Racing is a sport of dangerously high speeds. Although Motorsports around the world attract a lot of funding in the form of sponsorships, research, media attention etc., but in India, it lacks the status of a serious sport and is considered entertainment. Some rally car races do enjoy the status of sport but overall it’s considered a sport for the rich, by the rich.

But if I were to say, that motorsports have  great contributions towards enhancement of human life outside the racetrack you would be more than surprised. Being a mechanical engineering student I have always been in an awe of the countless hours that go behind designing, testing and management of these racing series. So let us discuss how motorsport influences a normal person’s daily life.

Safety:

Let us begin with the aspect of safety. In the past many drivers lost their lives due to the dangers high speeds bring in motorsport. However over the years most of the big motorsport series like Formula one, Nascar, Indycar have all focused on making the sport safe. Manufacturer’s have not only directed their significant attention to driver safety, but have carefully analyzed the crash data to develop many safety features, which were eventually adopted in the road legal cars.  Driver’s seat and head restraint was been translated into seat belts and headrest. While the Seat belt safety features has now been made mandatory in almost all countries, importance of headrest may still go unnoticed. Severity of whiplash neck injury due to rear end car accident is drastically reduced by these headrests, which secured firmly in motorsport cars. Although invented in 1921, used in Volvo cars in 1960’s in the front seats, headrest found their way to passenger cars only after more than 72% success was observed in preventing neck injuries by using the Head and Neck Support system (HANS) in motorsport crash analysis.

Another safety feature, that found its way from motorsport lab to automotive research is the safety roll cage structure of the car. It was directly taken from the racecars since it managed to keep the drivers safe during crashes. This is like a carbon fiber structure known as “carbon fiber monocoque’ having the core structure a honey comb made of aluminum or Nomex aramid. The purpose of the chassis is to absorb the impact while being lighter. Initially it was used in racecars to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency later became known, as survival cell has now become the safety feature for all road legal cars.

Like this there are countless safety features like Antilock breaking system (ABS), traction control system for driving around the corner, radial tyres, AWD (all wheel drive), multifunction steering wheels that started out from motorsports and got translated as standard safety features in cars.

Sustainability:

Unlike to the common belief Motorsports are building a roadmap towards sustainability. Formula E, purely an electric car-racing event has shown a path to the automotive researchers how the performance of electric cars is not a limitation. Formula one is highly committed towards reducing the carbon footprint to net zero by 2030. In 2022 E-10 has been prescribed as the preferred fuel, which uses 10% ethanol made from plants and vegetables aiming to be number in reducing carbon footprints by 2026. Indycar this season is using’s shell’s renewable race fuel and renewable diesel and tyres made from guayule rubber used for street circuits. Motor GP also has plans to shift to 100% renewable fuel by 2027. The green revolutions by the motorsport governing bodies have forced the suppliers up their sustainability research to be profitable while being compliant.

Engineering Research:

Engineering research in motorsports has shown immense impact on automotive and transportation industry. Earlier in Formula one participating teams had free hand to engineer and innovate to enhance the performance of their cars. But with safety being top most priority in motor sport FIA the governing body of Formula one set some ground rules and regulations. Hence performance of car has taken the top priority for most teams sometimes even creating the debate on driver skills. Outcomes of these researches cannot be limited to just motor sports for the companies to be profitable. Pool of this research sometimes also known as Formula one laboratory shares a lot of knowledge with the automotive industry as well other motorsport series. An example of this is the Hybrid technology, which was tested extensively in F1, is now extremely relevant for the automotive world. Development of energy recovery system (ERS) to store the energy while vehicle is in motion is extremely useful in enhancing performance and improving fuel efficiencies of road cars. Thermal efficiencies (energy wasted as heat in engines) of the hybrid vehicles have been improved from 30% to 50 % in just a few years.

Motorsport teams need performance data and to conduct actual wind tunnel testing can be extremely expensive and time consuming. Computational Fluid dynamics also known as CFD simulations provide quantitative predictions of Aerodynamic lift or pressure drag due to the vehicle design and the air flow interaction around it. Motorsport teams use these analyses to predict and enhance the performance of their cars. Not just the teams but also the governing bodies run their own simulations to come up with an appropriate design guideline such as FIA partnership with AMAZON and AWS cloud formula to cut down actual wind tunnels testing time and expenses drastically for their revised 2022 regulation changes.  Inspired by this Ferrari signed up a collaboration deal with AWS for R & D on their road cars, GT racecars and Ferrari challenge cars besides the F1 cars.

Beyond Racetrack

Talking about impact of motorsport beyond racetrack, pit stops have set a great example of team coordination and fast response. Two hospitals – Great Ormond in UK and University hospital in Wales have taken insights from these to increase communication between doctors, nurses, anesthetist and the first response teams. GlaxoSmithKline partnered up with McLaren to utilize pit lane efficiency data for twin high-speed production lines of toothpaste.

Huge data is collected, processed and recorded during races. McLaren has an applied technology wing MAT that designs High Performance Computing (HPC) systems to collect and process race data. MAT sensors have now found a new abode in the hospitals. Some of the pharmaceutical companies are now using these sensors to track patient recovery during drug trials and collect real time data from surgeons by placing them on surgeon elbows.

Aerofoils made from completely recycled aluminum materialare developed to regulate the airflow around the formula one cars and improve performance. Williams racing partnered with Aerofoil systems, a startup in England and adopted the technology to channel the cold air from top to front of the refrigerators instead of falling on the aisle in supermarkets. This has shown a great energy savings and reduced the carbon footprint of supermarkets.

Besides all the research, development, sustainability and useful data; the ability to adept, anticipate, innovate and provide lightening speed response by drivers and teams is something extremely valuable for us in real life situations.