Rising star - CP autosport

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CARBON COPY
Rising star
A new Mercedes SLK-based hillclimb car is taking
shape, with the FIA European Championship and
Pikes Peak in its sights for 2014
WORDS BY GRAHAM HEEPS
Hillclimbing remains
one of the few
areas of top-level
motorsport where competitors
have the regulatory freedom
to pursue creative engineering
solutions. No wonder that
two of the biggest prizes,
the FIA European Hillclimb
Championship and Pikes
Peak’s ‘Race to the Clouds’ –
“THE STRENGTH COMES
FROM COMBINING THE
ROAD-CAR CHASSIS AND
THE CAGE – IT WOULD BE
MUCH EASIER TO MAKE A
SPACEFRAME-TYPE CAR”
April-June 2013 |
One of the team’s
two bodies-in-white
was used to make
molds for the body
panels. Prototype
parts were revealed
at the Geneva show
www.pmw-magazine.com
whose course is now
fully paved – are contested
by highly sophisticated,
bewinged, overpowered
monsters of the track.
Later this year, a new
contender for the FIA’s E1
category will emerge through
a collaboration between the
Mercedes-Benz tuning house
Carlsson Germany, and Team
Meisel Motorsport, which is
also Carlsson’s Swiss dealer.
Working in the Swiss workshop
of Meisel Motorsport, race
engineer Martin Burmeister,
who previously worked on the
late Georg Plasa’s BMW 134
Judd (see Trailblazer, AprilJune 2011, p40-41) is now in
charge of most of the technical
aspects. This Mercedes-based
CARBON COPY
SLK340 racer will also have
Judd power (an LMP2-derived
DB V8 with 610bhp) and will be
campaigned by experienced
hillclimber Reto Meisel.
Through Mercedes-Benz,
the team has access to full
CAD data for the SLK, enabling
it to digitally design every
aspect of the new machine.
The stripped-out steel shell of
the road car weighs 265kg;
Burmeister and his colleagues
have trimmed this to 135kg as
the base for the SLK340. The
goal is not to exceed 200kg for
the basic structure, once the
bespoke Lockid roll cage has
been welded in. The process
was underway at the time of
writing, with the skeleton car
mounted on an 8-metric-ton
table and each critical chassis
and suspension point held in
place by a specially designed
jig set.
“The suspension work,
designing the cage, and
welding the cage, is around
1,800-2,000 man-hours,”
estimates Burmeister.
“The strength comes from
combining the road-car
chassis and the cage – it would
The roll cage is
being welded into
the second bodyin-white at Lockid.
A bogie has been
built to rotate the
chassis
be much easier to design and
make a spaceframe-type car
[but the rules do not permit
this]. We know how critical it is
to weld a cage 100%; this isn’t
always the case in motorsport,
but we have made sure we
have access to all the welding
points.”
As witnessed by Plasa’s
fatal accident in 2011, the
high-speed, public-road
nature of European hillclimb
courses present major safety
challenges to competitors
and their cars. Safety in
the SLK340 will be further
enhanced by an FIA
8862-2009-specification seat;
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Tech spec
MERCEDES-JUDD SLK340
DIMENSIONS: 4,584mm (L) x 1,950mm
(W) x 1,224mm (H). (SLK road car is
4,134mm x 1,810mm x 1,301mm).
Track width: 1,653mm (1,559mm)
WEIGHT: 780kg
ENGINE: 3.4-liter Judd DB V8, 610bhp,
430Nm
TRANSMISSION: Hewland TMT
transaxle, Sachs anti-stall clutch,
Megaline paddleshift
ECU/DATA ACQUISITION/DASHBOARD:
Cosworth
SUSPENSION: Double A-arm,
KW coil-overs
WHEELS: BBS monobloc. 10J x 18 (F),
13J x 18 (R)
www.pmw-magazine.com | April-June 2013
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CARBON COPY
“WE HAVE ALREADY
DEVELOPED A FEW
TESTING PARTS FOR THE
WIND TUNNEL SUCH AS
THE FRONT DIVEPLANES,
AND DIFFERENT RADII
AND SHAPES OF THE
FRONT SPLITTER”
the car will feature what
is believed to be the first
non-Audi use of Audi
Motorsport’s PS1 (Audi
Protection Seat 1) seat design,
originally developed for the
R8 LMS GT3 racer. Burmeister
notes that the attachment
system – eight bolts straight
into the floor – makes it a much
stiffer component than the
old 1999-standard seats,
with much improved padding
around the head, too.
A second SLK prototype
is being used for the parallel
development of the body
panels, including the
8kg, one-piece removable
front end, the rear quarter
panels, wing and underfloor
components. Largely of
carbon-honeycomb or
The considerable
track width extension
compared with
a normal SLK is
apparent in both the
CAD view (above) and
on the show car (right)
April-June 2013 |
www.pmw-magazine.com
carbon-Kevlar-honeycomb
construction, they are being
made by Flossmann to the
team’s design, following the
same design philosophy as
on the BMW project. Only
the door handles and part
of their seals, plus the
tail-lights, remain from the
base SLK’s exterior.
A show car featuring the
initial aerodynamic design
appeared on the Carlsson
stand at Geneva in early
March. Burmeister says there
will be a number of detail
changes before the design hits
the track, with a CFD program
being completed by specialists
in Germany using Star-CD,
and wind-tunnel testing in a
full-scale facility likely to follow
in the summer. With so much
power on tap in a 780kg car,
outright downforce, rather than
drag-reduction, is the order of
the day; the SLK should have
around 6,500N of it at 150mph,
with a lift/drag ratio of greater
than 2:1.
“We have already developed
a few testing parts for the
wind tunnel such as the front
diveplanes, and different
radii and shapes of the front
splitter,” he adds. “We’ll have
a number of extra parts and
brackets that we’ll be able to
bond together to make it easy
to try different designs.”
Burmeister is not working
to a fixed deadline to complete
the car, but is confident that
the finished SLK340 will be
ready for track testing in the
summer (it’s unlikely to see a
wind tunnel before July). That
will still leave time for some
late-season test races; the FIA
European Championship runs
until September, with national
championships continuing
into November. A full season of
FIA competition is planned for
2014, but driver Meisel also
has an eye on a transatlantic
trip to take on Pikes Peak. <