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.