pilmat Real Racing Thread

[pilmat]

Hi all! After reading through EDK's racing RL exploits, and how you all reacted positively to it, I thought I would share another side of real life racing. I'm involved in racing on the other side of the steering wheel, I engineer the car. The role is what we call the track side engineer or race engineer. I interface with the driver and the car data to maximize the set-up (and often the driver too ).

I'm involved with a team in Canadian Formula Ford and in the US Formula 2000 Championship series. Those are my main 2 series, but I am also involved in a Canadian Tire NASCAR team and several NE DIRT Modified teams. It's a pretty busy schedule

As part of driver development, I'm integrating more simulation into all of the above programs. Sim programs are to the point where, with careful cross-referencing to the real world, they can be used as practical learning tools. My home rig can be seen from my sig, we have a DBox equipped Human Racing rig at the NASCAR shop and we are implementing a Human Racing rig at the formula team too.

One of my specializations is in suspension, specifically shocks (or dampers, if you prefer). They are wonderful dynamic system all of their own and I love getting into the meat of their integration of the rest of the car set-up. I do formula shocks, paved oval and dirt modified shocks. Marrying what I learn from these VERY different environments is one of the most satisfying things for me in racing

The other great pleasure, is to find ways to get the most out of each of my drivers. In all the teams I'm involved with, we have a wide range of drivers. Everything from up-and-comers to gentleman (and the odd gentlewoman) drivers. Everyone has their own personal potential, and it's a lot of fun getting them to surpass themselves and reach a new level! This winter, I'm working with a couple of drivers on simulators to try to get a jump on the competition: results to follow.

My goals in this thread are to share with you things I come across in each of the aspects above and anything that I find cool along my many travels. Feel free to ask questions as I find explaining things forces me to look at stuff from an angle I might not have before, and I end up learning something too 💡

Cheers, Phil.

 

[pilmat]

As this is my thread, I'll double post I'm a visual person, so I like lots of photos!

Today I'm in the shock room working on some Penske 8760 triple adjustable shocks. The three adjustments are low speed rebound, low speed bump and high speed bump. The speed referred to is the shaft speed. Low speed is typically defined as the weight transfer zone, or "what the driver can feel". High speed is bump and curb management.

This is the shock room:

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Here is the guts of one being worked on:

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The shaft you see just above the shock vice was giving me some grief until I realized the person who originally put it together, did so with an incorrect diameter valve . It took me a couple of hours to find one valve shim that was 0.035" too small in diameter (dang these things are sensitive!).

WARNING!!! TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS!!!!!!
This is what the dyno looks like running that shock. The sound is atrocious (not much better in real life), so BE WARNED!! The video quality is crap too, I need to figure out how to get better video from my iPhone...

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The dyno is a fun tool, but just a tool (we don't race dynes!). It has an infrared temp sensor (on the left pointed at the main body). And the dyno is set to a 1 inch stroke (so that is up 1" AND down 1"). The load cell (blue disc above the shock attached to the cross bar) makes all the force measurements, and there is a position sensor on the left of the scotch yoke (twirling part in the base) take precise time based position measurements (converted to velocity mathematically).

And here is the force versus velocity graph from that run:

​

Upper left quadrant is compression, lower right is rebound. Left right is velocity, up down is force. What we are looking for in this shock (formula car with sticky tires on asphalt), is a lot of low speed control. The nose of the compression is critical and the smoothness of the rebound is important. The graph diverges from itself due to hysteresis.

 

[anastasis14]

Oh man, do I love this! The stuff you are presenting us is actually a part of what I would prefer to do in my life. But first things first, I have to enter the mechanical engineering section of the university! Please add more!!

 

[pilmat]

Oh man, do I love this! The stuff you are presenting us is actually a part of what I would prefer to do in my life. But first things first, I have to enter the mechanical engineering section of the university! Please add more!!

School is important now in racing. There are a lot of very advanced concepts that I only really learned when at school. I went to university for my B.Eng in mech after spending 5 years in the UK learning race mechanics. With the education I really started to apply things I mechanically understood, and became a better race engineer Another thing that helps is I raced a lot: karting, formula cars, ice racing, a bit of sedans, co-driver in rally (never drove in a rally myself). Putting the theory together with understanding what it feels like is a great benefit. Sims are getting closer!

 

[mike_gt3]

Great thread Phil! very interresting stuff! 👍

 

[Senninha_77]

Wow... !!!! Got my 'Watch Thread' even before I finish reading all of it...!! Really nice and interesting!!
Congratulations Phil!!!

