One of the most revered topics in motorsport engineering is racecar design. If you mention to anyone that you are designing a racecar, and are serious about it, you tend to be treated with something akin to super natural deity status. Very sadly, this is a reflection of the fact that, due to the modern motorsport environment, this doesn’t tend to happen that much anymore.
Consequently, most vehicle dynamics simulation these days is focused more on race engineering than racecar design. ChassisSim is no exception to this rule, and this is a sad reflection of the times we live in.
That being said, over the last couple of years ChassisSim has found itself being used in the racecar design process on a number of different projects. What these projects are I’ve been sworn to secrecy on, but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you in rough terms what the process has been. Some of it was reflected in a previous article I wrote on this subject about 10 years ago but, as some other new stuff has been learnt along the way, I thought it worth re-visiting.
The first step in racecar design is to understand that nothing happens in a vacuum,
