How Champ Cars Work

BY MARSHALL BRAIN
Browse the article How Champ Cars Work

Champ Cars have carbon fiber bodies, 900-horsepower engines and top speeds of over
230 mph!

Champ Car racing is one of the most technologically advanced sports in the world today. And,
other than space shuttles and jet fighters, Champ Cars are the most sophisticated vehicles that
we see in common use.

Their carbon fiber bodies, incredible engines, advanced aerodynamics and intelligent electronics
make each car a high-speed research lab. Because a Champ Car runs at speeds up to 240
mph, the driver experiences G-forces and copes with incoming data so quickly that it makes
Champ Car driving one of the most demanding professions in the sporting world.

Have you ever wished you could go behind the scenes and really understand how Champ Car
racing works? Where do these incredible cars and engines come from? How do the drivers
become drivers, and how do they train for each race? Who is on the team, and who works on
these cars before and during each race? What is happening in the pits on race day?

To answer questions like these and really understand how a complete Champ Car team works,
we will learn about the car, the driver and the people that make up the Motorola PacWest
Racing Team. In this article, you'll see everything that makes a Champ Car work through the
eyes of the Motorola PacWest Racing Team.
 Champ Car racing is a unique sport. It features exotic, high-speed, open-wheel cars racing both
in the United States and around the world. The CART program is a combination of Formula 1-
style and oval track racing on four very different types of tracks:

 Short ovals - oval tracks less than 2 miles long

 Super speedways - oval tracks 2 miles or longer
 Street courses - courses laid out on city streets
 Road courses - courses with much of the feel of a street course (lots of tight turns and short
straight-aways), but running on special closed tracks rather than on city streets
The type of track changes from race to race -- Champ Car racing is an incredibly diverse sport.

This level of diversity makes a season of Champ Car racing incredibly exciting. The racing
teams have to create cars that are flexible enough to run under all of these different conditions.
The teams have to completely revise the aerodynamic package, the suspension settings, and
lots of other parameters on their cars for each race, and the drivers have to be extremely agile to
handle all of the different conditions they face. No two races are alike in Champ Car racing.

Approximately 25 cars and drivers -- like the Motorola PacWest Racing Team's number 18 car
driven by Mark Blundell -- compete in the 20 Champ Car races that make up a season.

The sanctioning body for Champ Car racing is CART, or Championship Auto Racing Teams,
Inc.. CART is the governing body for the sport, setting the rules that the teams have to follow
(see the CART Web site for the complete rule book), and it also provides the race officials who
oversee each event.

See the CART Web site for complete details, television schedules and race times.

The Motorola PacWest Racing Team fields car number 18 -- Mark Blundell's
Motorola/Mercedes-Benz car. Mark Blundell is the driver. Motorola is the title sponsor for the
car. Mercedes-Benz provides the engine. Reynard provides the chassis and the tires come from
Firestone.

Champ Car Chassis

 Modern Champ Cars are defined by their chassis. All Champ Cars share the following
characteristics:

 They are single-seat cars.

 They have an open cockpit.
 They have open wheels -- there are no fenders covering the wheels.
 They have wings at the front and rear of the car to provide downforce.
 They position the engine behind the driver.
The chassis of a Champ Car is an amazing thing -- formed almost completely out of carbon
fiber and aluminum honeycomb, a Champ Car chassis is extremely strong and lightweight.
The entire chassis of the PacWest Motorola car weighs only about 1,000 pounds (455
Kilograms) when it arrives from the factory. The team then begins mounting things like the
engine and electronics onto the chassis.

The chassis for the Motorola PacWest car is made by Reynard in England. Reynard supplies the
chassis for a number of the teams. Other teams use chassis from Lola. Every year, the
manufacturers release a new chassis and all of the teams start from scratch, attending testing
sessions to try to gain a competitive advantage with their new chassis.

One reason that a new chassis comes out every year is because the rules evolve with each
season. For example, in 1999, the CART rules reduced allowable aerodynamic downforce by
500 pounds, and all of the chassis manufacturers took this rule change into account in their
designs. (The Information section of the CART Web site contains the complete rule book for
Champ cars.)
When it arrives from the factory, the chassis comes complete with the body of the car, the
suspension, the steering system and the transmission, and is called a rolling chassis. The
team's job is to add things like the engine and electronics to the rolling chassis and tune it to the
driver's style for maximum performance.

All Champ Cars have similar components:

The nose cone includes the front wings, the front suspension, steering mechanism and
front tires. The front wing assembly is completely interchangeable depending on the type
of track, the weather and other variables.

The "tub" (monocoque), or central section of the car, is where the driver sits.
The two side pods on either side of the driver house the car's electronics and the
channels feeding air to the radiators. In this photo, you can also see the fuel filler area,
which leads to the gas tank just behind the driver.

