multi21

Look Ma, no windtunnels.... We'll see next week (Testing resumes Feb. 10-13) how this all computer model car goes up against the traditional CFD/windtunnel cars and old school Adrian Newey "Draft Table" Red Bull Racer.

Virgin reveals 'all-digital' car
03 February 2010 / Photos


The brand-new Virgin Racing has unveiled its first car as it becomes one of Formula 1's four new teams for the 2010 season. The VR-01, to be driven by Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi, has been dubbed F1's 'first all-digital' car due to designer Nick Wirth's sole use of computer technology as opposed to wind tunnel development.

With John Booth's Manor GP entrant having been renamed Virgin Racing following the buy-in from Sir Richard Branson's worldwide group, the official team launch was held in London's Notting Hill last December ahead of Wednesday's gathering in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.




Virgin's online launch was not broadcast on its website due to technical problems
Nick Wirth's return to Formula 1 sees the welcoming back of the man who was owner of the Simtek team in the mid-1990s as well as being an aerodynamicist and Chief Designer at Benetton. The Cosworth-powered car will be shaken down on-track in a private test at Silverstone on Thursday and Friday of this week.

"Today is a very proud day for everyone involved with Virgin Racing," Technical Director Wirth commented. "However on this occasion, where the car is the star, I want to pay tribute to all the amazing people at Wirth Research who deserve so much of the credit for the VR-01.

"Putting together an F1 team, assembling an engineering group and designing a new car from scratch is an epic task in the timeframe we have been working to.





"I have been fortunate to have worked with the very best designers in F1 and I am well aware of exactly what it takes to be successful in this sport. When you see what the existing teams have achieved - using the conventional but proven design approach - it is unsurprising that there is a great deal of scepticism about our all-CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) approach.

"But we are competing in a sport that is undergoing significant change, having come face-to-face with today's harsh economic realities. Under resource restriction, convention will become too costly and necessity really will be the mother of invention. I have absolute belief in the digital design process and the opportunity to put the all-CFD approach to the test at the highest level - to demonstrate that this could be the way for the future of F1 - is very, very exciting."

theporscheguy

One of the other considerations has to be the powerplant. The other teams have had a significant amount of time to tweak the powerplant. Schu's first full season team switched from Ford in 1995, I think, to Renault to help compete with the Williams. All good stuff though. Can't wait for the season to start.

ltc

IIRC, wasn't Nick Wirth and his company responsible for the Acura ALMS P1 car?
IIRC, that too was an 'all digital' (ALMS) car.

Veloce Raptor

Damn, Pete...when you said "virgin" I thought GhettoRacer was now designing cars.






Professional Racing and Driving Coach

multi21

^^^LOL I guess both "Virgin" and "All Digital" does spur the imagination of little GR doesn't it?

ew928

Irony?

May their CFD assumptions be close to reality.

Cory M

The Prodrive GT1 Ferrari's that beat the Corvettes at Lemans were designed with no wind tunnel testing, at least initially they may have been tested after a couple of season when they were further into the development.

I get a kick out of the "Adrian Newey draft table" comments you always hear. Do people really believe that he draws up the car himself on a drafting board??

ltc

IIRC, Matchett mentioned during one of the broadcasts that Newey still uses a drafting table and then hands off his drawings to others for entry into the CAD systems.

Bryan Watts

Got a link so we can read the article and see some decent sized pictures?

FYI - Copy and pasting the entire article is bad from a copyright standpoint and from the reader's standpoint (websites live from traffic via ads, etc...if we don't visit, they have no idea we're reading their content and may not produce similar articles in the future). Generally, the title, the first paragraph, and a link are the way to go.

multi21

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/formula-1-...l-digital-car/

Cory M

I know, and I've heard that for years too. But to think that a team with with multi-million dollar budgets, hundreds of employees, cutting edge software (CAD, FEA, CFD, and a lot more), wind tunnel, etc relies on some 2D pencil sketches by one man to design their car is absolutely ridiculous. Of course your technical director who is paid millions is not going to waste his time modeling parts in CAD when you can pay someone a small fraction of that to do a better job of it than he could. I'm sure he has a lot of technical input into the designs (more than most tech directors) and he uses sketches to demonstrate his ideas just like every other engineer. But after that his team takes over and studies, changes, optimizes, iterates, and evolves the design until what the analysis and testing shows is best ends up on the car. To think that Adrian Newey hands his pencil sketch over to a CAD operator and then it's off to the races is laughable and demeaning to all of the hardworking engineers and technicians on the team.

When he left McLaren, and took his drafting table with him, did the team run out of design ideas and fall apart?