 

[Racingworld68]

Awsome Phil 👍

 

[pilmat]

Thanks for the encouragement guys

These are the actual cars I work with:

F2000 Championship Series

This is a great series, fairly limited in expensive technology, but there is more than enough to play with to make it a great engineering challenge. But the cars are well balanced in terms of power, grip and aero, so a good driver is still the most important ingredient.

NASCAR Canadian Tire Series

These things are beasts! The technology is repressed through the rules to keep things within NASCAR's vision (which, incase you didn't know, is parity). There is a lot to do on the cars, they basically eat themselves. Brakes are not the strongest, but we've come a long way to make big improvements here. Handling is meh, but it's the same for everybody, so "git up on the wheel and dive"!

DIRT Modified

Those cars are awesome. I learned a lot developing the shocks for this car. We started a bit off the mark, but quickly got are program together and went on to a very dominating season. I only do the shocks, but we found a lot of speed and consistency in them!

Canadian Formula Ford Series (Ontario and Quebec)

These cars are basically the same as the F2000 above, but with quite a bit less power, no wings or under car aero and a LOT less grip from the tires. It's a true drivers class, but the recent move to radials has put too much engineering into such a junior formula... Data is key to helping the drivers, and the most powerful data is an on-board camera. Video review with the driver is one of the best ways to get a lot out of the driver/car package.
​

Each series has very different rules and approaches. I consider myself a "race fan" and not aligned with any one series (in fact, the racing I enjoy the most is Moto GP ). Keeping an open mind about all kinds of racing has allowed me into many situations I didn't think were possible and has put me in contact with a lot of brilliant and knowledgable people!

Is there anything you would like to ask about any of this stuff? I like questions

 

[mike_gt3]

Is there anything you would like to ask about any of this stuff? I like questions

i have one question, can i be one of your test driver?

More seriously now, do you go to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for the Nascar canadian tire? and for the Formule 1600 during the F1 GP ?

 

[pilmat]

Test drive? Well, we'd have to discuss that one!

I've watched the Nationwide race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve once, the first year. But I started in NASCAR the race after the last one in 2012

I've been there the last few years, except 2013, for Formula Ford. We won Saturday in 2010 and Sunday in 2012 (always the yellow and blue cars).

In 2013 I was there with a CTCC Scion FRS. The car had just been built and the weekend was full of teething problems, including a junked motor in the Saturday race...

 

[mike_gt3]

Test drive? Well, we'd have to discuss that one!

I've watched the Nationwide race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve once, the first year. But I started in NASCAR the race after the last one in 2012

I've been there the last few years, except 2013, for Formula Ford. We won Saturday in 2010 and Sunday in 2012 (always the yellow and blue cars).

In 2013 I was there with a CTCC Scion FRS. The car had just been built and the weekend was full of teething problems, including a junked motor in the Saturday race...

...I am always open to discussion when driving is involved

Its great that you can take part in many different type or racing. 👍
Thats something i would have liked to do, thx for sharing this stuff!

 

[pilmat]

Yes, it's Saturday, but racing never sleeps! Today we're going to do some virtual testing

As I mentioned earlier, I work with sims for driver development. In a little over a week we start our pre-season testing on track. And to knock some winter dust off before we get to the track, today we are working on different aspects of driver feedback and self-analysis to accelerate the learning curve and save some expensive track time.

We are on iRacing, using the HDP sports car at Mid-Ohio. We start with he baseline car from iRacing's set-ups and tune it from there. I let the driver go and just observe while he is on track, unless there is something very blatant that is impeding what we are doing. Else we talk about the car and driving at the end of each lapping segment. I observe while he's driving and correct info that he feeds back unless I want him to see the error of his feedback. We work on understanding what changes do and the difference between mechanical and aero changes, and what a "big" change versus "pushing the car in a direction".

These days are fun and we have seen really good results! I have a few drivers I do this with and the benefits have been quite striking, often giving us something to compare real world problems to: "You remember when we had this problem on the rig? Well, this is like that but..."

I'll give some more details on this through our discussions, but I have to get back to the rig now

P.S. I convey a LOT of what I learn here within the WRS too! Thanks to everybody for helping me

 

[Cats_PJs]

Glad I finally got around to reading this thread, really interesting and well written. Thanks for sharing, and I'm pleased to hear that even someone involved in real racing still enjoys our little game.

