When race driver Max Papis zips around tracks at speeds approaching 240 m.p.h., they may be fine-tuning the ride and handling of future Ford trucks.
Papis drives Ford-powered race cars for Team Rahal on the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) circuit, and about the only thing their high-tech cars have in common with pickups and sport-utility vehicles are four wheels.
CART, which competed at the Chicago Motor Speedway in Cicero in August, races single-seat, open-wheel cars with 850-horsepower, turbocharged V-8 engines mounted behind the driver.
However, when Papis charges into a corner at the limit of tire adhesion, Ford engineers in the pits monitor onboard telemetry that records every movement of the shock absorbers and other suspension components. The data are collected on computers and analyzed to find the optimum suspension settings that will make the cars go faster.
The computer data gathered at the track may translate into better ride and handling on an F-150 pickup, said Scott Ahlman, a Ford vehicle dynamics engineer who worked on the F-Series before his assignment with Team Rahal.
“Your targets are much different for the ride and handling of a truck, but the overall analysis is similar, and the laws of physics still apply,” Ahlman said of the link between race car and street vehicle.
This doesn’t mean a shock absorber or spring from a CART race car will find its way onto a pickup truck consumers will buy. The same computer-based process that helps Papis win races can help Ford develop trucks and passenger cars.
Computer suspension simulations that Ford first used in racing series such as CART, NASCAR and Formula One were recently adapted to create shock absorbers for Jaguar production cars.
“Racing is so sophisticated, there is little hardware transfer to mainstream vehicle lines,” said John Valentine, Ford’s chief engineer for racing advanced technology. Software, however, easily translates to production vehicles.
Before building prototype parts, engineers use computer simulations to evaluate how a vehicle reacts on the road or track to bumps, curves and wet pavement. Components that perform well in virtual tests are then built and tested on real vehicles. This eliminates much the old fashioned, trial-and-error testing–bolting on parts one at a time to see which can do the job.
“Things tend to happen very fast in racing, and we’re trying to adapt that technology to our mainstream products to get them out the door faster,” said Valentine, who manages a worldwide group of about 40 racing engineers from Dearborn, Mich.
Ford says the fast-paced world of racing led to improved computer simulations that now speed up ride and handling development for trucks and passenger cars. The company would not name specific applications or examples.
“We’re on to something pretty special, and we’d like to keep it to ourselves,” said Steve Siegal, a vehicle dynamics engineer assigned to Team Rahal.
Computer-generated virtual wind tunnels and virtual test tracks shaped the aerodynamics of race cars before Ford applied the technology to passenger vehicles. The results of virtual tests are later compared to tests on cars to perfect the computer models.
“Instead of building a metal prototype of a vehicle, it is much easier to do it by computer,” Valentine said.
“When we do a virtual car and virtual testing of the car, the cycle becomes much shorter. You aren’t going to replace the wind tunnel or the test track, but you can do several computer models before you rent a wind tunnel for $8,000 per day.
“Racing lends itself to developing computer models. You can do it every week at a different track, and you get instant results.”
Racing puts engineers on a fast track for development and provides an intensive post-graduate training opportunity.
“Young engineers come out of college computer-literate and full of ambition, but most haven’t served an apprenticeship that would help hone their skills,” Valentine said. “Racing does that. They probably learn in the first few weeks on the job that they weren’t the top guns they thought they were.”
Siegal, whose previous assignment had to do with ride and handling on the Explorer, found himself in the fast lane as soon as he joined Team Rahal during the summer.
CART teams typically arrive at a track on Thursday, practice on Friday, qualify on Saturday and race on Sunday.
“You get a much better appreciation for deadlines. With passenger vehicles, projects go on for years. Here, it’s week to week,” Siegal said. “You also get a much better appreciation for customer feedback.”
In his case, the customer is driver Papis, who demands a quick fix if their cars are slow. Don’t expect to find engineers such as Siegal and Ahlman grease-stained and sweating in the pits as they wrestle new suspension components onto race cars.
That dirty work is left to mechanics.
Instead, their Team Rahal uniforms are spotless and crisply pressed when their work is done, and the only tools they lug around are laptop computers and pocket calculators for interpreting the data transmitted from the race cars.
“Engineering today is nerdy work with computers, but in racing you also have to work with people. It requires teamwork,” Valentine said.
“It helps to round out our engineers by developing their poise, their ability to think on their feet and their decision-making–the things you don’t really learn in the university.”
