Finally- a sophisticated, yet user-friendly, software tool to help setting up a racecar that doesn't require an engineer to operate it.
Developed for use on any car racing on ovals or road courses, Racecar Engineer (R.E.) is a tool to be used at the track by people who work on racecars. R.E. will use your setup information to generate straightforward outputs that let you tune your car to maximize cornering power. This predicative ability will help avoid making very expensive mistakes and improve your overall performance.
It is often easy to decide which components need changing to improve a car-but it is often very difficult to decide how big this change should be. This becomes even more difficult when making multiple changes at the same time as is often required by the tight schedule of a race weekend. A certain amount of guesswork is usually involved when making multiple changes at the same time. R.E. eliminates the guesswork allowing you to make educated decisions based on a combination of your experience and our science without the time and money commitment required by dynamic simulations.
Racecar Engineer uses basic inputs of common tuning parameters and performs the vehicle dynamics calculations required to understand what to expect from your car. The results are shown as the resulting load on each tire allowing you to optimize your available traction for combinations of various braking, accelerating and cornering situations. In addition, the effect of fuel load changes and driver adjustable anti-roll bars are shown allowing a side-by-side comparison of the cars expected performance at the beginning and end of an event.
Additional functions include:
• A setup calculator helps you find a range of optimum spring and bar rates for your car based on weight transfer calculations.
• A spring perch calculator function calculates the required adjustments to ride height and spring preload after a change of spring rates.
• A "G" calculator calculates the effect of vehicle speed as well as corner radius and banking angle, including off-camber corner effects.
In addition to the basic trackside tools, additional information is provided for use in setup planning including: natural frequency analysis, tire deflection, detailed weight transfer analysis, predicted roll angle and ride height, center of gravity and center of pressure locations and the effects of track banking. While the R.E. calculations are performed for steady state cornering conditions, the trends and values it exposes will be equally as valuable in tuning your cars transient response.
The intuitive user interface allows you to go to work instantly. But when you need help, the comprehensive documentation provides detailed explanations of the principles and vocabulary as well as a "Tips and Tricks" section to help you find the right setup and maximize the value of your time on the track. In addition, a condensed explanation of vehicle dynamics and weight transfer is included for your reference.
With the typical cost of operating a professional race car ranging from $500 to $1000 per mile, it is not cost effective to tune a race car by trial and error. At less than half of the cost of one lap around a race track, Racecar Engineer is available to eliminate the guesswork and help you make good decisions, quickly, based on a solid vehicle dynamics analysis.
A full complement of road race and stock car options, settings and graphics are included as well as an option to use metric units if preferred. Open wheel graphics are shown below.
For use on PCs running Windows 98SE, 2000, ME or XP.
See details about Racecar Engineer Inputs and Calculations
See Enclosed Wheel Graphics
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