Race Car Tech is going to be looking at the technical side of sportscar racing. We’re used to being able to get news on drivers and teams quite easily, but cars can sometimes be a little more difficult. Sure, we can get the basic specs of a Bentley Continental GT3, or read that Strakka has switched from McLaren to Mercedes, but what about the fine details?

Where sites like Daily Sports Car and Racer.com concentrate on delivering the latest news on teams and drivers, it’s often a little harder to come by technical news. It’s understandable, as it’s a difficult topic to cover. When Perrinn announced a new direction for the project, towards an all electric Garage 56, there were 2 different types of articles. Daily Sports Car concentrated on the people, the team and the reasons for the new direction. theRacingLine concentrated on the proposed battery size, power output and technical specifications of the new machine. That is what RCT is about.

One of the best sites (and my personal favourite) for technical updates is Mulsanne’s Corner. Filled with diagrams, photos, explanations and rules – it’s paradise for sportscar nerds. Unfortunately Mulsanne Mike hasn’t been as active as he used to be, and updates are rarer now.

Race Analysis

One of the great things about sportscar racing is seeing how races play out. An endurance race is rarely about raw speed, and more about a balance between speed, strategy and reactions to race events. Strategies are often more complex than they seem. Do we pit under FCY even if it’s only half a stint? What about Safety Car? Do we take 4 tyres, 2 tyres or fuel only? When should we run the silver driver? Do we pit because there’s a cat on the circuit?

It’s common to get to the end of a race and wonder “How did Rebellion manage to win that?”, or, more commonly, “Where did the Manor car disappear to?”. We’re going to have a look at these sort of questions and try and understand what happened.

Andrea Quintarelli is our resident race engineer. When he’s not writing articles for publications such as 24H Race Technology, he’s posting in his blog. One of the many technical topics that Andrea covers is race analysis – understanding why races panned out the way they have done. Andrea will be joining us on Race Car Tech, analysing WEC and ELMS events for LMP1 and LMP2 classes. We highly recommend his blog if you enjoy geeking out – the excel kinematics tool is one of my personal favourites.

Outside of the race analysis articles, Andrea is planning a series of introductory tech articles. Topics such as tyres, aerodynamics, data acquisition, differentials, and other wonderfully geeky topics are being considered.

Getting the wheels rolling

The first series of articles will be about tyres. Tyres are often overlooked in motorsport, but they are the only thing that connects your car to the road, so are arguably the most important bit of equipment on the car.

There will be 7 articles, one a week, covering a variety of tyre basics – spring, road interaction, forces, camber, pressures, etc. The articles will commence mid-January.

Race Car Tech will most likely be a slow burner, but if you have any ideas of what you want to read about then let us know in the comments. Similarly, if you’d like to contribute then get in touch and we’ll have a chat. Let us know if the level of detail is too high, too low, or just right. Your feedback, combined with article popularity, will define the direction that RCT rakes.

Engineering student, lover of all things technical and lifelong motorsport fan. Employed in the Oil & Gas Industry, developing Major Emergency Management simulations. Owner of the best beard on the site.