Lola Aston Martin LMP1

[RacingManiac]

Really? What engineering benefits exactly are applied from these LMPs to street cars? Does racing really improve the breed anymore these days?

If you are Audi or Peugeot I'd buy that theory. The diesel used in racing now is beyond that of production, and could legitimately push the technology further, much like Audi's direct injection technology did for gas engine. AM and others, they are there for racing sake.

[togos452]

Really? What engineering benefits exactly are applied from these LMPs to street cars? Does racing really improve the breed anymore these days?

Zero racing in NASCAR improves the breed, even more so with the COT.

Aston Martin Racing just started work on the LMP1 project. The GT stuff is their main business (DBR9, Vantage GT2, DBRS9, Vantage GT4). Perhaps the technology from the DBR9 will be shown with the new One-77.

Aston Martin - The Company - News

Pratt & Miller builds the Chevrolet Corvette C6.R and I don't see why the racing program has hurt the Z06. They have a contract with GM through 2010.

Feature Article - Racing Developments: Actually, It Is Rocket Science - 05/07

Pratt & Miller Engineering

[Kitdy]

I'm not talking about NASCAR - you needn't bash it here. Tech from GT1 is very different to tech form LMP1 and even still how much in terms of innovation in the DBR9 will find it's way to the street Astons? I'd say next to none if not none.

I think the link between racing and road cars is largely a marketing one.

[Ferrer]

I'm not talking about NASCAR - you needn't bash it here. Tech from GT1 is very different to tech form LMP1 and even still how much in terms of innovation in the DBR9 will find it's way to the street Astons? I'd say next to none if not none.

I think the link between racing and road cars is largely a marketing one.

Well doesn't the LMP1 Lola Aston has an engine derived from the road cars?

Even so, I'd tend to agree with you, this is racing for the sake of racing. Which in my opinion isn't bad.

[RacingManiac]

Which in my opinion isn't bad.

Not at all, just bad for the bottomline I think, especially thesedays.

I don't know how you'd classify as beneficial to road car. C6.R, DBR9...etc, they are race cars, made with racing requirements and performance in mind. And in most cases they are made with lots of custom parts with no cost impact inmind. Lots of the technology used on race car is just not practical for road car. Then there are stuff like the Audi's FSI, or Aluminum diesel engine, or the super high pressure diesel injector, or the particulate filter or the special bio-GTL mix blend. You are actually stress testing the technology in a difficult operating environment. Which will advance the technology.

[Ferrer]

I don't know how you'd classify as beneficial to road car. C6.R, DBR9...etc, they are race cars, made with racing requirements and performance in mind. And in most cases they are made with lots of custom parts with no cost impact inmind. Lots of the technology used on race car is just not practical for road car. Then there are stuff like the Audi's FSI, or Aluminum diesel engine, or the super high pressure diesel injector, or the particulate filter or the special bio-GTL mix blend. You are actually stress testing the technology in a difficult operating environment. Which will advance the technology.

The only way to see a visible link between race car and road going counterpart is if the racing series requires an homologation model, which isn't the case here.

If not, as you say, technology will eventually filter down to road cars even if it isn't very evident.

[Kitdy]

The issue is back in the day when things were less advanced than now and racing cars were sorta comparable to road cars - racing actually came up with innovative solutions that without the pressure and competition of racing may well have taken longer to develop/refine/invent otherwise. Now that racecars are so advanced and so far removed from road cars, it is really hard for this new technology to filter down. In terms of F1, you see things in road cars you don't see in F1 like direct injection etc due to strict rule regulations. F1 I know is getting creamed monetarily but there were ages in which all this new technology could have happened but the regs in my eyes are too tight.

hellcat told me about in the new article of Car and Driver there is an article about what if there was a modern Can-Am (ie limited regulations) series today what would happen. This I think is where you could find cool new tech with inspired minds but even still - these cars seem too removed from road ones for the bulk if not all of the tech to filter down. That being said, to my knowledge, the dual-clutch transmission first existed on the 956/962 and now it's becoming widespread in performance cars today so there was trickledown form as "recent" as the 80s. Ferrari's F1 transmission system with the paddle shifters is also a race innovation so this is yet another recent case - the question is, what is the next new tech from racing that will come to cars if at all?

[RacingManiac]

I think one has to make a distinction between "advanced technology for racing" vs "advanced technology in general". The former are MUCH narrower in scope and their application may be very limited for anything else other than what they design for. There are tons of very tricked out stuff for racing, but are they all worthwhile to be applied to road car? Take something like inerter, at its current form of application, it is not very useful for road car. The need stems mainly from the problem with race car, and specifically F1 car with their high aspect ratio tire and very limited mechanical suspension travel, which results in uncontrolled tire forces that dampers cannot deal with because they are not moving(or moving enough), thus something like inerter found favor with F1 crowd. Will it work with road cars where suspension travel is an order of magnitude more? Probably not, and the aspect of inerter which requires it to be tuned for specific condition or it might actually be detrimental to the vehicle(re: Massa's "damper failure" in Monza, 2007), makes it a legal liability if not researched properly and applied properly.

And then there is cost. Take carbon fibre chassis, we know how to make very light, very strong, very safe car out of carbon fibre, but why not Toyota Corolla? It is simply not feasible to do so. The Material is expensive, the process is expensive, and the time is expensive. It probably takes no more the 5 mins to stamp out all the unitbody structure of a regular car out of sheet steel. It takes hours to lay carbon fibre sheets, and hours to bake and cure the resin. Just not feasible for mass production. We have the technology, but we just can't afford to do it....

[ChrisDistinct]

Nice car & I hope they win.