 

[pilmat]

^ Thanks Baron 👍

Test session went really well on Saturday. I'm very pleased with the way tuning works in iRacing. The car behaves much as expected

For example, the HPD ARX 01c is a handful on power. The default diff settings are far too harsh, but even once the diff is set to a much calmer setting (basically minimum settings) the on-power behavior can be abrupt. We worked on taming the rear with mechanical grip and with aero changes. It responds best to aero, especially changes that accentuate the under car aero. Lowering the rear ride height, which lowers the rear roll center AND moves back the aero center-of-pressure (CP), has a dramatic effect on handling. And as the changes is more pronounced in higher speed sections, the Cp change seems the greater of the two. Further, lowering the rear spring rate (while keeping the static rear ride height the same) has less pronounced effect, proving that the mechanical grip aspect is not as strong as the aero.

We got the rear reasonably well planted, and now moved towards the front as the turn in was inconsistent, especially at higher speeds. We tried a stiffer front spring to see if it the front was just too aero loaded on initial turn in. That helped make the front more manageable at speed, but required a greater effort to turn the car. So we then went back on spring and increased the front anti-roll bar (sway bar) stiffness. This really calmed down the front on turn in at higher and lower speed. The low speed change was quite nice as it gave the car a touch of turn-in understeer which allowed earlier throttle application without the rear end unloading (spinning the inside rear tire) too quickly. Overall the best balance we found. To explore the front feel a bit more, we went back on bar and played with the shock settings. Increasing the bump gave the same feel as the increased spring (as a quick pit check of a too soft front spring, I will add a good chunk of front bump to see if this helps, and if it does I am confident the car can take more front spring), and increasing the front rebound had a very small effect on the turn in, although it did help. So the car has a more static issue (overall front roll rate) than a dynamic one (roll resistance during weight transfer).

We also experimented with different lines and driving techniques. Mid-Ohio is a great track for this, as the complex combination of corners allows for multiple line selections. Really, you are choosing which parts of the back-to-back corners to sacrifice in order to maximize overall speed. The HPD (and iRacing in general) rewards the driver for balanced throttle driving through complex corners, where as GT tends to like trailing throttle in a lot of places. Knowing these characteristics makes for getting the most out of each sim

It's back in the shock room today, getting F2000 shocks ready for the first test next week 👍

 

[skyline1683]

Such a great thread to come across

Great to see someone as involved in racing/Motorsport away from the game as you are.
Just wish I had someone as knowledgable as you in my team for my drag weekends.

Great thread

 

[pilmat]

Had a few days in the formula car shop finalizing the F2000 before our first test next week. Lots of little details absorb 3 days before you know it! The good news is the car looks great on the set-up pad, everything is square and flat

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The brake balance bar (for setting brake bias) was worn out. The new one was a pain to fit, but the result is a brake pedal with a lot less play in it:

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Here are the shocks you saw before, installed front and rear:​

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We also put a new ReplayXD camera on the car for the test. Here is the angle we will see when doing video review:

​

Even with a data logging system (we use a multi channel AIM system), video review shows a lot of the little things that the driver is doing. I like to see smooth hands, opposed to someone constantly sawing at the wheel. And reviewing braking and turn-in tendencies can help the driver be smoother, which leads to carrying more speed through the corner.

​

 

[mike_gt3]

Awesome stuff Phil! 👍 nice camera angle on the car!
What engine are in the F2000?

 

[pilmat]

Awesome stuff Phil! 👍 nice camera angle on the car!
What engine are in the F2000?

It's a Zetec 2.0l, dry sump and custom intake system. The rest is fairly stock and reliable. They are sealed too. The power plant is sound and it's not a horsepower category, driving and set-up (in that order). The tires are quite good too, but don't have a very long life. 4 heat cycles and they are toast (~100 miles).

Chassis is a Van Deimen (British) and the gearbox is a 4 speed Hewland "fully customizable dog-box".

There are no secrets under the engine cover, I'll take better pictures when I get to the track. The whole car shot was just a test run of the Replay camera, but I liked it when I was loping for the camera position shot

As for speed, when I ran the previous generation with a 2.0 Pinto motor, we were faster than the NASCAR trucks at Watkins Glen And that was 135hp at the flywheel! The Zetec produces around 145hp, which a fat torque curve.

 

[JogoAsobi]

Thanks for sharing this info!
Its great to see it from a behind-the-scenes perspective! 👍
Now one of my "watched" threads.

 

[Argon]

Wow Phil, I'm definitely going to be paying a whole lot more attention to any tuning tips you post from now on. Awesome read and can't wait for updates

👍

 

[pilmat]

^ Thanks Mike, but tuning in GT6 is quite different to real life

Just finished a 2 day test with the F2000 in perpetration for the first race 👍 Have a lot of data to pour through, but we found a lot of what we were looking for!

I took a few pics too, and will get them up early in the weekend.

