USF1 -- F1's All-American Challenger

[cooper-climax]

Sorry to rake over old coals, but I have just found this :http://www.f1mania.net/noticias/vernoticia.php?43332

Google translation.

Organization puts participation of USF1 in doubt
[10:10:48 Tuesday, December 22, 2009]

Although he has performed several inspections, the FIA still has doubts about the viability of the project of USF1, and therefore sent Tony Purnell to Charlotte during the past weekend to check the progress made by the team of Ken Anderson since last visit Nick Craw, then the right arm of Max Mosley.

The Americans say they have to build the first chassis being finalized and all funding secured for 2010.

What grabbed me were the dates. The article puts the inspection on the 19th/20th. Bernie then made his last statement about USF1 not making the grid on the 21st. Perhaps he knew more than just rumour.

[donskar]

Windsor speaks for the team -- convincingly IMHO:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/80684

[xpensive]

That's just taken from USF1 website I believe. I'd be more interested in an interview where he gets an honest chance to xplain why they seem to have moved the goalposts on things like windtunnels, American drivers and date for completion of the first chassis?

[cooper-climax]

Team US F1 silence was deliberate

http://www.autosport.com/features/article.php/id/2019

Our race facility is going to be completely fan-friendly from day one; they will be able to come around whenever they want, we'll have a tour area around the whole thing. We're going to be very visual in the way we do the team, it is going to be very television-orientated from day one, we're going to have webcams all around the factory showing live pictures of what is going on at any stage and you will be able to log on to a website at any point and say, ‘oh wow, they are about to do the tub now, they are about to put the two pieces together', or 'they are going to finalise the design of the front wishbone, let's see how that is being done'.

That is going to be on 24/7. We believe that the technology that Formula One has is a unique property – no other form of motorsport requires you to design and build your own car before you even turn a wheel. And because Formula One has that fantastic side to it, there is no reason why that technology shouldn't be totally available to the public for them to enjoy and understand.

If it's a cheap shot to use someting said many months ago in relation to that piece, here's something I noticed from his own website.


From the recent article and Windsors blog on the USF1 website.

"Second, since August, we have been building our "house". Literally. We gutted the ex-Hall of Fame Racing/Joe Gibbs NASCAR shop, re-painted it, re-floored it, re-wired it, re-lit it and re-designed it. In three weeks. That’s what you can do in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the economic impact of the motorsports industry approaches $6 billion per year. Ask and you will receive. Brilliant.

But Here:http://www.usgpe.com/news/us-f1-team-mo ... olina.html
They say the moved in in March?

[Giblet]

That's just taken from USF1 website I believe. I'd be more interested in an interview where he gets an honest chance to xplain why they seem to have moved the goalposts on things like windtunnels, American drivers and date for completion of the first chassis?

Goals change. A goal is time and results based. Otherwise, it's just an idea in the ether.

If you have ever managed a large project, which I am sure you have, goals move all the time.

I would be more concerned if USF1 was sticking to their original guns about American drivers and such, and tryig to force ideals that might have looked good when everytihng wsa on paper, and nothing was in front of them.

When I decided to learn to program for the iPhone, my goal was "In threee months I will have a small menu based app compiled on my iPhone".

This very quickly changed to "I need to find Objective-C for Dummies by tomorrow".

Sometimes you don't necesscarily bite it off more than you can chew, but what you have bitten off will take a lot more time and effort to digest, and it is tough to chew, and the texture and taste are nothing like it looked like in the recipe book.

[marcush.]

yes and no,really.
In todays world you just cannot buy a building ,make up a list of tools you need hire a handful of people and start up ....and exactly that is how USGP is looking
like at this time....
In todays world you have to first develop the whole plan and implement all the tools necessary to arrive at the zero fault lean layout maxed efficiency enterprise.
I can´t see that in usgp but definitively in Virgin happening ...
that is not saying they could not build a force to be reckoned with ,far from it ,but you will have to rely more on individual expertise and responsibility with their approach and it sticks with me when they tell quite naively they do not have a date for car completion....is this a joke or what? Nobody will go as far as buying all that stuff and produce a tub and what have you only to realise in January that the lead time for casting the titanium gearboxhousing is 6 weeks ...or that gearbox mainshaft material is unavailable till march.. so there must be a project plan of course and there is a date for the car to be finished..but maybe this day is a bit too close to the first GP ...to be told in public.

