How BMW got ahead of Ferrari and McLaren in the constructors championship
The aerodynamic philosophy in modern F1 is pretty radical. The abruptly sculpted central section of the front wing would normally be expected to be switch-like in how it produced its downforce – and the drivers’ initial complaint of the car was that it was very inconsistent. At some parts of the corner the grip was there, at others it wasn’t.
The team went back to their simulations and fine-tuned the car. Team boss Dr Mario Theissen says:
“There was a gap between what we were getting in the wind tunnel, what we were getting with the CFD [computational fluid dynamics] programmes and what we were getting at the track,”
“I was concerned after the initial tests. “Before the tests we knew there was this gap between what the simulation could tell us and what we knew we needed.
“So there was a risk and after the first test I was concerned. Maybe in that gap was something that was not achievable.
“After the test, we took the data from the track and were then able to feed it into the simulation process, enabling us to derive information that was previously absent.
“Then we found that what we were looking for was in fact achievable with a few small changes to the car.”
The team has a state-of-the-art wind tunnel at its Hinwil base, but when the time came to invest further in the team’s technical resources, BMW decided against doing what other major F1 teams have done: building a second tunnel.
Instead it made further investment in computing power. ‘Albert 2’ is among the most powerful computers in use anywhere in the world, certainly the most powerful in F1 – and this is crucial in CFD programming, where the limit of the process is defined by the number of computing cells.
Could this be the major differentiator that has allowed BMW to make unprecedented progress with its car? It is going to be intriguing to see.
Under commonly accepted F1 convention, BMW’s relative pace to the front should remain fairly static as all the teams develop what they have at roughly the same rate.
But will ‘Albert 2’ demolish this convention? Has its computing horsepower enabled the team to perform intricate enough calculations to make what would otherwise be too ambitious an aero configuration work?
Will that power now be used to develop the car at a faster rate than Ferrari and McLaren, enabling it to leapfrog ahead at some stage during the season?
Or was the car simply so poorly set up in its initial tests that the big initial competitive leap came quite easily and further gains won’t be so simple?
WIll BMW win a race in 2008?
Will BMW continue to lead the constructors championship or is this just a blip?
Are Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld experienced enough to handle the pressure of being at the front?
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