Nerd’s Eye View: The Dyson Mazda ALMS P1 Prototype

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AP calipers are used at all four corners.  The sticker is an indicator for maximum temperature.  Street circuits are hard on brakes and temperature control is important with carbon brakes.  The rear brake shown here is a 4 piston piece.
The carbon rotor is pin driven on the hat for full floating.  The AP Motorsports caliper is an amazing piece.  You can see the detailed machining here where the material is pared down to an extreme.  This not only saves a lot of weight but also allows for cooling airflow through the insides of the caliper itself.
The brakes are fully contained within an elaborate carbon fiber clamshell that is fed cooling air through a duct which distributes the air to the rotor and caliper.  You can see that the duct is feeding air through the far side of the caliper that does not get as much exposure to air as the outside part.  Look at the minimalistic amount of material left in the caliper and the external side strengthening bridge.  No doubt these calipers receive a lot of intensive FEA optimization and six axis machine time.
A look at the carbon front brake temperature control cooling clamshell in place with the AP six piston caliper.
The pick up points for the front suspension show that they are adjustable for camber curve and roll center as well.  The carbon of the tub at this point is over 1″ thick to support the stresses that the suspension transmits through the chassis.
The crew swarms over the car.  With our wide angle lenses you can begin to see how much movement was going on in such a small space.  We had to dart in and out to quickly take shots so as not to get in the way! Dyson uses a Lola B1/66 prototype chassis which was an off the shelf part.  However Lola went out of business last year so the current car is an evolution of the Lola chassis engineered by Dyson.  The great Nissan GTP car also started off as a Lola and evolved to a unique design bit by bit in the 80s as well.

 

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