for now, Lotus are still in Europe). So everyone automatically assumes the "outsider" teams are going to not even make it. Something stupid like that.

Well, Campos hve been quiet, but Campos himself has confirmed a budget of forty-eight million Euro, a shortlist of four drivers (Senna, Petrov, de la Rosa and Piquet) and a deal with a regional government in Spain that would see them get a whole lot of income and build a brand-new testing facility, complete with a three-kilometre straight.

I hope you're missing a zeroes off there. I know people who have houses that size.

I don't think he did miss a zero.

You can see it from going to google maps and entering the postcode of the site: S25 3QU

They only run a very small team out of there, hence the planning request to extend the premises. Even expanding to fit 50 staff can be done with a very small extension.

What are 50 staff going to do for them anyway? That'll cover the staff at the racetracks. There should be several times that figure back at base running the show.

In my opinion Manor are looking the least credible of the new teams. If the Virgin announcement does come it will surely be to suggest they are taking over the entire operation and will never be based in Dinnington.

That's also as I see it.

A lot of the work is going to be done in Bicester, then shipped up to Dinnington.

One thing I've been wondering... 20 years or so ago there were 2 John Booths in Formula Ford - they were known as John "Brolly" Booth and John "Butcher" Booth to differentiate them. I'm assuming this is one of them, but which one?

The Booth at Manor is Butcher Booth, for his previous vocation not some Mike Gascoigne-esque hardman nickname.

Thanks

Yes, I understood it was their vocations that gave the nicknames - I wonder did "Brolly" go back to his original job...?

My memory is a little hazy, but I seem to remember, that one of the Booths was an actual Butcher, whilst the other one, owned a Butcher's hardware store.

This was in the late 70's, early 80's.

Manor have confirmed they have planning permission to expand their facitiies on Manor Road by six thousand square feet.

If Virgin were to take over, where would the relocate to? They'd be absolutely mad to do so, since Manor already have a base of operations.

apparently Manor have just taken 2 weeks to complete a full car mapping in CFD with about 20 CFD/aero engineers. this is something that will take minutes, not weeks, with a wind tunnel!