The Final Countdown

The second race of our season took place in Kazan, Russia and after some shaky moments – including qualifying ninth – it ended up being a great race for us. After a lacklustre qualifying day, we really turned a corner on race day to set the fastest time of the day in the Round of 14 and eventually finished second.

While the final result is ultimately the only thing that matters, one of the things we were asked to explain was how such big swings in performance occur. In qualifying we were almost two seconds off the pace set by young Frenchman Mika Brageot, but then we were the fastest plane during the race, just not on the lap that really mattered in the Final 4!

These variations in pace, especially when they are quite large, are very much track-specific and can more often than not be attributed to environmental factors. The Kazan track this year was incredibly fickle, particularly due to wind affecting what was a high-speed track. If you got a gust of wind early during your run in the track that hindered your speed by just one knot, it had the effect of putting you behind where you should be (based on raw speed, unhindered by wind) by half a metre per second.

Over 60 seconds, that equates to being 30 metres behind where you should have been.

There are also some interesting lines a pilot can take in the Kazan track that can make or break a run, and the wind direction played a part in each and every line. Our strategy was to go for a more aggressive line during qualifying, though it did not pay off and we reverted to our secondary line on race day, which worked nicely.

The other thing we did for Kazan was make changes to the race plane. Even though the series is coming to an end, we are still trying our hardest to win. When you look at it, everything in life comes to an end at some stage. Just because you know when that end is shouldn’t mean you reduce how much effort you put in.

So, here’s what we worked on… keep this to yourself! At the first race of 2019 we had a few engine issues so before Kazan we corrected those. We purchased a new cylinder kit just in case we needed to replace damaged equipment, but as it turned out we found the cylinder and piston to be in excellent condition. That was a welcome relief.

Then we started looking a little more closely at what could have been causing the issues. We found a gap in our plenum that had opened up (about 2mm wide) that was letting cooling air escape at the wrong location. That made a difference. We also found an induction air leak from where the induction tube leaves the cool air sump under the engine, and that made a difference.

We found one of our water-cooling injector nozzles was gummed up with a different spray pattern. That made a difference. When we added it all up, we found the cylinder dropped in temperature by about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is huge for the power delivery of that cylinder, the balance of the engine, and the oil temp trying to cool it with the limited airflow. That was a tick for solving the engine issues.

With the engine issue solved, we then looked at adding some other upgrades. We installed some new displays in the aircraft, and I can’t go into too much detail on them. What I can tell you is that one of them was a digital indication of the position of our cowl flap. We initially tried to keep the fact we were running a cowl flap a secret (we have had it for over 18 months), though all our competitors know about it now. Some even copied the design.

But what we did not have was a digital tracker of its position – we were just relying on the fact it was working in accordance with the switch position. However, the more we have worked on this feature of the plane, we found that it was opening under high velocity air loads when it should have been closed. That equated to slowing down the plane when at high speed, which links back to the math of ‘how many metres per second is this slowing us down’.

Our work on the cowl flap also led us to discover some uncommanded movements during the track flying which were, again, slowing us down.

After addressing all of the above and fixing a few issues (some we didn’t even know we were looking for), we were all of a sudden back to winning form.

As I write this with two rounds of racing to go, we still have a lot to do on the aircraft. We are not giving up on trying to go faster, and testing and evaluating everything we do – even in the face of a series that is well and truly in its swansong.

Once it is all over, we will start sharing some of the cool stuff we have done to the plane over the course of the past few seasons. But that’s for another column.

Smoke on…

‘Even though the series is coming to an end, we are still trying our hardest to win’