The comfort zone

Motor racing design for the engineer means work in aerodynamics, mechanics, physics, and chemistry. Often, one of the items that usually goes by without much comment is entirely dependent on biomechanics and biology; the driver. But the person behind the wheel is not entirely forgotten when it comes to designing a racecar, for we also have ergonomics, or the study of human-machine interfacing, to think about.

Ergonomics is actually a multidisciplinary field in its own right, in that it encompasses and amalgamates physiology, anatomy and medicine on one side; as well as psychology, physics and engineering, plus anthropometry.

But for too long racecar design seemed to follow the Procrustean school rather than the ergonomic school. According to Greek legend Procrustes was an inn-keeper who either stretched his customers if the bed was too big for them, or chopped off pieces of their legs to make them fit. If you have ever driven vintage racing cars this will not be news to you.

But the vehicle cockpit should serve the driver, not the other way around. The more driver-friendly the ergonomics are, the more comfortable the driver will be and the better they can focus on driving. Considering the driver is already working in a difficult environment, hot, noisy and vibrating, plus being subjected to g forces the body was not designed to cope with, anything that interferes with their performance will mean slower lap times.

If you find that the drivers must twist their neck to see enough to feel confident, then their field of vision is inadequate

Even in the best-designed racecars, with an ideal layout, power and aero, having a bad fit can cost consistent lap time. A better driver fit sometimes gives a one second gain, hard to achieve with other means and considerably cheaper. It just demands some time.

There are two pitfalls for designers, one is designing the car around themselves, so it can feel okay to them him but be unusable for a different sized driver. But there are standards for all movements and forces used by the driver to control the car, derived from operating machinery, which will cover most of the sizes of driver that could conceivably drive it and be used for design. The other pitfall is forgetting the problems brought in by the forces a driver is subjected to under high g loads.

Tailor made

If you are designing for a particular driver you can dimension it to them, but there are still several parameters that you must