A differing approach for Manor

[McLaren Fan]

From F1 Live:

Manor is one of the new teams scheduled to join the series next year and according to reports from Autosprint, the Sheffield-based team are taking a differing approach to the construction of its new F1 challenger.

Lead designer Nick Wirth and the team are relying purely on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), rather than the more traditional use of wind tunnels. The first test chassis scheduled to be completed in the next four to five weeks ahead of testing in February.

"We are developing the aerodynamics completely on the computer with the CDF system,” Wirth, the former Simtek Formula One team owner, said. “We won't even spend one day in the wind tunnel, not even for checks."

Wirth went on to explain that individual components are now being manufactured and that crash tests have been successful.

However, he has realistic expectations for 2010 season with the Cosworth-powered challenger, expecting to start at the back of the field before trying to put pressure on the established teams.

Manor has been linked with Richard Branson’s Virgin group and has admitted interest in signing current A1GP champion Adam Carroll.

Earl ALEXANDER
© CAPSIS International

It will be interesting to see how this works.

[stonemonkey]

Yep, will be interesting. Reminds me of spaceshipone which was all done with cfd, and that was fairly successful.

[Denthúl]

I read about this earlier today and thought that it was an interesting approach. If they get it to work well without wind tunnels, I can see a lot of teams starting to invest more in CFD to cut costs in the wind tunnel area.

[EwanM]

I read about this earlier today and thought that it was an interesting approach. If they get it to work well without wind tunnels, I can see a lot of teams starting to invest more in CFD to cut costs in the wind tunnel area.

Most teams already are. Eg. Renault.

[Rivelution]

Acura did the same thing with their LMP1 project.

[cap-dude]

hmmm, good luck with that.

Lets just hope they actually make the grid then.

[JamesD89]

There was a double page spread in F1 Racing, the gist of it being you can't design a car using only one of the windtunnel and CFD approaches.

[myownalias]

The only reservation I would have with using a computer to calculate aerodynamics is that the program is only as good as the person who programmed it.

I don't believe that a computer is a perfect substitute for having actual airflow over the car that only a wind tunnel can provide!

[Denthúl]

The only reservation I would have with using a computer to calculate aerodynamics is that the program is only as good as the person who programmed it.

I don't believe that a computer is a perfect substitute for having actual airflow over the car that only a wind tunnel can provide!

A correctly-configured wind tunnel, that is. See Renault in 2007

[myownalias]

The only reservation I would have with using a computer to calculate aerodynamics is that the program is only as good as the person who programmed it.

I don't believe that a computer is a perfect substitute for having actual airflow over the car that only a wind tunnel can provide!

A correctly-configured wind tunnel, that is. See Renault in 2007

See aforementioned analogy about computer programs.

[Denthúl]

The only reservation I would have with using a computer to calculate aerodynamics is that the program is only as good as the person who programmed it.

I don't believe that a computer is a perfect substitute for having actual airflow over the car that only a wind tunnel can provide!

A correctly-configured wind tunnel, that is. See Renault in 2007

See aforementioned analogy about computer programs.

I don't know what you're talking about. All mine are perfect. They've never deleted any critical files because I typed a path wrong or anything.

[7UpJordan]

If only there were more designers like Newey in F1, he still uses the old fashioned methods of the drawing board and pecil before Red Bull do anything with a wind tunnel or computer.

[autogyro]

If only there were more designers like Newey in F1, he still uses the old fashioned methods of the drawing board and pecil before Red Bull do anything with a wind tunnel or computer.

Exactly, the modern ideas on design slay me.
Nick Wirth has a brilliant computer system it is true, probably the best.
However it is only ever going to be as good as the data base it has.
Many designers have confirmed to me that after the computer work there is a meeting of minds to analyze the results and make decisions.
Let us hope that Nick has engineer/designers who can think out of the box for his sake.
IMO CAD systems are slowly destroying the human brilliance for innovation, shown so often in the past.

[Jabberwocky]

the problem is that there is only one Newey. I think another problem is that it is down to the communication amongs a design team. If one man designs the whole car he will know why this bit is there and that bit is there. If it is built by commitiee there is gonna be problems and arguments

[autogyro]

the problem is that there is only one Newey. I think another problem is that it is down to the communication amongs a design team. If one man designs the whole car he will know why this bit is there and that bit is there. If it is built by commitiee there is gonna be problems and arguments

Was that why Adrian left Williams. Patrick was certainly a technical match and there is usualy only one genius.