understanding race car dynamics

where every track driver turns
issue 20
£ 5.95
suspension
Understanding race car dynamics
n Alex Zanardi, survival, success and speed
n Inside McLaren’s road models; P1 and 650
n Testing winter tyres; the engineer’s view
MIND OVER
CATASTROPHE
alex zanardi
Alex Zanardi has achieved much in his career, as a race driver and latterly as an athlete. He has overcome
a massive accident in a US Champ car which cost him his legs but went on to claim Olympic gold. His
biggest asset though is one that cannot be seen; his strength of mind. In the first of a two part special,
psychotherapist and sports mind coach, Linda Keen gained a fascinating insight about his racing,
winning and approach to life in general.
L
ast November, American chat show host David
Letterman, said at the end of his interview with the
Italian athlete and racing driver Alex Zanardi: “You
don’t have legs but you are not handicapped.” What
an understatement...
Letterman was interviewing Zanardi at the
completion of his first-ever Ironman triathlon at
the famous Kailua-Kona event in Hawaii on October
11th last year, when he finished 272nd out of a 2,187
finishers. The Italian’s latest challenge consisted of a
2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile cycle ride and a 26.2-mile
marathon run. Quite straightforward perhaps for a
fit and able-bodied person like McLaren Formula 1
driver, Jenson Button, but with no legs, Zanardi had
to compromise by utilising a wet vest to keep his
body afloat for the swimming section, then took to a
self-developed handcycle for the biking segment. In
a superhuman feat he completed the Ironman on an
Olympic wheelchair, and crossed the line in 9 hours,
47 minutes and 14 seconds. He tweeted triumphantly
at the finish: “What a feel: thousands of people
cheering you at the line and the speaker shouting:
‘Alex Zanardi, YOU are an IRONMAN!’”
And if you’ve never heard of the ex-Formula 1
driver and double CART champion through his
motorsport endeavours during the 90s and early
2000s, then unless you slept throughout the 2012
London Olympics, you must have heard of the double
Olympian gold medallist.
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Zanardi’s is an exceptional story. Here is a man at
the age of 48, who continues to challenge himself
mentally and physically, not only in motorsport and
paracycling, but in every area of his life. The Ironman
Triathlon is just the latest in the achievements of this
unique human being.
And yet this affable Italian is lucky to be alive.
Following a relatively inauspicious Formula 1 career in
the early 90s, Zanardi switched to CART, culminating
in two outstanding titles with the Chip Ganassi outfit
in ’97 and ’98. These titles resulted in Zanardi being
recalled to Formula 1 with the Williams team, a
relationship which lasted just one season before Alex
returned to his happy hunting ground in CART, where
he landed a drive with Mo Nunn’s team. For most of
the 2001 year, Zanardi was pretty unsuccessful until a
race in Germany’s Lausitzring when he found himself
in the lead with 13 laps to run. A final ‘splash and
dash’ pit stop saw Zanardi exit the pits before spinning
broadside across the track and into the path of another
car. The resulting horrific side-on impact saw Zanardi
lose both his legs and most of the blood in his body.
How he survived is anyone’s guess but survive he did.
What followed afterwards can only be described
as a miraculous recovery and comeback and in 2003,
Zanardi was behind the wheel again to finish the 13
laps at the Lausitzring, achieving lap times which would
have qualified him in fifth place for that fateful race.
People like Alessandro Zanardi are a rare breed. He can
Webber’s return to
sportcar racing at
Silverstone earlier
in the year was
marked by a
Biblical downpour
that shortened
the race. His
Porsche came
home third
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car setup
car setup
THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF RACE CAR DYNAMICS
HANDLING AND ROADHOLDING
The article in the last issue of TrackDriver (TD19) focused on tyre characteristics, their effect on vehicle handling, and
some of the basic principles of vehicle dynamics. In this issue we’ll explore the effects of suspension geometry, steering
geometry, springs, anti-roll bars and dampers on the handling of a race or trackday car.
Jakob Ebrey Photography
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Company Profile
Company Profile
BRAKING WITH TRADITION
fellow stunt performers were queuing up to persuade
him to make a set or two for them – and when this
trickle became a flood, the ‘Tar’ in Taroni became
the ‘Tar’ in Tarox, and our story truly begins. Early
incarnations of the new Tarox brand endured extreme
testing with ex-Ferrari driver Giancarlo Baghetti, who
entered a Rally Raid with Gianni from Cape North
to Cape Town in an Alfetta, quickly followed by the
Milano-Calcutta event with an Alfa Sud, and then
Terra de Fuego-Alaska in a Fiat 131. With creditable
results in all events, the young Taroni knew he was on
the right track.
Founded in 1976, the fledgling company quickly
gained a reputation for superb craftsmanship, backed
“As early as 1979 Tarox gained its first F1 victory
in partnership with the Ligier team: a mere
three years later it was part of the package
that helped Keke Rosberg in a Williams secure
outright championship honours… The firm had
clearly earned its stripes”
by good-old fashioned customer service. Creating
effective solutions from day one soon put the Italian
outfit on the radar of F1 teams, and its first contract
wasn’t long in coming. As early as 1979 Tarox gained
its first F1 victory in partnership with the Ligier team:
a mere three years later Tarox was part of the package
that helped Keke Rosberg in a Williams secure outright
championship honours. To achieve such greatness so
early on in the company’s history was to set the future
engineering benchmark for what was to follow.
