Driven (10 page)

S
traker split from Quartano at Heathrow and was met by the car sent for him from Ptarmigan.

On his way up the M40, Karen called him from London. ‘I have some info on Michael Lyons, but it’s not much, I’m afraid.’

‘Not to worry – anything might get us started.’

‘It looks like he’s an I.T. specialist. Graduated from Aston University, started out on a graduate traineeship with IBM. Was sent on secondment to MG Rover and then transferred to them permanently. Joined their electronics team but was made redundant just before the company went into administration in 2005. Strangely, there’s no further information since then. Nothing about current employment. Whereabouts unknown.’

‘Is that it?’ Straker asked disappointedly.

‘Afraid so.’

J
ust over an hour later Straker was driven onto the Shenington Airfield, one of Oxfordshire’s long-abandoned RAF wartime air stations. Passing some of the derelict pre-fab concrete huts, and even the old control tower, they drove down a long straight approach road lined by an avenue of trees. Straker was greeted at the end by iconic architecture. Confident, proud and powerful were the adjectives implied by the brand-new Ptarmigan factory. It had nowhere near the self-belief of the Foster and Partners statement in Woking, but was impressive nonetheless.

They continued through a tunnel set into a broad, three-storey facade of reflective glass, emerging on the other side into a sizeable quadrangle and more reflective glass. Despite the sheen on the windows, there was some visibility into the buildings. Ghostly-looking figures could be seen working behind desks, at CAD work
stations, poring over laboratory benches and, in one window, he saw a team working on a complete chassis. Straker’s car circled round the sweep of the quad, which enclosed a large, heavily-landscaped ornamental garden, and pulled up under the awning in front of the main entrance.

Inside the reception area, he faced more glass, this time fronting a row of display cabinets holding all the team’s trophies, which seemed to cover every spare inch of the walls.

Straker was greeted by Backhouse and handed a security pass.

‘I daresay you’ll want to study our security measures,’ Backhouse said. ‘Perhaps it might be helpful to give you an idea of the whole process so you could see where we might be vulnerable to leaks or outside interference?’

Straker agreed, slipping the turquoise lanyard over his head.

‘Let’s start in Design, then.’

Riding up two floors in a glass-walled lift, they moved through the cathedral of modernity to the design studio. As Backhouse swiped his card through the door panel, automatic doors let them into a vast open-plan office. Forty or so people were distributed across the space. Atmospherically, it was quiet and serious – not exactly what Straker had imagined from a creative team, particularly one that had enjoyed such a historic weekend.

While security was the main purpose of the two men’s tour round the Ptarmigan factory, Backhouse inevitably found himself describing the practices in each room or workshop along their way. Straker soon gathered that, remarkably, Ptarmigan’s aim was to reinvent the car on a continual basis – but always within the dimensional, weight and capacity constraints imposed by the FIA’s Formula. Backhouse explained that in trying to work within those limits, they were faced with the classic trade-offs of any design; in this case, they had to balance any extra performance that might be enjoyed from a new component or configuration against any unwanted consequences – typically extra weight or size. Straker was told that paring a component to the bone might get it to perform better but doing so could
reduce its tolerance, weaken it, and even invite it to fail, which would of course then threaten reliability.

Backhouse went on to point out that making their components and cars too reliable, on the other hand, would result in their being heavier than they needed to be, so slowing them down. ‘But, as the legendary Murray Walker had it: “If you want to finish first, first you’ve got to finish”. Except the last thing we want is any structural redundancy,’ qualified Backhouse with a believe-it-or-not expression on his face.

Straker was led on through the quietness of the design studio, between the rows of designers, most of whom were working on large high-definition computer screens. Some of the operators were rotating wireframe diagrams, while others analysed brightly coloured thermal images of components in three dimensions via touch-screen commands. Backhouse indicated that the data recorded from the cars’ two hundred and fifty on-board sensors, which Straker had seen being collated through the headquarters truck in Monaco, was fed into this redesign process. Conclusions drawn then allowed for each component to be redesigned electronically. Once done, the computer could then backtest any new design against a model using the actual load, pressure and temperature data of the last few races.

