Motorsport Engineering

gt-arrowhead

That, my friend, is a sexy beast!

(I dont know) Its a beauty though, it looks like a mix between the Shelby AC Cobra and a Jaguar D type.

gt-arrowhead

nicklouse wrote:

all cars hat i have built or rebuilt. 3 of them were are mine the other (Metro) i built and prepped for two different drivers over a number of years. and it held the class record at Harewood Hillclimb for about 11 years. (gives you an idea how long i have been playing in Motorsport and cars and working in the Automotive industry.

as said dont get too tied up with "Motorsport" find some area of engineering that you are good at and follow it. and find a Uni that does Formula Student and get in on it from year one.then i your last year will be having fun with it somewhere in the World.

That is very impressive!
Im assuming there was some sort of cash prize for getting the record?

Kowalski675

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

That, my friend, is a sexy beast!

(I dont know) Its a beauty though, it looks like a mix between the Shelby AC Cobra and a Jaguar D type.

Does a bit, doesn't it. Same era as the D Type - it's a 1958 Sadler Mk3 that I snapped racing at Oulton Park a few years ago, powered by a Chevrolet V8, and it sounded fucking glorious. It wasn't hanging around either, he was fighting it through Lodge on opposite lock every lap (and you could hear it coming all the way from Druids) - you can see the body langauge in the picture. Beautiful car.

gt-arrowhead

Chevy V8s sound absolutely incredible. Which is one of the reasons why this car has been my favourite car since i was in primary school.



Looks incredible even in racing livery. Beautiful.

mudsucker

I know my cousin is doing a motorsport engineering degree at Brooks College in Oxford. That's all I know though!

rockmonkeysc

If you're wanting to get in to engineering I would suggest that its worth considering a few options.
There are an awful lot of graduate engineers competing for jobs at the moment. What a lot of big companies do is take on apprentices and include uni as part of the apprenticeship, this means your degree is paid for and you come out of uni to a job. You will be expected to work through the holidays while your mates are off but it's worth it.
You will need to be very good with maths, degree level engineering involves a LOT of very tough maths, particularly calculus. You won't ever use any of it once you leave uni, there's software to take care of that for you.
Engineering is a good career choice, I'm getting contacted by agencies looking for mechanical designers most days.
Just don't limit yourself with a Specialist degree.

gt-arrowhead

Thanks for your reply.

I still have loads of time to consider everything available, and either way im going to give Maths and Physics A Levels my best. I can breeze my other two options, geography and ICT. Which is why i chose them.

Maths seems very very difficult so far, i have to give my full focus in class and do as much practice as possible to understand it. Its in a different league to GCSE.

Physics is easy enough so far, and i reckon i will be alright. I was struggling with "Vectors" but i soon figured out how to do them properly. If i just keep on going the way i am, i should be alright. Maths and Physics are fun when you can understand it fully and just do any problems the teacher gives you.

I really dont mind working in my spare time. Ultimately it would help me get to where i would want to be. And it would be work that i would enjoy doing anyway.

Isnt it quite rare for a uni to pay for your degree and take you on straight after? That sort of sounds too good to be true.

.blitz

My only advice would be to go and visit as many unis as you can. blitz jr is hoping to go to uni in 2014 and the last couple of months we've been to several uni open days they are like chalk and cheese

The red brick unis are quite elitist you go to them and hope you can get in but by the same token industry/business/education come to them and ask them to do research etc. Very academic with only a passing nod to what you might call 'real' jobs but they have contacts and they network and they open doors that other unis can only dream of.

The other unis vary wildly some of them are great and offer a viable alternative to red bricks via subject specialisation while others are clearly struggling with low admissions and low entrance grades.

Take no notice of league tables and what you mates are doing go and see for yourself what these places are like it will be time well spent. Good luck

jairaj

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

... Isnt it quite rare for a uni to pay for your degree and take you on straight after? That sort of sounds too good to be true.

You've miss understood. The Company you do you the apprenticeship with will pay for you to get educated at uni and if you are good they will offer you a job at the end of it all.

But I agree with the others, you don't necessarily need to specialise in Motor sport. As long as you do a related engineering qualification that has similar key skills and knowledge you will be fine and also stand a better chance of getting job outside of motor sport in case that doesn't work out.

I work in the electronics industry and while the companies I've worked at specialise in a certain field. The specialist knowledge is not usually a requirement for a job, certainly not for graduate level jobs. A background in electronics design is all that's needed and you hone those skills and pick up a few more in your specialist subject as you go along.

Speaking to some of my friends who are civil engineers seems to be their industry is the same. So I imagine most engineering jobs will be like this, including the automotive and motor sport industry.

redddraggon

Kowalski675 wrote:

paul.skibum wrote:

Do something you love at Uni - focus on careers out of uni is very much a modern trend, in the 80's/90's nobody did career oriented degrees (or very few)

That was when degrees meant something...

