Team America World Time Attack – ARK Design's BNR32 Skyline GT-R Part 4
Supposed to be by Eric Hsu, Really by Mike Kojima
In the last segment, Gary Castillo of Design Craft Fabrication was starting to work on the rest of the car's fabrication. With the clock ticking away and a lofty early June completion date looming closer, it was decided to let the gutting of the rear section of the car wait until next year. In my opinion this year will just be a development year for us to get some experience with the car and the World Time Attack format.
This year we learn, next year look out! This year we will be going in with an undeveloped aero package and a conservative engine package. We have little experience with aero dependent cars and no notes developed for the track. We learn quick though!
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| Gary made a high MDF board plug for our splitter going off of some guidelines I gave him. The real splitter will be made of carbon with a foam core. Since we could not afford Andrew Brilliant, the team has to settle for Mike Sorta Smart. The splitter is going to be 6″ from the leading edge of our bumper as I think there will not be much downforce benefit by making it longer. I think longer will only make the car more pitch sensitive in general. The center kick up is to reduce pitch sensitivity. As the car dives or moves around on the suspension the kick up will help keep air flow going to the rear diffuser. Their are two 20 degree small front diffusers leading to the front wheel wells which will have vortex generating strakes in them to help keep the flow attached. The wheel well diffusers will be removable so we can tune them depending on how much test time we have. We have air traps in front of the front tires and end plates for the splitter in front of the tire to give more stagnation pressure. Side canards which you can't see yet will create some Newtonian downforce and create side vortices to reduce air curling under the car from the sides I hope. Without CFD or a windtunnel and no real time to do physical testing the whole deal is a crap shoot. |
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| Gary and I rough out the packaging for the rear diffuser. We decided to go with a diffuser vs tunnels because a diffuser is easier to package and make in the short time we have. I also think the production based rear suspension has too much crap to hang in the airflow of tunnels. We are going to make the diffuser as wide as possible to get the maximum area and it is going to be around 10 degrees with strakes to keep the air flow attached. |
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| Gary with an angle finder and I are trying to find the best possible area to take up. The top of the diffuser is going to use a diffused exhaust exit which Eric will hot blow on over run as part of our aero and anti lag engine control strategy. Hopefully this innovation will work well and we won't cook off the fuel cell! |
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| Gary's impossibly long check list. Eric and I are on the Formula D circuit so everything must be in place before we fly out for the east coast early next week. Gary moved to a new shop in record time since our last installment. He is up and running but everything is a mess and the shop is in disarray. |
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| All hands are on deck in a full court press to get the car done. The guys at Bridges Racing are all helping out as their car is on the east coast on the way to Florida. Bridges Racing supports Robbie Nishida and Achilles Tires. A lot of the guys from Cosworth are pounding away too, It look like an Asian NASCAR team in there! |
