There is probably no better exemplar of British high value-added engineering than the motorsport sector, where an industry worth almost £10 billion is acknowledged to be the best in the world.
A vastly lucrative and glamorous F1 competition, with teams funded and supplied by engineers from across the world, is centred on a 200-square-mile area of the country dubbed Motorsport Valley. Teams based here include Red Bull, in Milton Keynes; McLaren, operating from Woking, Surrey; Mercedes, in Brackley, Northamptonshire; Lotus, headquartered in Enstone, Oxfordshire; and Force India, near the Silverstone race circuit.
Some 25,000 engineers, working for 4,000 companies, serve F1 and other motorsport competitions within this boundary. According to Chris Aylett, who raced for 25 years and has been at the helm of the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA) for 17 seasons, his trade body, based in Warwickshire, is the only one of its type globally – although two regional US associations serve the Nascar and Indy 500 competitions. A quarter of MIA members are foreign teams or firms, he says. “Motorsport Valley is far and away the biggest cluster of companies that manufacture performance engineering for motorsport.”
The UK enjoys a special motorsport heritage: the first Formula One World Championship was held at Silverstone in 1950, although the nascent industry was dominated at the time by Italian teams. But in the 1950s, British teams did well: Jaguar won Le Mans five times, and Aston Martin once. In the following decade, UK-based teams became F1 world leaders.
This success laid the basis for the successful F1 engineering industry now seen in the UK. Leading F1 team Williams, which is based in Grove, Oxfordshire, was enjoying third position in the championship as PE went to press. Like other teams, it is branching out into other areas in order not to be solely reliant on revenue from racing.
In 2008, Williams F1 designed an electromechanical hybrid energy recovery system using a flywheel instead of a battery. This was successfully adopted by Audi and Porsche in the World Endurance Championship, and the technology was then bought by a major supplier, GKN Driveline. The Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) – see box overleaf – was also used in F1 for the first time in that year. In recent times, the F1 industry has focused on energy efficiency as well as operating under a relatively austere cost regime. Carbon-fibre composites, used in building racing car bodies, have also been used extensively in road cars. Like KERS, the technology is gradually being adopted in volume car production. Technology suppliers in motorsport are also working in aerospace, defence and consumer goods.
Matthew Burke, head of technology ventures at Williams Advanced Engineering, says: “There is always this valley of death between idea generation and having a physical prototype in your hands. As an F1 team we make a car from scratch on an 18-month cycle. Most people cannot comprehend that speed of work. For us it’s part of our daily workflow.”
F1 teams and suppliers invest heavily in R&D – up to a third of profits – meaning that the industry is twice as R&D intensive as pharmaceuticals, and perhaps 10 times more R&D intensive than mainstream automotive, Aylett points out. So motorsport is particularly good at dealing with mid-tier Technology Readiness levels – the major gap in the so-called ‘valley of death’ – which develop a concept from proof stage to physical prototype. Teams, used to developing technologies quickly in the two weeks between F1 races, offer a speed and efficiency of development of prototypes that is beyond the capabilities of OEMs working in slower-moving industries, says Aylett.
The MIA chief says the engineering culture associated with motorsport is one of “pistols at dawn” – a harsh but creative environment in which the optimum engineering solution is always sought. He says: “The changes in regulations in F1 force regular innovations, because you never have a five-year production run. Each time the regulations change, whether people think it’s a good thing or a bad thing, they create a kind of dynamic that drives engineering solutions.
“For business, that’s always good. And the rules move faster than ordinary engineering regulations. They change quickly. The engineers have to react – and still come up with a winning solution.”
Engineer Kieron Salter, owner of KW Special Projects, which provides engineering services to motorsport, is expanding into other areas. He has acted as an engineer on schemes for Reynard, Indy Car, Formula 3000 and Le Mans, and was a consultant to McLaren on its supercar project. Salter says data analysis, lightweight structures and aerodynamics are areas of motorsport technology that other sectors are interested in.
“We are very good at making things fast,” he says. “We are good at tyres, and geometry, and human performance – because racing drivers are outstanding athletes.” One recent initiative for KW Special Projects was the development of an industrial inkjet printer featuring fast-moving printheads working to high accuracy and tolerances. Salter’s firm is also interested in transferring motorsport technology into medical, rail, defence, aerospace, and bike design.
Motorsport has become more open and is benefiting from less of a shroud of secrecy over its engineering, Salter believes. This means more interest from other sectors. “I think in the past there was a lack of transparency about what motorsport did,” he says. “Aerodynamics and composites were the key areas.
“Now there is a lot of technology being developed around data protection and analysis. There are a lot more engineers working in other sectors recognising that; they make some of the connections back from industry into motorsport.”
He adds: “What you find in motorsport is there are a lot of people thinking what they are doing is really clever, but not giving access or knowledge externally about what is going on. There is a hush-hush attitude.”
