Motorsport innovation has, over the years, increasingly fed into the mainstream automotive industry, particularly in the areas of powertrain and electronics. As the connected car becomes a mainstream reality, road cars are again set to benefit from motorsport input, thanks to the high level of connectivity between race cars and their teams
With 1.5GB of data transmitted from each Formula 1 car back to its garage during a Grand Prix race, enabling the constant monitoring of fuel consumption, tyre wear and engine status, “an F1 car is probably the best example of a connected car”, says Steve Wainwright, General Manager EMEA, VP Sales and Marketing, Freescale Semiconductor.
Freescale has a long-standing partnership with McLaren Electronic Systems, which began in 1999 and was formalised in 2008, when the two companies entered into a technology partnership. Freescale itself was established as a company in 2004, when it was spun out of Motorola. The automotive industry is Freescale’s largest single business segment: in 2010, 50 million cars globally had a Freescale component in them. 300 million automotive microcontrollers (MCUs) were provided by Freescale in 2010 alone, and the company has shipped four billion since 1996. According to Wainwright, “That translates to 160,000 cars a day rolling off a line somewhere in the world with Freescale in them.”
The technology partnership came about as a result of the FIA’s decision to standardise powertrain management in Formula 1. “Suddenly Freescale became a supplier to all of the teams on the grid in Formula 1,” says Wainwright. “That was followed up by the extension into NASCAR. By that time, Freescale and McLaren Electronic Systems were working much more closely, and at that point we formalised our partnership.”
“There is a standard ECU which all of the teams use; all of those control units come from McLaren Electronic Systems in Woking, UK, and are underpinned by microprocessors which come from Freescale,” explains Dr Peter van Manen, Managing Director of McLaren Electronics. “The electronics and software which are created by McLaren Electronics Systems are used by all of the teams on all of the cars, with a single version of hardware, and a single version of software. The only difference between the cars is the tuning and the data that’s used to tune them.”
Although teams could gain a competitive advantage in the area of electronics, the FIA introduced a standard ECU in 2008, to remove driver aids like traction control and automatic gearboxes. The electronics platform that was being developed by a number of sources was adding little to the racing, says van Manen. “The tuning of the systems was providing the differentiation. Electronics was a performance differentiator in the early 1990s, but there was an opportunity to reduce costs by having a single platform.”
Motorsport: the industry test-bed
Freescale’s interest in motorsport lies in the test-bed opportunities that it offers. “You don’t make a lot of money supporting F1,” says Wainwright. “There are 22 cars on the grid this year, so the volumes are low. What you do get is this opportunity of a lab environment, and learning cycles.” Product development cycles in F1 are much shorter than in road cars. Whilst a product may take five to seven years from development to fitment in a road car programme, “it is very different in F1,” says Wainwright. “There’s always a change in regulations, and every year there is a new engineering challenge, so there is constant innovation.”
The extreme conditions of motorsport, and of Formula 1 in particular, are ideal for testing those components which, in road cars, would be exposed to much less extreme conditions. “This is an extremely tough environment in terms of heat and vibration. In an F1 engine, you have a machine running at 18,000 RPM. That’s about three times what you get in a road car. That puts tremendous demand on the processors we use, but the processors we use for race cars are the same as those we use in most road cars.”
High speed data, high speed cars
Success in Formula 1 hinges on high speed data transfer between the car, the garage and the factory, explains van Manen. “F1 is a racing series that goes around the world, and every two weeks we set up a new track. F1 relies on a connection between what’s happening on the racetrack, and what’s going on back at base. A Formula 1 car is a complex piece of machinery: it’s made up of about 25,000 components, and 5-10% of those components change every two weeks to make the car faster. The car relies on electronics to make it work reliably, to keep it safe and to perform at its best.”
With up to 10% of the car changing from one race to the next, the teams need to quickly understand how the changes will affect performance. “We can put what is effectively a new car on the track every two weeks by being able to gather data and act upon that information, to develop the car and race effectively against competitors.”
Data from the cars is sent back to the garages, and from the garages back to the factories in real time via a DSL line. “Within most of the garages, there are complex simulations going on, about the state of the engine, tyres and fuel consumption, so that the guys running the race are able to very quickly take decisions, and know what the impact of those decisions will be,” explains van Manen.
This may be crucial in Formula 1, but picture how valuable such data monitoring could be if information about the status of road cars could be monitored in real time, with faults identified before they lead to serious problems. Take it a step further, and vehicles could be repaired on the road, without the need to return to a garage.
Technically, this is already possible, as proven by David Coulthard during the 2002 Monaco Grand Prix. A problem with a transfer valve created dramatic smoke from Coulthard’s McLaren, and threatened to cost him the race. Working remotely via telemetry, McLaren’s engineers identified the problem and carried out a repair, without him returning to the pits. Coulthard went on to win the race. The fact that remote repairs of this kind were later banned shows just how significant such remote intervention could be, not only for Formula 1 but for road cars in general.
2014 rule changes
Although regulations change constantly in Formula 1, the changes coming into effect in 2014 mark a major development in the sport.
“The new engine regulations are much closer to some of the road car considerations, and that is interesting for us,” says Wainwright. The changes include: reduced emissions; increased fuel economy, with the amount of fuel carried on board falling from around 150kg to 100kg; new regulations on how long engines have to last; and most significantly, there will be a smaller engine, going from a 2.4-litre V8 currently to a 1.6-litre turbocharged V6. “All of these things make a big difference to the appeal of this racing to viewers,” says Wainwright. “It’s going from a rarified atmosphere to something we can relate to a little more easily.”
It also gives Formula 1 some green credentials as the sport attempts to become more efficient, but it is high-speed connectivity and data transfer that is set to be the next major technology to transfer from Formula 1 to road cars. “All road car telemetry has been helped by F1 – how to do things at very high speed while ensuring data integrity. That’s very important for driver assistance. It’s all about data acquisition, data transmission and data processing.”
As connectivity improves, it will enable greater levels of driver assistance, and ultimately vehicle autonomy. “At the moment, ADAS is typically the combination of passive and active safety. Much of this technology is already here, like the 77 GHz radar for anti-collision, and the manipulation of video signals for lane departure warning.” As telemetry in Formula 1 advances, and as the technology transfer from Formula 1 to road cars accelerates, so the narrowing gap between ADAS and the autonomous car becomes easier to comprehend – and much of it is thanks to motorsport innovation.
Martin Kahl is the Editor of Automotive World
