BARRICHELLO: HOW I DID IT! THE IMEWS BEHMIMD THE I\1EWS
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No. 292 September 15-28 2004
What was Team Dynamik doing in the desert...
back s lead rSBR 1-2
Behind the scenes of the best motorsport movie ever made
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motorspoit
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Issue 292
15 — 28 September 2004
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news and opinion 4
Not over by a long shot Dynamik test war heats up 8 On the ropes Question marks over V8s in NZ - and AGP? 11 Remember me? A Villenueve comeback. Are they serious? 12 Clashing horns Luca gives Bernie a serve 14 Like you’ve never seen them Rrst pics of Bathurst and Pi 25 Motor Mouth The Other Bioke in the 05 Commodore speaks 26 Box Seat Saward asks for a "please explain" on Aussie logic 82 Talk Converter Good time to write. About to get busy here
features 28 Five Minutes With Rubens Barricheilo How he lost, then won, then cried 30 Five Minutes With Greg Ritter He came, he saw, he conquered Sandown It’s an all-Richards edition of Motorsport News! 32 JR speaks Jim yacks about Porsches, driving with Steve and what’s next 36 DR speaks too David on Jenson, BAR and what happens in Australia 38 He shoots, he scores! ‘He’ is the Aussie bloke who directed NASCAR 3D
race couerage
40 Safety Car stars at Sandown! Not quite. The Audi could not catch the Stone cars but neither could anything else. All the latest from the Betta 500 52 Just Bloody Brilliant Rubens and Michael make the Great Escape at Monza
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nudrspbrl BUIE DAY r--. I
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60 Carreras and VDs Sandown’s supports turn it on 62 Fetter is Back Solberg and Atkinson dazzled in Japan
Photos: Cover James Smith Contents; Dirk Klynsmith. suttonimagos.com
regulars 64 Rallying
66 Speedway
68 Drag Racing
70 National Scene
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Marketplace I
lhawest
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Dynamikgate Roll wills fined $100K over test breach.TD and TEGA lodge appeals- bu
PARTIES on all sides of the Team Dynamik testing controversy are digging in for a long battle, following the nine-page decision handed down by CAMS stewards at Sandown last Friday. Team Dynamik was fined a total of $104,000 but escaped any penalties to drivers' points or championship positions after being found guilty of four separate breaches of the V8 Supercar regulations. The charges arose after AVESCO Operations Manager Tony Manson observed team members conducting an unauthorised test at South Australia's remote Woomera facility on August 20 and 21. The most severe component of the penalty was a US$50,000 (approx $72,000) fine for unauthorised testing, which is the maximum allowable under the FIA's International Sporting Code. Additionally, the team was fined $15,000 for using tyres assigned to IMS-lmrie Motorsport's Level 2 team, a 4
further $15,000 for illegal placement of sensors, and $2000 for failing to display the required V8 Supercar identification on the team transporter. Mike Imrie was cleared of any wrongdoing. However, the matter is far from resolved, with the findings due to be appealed from both sides. Team Dynamik owner Kieran Wills, opposite right, has announced that he will contest the charges and, in a bizarre twist, TEGA will also appeal the finding that the team "had no intentionto break the rules." According to the CAMS report from the stewards' inquiry, the bulk of Dynamik's defense was based upon a distinction between the team and its Technical Director, Oscar Fiorinotto. The report states that Wills signed an agreement allowing Fiorinotto access to the #14 'gold' car that Will Davison drove for the team at Oran Park under a franchise leased from Mike Imrie. Fiorinotto told the hearing that he was using the car for non-racing applications, a
claim he said was borne out by data downloaded from the car's ECU that was later described by a TEGA expert as being "unusual in track-based conditions". Fiorinotto, formerly race engineer to Craig Lowndes, went on to submit that Woomera was unsuitable for race testing as it did not allow for the measurement of lateral forces, and that the 2.3km strip of tarmac was at least 700m too short for any meaningful aerodynamic evaluations. Despite urgings from TEGA and AVESCO in regard to the breaches as "intentional, wilful, covert and deceitful", the stewards found that there was no intention to break the rules and Dynamik had attempted to separate their activities at Woomera from the application of the regulations. However, the stewards decided that the two entities could not be divided, and that the team retained responsibility for the car. It was also pointed out that Fiorinotto had failed to co operate with Manson when
first approached. Fiorinotto reportedly attempted to hide the identity of the car, designated by the team as 'TD003', before removing a piece of tape that was covering the rollcage's identity number following a further request from Manson. Crucially, it was also confirmed that Dynamik had conducted an unauthorised windtunnel test with the same car at Monash University in May. Industry sources are suggesting that both were part of calibrating sophisticated simulation software (see insight, right). The appeal hearing, originally scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday), has been postponed by a week to allow both parties to prepare their cases. Meanwhile, the team had some somewhat brighter news with the unveiling of its new sponsor, cut-price telecommunications company Dodo. Both the #44 and #45 cars ran with Dodo signage at Sandown. For more on the Dynamik case, see page 6
t hearing delayed
NEWS INSIGHT
Time for some Dynamic thought?