 

[pilmat]

As spectators, we see a lot of what goes on outside the car, and with many televised series we can see a lot of things from a driver's point of view. In those in-car shots, there can look like there is a lot going on: buttons, knobs and levers all over the place! The reality is that a cockpit is a simp, orderly place. A driver has his hand and mind full with, well, driving (and he or she doesn't, maybe they shouldn't be on a race track ).

Some of the stuff you see in the car isn't even for the driver, or at least not for while they are driving. There are maintenance functions and accesses that only get used in the pits, but we have a convenient access to them without having to take the car apart. Here is what the inside of our F2000 looks like:

Through the roll over hoop

Bird's eye view
​

There is a fair bit of stuff in there, so let's walk through what it all does. Let's start on the right side, as it is the simplest:

Right Side Controls

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The silver lever below and to the right of the steering wheel is the gear shift lever. This car uses a 4 speed H-pattern shifter (4 is the maximum allowed forward gears and sequential is not allowed). The lever is nicely placed just off the steering wheel. Simply drop your hand from the wheel and it falls right onto the lever.

The car does have a working reverse gear, and it is over to the left and forward. A spring prevents the lever from "falling" into the reverse gate. If this sounds a lot like a VW gearbox, it's because it is (well, it used to be). This car uses a Hewland LD200, which is an evolution of the Mark 8 and Mark 9 Hewland gearboxes that were literally VW original beetle gear cases fitted with custom internals.

Above the gear lever is a cockpit adjustable rear ant-roll bar (sway bar if you prefer, but I engineer-speak this as RARB in my notes). The RARB functions the same as the FARB that you will see up close a little further down. One thing to note here is that due to the limited space in the cockpit, the RAB is adjusted with the LEFT hand. As it is only adjusted on straights, and usually in one direction and left there if it's during a race, this isn't a problem, just something the driver needs to use a couple of times and it's automatic after that.

Now let's move across to the left:

Left Side Controls
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Let's start at the top of the aluminum coloured switch panel. The top right switch is the ignition switch, it turns all engine controls on, including the fuel pump. Turning everything off is again a one switch deal. Just to the left is the start button.

Below that is the rain light. Formula cars have very simple electrical systems. Well they used to before multi port fuel injection and data loggers! The only lights we have are a rear facing red light that's used in the rain to help drivers identify cars in front of them through the wall of spray. With modern LED lights, these are now very bright and consume incredibly low power, visibility has improved greatly in the rain.

And just south of the rain light switch is the brake bias knob. In GT we set amount of front and rear brakes as separate items, but in real cars they are purposely linked together. The rules specify that a car must have two independent braking circuits operated on a single brake pedal. We use one circuit for the front and the other for the rear, and they are connected by the brake balance bar (look for that picture in a previous post). Inside the brake pedal is a ball that is turned on a screw to one side of the pedal or the other to but more of the pedal force bias to the front or rear brake circuit. So the front/rear braking relationship is always give and take, not independent like in GT6.

You'll note that the brake bias is the only control that is labeled, and it is indicating F and R for front and rear. The other switches are not labeled as they are auto apparent to the driver. Plus he doesn't have time to read a tiny label at speed! The brake bias label is really just to remind all of us how this car was assembled because sometimes it is different on our cars (lots of factors here...).

The red pull handle above the switch panel is the fire extinguisher release. VERY important piece of equipment! The fire bottle, which is beneath a panel under the driver's legs, has a nozzle in the cockpit and one into the engine bay near the fuel side of the engine. One pull of that handle and the cockpit and engine bay a fogged with fire retardant. The cockpit nozzle is fairly low so as not to asphyxiate the driver.

Just aft of the fire handle is the radio tray. The driver can adjust the volume of the radio himself, especially useful if there is interference, as he can even turn it off so it doesn't bother him. The push-to-talk button is on the steering wheel, in this case it is the bottom right green button.

The red knob below the switch panel is the front anti-roll bar (FARB) control. Like the rear it is a five position lever, with strong detents to hold it in place. So what is it changing? Here is the FARB itself.

FARB (top)

FARB (side)
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The anti-roll bar is a T-bar, where roll will cause the bar to twist the centre post (that is below the blade). We change the whole bar to change the size of the centre post. But there is a range of adjustment provided by the blade on top. When the driver moves the cockpit knob, he is making the blade "stand-up" (making it easy to bend and therefore softer) or "lie down" (making the blade very difficult to bend and therefore stiffer). Here it set in a medium stiffness.

Hope you enjoyed this

A couple of things are missing, like the master switch and the info about the steering wheel and what is displayed on it. The Master Switch is an obvious red switch mounted on the side of the cockpit and it cuts total power to the car. The display on the wheel (we usually call that the dash) and the data logger are controlled by the master switch, where the engine can be cut by the master switch, but it can't be started from it.