Degrees in the mainstream traditional academic subjects, e.g.(and I can only talk about Eng/the sciences) Mech Eng, Chem Eng, Elec Eng, Materials, Physics, Chemistry etc, at a Big name uni (Red brick/Russell group/Oxbridge/1994 unis) all still mean something.

Personally I would take something like Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering at a big name uni, than something like Motorsport Engineering at an Ex-Poly any day of the week.

Kowalski675

redddraggon wrote:

Kowalski675 wrote:

paul.skibum wrote:

Do something you love at Uni - focus on careers out of uni is very much a modern trend, in the 80's/90's nobody did career oriented degrees (or very few)

That was when degrees meant something...

Degrees in the mainstream traditional academic subjects, e.g.(and I can only talk about Eng/the sciences) Mech Eng, Chem Eng, Elec Eng, Materials, Physics, Chemistry etc, at a Big name uni (Red brick/Russell group/Oxbridge/1994 unis) all still mean something.

My point exactly - the proliferation of bullshit non-degrees means that these days it's only worth doing a proper degree, at a decent uni (one that didn't used to be a swimming pool or whatever until somebody renamed it...). The days of doing a degree in any subject, just to get a graduate job are gone - ask anyone with an arts degree...

gt-arrowhead

Im looking at unis still but i need to be realistic though...lol. Im not getting into engineering at Imperial College for example, and the course looks really really good there. You get to go abroad for a year and all sorts! That uni is rated 3rd in the world for engineering.

Maybe if i had the GCSE score requirement i could at least consider it, but i dont . I got a D in geography because i tried to do 8 questions instead of 4 in the exam like a total bellend (i was rushing!) so my UCAS points are like 360 something and the entry requirement for Imperial College London is 410. I would have easily got that if i didnt muck up my geography exam. That was an easy A that slipped away. And maybe if Religious Education actually meant something, i would have actually revised for that. And got another C+ grade.

I dont as you said want to go to an unheard of university because it wont really be recognised when looking for a job.

pesky_jones

If you get into the Imperial college, you are set. You will almsot always be employable. Anyway you can make up those 50 points

.blitz

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

I would have easily got that if i didnt muck up my geography exam.

Many unis will only take into account a maximum of something like 50 UCAS points from irrelevant/failed qualifications.

A* Maths & English and another one that's directly applicable to what you want to study seems to be the going rate for the top gun unis

jairaj

Also many unis will interview you and base your entry on more than just UCAS points. If you show you have a real interest in the subject and already have some experience they may over look your lack of points.

gt-arrowhead

Well, i got a B in maths (4 bloody marks from an A!) and a C in English. Im dreadful when it comes to summary and analysis. And i got an A in physics which is directly applicable. So thats a very average combination.

I could sit there and talk to them for hours about cars and aero and all of that stuff!

ckneller

I realise I'm a little late to the party here but I'll chuck in my opinion for what it's worth if anyone is still reading this!

As someone who studied motorsport engineering at uni and now works in F1 I like to think I might be of at least a little use!

Don't get too hung up on the whole motorsport title of the course. The main thing you want to ensure is that it's an all encompassing good engineering degree. I'm lucky in that this is exactly what mine was. This was more by luck than me selecting it based on this though. You want to make sure you have a good understanding in a wide range of fields such as solid body mechanics, thermodynamics, control systems etc.

It'll be easy enough to really specialise in something at a later date if that's what you want to do. You could do an aerodynamics specific masters or even a phd if that's what you fancy doing.

The other thing to make sure of is that it's a good reputable engineering uni. One thing me and my mates who also work in other areas of F1 have noticed is that there are several unis which you get an abundance of people from such as brunel, loughborough and cambridge. That's not to say that any other uni isn't work going to of course.

As for getting a job in F1, don't expect to get it straight after uni. Some do, some don't. I didn't. Get a good engineering job and get some experience. You can apply for other things whilst you're there. A design engineer job is always a good bet instead of a project management role. If you're working in F1 you'll be designing things more than likely. Even when you're senior.

And then just echoing what others have already said. Don't expect it to be a 9-5 job and put the effort in, be positive about it and work extremely hard. If you're hard working and good at what you do you'll always be employable.

I hope that was of some help!

gt-arrowhead

Thanks alot for your reply!

Im not really expecting to get a job in F1 as its the pinnacle of motorsport and its probably only reserved for the best of the best in all fields that are involved, i would imagine.

I would like to think i understand quite a lot of things to do with how a car works, and whats usually good and whats not. I spend alot of my time reading about various things to do with aero on f1 cars etc.