WHILE the ongoing story of Team D)mamik has had the motor racing industry abuzz,there has been a high level of conjecture about what might be next in V8 Supercar's saga of testing dramas. The limit of six days' testing at a single circuit means that opportunities for teams to develop and test new hardware are limited and that any gain made in any particular area is precious. With that in mind,the coming frontier of R&D could be spelled in three lettersCFD. Computational Fluid Dynamics is the science concerned with obtaining numerical solution to fluid flow problems by using computers- ie computer simulation. Without wanting to get into a jargon that only a computer geek understands, CFD uhlises computer power to predict what will happen to the flow of fluids (ie, air, gas, water,liquids) when subjected to changes in heat, mass transfer, temperature change, mechanical movements and/or other forms of stress. The science has been around since the 1960s and came to prominence in the '70s when developing, mathematics-based computer languages(like Fortran) made it economical to develop virtual models. With the rapid and ongoing development of computer power,aided by the access and cormnunication allowed by the internet, CFD is now a powerful tool in a number of industries. While the aerospace and automotive industries and historical'homes'for CFD,its applications now include the design of anything from a kettle to a train, and the development of retail items from DVD players to paint. CFD software packages,like the USdeveloped Fluent, allow any person with a reasonable degree of aptitude to set up an operation system,including hardware,for less than $50,000. The software can be run in a Windows XP environment(in other words, you could run it on almost any sub-$5000 laptop) though high-end users are more likely to prefer a Unix machine. So, why do it? Because, in effect, such software allows you to 'build' a virtual prototype of a widget and change, modify and refine if long before you ever need to build a 'hard copy'. If you have enough information, you can
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subject that widget to almost any imaginable external influence and,when satisfied, build the thing for real and go ... widgeting. If you follow Formula One closely, none of this is news to you. GP teams have been in the CFD business for years and have the process down to a fine art. While a basic system might allow you to log five millions cells of information plenty for one of our V8s,according to expert advice-Ferrari's current system employs approximately 100 million cells and,given the current performance of the team's F2004, the proof is in the pudding. Imagine you want to test a new wing endplate. You could build and test 50 different variations in CFD,actually build the best eight examples and test them in a wind tunnel. When it came to track testing them on a relevant circuit, you might only actually install two. Considering the cost of running a racecar, the savings involved in the process would be huge. And,if your test days were,by regulation, restricted, it would be a godsend... An expert in CFD software told MNews this week that the amount of potential gain in the use of the package is directly proportional to the amount of data logged prior to the processing. Without prompting - and with no reference at all to the Dynamik saga - his suggestion was that the first step in such a process in the motor racing sphere would be to gain data from a wind tunnel test, with as many serrsors connected to the car as was feasible. His second suggestion was to conduct straightline testing in as tightly a controlled environment as possible. The more accurate the model,the greater the potential gains. We have been told that several V8
Supercar teams already utilise CFD and that a couple have Fluent. We have no knowledge whether or not one of those teams is Dynamik. But,as we said, the (some would say)draconian testing regulations serve only to encourage lateral thinking and the quest for a new edge. In the next conversation you have on the subject of testing, you might just use the word 'Dynamic', not'Dynamik'. -PHILBRANAGAN
Co with the flow: A CFD model of one of Ford US's road car design studies.
Motor racing is a pain in the neck RACE car engineering can be a dangerous business. OzEmail Racing engineer Phil Curtis sported a neck brace at Sandown. No, he had not had contract negotiations with Brad and Kim Jones, nor had he run into Brisbane Lion Jonathon Brown. He had in fact taken a spill off a motorbike two weeks before making the trip to Sandown and spent the weekend smiling through the pain. n Next door. Triple 8 engineer Ludo Lacroix \was hobbling around on a crutch after - guess what? another spill off a motorbike. Both are expected to make a full recovery ... and this possibly explains why we do not see Valentino Rossi at V8 Supercar races. n Dave Ward made his first appearance at Sandown. The former Veloqx Audi man attended his first V8 Supercar race as the new team manager of Ford Performance Racing and took time getting up to speed. Ward and his girlfriend arrived in Melbourne 10 days prior to the race and have had their acclimatisation hindered by bringing a flu-like condition with them. Hopefully, health will be the order of the day by Bathurst. n Who has a tall tux with #34 on the back? We hear that Leanne Perrier will make an honest man of Garth Tander this month, the GRM peddler and Toyota's first lady of Corollas making the trip down the aisle prior to GT heading off in search of a second Bathurst 1000 win. n Christian Horner, who wants to take Arden Motorsport into FI, was in Russia a week ago, trying to raise funding for an FI programme. If all goes to plan Horner says that he will buy the intellectual property rights to an existing chassis. If the money can be found the team will almost certainly use the design for this year's Jaguar chassis. In order to fund the team Horner will need to find at least USS40m in order to pay the FIA bond for a new team. This might actually help him as the FIA pays this back to teams in a monthly payment in the first year of competition. The other option for Horner is to buy an existing team. n As support for the proposed F3000 replacement, GP2, diminishes, Aussie British F3 contender Will Power may, we hear, look instead to European F3 in 2005. As reported last issue, Power will get his first taste of FI when he undertakes the Minardi test offered by Paul Stoddard, currently scheduled tor Vallelunga on November 9/10. - SAWARD/STAFF 5