Although the firm had clearly earned its stripes
in the most demanding arena of motorsport, the
Family-run Italian
brake specialist Tarox
has a long association
with motorsport
and uses its racing
experience to the
benefit of its road-car
applications
Tarox founder
Gianni Taroni
(far right) was
inspired to
create better
brakes through
his work as a
stunt driver.
Above: tough
test regime
Words: Paul Cowland. Images: Tarox
W
ith roots that span back over four decades and
experience right up to F1 level, Italian brake
company Tarox has ‘been there’ and most
definitely ‘done that’. But how does it design and
manufacture its distinctive products? We went to Italy
to find out more.
Discovering how a company founder began his or
her career can tell you much about the DNA of the
firm that they run. A banker or accountant? Usually
means that their business runs on a sound financial
footing. A manager of some sort? Expect slick and
efficient operations. But a stunt driver? Yeah – that’s
more like it… I think we’d all like to work for a
company started by someone who thinks that driving
a car on two wheels is a sensible way to pay their
mortgage.
But that’s how the story began for the Italian brake
manufacturer Tarox. Wind the clock back to the 1960s
and a dashing young chap called Gianni Taroni was
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making quite a name for himself on the circuits and
film sets of Italy. Clearly a talented wheelman, Gianni
balanced a hectic schedule between racing and paid
stunt work, filming many TV adverts for Italian car
makers and ad agencies. Demanding much of every
car that he drove, it didn’t take him long to realise that
the brakes of many of the cars he was being asked to
drive clearly weren’t up to the job. When a particular
stunt kept frying the factory brakes again and again,
he decided to do something about it: the germ of the
idea that would eventually become Tarox was born.
Gianni had begun experimenting with rudimentary
friction materials from a very early age. While still
in short trousers, in his first workshop, he refined a
compressor-based brake system very similar to today’s
ABS. Later on, knowing what his stunt cars needed,
he quickly mastered the art and started to create truly
effective stoppers that out-performed even the very
best OEM brakes. Pretty soon his racing mates and
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The TrackDriver Interview
insight
TOM ONSLOW-COLE
From zipping around car parks in an off-road kart as a kid,
to racing an Aston GT3 in his late 20s, Tom Onslow-Cole
has lived the motorsport dream. Here he talks us through
his career to date, and explains that to be successful you
need to be a businessman as well as a racer
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coaching corner
coaching corner
TOUCHY-FEELY
The more you physically connect with your car, the
more you can feel what it’s doing, the quicker you will
go. Man and machine in perfect harmony, as BMW used
to say
I
n previous articles I’ve covered the areas of vision
and braking. Both vitally important to get right,
because if you don’t you won’t corner efficiently.
Once you’ve mastered those two, you can move on to
the fun task of sending your car round the bend as
quickly as possible. In pretty much every situation,
your target is to carry out each process in such a way
so as to minimise unnecessary inputs or variations to
any of the controls, and you can only do that if you
know what’s going on beneath you. In this article
I’m going to look at the relationship between driver
and car. We’ll examine how we can set ourselves up
to recognise and use the barrage of signals the car is
giving us and also how that will improve all aspects
of our driving. We’ll shine some light on two of the
most often overlooked areas of performance in driving
– seating position and steering technique. Perfecting
these will help us translate what the car is saying to
us and enable us to then tell the car exactly what we
want it to do and when..
Your efforts will pay dividends in the long run.
Whether you’re a newbie to track driving or a
seasoned pro with countless track miles on the clock,
you’ll be sure to find an advantage. If you’re starting
out it’s crucial you get the foundations of your driving
correct from the outset. If you’ve seen and done it
all before, the margins in which you can gain will be
smaller, but use your past experiences to relate to and
fine tune your technique, and you’ll be able to push
harder and become more consistent.
Sub-head?
Once, during some downtime while doing filming
work for a car company, I offered to pick up from the
airport a senior engineer of the manufacturer whose
car I was skidding around in for the cameras. Five
minutes into the return journey, and with him having
no knowledge of my role on the film set, he said, “You
race cars, don’t you?” At that particular point in my
career I had only been racing a few seasons, so I was
surprised that a leading engineer from a major car
manufacturer had recognised me and knew who I
was… But it turned out he actually didn’t have a clue:
he’d just noted the tell-tale signs of how a racing driver
sits behind the wheel. Close, upright, good bend in the
arms, hands fixed at quarter to three at all times, head
constantly moving round the corners ahead of the car.
We’ve all heard the old adage about ‘driving by the
seat of our pants’, which is an expression shaped by
the truth (more on that later). But I’ve come up with a
new and equally appropriate phrase: ‘drive through the
palms of our hands’. Many drivers I see on trackdays
(and somewhat surprisingly a handful of race drivers,
too), ‘feed’ the wheel. When we were learning to drive
we were pretty much all taught the ‘BSM shuffle’ and
were promised that if we were to cross our hands we’d
both fail the driving test and lose control of the car.
These days that’s wrong on both counts – you won’t
fail your test and you certainly won’t spin off the road.
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