The lucky people going to this event duly met up at the Black Bull for lunch before making the short trip into the Lola works in Huntingdon. As you can see this was a good place to meet, flat car park, good value food and a nice ambience. We were lucky with the weather as thunderstroms had been forecast, personally I escaped the whole trip without a drop of rain appearing!
In
all there twenty people, Chris Notley
arrived a little later but the majority
of the motley crew appear above. Naturally
there were no photos allowed inside,
even our mobiles were confiscated - the
prevalence of phone cameras being what
it is nowadays - so a few outside shots
are the only record we have.
Six GT40s were in attendance, Tony Hunt is turning around so missed this group shot. Lola has a nice modern building but no air-conditioning, since it was around 30 plus degrees C on the day, it was actually quite a tiring tour with frequent visits to the several water coolers dotted around.
We were shown around most of the plant which included a 'garage' area, wind tunnel, modelling shop, setup rig, design office, carbon fibre production area and no doubt somewhere I have forgotten! The garage shop floor had several race cars old and new being worked on, it was interesting to note the difference between a seventies designed car (ally monocoque) and an up to date carbon fibre tub style - really light years apart. It was great to be able to crawl all over these cars and study the suspension pick up points, gear linkages etc. every one working there was helpful to answer any questions.
The wind tunnel is half size and apparently approaches within a few percent of the results of a full sized tunnel (of course F1 is exactly looking for the last few percent or tenths of a percent which is why they want a full sized rig). The control room for the wind tunnel was the only place with aircon so we spent some time dropping our core temperatures here! Each test run only takes a couple of minutes, the model sits on a rolling road to simulate the car actually moving within the air stream - this is vital as tests on static ground are next to useless. The car is held in position by a fin stretching down from the ceiling into the drivers helmet, this also measures the various strains produced by the wind resistance in the three planes, everything logged to a computer on each run.
Naturally to test a half-sized car you need a modelling shop. Two cars were on display a (for me eponymous) Champ Car and I think an F3 car (please correct me someone). The regulations allow full ground effect features on the Champ car but not on the F3 so staring under models was very interesting. The modelling goes to quite a detailed level with wishbones milled out of solid ally stock with miniature rose joints. All the various body parts being carbon fibre.
In the design office they had modelling software to predict the effect of aerodynamics on design changes. This software is gradually being honed to improve its prediction but the wind tunnel is still needed to provide a more accurate simulation of real world effects.
In another section a seven post exercise device (the real name escapes me) is able to hold down a chassis and take all four wheels separately through a cycle of frequencies, this mimicks road and track effects. By making suspension adjustments (e.g. damper, spring rates etc) the wheels can be progressively 'glued' to the 'ground'. The ultimate is that all four wheels never leave the 'track' thus giving best grip.
We also looked around the carbon fibre production area. This was very hot and had a couple of large autoclaves for bonding the pieces under pressure. These were cylindrical chambers, about 8 feet in diamter and 20 feet long, but apparently there were some bigger ones in another building! The car tubs looked incredibly strong with petrol tanks sections bonded behind the passenger survival shell.
Overall I found the visit very interesting indeed and Lola made us feel very welcome, if you have the chance to experieince a similar tour I strongly recommend you make the effort to go.