The thing that puts me off the whole designing idea is the fact that im hideously bad at drawing things, and anything along those lines. But then again apparently most design is CAD now a days.

I know i will work extremely hard at uni when im doing a degree in something that i am interested in. Especially if it is some sort of practical project. I would love for them to go "okay, here is a massive workshop. You have to build a go kart from scratch. Go" LOL. Very unlikely i know.If i do eventually end up with a job in motorsport engineering ill obviously work hard at it because it is what i want to do. At the moment im lacking motivation with my AS levels though, and im being a bit lazy. I know i have to buck up because crap results this year will juts be a domino effect for everything else in the future, especially because there are no retakes for A levels this year. Just the one shot in teh summer and thats it!

nicklouse

dont worry about drawing, the only people who do that are the stylists. as an engineer the styling surface is Holy. you can NOT change it. but what happens under that surface yep you might be involved in that. but it would just be "making" what someone else has "designed" Like currently I am working on developing the upper structure of two car brands on the same platform. where the brands have totally different ways of transferring crash forces. So we come up with a solution and pass it over to others to "crash" test and we then modify etc... all of this is done in the PC. paper might be used to help understanding between two people as they might see the answer differently.

strange this in a bike forum we have F1 people, race car people, car people and the odd person who has their head in the air, yes the aero engineers.

when you get your place at uni start thinking about the third year when you will need to do your placement as that can be very useful.

gt-arrowhead

Why wouldnt an engineer be able to change the styling surface? Im assuming you mean the body shape/body work. Wouldnt an aerodynamicist be able to change certain aspects of the body to acheive a certain goal? Say for an example (off the top of my head) an aerodynamicist working on a touring car wanted the car to have greater downforce, wouldnt they do things like change the front bumper to be able to have a front splitter, or "widen" the car to make the car produce more downforce? This would be changing the style surface of the car wouldnt it?

gt-arrowhead

Im surprised Bike Radar has so many people that are interested in motorsports. Not just watching it, but in discussing motorsport like in the CC F1 thread. That thread is alot better than the threads ive seen on dedicated sites.

rgliniany

Its awesome that you have a focus on what you want to do mr arrowhead.......

3D cad packages are ok in my eyes, i used one when i was a surveyor for the first company i worked for.... but there is also Autodesk Inventor....... freakin awesome design/modelling package..it has hundreds of tools i never manged to touch on when learning it.... mouldflows etc... which would probably help with feasibility tests for production of your new aerodynamic bodyparts..... i used it at uni for my my degree and found it quite easy to pick up.... ended up having a wager with the student lecturer for an A and kinda fluked it ..... but that's another story.

when you say you are rubbish at drawing do you mean making things look lifelike?....having a grasp of teccy drawing would put you in good stead if, heaven forbid.... the pc had a funny turn and you needed to get a diagram out....

just sayin ( i do most of my diagrams now in the dust onsite... or on the ute window)

good luck!!

gt-arrowhead

Thanks

I would love to have a program like that, sounds like alot of fun to be had. But im sure the program costs 3 times as much as my computer does! I tried to create an F1 car in "Google Sketchup". I made the nose part of the front wing which came out really well, and i couldnt do anything else so i just uninstalled it! :P

Indeed, i cant make anything look life like to save my life. This was an art project from 3 years ago, i had to create something to do with a film of my choice. I did transformers because i liked planes at the time, so i just wanted to draw Starscream. Linkin Park made the theme song for all 3 films so i thought id just add them in aswell.I was so chuffed with it at the time, now that i look at it, its appaling! Took me an age though. Its essentially just an outline of an F22 that i looked at a photo to get, and i just added a few stripes to it along with my initials and the Linkin Park logo.

nicklouse

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Why wouldnt an engineer be able to change the styling surface?

because it is not your pay grade.

only styling can. you can tell them what and why but you can not do anything about it.

Clank

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Why wouldnt an engineer be able to change the styling surface? Im assuming you mean the body shape/body work. Wouldnt an aerodynamicist be able to change certain aspects of the body to acheive a certain goal? Say for an example (off the top of my head) an aerodynamicist working on a touring car wanted the car to have greater downforce, wouldnt they do things like change the front bumper to be able to have a front splitter, or "widen" the car to make the car produce more downforce? This would be changing the style surface of the car wouldnt it?

Forgeting F1 for a second - a stylist has designed a car body shape. Everyone else works around it (including aerodynamics). If I need to get the bonnet shape changed because I can't actually make it that shape, or the packaging for the engine doesn't work - that styling won't change. I can't do anything that will interfere with this bellend's vision of 'The Car'. I have to change the way the car is engineered and constructed instead.

