Formula 1: The GOAT

”We are wasting time following someone’s guess,” Carlo, an engineer at the home base in Italy, said as he frantically opened the design files, looking for the suspension mount point designs. He had been selected to be the one to verify everything discussed and suggested during the morning session.

”What is wrong with checking to be sure when it could easily be what we have been looking for from the first time anyway?” an engineer next to him said as he focused on checking the live telemetry that was being delivered by their car, which was now on the track already going through other tests as they waited for results.

”I’m open to suggestions, but what does he know about the car other than helping with the simulation? He hasn’t driven the car, and he says he came up with a solution just from hearing what the drivers described. Do you think there is credible information within his words, if not to attract attention because he felt like he was not the center of attention?” he said as he begrudgingly started scrolling down to a specific page.

In isolation, his grievances made sense because the one who suggested this didn’t even have access to the car’s design files or simulation results, nor had he driven the car to say he came up with the suggestion from experiencing it, but from just looking at telemetry and thinking about what the drivers said.

If it was that easy to pinpoint the problem, then there was no need for all the processes they had, and the time he was currently wasting trying to prove an already known answer was precious time not spent on finding the actual problem.

The engineer next to him didn’t bother saying anything more as he too was focused on his own tasks.

”This should nip everything in the bu...” Just as Carlo was about to finish saying with confidence that he had found the answer to end everything, he had to pause from sheer disbelief of what he was seeing.

He frantically scrolled up and down to see if he had skipped a page, but no matter how hard he tried, the result came back the same.

The adapter plate was designed to a strength specification, and it had passed with flying colors, but nowhere in the document were the deflection calculations and simulations under peak loading done. Strength and stiffness were not the same properties.

As a result, a component can be perfectly strong, meaning it won’t break, but still not be sufficiently stiff, resulting in it deflecting measurably under load. The distinction was fundamental in mechanical engineering but easy to overlook when the primary concern during a compressed development timeline is structural integrity.

But he was still sure that Fatih was not correct and it was just a lucky guess. He imported the adapter plate geometry from the drawing files and input the peak combined loading vectors from the vehicle dynamics model before running the deflection analysis.

As the analysis was happening, he was biting his nails on his shaking fingers, with his eyes not leaving the screen, worried that he might miss something.

And the results that came once the analysis was done: Deflection magnitude was 0.29mm, resulting in a toe change at the wheel of 0.061°, with a camber contribution of 0.019°.

He released a sigh when he read the analysis results. After a few minutes of wondering how the kid managed to pinpoint the specific cause, he reached out to Thomas and Hendrik, the suspension system designers, to inform them of it. The news immediately reached Franz, who was on the pit wall following the practice session.

......

”How confident are you in the field FEA?” Franz heard when he received the update.

”Based on the analysis results, I have high confidence,” Thomas said just as the feed on the live broadcast changed to show the two of them having a back-and-forth conversation.

”What does 0.29mm at that point produce at the wheel?”

”0.061 degrees toe. 0.019 degrees camber.”

Franz pinched his eyes for a moment before turning to the garage to see Fatih standing with radio headphones on, looking at the screen in front of him, unaware that he was correct.

”Okay, call Gasly in. I want the behavioral test this afternoon. Let’s confirm it on track before we go further,” Franz said, calling the car back into the pit, killing the planned tests for the entire session. Solving this problem was more important than completing those tests since they were being actively tainted by an unstable platform. By solving it ahead of time, it would give them the confidence to trust the data.

....

Gasly, at his one-and-a-half-hour mark of the morning test, was called into the pit lane before the car was dragged into the garage. Mechanics, already updated on what to do, started working on the car as Gasly came out and started being briefed by his race engineer on what was expected of him for the following test.

Since deflection only occurred under combined loading, pure braking, pure cornering, and combined loading should produce distinctly different anomaly signatures. For that, Gasly was required to drive in a specific style.

He was asked to brake heavily on the straights near the braking zone, coming from high speed without cornering, to only apply pure longitudinal load without lateral G. In some high-speed corners, he was asked to trail brake to apply combined lateral G plus longitudinal load plus aero, which, if the theory was correct, would result in maximum magnitude deflection. Then he was sent out, with all those in the know focused on the data that would be gathered.

After five laps driving under these instructions, he was called into the pit before being sent out again after wing angle adjustments to gather more concrete real-world data. But everyone who had seen the data from the five-lap test and knew the possible cause already knew that Fatih’s guess was correct.

These tests changed constantly as Gasly came into the pit after every five laps until the end of the session. The mechanics immediately got to work, rushing to install strain gauges to have accurate real-world data on the strain in the material at the exact location, and from strain, calculate stress and deflection.

Due to the magnitude of the changes requiring them to strip the suspension to reach the location to install the gauge, the car was only able to enter the second session after a two-hour delay, once it was finally done being rebuilt, before Yuki was sent out.

......

”Good work,” Franz said to Fatih at the end of the day’s post-test debriefing meeting. Franz finally announced that Fatih’s suggestion was correct and they were going to work overnight to machine the replacement part to be put in the car tomorrow to see if the problem would be solved.

Franz’s words resulted in the people in the room clapping for Fatih, as it was an unimaginable feat to be able to point out such a specific problem when he had very limited data.

”Thank you,” Fatih said with a satisfied smile on his face. He had finally helped the team solve the biggest hurdle that would have taken them a long time to discover and solve. But now that he had helped provide them with a stable suspension system that they could trust, they would now begin solving all the other problems they would be discovering starting tomorrow.

He wasn’t planning on getting involved anymore unless they were actively making a mistake, but that was very unlikely to happen.

”And as promised, he will now be actively participating as an engineering intern, so keep that in mind, as he has the knowledge to back it up and survive the position,” Franz said, keeping up his side of the promise and recruiting Fatih as an intern for AlphaTauri. He was already registered as an engineer, but this time he could actively do engineering things.