The wheel, display and dash I will feature in another post as it is a whole conversation on its own 👍

If I missed anything over breezed over it too quickly, just ask

 

[JogoAsobi]

Very nice write-up Phil!
Interesting about it using an H-shifter, and not sequential.
The front/rear brake relationship and brake bias very insightful too. 👍

 

[mike_gt3]

Thx for sharing Phil, really interresting to learn more about this car! , we can feel the passion you have for motorsports
as well.
👍


Have you had the chance to drive it? and is the zetec engine made by Ford?

 

[anastasis14]

and is the zetec engine made by Ford?

I was wondering that as well!

 

[pilmat]

Have you had the chance to drive it? and is the zetec engine made by Ford?

I was wondering that as well!

I haven't driven a race car in anger since 1991! Been a looooong time. So, no, I haven't driven any of the cars I work with.

Last year I did get back into a bit of karting and it helped me understand where kraters are coming from now. The tires and associated chassis are horrible! Combine that with centripetal clutches and it's easy to see why kraters have such bad habits when moving into formula cars. It takes me up to a full season to get them out of their karting habits and driving the cars efficiently.

I am trying to do a couple of evening track sessions in a F1600 before the season starts. This is in the same vein as to understand the car again from the drivers perspective. Plus it will be fun

The engine is indeed a Ford Zetec. The series was originally called Formula Ford 2000 and was a step up from Formula Ford 1600. Back then the F2000 cars were Pinto powered, and the F1600 had an engine called a Kent (fitted to the Cortina and here in NA to the original Fiesta way back when). Ford have very little implication now, and as Honda motors are allowed in F1600 (the joke there is that the Honda is a 1500), we just call it Formula 2000 and FF respectively. F2000 is called Formula Continental (FC) in SCCA racing. There is a similar F2000 series called USF2000, and they use a Mazda 2l engine (and Mazda is partially owned by Ford).

Confused yet? It is confusing and all it does is thin out the grids. With multiple organizations (SCCA, Indy car, NASCAR/Grand-Am, etc.), everybody is trying to find a niche and each series does cater to a price-point/clientele. Top that off with a weak economy and racing gets watered down a lot.

 

[pilmat]

Hello?

This thread is in the WRS section (you are in the WRS, right?) for the same reason as @EDK has his thread in here: to share with WRS friends. Prior to starting it, I asked the WRS mods what they thought and they agreed it would be appropriate here.

If the thread bothers you, may I suggest ignoring it?

 

[mike_gt3]

I just don't see what it has to do with the WRS. It's purely about things you're finding in the real world.

No one want you to understand, and from there since Pilmat already said his thread is allowed, i think it is not useful for you add new post to explain your point of view. Just ignore the thread





Phil @pilmat , what are the bad habit when coming from Karting? i was planning to buy a Kart this spring...

 

[pilmat]

Karts are solid axle design, which locks the two rear wheels together. Kart designers have known for a very long time that the only way to get a kart quickly through a corner is to "unload" the inside wheel. The chassis is designed that it flexes under power with steering input, thus unloading the inside wheel.

So the best driven technique is to apply throttle as soon as possible, basically on corner entry so that the car can "carve" on one rear wheel. This is amplified when you consider the engine has a centrifugal clutch, which allow the kart to freewheel off power. Back when I did inter nation karting, we ran direct drive (the chain went from a sprocket on the crankshaft to one on the rear axle), which gave us some back torque and helped a lot on corner entry. Now you need throttle VERY early!

This loaded chassis technique also changes what a racing line looks like. With a suspended car, especially one that is traction limited, you drive with a technique where you apex just a bit after the geometric centre of a corner so that you can start to unwind the steering wheel as quickly as possible. This reduces slip angle in the tires giving more of the friction circle to forward acceleration and produces faster lap times. With a kart, you need to keep the inside wheel unloaded as long as possible, so the racing line changes with the apex now back at the geometric centre of the corner, allowing steering lock right to corner exit.

The current kart tires are also adding to the technique, as they provide very low levels of grip, so "banging open the throttle" produces a better unloading effect on the inside wheel. And in a suspended car, this produces a very fast weight shift front to rear and makes the car handle poorly.

Getting karting out of drivers is something I find is very good to do on the simulator. It provides a benign environment where we can easily over exaggerate driving techniques to show drivers why things happen. You didn't see a RESET button in the cockpit of the F2000!

But there is nothing "wrong" with karting, in fact it's a lot of fun. Just don't think that because you are lightning fast in one that you can jump into a formula car and easily dominate

 

[anastasis14]

What changes besides the tire selection tuning wise in raining conditions?