Straker was clearly impressed with the attention to detail and the capacity of the system. ‘But won’t reshaping one component have an effect on all the others around it?’

Backhouse gave him a smile of appreciation. ‘Welcome to the Rubik’s Cube of race car design.’

Backhouse led Straker on through the room to another set of automatic doors. Once he swiped his card, they passed onto a balcony overlooking a cavernous space that reached from the ground up into the three-storey roof of the building. Every surface of the room was white and gleaming. Here, there was considerable noise.

Several bulky machines were spread out across the workshop floor. This, Backhouse explained, was where the newly designed components were sent to be made. They walked down a flight of
long white stairs to ground floor level, and across to one of the sizeable machines. Backhouse indicated that one of them made aluminium components, while another did tungsten, and another titanium parts.

Leading him off into the next room, Backhouse told Straker: ‘This is where we test samples of our new components to destruction.’

Inside, behind some sturdy-looking safety glass, several technicians were operating machines and applying force – percussive, compressive, torsional or tensile – to several components.

‘And once you’ve made and tested something new – and it passes these tests – what happens if it
does
require a change in the shape of its mounting or its interface with other components?’

Backhouse explained the most likely consequence of a new component was a change in the shape or weight distribution of the car, albeit that the change might be small. Even so, the bodywork could be affected, necessitating remedial adjustment in the aerodynamics. Most problematic, he said, was a new component that threatened to protrude beyond the limit of the physical dimensions set by the Formula.

‘And if you
do
break the Formula, what can that mean?’

‘A
big
fine.’ Backhouse described the penalties imposed by the FIA, and illustrated how the governing body meant their fines to hurt. The last one – for an infringement – had been five million dollars for a non-compliant diffuser on one of the Massarellas. But worse, the FIA could dock Championship points, which potentially cost the teams even more. Under the Concorde Agreement – the arrangement with the commercial rights holder to distribute some of the multi-billion-dollars-a-year revenues from Formula One sponsorship, advertizing, TV rights and royalties – shares of that income were calculated using a team’s standing in the Constructors’ Championship at the end of the season. Being docked Constructors points as a penalty, therefore, could cost a team its placing in the standings, which would then hurt its share of the Concorde payout – to the tune of millions of dollars.

Backhouse led off into a smaller room. ‘This is our carbon fibre workshop.’

In the middle was a large – twenty-or-so square feet – waist-high table. On it was a sheet of what looked like black cloth. Lifting up a corner, Backhouse extolled the virtues of carbon fibre as a remarkable material, showing a fascinated Straker that it came in flexible sheets and, depending on the direction of the fibres, could give enormous tensile strength while being remarkably light. This was coated in resin and fired in an oven. Backhouse leant down and lifted up a three-foot long nose assembly from Remy’s car, offering it as an illustration. ‘This is constructed of twenty-five layers of carbon fibre. It can withstand a head-on impact at one hundred and twenty miles an hour, absorbing all that force within it and so is capable of protecting the driver. This stuff most certainly saved Helli’s life over the weekend. But feel the weight?’

Straker’s arm almost shot up as he took hold of it, expecting it to be far heavier. It only weighed about the same as two litres of milk.

‘The only trouble with carbon fibre,’ Backhouse went on, ‘is that you can’t screw anything into it; it won’t take the thread of a screw, for instance. The stuff just crumbles.’

‘How
do
you fasten it to other materials then?’

‘Good old-fashioned glue!’

After looking at the next workshop, focusing on hydraulic technology, Straker was shown the engine section of the factory. Backhouse explained that Ptarmigan did not make their own engines, which would be far too expensive – even with their sizeable Quartech budget. He explained how their engine partner, Benbecular, fitted in, and likened the power, quality and reliability of their engines to those of Mercedes, Renault and BMW. Straker learnt that Ptarmigan’s only involvement with engine design was in engine management, working with an outside contractor, Trifecta Systems, to develop Ptarmigan’s own bespoke operating system – a highly sophisticated optimizer which offered them various nuanced options and settings they could adjust during a race.