Motorsport has realised it can’t be sustainable “just by doing motorsport,” he believes. “It is now more about the motorsport industry reaching out and saying ‘we’ve got this really great stuff that we’ve been keeping secret’.”
Aylett of the MIA notes that the silo mentality of motorsport, and of some other sectors, is changing fast. “The silos in engineering are going to fall apart over the next decade or two,” he says. “If Britain is to be an engineering powerhouse for low-carbon technology, they are going to have to crumble.”
A case in point is work that Burke of Williams is carrying out for Sainsbury’s, to develop a means of reducing costs and energy use by stores’ open-fronted refrigeration. Energy consumption makes up a significant percentage of a supermarket’s costs, with power-hungry refrigerators that keep produce cool the culprit. Sainsbury’s operates 1,100 stores – and uses 1% of Britain’s energy in total. The retailer has committed to reducing its absolute operational carbon emissions by 30% by 2020.
Aerofoils, carefully engineered profiles that control the direction of air flow, are being developed by Williams engineers to attach onto each refrigerator shelf to keep more of the cool air inside the cabinet. The technology could result in significant energy savings for stores, Williams claims. Aerofoil Energy is working closely with Williams to refine the concept. Sainsbury’s, the UK’s second-largest supermarket chain, has been testing the product in its stores and achieved a 30% reduction in the energy being consumed.
Since the financial crisis, says Burke, Williams has been “moving away from being just an F1 team. It’s better for us: as well as sponsorship and prize money, we need to identify a third revenue stream.”
Technology transfer
F1 electric flywheels in London buses: GKN and the Go Ahead group have agreed a deal that will help reduce emissions in cities with the supply of electric flywheel systems to 500 buses over the next two years. The system was developed in F1.
Race engine technology gets airborne: Race engineering firm Ilmor has created the Hornet unmanned aerial vehicle engine. The three-cylinder, 12-valve engine fits into a 440mm diameter fuselage with an installed weight of just 70kg. It has an integrated propeller drive and electronic fuel system.
Racing composites take flight: Forward Composites has applied its motorsport expertise as a partner for the revolutionary British-designed Airlander airship, and the Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicle.
Performance data recording for mainstream automotive: Cosworth’s Alivedrive performance data recorder transfers data logging technologies to the OEM automotive market. It combines high-definition video, car sensor data, GPS, accelerometer, and post-driving analysis with social networking.
Flywheel cuts bus fuel costs
The 2014 SMMT Award for Automotive Innovation was won by transmissions firm Torotrak for its Flybrid mechanical flywheel hybrid system, an F1-inspired Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) with “huge potential to influence the wider automotive sector”.
Torotrak was commended on the application of its mechanical hybrid technology to urban buses and commercial vehicles. The system captures kinetic energy as the vehicle slows down and transfers it to a flywheel that spins at up to 60,000rpm.
As it brakes frequently, a city bus is an ideal application for the Flybrid technology, says Torotrak. This project, with British bus manufacturer Wrightbus, has led to the development of a heavy-duty but lightweight Flybrid unit for buses and light commercial vehicles.
Wrightbus’s StreetLite midi bus is the first to be equipped with the technology. With a simple mechanical connection to the driveline, and being relatively compact, the KERS unit will fit a variety of buses and is also suitable for 10- to 12-tonne commercial vehicles, says Torotrak. The main feature of the system is its low purchase cost, and short payback time for operators. Compared to hybrid electric bus options, the Flybrid unit is available for almost a quarter of the price, and with around half the payback period, at under five years, the firm suggests.
The technology puts energy into the drivetrain during acceleration, to reduce load on the diesel engine, saving fuel and reducing emissions. It is purely mechanical, with no costly high-voltage batteries, and without the inefficiency of converting energy from mechanical-kinetic to electrical and back. Because it is completely mechanical, the flywheel system also provides full depth of discharge throughout the vehicle’s life, and has only basic servicing requirements, similar to the main drive transmission. This helps to offer a low cost of ownership, and also to maintain the vehicle’s residual value.
The total UK bus fleet is 52,000 vehicles, offering extensive opportunity for retrofitting energy-efficient technologies, says Torotrak.
While the first application of the Flybrid will be in the Wrightbus StreetLite in the UK, the list of further vehicles that could accommodate a system like this is extensive. There is also a “significant opportunity” for commercial vehicle applications, says Torotrak.
The StreetLite vehicle weighs 12 tonnes. More weight and higher average speeds mean more energy to recover, so it is possible that the KERS system will deliver even greater savings. This would make the unit ideal for mid-sized delivery trucks, and also refuse collection vehicles that stop and start regularly. The Flybrid KERS system can either be installed during the vehicle manufacturing process, or retrofitted to older vehicles to improve CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
Torotrak received funding last year from Innovate UK to work in a consortium including JCB on an off-highway vehicle project.