Example - the Lotus Elise only ended up with a lip on the boot after they proved to the 'designer' that the car was aerodynamically unstable without it. Literally they had to crash one on the track to get the point across. He wouldn't bastardize his Vision. The car crashed - he added a lip-spoiler pronto.

Re aerodynamics - I'll not fanny about with aero when I could be working the suspension kinematics to generate more mechanical grip. Aero is always limited - mechanically generated grip is ungoverned.

See aero, like styling, is only one small aspect of the overall vehicle package. There's a lot more mechanical engineering that goes on under the skin (aero is irrelevant to crash performance, for example). In fact there's a lot of manufacturing engineering that goes on with the skin too (A-surfaces were the bane of my life!). Aero is arguably the last, and least, most important aspect of the vehicle, especially in race-cars - the underpinnings need to be right first - otherwise you're just polishing a Marussia ('my dog has a stepped nose'. 'How does it smell?' 'Like a Caterham')

rgliniany

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Thanks

I would love to have a program like that, sounds like alot of fun to be had. But im sure the program costs 3 times as much as my computer does! I tried to create an F1 car in "Google Sketchup". I made the nose part of the front wing which came out really well, and i couldnt do anything else so i just uninstalled it! :P

Indeed, i cant make anything look life like to save my life. This was an art project from 3 years ago, i had to create something to do with a film of my choice. I did transformers because i liked planes at the time, so i just wanted to draw Starscream. Linkin Park made the theme song for all 3 films so i thought id just add them in aswell.I was so chuffed with it at the time, now that i look at it, its appaling! Took me an age though. Its essentially just an outline of an F22 that i looked at a photo to get, and i just added a few stripes to it along with my initials and the Linkin Park logo.

http://www.autodesk.com/free-trials

there you go sir

nicklouse

Clank wrote:

(A-surfaces were the bane of my life!)

yep cant install the engine at the moment. engine lift intersects the fenders. cant open the bonnet more than 20 degrees at the moment the hinge intersects the fenders.

not to mention front impact.

Clank

nicklouse wrote:

Clank wrote:

(A-surfaces were the bane of my life!)

yep cant install the engine at the moment. engine lift intersects the fenders. cant open the bonnet more than 20 degrees at the moment the hinge intersects the fenders.

not to mention front impact.

I feel your pain. :shock:

...bloody glad I was in BIW assembly - you guys gave us all the fun stuff to stick together, really pushing material use (AHSS, dual phase steels, boron steels, bainitic steels, TRIPs and TWIPs and aluminium sections). Genuinely enjoyed that aspect of the work.

gt-arrowhead

Clank wrote:

Forgeting F1 for a second - a stylist has designed a car body shape. Everyone else works around it (including aerodynamics). If I need to get the bonnet shape changed because I can't actually make it that shape, or the packaging for the engine doesn't work - that styling won't change. I can't do anything that will interfere with this bellend's vision of 'The Car'. I have to change the way the car is engineered and constructed instead.

Example - the Lotus Elise only ended up with a lip on the boot after they proved to the 'designer' that the car was aerodynamically unstable without it. Literally they had to crash one on the track to get the point across. He wouldn't bastardize his Vision. The car crashed - he added a lip-spoiler pronto.

Re aerodynamics - I'll not fanny about with aero when I could be working the suspension kinematics to generate more mechanical grip. Aero is always limited - mechanically generated grip is ungoverned.

See aero, like styling, is only one small aspect of the overall vehicle package. There's a lot more mechanical engineering that goes on under the skin (aero is irrelevant to crash performance, for example). In fact there's a lot of manufacturing engineering that goes on with the skin too (A-surfaces were the bane of my life!). Aero is arguably the last, and least, most important aspect of the vehicle, especially in race-cars - the underpinnings need to be right first - otherwise you're just polishing a Marussia ('my dog has a stepped nose'. 'How does it smell?' 'Like a Caterham')

Thanks for the reply, very informative! (i like the polishing a Marrusia bit, and referring to the stylist as "bellend") I am fully aware that aero is just a small part of how good a car is. I dont know a huge amount but i pretty much know the basics. Suspension is probably one of the most important because it can give you so many advantages if its done correctly. Like weight transfer under braking, during acceleration and cornering, ride height, mechanical grip as you mentioned, mid corner grip, and so on. I dont know a whole load of stuff but i know some of the basics.

Thanks rgliniany

Whats an A-surface? Engine lift? Fenders?

Graham K

A lad I know studied some Motor course at Stafford and now works for M-Sport, dont know his role but its some kind of tech/engineer and he wears overalls and not a shirt n tie,
Ive sent him a link to thread so if he's got time away from fapping off to the photo of him and Rossi at Monza from the other week he may reply to the thread.