At the heart of the Renault F1 team at Enstone

Monday July 6 and Tuesday July 7, all Formula drivers Renault 3.5 Series was gathered at Renault headquarters F1 à enstone. Based not far from the Silverstone circuit in Great Britain, ?Enstone? is thus one of the two entities of the diamond team. The place is dedicated to the design of single-seater chassis. The engines are assembled in Viry-Châtillon, in the Paris suburbs. During these two days of training, the pilots were able to discover all of the installations. For the first part of our report dedicated to the visit to the English site, we focused on the aerodynamic part: the fluid dynamics center and the wind tunnel.

Within the English entity of the team led by Flavio Briatore, the engineers strive all year round to get closer to their main objective: to advance the R29s to win. In Enstone, no less than 460 people work to develop and upgrade the racing cars.Alonso and Piquet in their chassis part.

The first part of the course offered to Formula Renault 3.5 Series drivers was devoted to discovering the Computational Fluid Dynamics Center (CFD). In this new cylindrical building completed in June 2008 which claims to be "green", both in the use of materials useful for its construction and in its desire to blend into the English countryside, around fifty engineers are working on the study of fluid dynamics. The place mainly contains the 'Mistral Super Computer' which occupies a third of the building. 52 meters long, this tool allows engineers to solve millions of equations at incredible speed.

Thanks to this, they are able to represent and precisely model the interaction between the single-seaters and the air they move when they are in motion. A real tool at the service of performance, the CFD is intended to support the wind tunnel or even surpass it in a short time. If the latter makes it possible to obtain more precise results at present, CFD is now essential in the design of bodywork and aerodynamic appendages.

The wind tunnel open 7 days a week, 7 hours a day

The CFD and the wind tunnel being complementary, it is quite naturally towards this second center that Marcos Martinez, the leader of the FR 3.5 Series, and Bertrand Baguette, his runner-up before the Silverstone meeting, are directed, among others. Accustomed to the circuits, most of the drivers were discovering the inside of an F1 team. And they were all enthusiastic over the two days.

Within the building housing the wind tunnel, we immediately sense the activity of the engineers hidden in offices that are very difficult to access. Opened in 1997, the center makes it possible to study the behavior of single-seaters on a 1/2 scale. Working with wind speeds of up to 360 km/h, the 80 engineers are hard at work searching for the best possible aerodynamic solution since the place is open seven days a week and 24 hours a day.

If wind tunnel development constituted the heart of single-seater development until now, it is clear that CFD is set to play an increasingly important role in the years to come; above all, it is no longer just a prospecting tool before wind tunnel tests but is a real prospective tool, capable of validating aerodynamic choices on its own.

This first part devoted to the aerodynamics of Renault single-seaters allowed everyone to get a more precise idea of ​​the complexity and the work required to obtain the best possible compromise and thus manage to gain a few precious tenths on the track.

On Saturday, you will discover the operation of another part of the factory: the design of parts. From their modeling to their installation on the R29s of Piquet and Alonso, you will see the different necessary steps.