A set of four cover panels: 1) The cover

over the front suspension; 2 and 3) The
covers over the two side pods; 4) The
The rear suspension, rear tires and rear cover over the engine
wing

The Motorola PacWest team uses engines supplied by Mercedes-Benz. Ford, Honda, and
Toyota also supply engines to other teams.

One incredibly interesting characteristic of the chassis is the fact that the engine and
transmission are actually a part of the chassis -- they are known as stressed members. You
can see that the only thing connecting the tub to the transmission and rear wheels is the engine,
and the rear wing bolts directly to the transmission.

The chassis of a Champ Car as described here weighs approximately 1,110 pounds (500 kg).
Adding the engine and other components brings the weight up to the official 1,550 pound (700
 kg) running weight for a Champ Car. At race time, the driver and fuel bring the car's total weight
to between 1,900 and 2,000 pounds (860 to 910 kg).

The Aerodynamics

One of the most important features of a Champ Car is its aerodynamics package.

The most obvious manifestations of the package are the front and rear wings, but there are a
number of other features that perform different functions. A Champ Car uses air in three different
ways:

 The wings on a Champ Car work opposite to the way they work on an airplane (see How
Airplanes Work for details on airplane wings). On an airplane, the wings provide lift. On a
Champ Car, the wings are mounted upside down so that they provide downforce. The
downforce keeps the car glued to the track with a downward pressure provided by the front
and rear wings as well as the body itself. The amount of downforce is amazing -- once the car
is traveling at 200 mph, there is enough downforce on the car that it could actually adhere
itself to the ceiling of a tunnel and drive upside down! In a street course race, the downforce
aerodynamics have enough suction to actually lift manhole covers -- before the race all of the
manhole covers are welded down to prevent this from happening.

 The engine in a Champ Car creates an incredible amount of heat. The car is burning a gallon
of methanol fuel every 30 seconds or so, and that process releases approximately 100,000
BTU of heat per minute that the car must dump through its radiators (one Champ Car
produces enough heat in 10 hours to heat a 2,000 square-foot house all winter!). The side
pods are designed to move a huge amount of air past the radiators to help this process.
 In this photo you can see how the radiator and its plumbing mounts to the air tunnel beside
the driver. At race speeds, this tunnel moves approximately 10,000 cubic feet of air past each
radiator per minute -- enough air to fill a 2,400 square foot house every minute! The engine
also needs spot cooling provided by small air scoops like the one you see in the picture
below. On road and street courses, the brakes use special cooling ducts to bring more air
over the rotors.
 The engine needs air to breath. An air intake at the rear of the car provides a stream of air
directly to the turbocharger. The screen keeps debris out of the air intake -- debris can be a
real problem at 240 mph!

One thing that you can see by looking at them -- Champ Cars definitely are not streamlined,
aerodynamically perfect vehicles. You've got the wheels and suspension system sitting out in
the open, the huge wings grabbing the air and converting it into downforce, the vents and
protrusions on the body, and even the driver's helmet sitting out in the slipstream! It takes a
great deal of power to overcome all of this drag, and that's one reason why Champ Cars need
such amazing engines.

One part of the aerodynamics package that is not visible is underneath the car. A single carbon-
fiber panel covers the entire underside and provides a completely smooth surface for the air to
flow past. There are two air tunnels formed into this panel, underneath the two side pods. The
tunnels taper so that the Bernoulli effect creates suction underneath the car. Both the wings
and these tunnels contribute to the downforce.

Suspension and Tires

A close-up of the hub

The front and rear suspension of a Champ Car is known as a double-wishbone suspension.
This type of suspension has the advantages of light weight, impressive strength and a well-
controlled ride. The racing surface can be surprisingly bumpy -- for example, at the Cleveland
track the surface changes several times along the course, with a bump at each transition. The
purpose of a Champ Car's suspension is to keep all four wheels glued to the track despite these
aberrations in the pavement.

Two wishbones hold the hub and allow it to move up and down in a plane. The diagonal
piece connects to the shocks and springs (which are located under a panel just in front of
the driver). The horizontal tie-rod provides the steering input to rotate the hub.
A Champ Car's suspension also has to be lightweight and compact. The front
suspension consists of the triangular supports (wishbones) that mount to the front hubs, along
with the springs and shocks. The springs and shocks, as well as the equivalent of the anti-roll
bar, are all mounted on top of the car just in front of the driver.

The rear suspension is similar to the front. The main differences are the lack of the steering
mechanism, the addition of the drive shaft and the greater weight that the rear suspension must
carry. The springs and shocks follow an arrangement similar to the front suspension, but they
are larger and fold alongside the transmission.

An important part of tuning the car for maximum performance is done in the suspension. The
team controls the toe-in and toe-out of the tires as well as the positive or negative camber of the
tires and the caster. These settings help adjust understeer and oversteer. The team can even
shorten and lengthen the wheelbase by changing the wishbones!

