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Drawing Office
 
See also:
The car for 2002
The timescales
The regulation changes
Making it happen
The monocoque
Vehicle dynamics
The transmission
Front suspension
The uprights
Rear suspension
EJ12 - the design process

The aims of the design process are pretty much the same from year to year. The reasons for building a new car each season, apart from complying with changes to technical regulations, are to incorporate lessons learned in the past and make the most of new technologies. The aims are simple: reduce the weight, reduce the polar moments of inertia, lower the centre of gravity, try and increase stiffness and get more downforce and more efficiency. On the engine side, Honda is looking to increase power and driveability, while reducing fuel consumption and cooling requirements.

The design group meets once a week, although many of the people involved are working together on a daily basis. Eghbal Hamidy lays down the basic car specification, but it is based on consultation with various experts in different fields and takes into consideration the problems and lessons learnt from the previous year’s car.

"From that starting point, we go through the problem areas and look at what needs to be improved and which areas have worked well and should be carried over," explains Holloway. Honda are involved right from the start, in the sense that their new engine package is fundamental to the discussion. The 2002 engine is quite a bit different to the previous one and that has a big impact on our philosophy, our ideas and the direction we are going in.

Factory

"Everything happens very quickly. Within a day of the first design group meeting, something is being tried out in the wind tunnel. In the beginning it tends to be a general concept or different trend that you are trying out. From a concept, someone will come back and for example, suggest that if the chassis is tipped upside down, it works very well! Then the suspension guys will be tasked to working out how to fit the suspension to the chassis upside down. They find a solution and then the aero people will explore it further. If they say it’s not possible, then we have to think again. Obviously, running a car upside down is not going to work, but we do look at extreme ideas, such as where to put the car’s refuelling nozzle. That involves working out whether the fuel system can be made to accommodate it and whether the mechanics can actually fit the nozzle on the filler in that position.

"The usual problem is that the designers all want to keep working on their ideas for as long as possible. So there is always a compromise between getting the very latest ideas and having everything built in time for testing prior to the first race of the season. Experience has shown us how much we can compress the design and manufacturing period to maximise wind tunnel time. At the end of the day, the aero side has the biggest impact on lap time, so we try to give that department as much time as possible, but never as much as they would like. It’s a case of finding the right compromise in all the areas.

"Production guys ideally would like twice the time we give them. The designers, once they are given the basic shape and concept would also like double the time and the wind tunnel people would just like forever! We have to put stakes in the ground and say, "that’s our final cut off point" be it for the chassis shape or for an engine cover. So the car is released in stages.