[madtown77]

Well at least they fixed the calendar on their website, lol.

[madtown77]

If I understand the above regulations right, a team will only have six shots at four hours each to try their full-scale car in a windtunnel over the season, why I suspect that USF1 might reconsider on the 60% model?

They probably will, and will use them sparingly once they have a base car designed and validated in the wind tunnel. I completely believe that CFD is capable of designing a top car, but they need these tests to check to make sure the computer numbers are accurate.

I don't think the idea of wind tunnel model after wind tunnel model is in any way necessary with the level of technology that is now available for computer analysis.

[JoeE]

Both usgp and virgin I wud say have done some wind tunnel work. They have too, to ensure the cfd is pushing out the numbers they expect.

For virgin I would say they have validated their cfd process from the work carried out in the lmp program. As for usgp they will be running some type of widn tunnel stuff even if just to make sure the cfd is working as expected.

Be silly not too would it not ?

[marcush.]

to go into a tunnel ,you need a very accurate scalemodel ,a suspension for this
and means to measure what is going on in terms of flow on this model....
There is absolutely no way to go into a tunnel looking for something of any value without having this .
Or does anybody think to put in say a brick into windshear will yield anything useful in terms of results for a 2010 GP car???

so if you were a newcomer tying to get something out of tunnel work you would have to build a scale model and replicate the dominant car of 2009 to get an idea what was going on the last season....but then ,why not start with a digital model in the first place,,as we could see from some f1technical forum mebers the CAD part of the
outer skin is something a dedicated person can perform in a timeframe not going fully out of any perspective.Also we did see that CFD basics are within reach .
so presto-you can look into what we saw in terms of design variants last season with moderate effort -in F1 terms at least-
Of course you might miss some of the finer points in this but would you learn more in actually building crap variants for the bin ?
I still can´t see the magic of a tunnel ,i can see the problems it can produce when people trust in them in spite of the results not translating into trackperformance.

[Pandamasque]

Or does anybody think to put in say a brick into windshear will yield anything useful in terms of results for a 2010 GP car???

What's the problem with that? Bricks are much like toasters.

[Mystery Steve]

Could someone remind me of the model laws and how wind speed correlates to scale. I have a vague recollection that you must keep Reynold's and Euler numbers constant which involves changing fluid viscosity or speed by an exponent.

Ideally you would like to match the Reynold's number and Mach number for perfect scaling.





In practice it is very difficult and takes a lot of time to match both, because you have to control the temperature, which the fluid viscosity, , depends on. Generally, for an automobile you would use the Reynold's number to scale the velocity, and then just check the Mach number to ensure it's not too close to 1 so you can assume incompressibility.

As long as you are incompressible, then the speed is inversely related to scale. So for some Reynold's number of interest, if you are running a 50% scale model and want to simulate flow at 100 mph, then the tunnel speed would be 200 mph.

[xpensive]

According to Windsor, they are not going to build any scale-models and while they don't seem to have a complete car,
the obvious conclusion is that they have not yet validated any of their CFD calculations in the Windshear tunnel.

Come January first, they will only have six shots at doing that, of four hours each, for the rest of 2010.

[marcush.]

According to Windsor, they are not going to build any scale-models and while they don't seem to have a complete car,
the obvious conclusion is that they have not yet validated any of their CFD calculations in the Windshear tunnel.

Come January first, they will only have six shots at doing that, of four hours each, for the rest of 2010.

another good reason to stick to a simple concept in your first year.

ah and btw joesaward mentioned on his blog that he believes USF1 has offered ralf
a drive....funny read about drivers nicknames in the press office...

[Fil]

Another article on USF1's alternative methods of car development.. This one, for once, seems to be genuine, credible and above all, believable.

Link

“We have considered our options and believe that this is the best solution available to us,” team principal Ken Anderson told the press. “Magic is a promising and under-used development tool in Formula One, and we plan to use it to its fullest extent.”