ARK Team America BNR32 GT-R Update Teaser
An update has been a long time in coming but it is true, the ARK Team America BNR32 has not gone away or died, it’s just that all of the principals have been busy with our other motorsports and industry jobs ranging from ALMS to Formula D. With all of us so busy working the car kept getting pushed off but lately Eric Hsu has been rallying the troops and work has been progressing on the car all summer.
Our car had almost made it to WTAC two years ago but a SNAFU with the shipping company resulted in the car getting lost in transit and ending up in China. It took months to get the car back and was really tough on the teams morale. The car sat in mothballs for a year and earlier this year, Eric started to make plans for the car’s reentry into the Time Attack world.
While discussing what it would take, Eric and I figured that our biggest issue would be aerodynamics. A lot of the development for Time Attack has been in aero over the past few years and our car had gotten way behind. I had done the aero on the cars previous iteration based on my limited knowledge but with the latest fast cars now talking advantage of CFD and the services of real aero professionals our common sense approach would be sorely outclassed.
We enlisted the help of aero ace Andrew Brilliant to help us with an aero package for the car and most of the revisions are being done to accommodate his design. Now Andrew was great at working around what we had and our limited budget and I am sure that we will now be much more competitive. One point is that Andrew is very secretive about a lot of his design details so he asked us not to show a lot of them unfortunately and we will honor that. The small details you can’t see make most of the difference. If you want his stuff you will have to hire him!
Read The ARK Design BNR32 Build Stories Here!
Eric’s task list is daunting, fortunately a lot of the hard stuff has already been figured out. The car could start with a few days of work.
We have not shown the final configuration of the big mid mounted Borg Warner turbo and the Turbosmart wategates. The heavy turbo has been located rearward to improve weight distribution The floor has been raised to accommodate the high exhaust which was sunk into the floor to improve underbody aero. With the vastly shorter block and greatly rearward location of the VR38 engine, the weight distribution should be close to 50/50, vastly better than the BNR32’s 65/35 stock weight distribution. An aluminum box called the oven surrounds the turbo and receives high pressure air from the wheelwell which is ducted through the car exiting in the low pressure zone in the rear of the car.
A lot has been going on in the interior of the car with the Tilton pedal box and rear seat being moved way rearward to get the drivers weight as far back as possible.
The dry sump tank has been plumbed and mounted and the fuel cell is in place. Work is starting on the interior ducting for the oven and the inside mounted intercooler!