Because the suspension components are so important to the reliability of a car and its ability to
travel in a straight line, CART rules are quite specific on how they must be built. For example:

9.8.2. All highly stressed steering and suspension components shall be made from SAE 4130
steel or an alloy, specified by its manufacturer as having equivalent physical properties. Front
and rear uprights may be made of magnesium alloy or an aluminum alloy. All such parts must be
heat-treated, including stress relieving, normalizing, annealing and hardening when applicable,
after forming and/or welding as recommended by the manufacturer of the alloy being used. All
such parts that are electroplated must be oven-baked at a temperature of 375 degrees
Fahrenheit, plus or minus 25 degrees, for not less than three hours after such plating. Parts that
have been stripped of plating must be similarly baked unless they are to be reprocessed within a
three-hour period. Parts are not to be joined by brazing, soldering, or by dissimilar metals. Shot
peening is recommended for highly stressed parts.
 Unlike a normal car, which may have 4 to 6 inches of clearance to work with, Champ Cars
ride extremely close to the ground.

As you can see, the center of the car is perhaps 2 to 3 centimeters off the pavement. The
suspension system therefore does not need to offer tremendous up/down movement. With less
than 1 inch of up/down travel available, the ride can get extremely stiff.

The tires on a Champ Car are incredibly important -- they keep the car on the track and
translate the driver's inputs from the steering wheel, brakes and accelerator into reality.
Especially in the street course events, the driver continually tests the boundaries of tire adhesion
-- the limit to how fast the driver can accelerate, brake or take a corner is determined ultimately
by the tires.

To handle the incredible forces applied to them, the tires of a Champ Car are much different
from the tires you find on your car.

The three biggest differences are:

1. The tires on a Champ Car are much wider -- 12 inches wide in the front and 16 inches wide in
the rear. A normal car's tires are only 8 inches wide.
2. The tires on a Champ Car are completely smooth to maximize the amount of rubber touching
the track surface.
3. The rubber on the face of the tires is extremely soft. It is more like a soft rubber eraser than
anything else, and very unlike the hard rubber found in a normal car's tires.
Between the size of the contact patch of a Champ Car tire and the softness of the rubber, the
tires have incredible adhesion.

The tires on a passenger car are meant to last 40,000 to 60,000 miles, while the tires on a
Champ Car are designed to last 60 to 70 miles! The CART rules allow a racing team to use up
to 60 tires during a 500-mile race.

Besides the incredibly soft rubber used on the surface of the tires, the other thing that makes
Champ Car tires last for such a short period of time is the fact that they are very thin. Rubber
conducts heat well and retains heat, so the tires have a very small amount of rubber on them to
avoid heat build-up. If the driver locks a tire just once during hard braking, it will create a
noticeable flat spot on the tire and expose the tire's cords, severely affecting the tire's
performance. This limitation is especially important during qualifying, because each team only
gets two sets of tires for qualifying runs.

Tires are mounted on magnesium rims and attached to the car's hubs with a single
locking bolt.

Firestone provides all of the tires for all of teams at every race and practice session. The teams
bring their rims to the Firestone area in the race paddock, where technicians mount and balance
the tires.
 Each tire is stamped with a yellow CART seal once it is certified.

Given that there are 25 cars and each team gets as many as 60 tires per race, Firestone is
mounting up to 1,500 tires per event!

Because the tires are so important to the team's success, each tire's pressure is
monitored by its own radio sensor.

This small cylinder, which is mounted on the rim opposite the valve stem, contains a 0.25-watt,
900-MHz radio transmitter and a centrifugal switch. Once a tire starts spinning, the radio is
 activated and begins transmitting the tire's pressure to this antenna, located just behind the
driver's head:

All four tires transmit separately. If the driver runs over something (like debris from a wreck), he
can talk to his pit crew, and they can check the tires immediately to see if any of them are
leaking using the telemetry stream from the car (see the section on telemetry for details).

The teams pay a good deal of money for this peace of mind -- each tire's radio costs thousands
of dollars, and each of the teams' 60 rims needs to have one! That gives you a good idea of how
important the tires are.

The CART rules specify everything about the tires and the rims. Here are some of those specs:

 Rear rim diameter - 15 inches

 Rear rim width - 14 inches
 Rear rim minimum weight - 14.7 pounds
 Rear tire diameter - 27.0 inches
 Rear tire width - 16 inches
 Front rim diameter - 15 inches
 Front rim width - 10 inches
 Front rim minimum weight - 13.48 pounds
 Front tire diameter - 25.5 inches
 Front tire width - 12 inches
 Pressure - 35 PSI for oval courses, 20 PSI for road courses
The rims are tested by X-ray and dynamic tests before they are allowed on the race course.