‘All this is worked on in here,’ said Backhouse as they entered a room that reminded Straker of a music studio. Technicians were working at something resembling a mixing desk, while through another sheet of safety glass an engine was bolted to a static mount and being run at what sounded like – even with the soundproofing of the glass – full throttle.

‘Finally,’ said Backhouse, as they made their way on through the Ptarmigan factory, ‘we come to aerodynamics and our wind tunnel.’

They passed through a further set of security-controlled automatic doors, and entered another manufacturing section. Inside, Backhouse led Straker towards a man in a white coat who was studying what looked to Straker like a scale model of a Formula One car.

‘Colin, can I introduce Matt Straker of Quartech? Matt, this is Colin Moore, Ptarmigan’s Director of Aerodynamics.’

The two strangers shook hands. Straker took in Moore’s intense expression which was enhanced by his closely – almost brutally – shaved head.

‘Andy’s giving me a crash course in how our cars are designed and built.’

Moore smiled and asked how much Straker knew of aerodynamics in the context of these cars. He admitted not much.

‘Without aerodynamic surfaces,’ said Moore inviting Straker to look at the model on the workbench, ‘a Formula One car couldn’t go anywhere near as fast as they go. Mechanical grip – the grip provided simply by the balance of the car, the tyres and their contact with the road surface – would not, on its own, hold a modern car on the track. Aerodynamic surfaces are critical.’ To give Straker an idea of their effectiveness, Moore indicated that an F1 car travelling at ninety miles an hour generated enough aerodynamic downforce that it could run upside-down along the roof of a tunnel.

‘However, the greater the downforce, the more the drag – and so the less quick we can go. But all of us are presented with numerous challenges. The first is set by the Formula, which limits the dimensions of the car – including the size and placement of any wings
and fins. Second, the FIA – in trying to reduce the cost of F1 – has banned the teams from all testing, other than on the track during race weekends.’

Straker pulled an are-you-serious? face.

‘And, third, we’re allowed to simulate the aerodynamics in a wind tunnel, but – get this – we have to do it with half-sized cars. Our half-sized models are made of plastic rather than metal and carbon fibre, which of course requires a whole other manufacturing process,’ he said with a wave of his hand at all the technicians and machine tools laid out across the bustling workshop.

After a few minutes looking at the model, Moore led them on to a nearby computer screen. ‘F1 is an open-wheel formula. In other words, we can’t smooth the shape by covering the whole body like a Le Mans car, and we have limits on the size of the aerofoils we
can
fit. When an F1 car punches a hole through the air,’ he explained, ‘its profile, wheels, and protuberances create drag – friction, resistance – which slows us down. Our aim is to minimize that drag, and help increase the ease with which it slices through the air.’ The aerodynamicist tapped a few icons on the screen. Two images appeared. Straker saw the screen was horizontally split – top and bottom – each showing a silhouetted chassis. Blue smoke seemed to be flowing over each one. ‘Here,’ he said pointing at the upper image, ‘is a simulation of our car’s core body with no aero assistance at all.’

This top car, without any wings or surfaces, showed the blue smoke swirling frantically off the front wheels and bubbling the length of the car, with a huge cloud of turbulence behind. ‘Every element of disturbed air slows us down,’ said Moore. ‘Now look at the bottom model, which shows our current aerodynamic package.’

This car, fitted with the wings and surfaces, showed the blue smoke – the airflow – over and around it was considerably smoother. Even where there were blunt bits of the car, the small blades and fins attached to various parts clearly trimmed and nudged the airflow preventing nearly all of the turbulence seen in the one above.

‘Does this computer model analyze the airflows and then prescribe what changes are needed?’

‘Sadly not for everything. CFD, Computational Fluid Dynamics, are getting better but – for reliability – if we want to try something new, we prefer to physically cut out a fin or wing, stick it on the model, run it through the tunnel and see what happens.’