Technical Insight: Silverstone

Posted on Friday 04 Jul 2008 and tagged with silverstone, britain.

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The British Grand Prix at Silverstone is the next destination on the calendar. A true drivers circuit, Silverstone presents a real challenge for the drivers and their engineers as they battle to find the perfect set-up. Jon Tomlinson, our Chief Aerodynamicist, talks us through the search for the perfect set-up.

Silverstone has a mixture of high and slow speed corners which, as at the previous race at Magny-Cours, puts a greater importance on a well balanced car.

The first half of the lap, up to turn 8 at Club, is dominated by high speed corners, with the slowest corner taken at about 185 kph. The second half of the lap, and in particular the final sector, consists of slower speed corners, with the cars dipping to as low as 100 kph. The difficulty with this is that the car needs to be set up to suit both types of corners. 

Aerodynamically, the high speed corners require a very efficient car, but with a good level of aerodynamic grip. The slow speed corners require maximum grip, and so the level of downforce is very important, whereas drag is less important. To overcome the different requirements, our race engineers use simulation software to determine which is the most important requirement, i.e. one which will achieve the quickest lap time. For instance, if the slow speed corners were the most important, then a higher downforce level would be used at the expense of increased drag.

The race engineers at Williams have several specifications of rear wings available to them which cover a range of downforce levels required for the various circuits throughout the year. The simulation data will be used to select the most appropriate rear wing to give the required downforce and drag. For a circuit with predominantly one type of corner, this is an easy choice to determine - for instance, a rear wing with a high level of downforce would be chosen for a circuit with predominantly slow speed corners.  Due to the nature of the Silverstone circuit, a compromise is required to achieve the best lap time.

The Silverstone test last week enabled the team to investigate which direction to take and to prepare for this week's Grand Prix. However, it is still possible that, come the weekend, changing conditions may require some alterations to the aerodynamic set-up. Silverstone is renowned for being extremely windy, due to the exposed nature of the former airfield track, and also unpredictable with complete reversal of wind direction possible from one day to the next.  This can have a big effect on the aerodynamics of the car, if for instance a tail wind changes to a head wind.

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