Grand prix giants race towards a bigger prize
AN ELECTRIC BIKE, HIGH-ALTITUDE DRONE AND A FRIDGE ALL RUN ON FORMULA 1 TECH
What do an electric fold-up bike, high-altitude drone and supermarket fridge have in common? Believe it or not, they all run on technology developed in the high-octane world of Formula 1 racing.
“Williams sees itself as an engineering business that goes racing,” says Paul McNamara, technical director of Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE).
His job is to get the technology from the Williams Formula 1 cars on the racetrack out into the wider world.
The above examples aren’t the first time Williams’ inventions have moved away from Formula 1.
In the early days it was limited to other areas of motorsport, such as the Rover 6R4, an Eighties rally car version of Metro whose build was subcontracted to Williams, as well as a Williams touring car and a Le Mans racer with BMW in the Nineties.
“The entire set-up here is designed to make Formula 1 cars, but it’s a ‘peaky’ business,” says McNamara, speaking at Williams’ Oxfordshire base.
“We’ve got the expertise and testing facilities such as wind tunnels... They get used heavily in the winter as we develop cars for the new season but less once the season starts. It’s an obvious commercial win to use them when it’s quiet.”
Separate business line
WAE took on a life of its own as a separate business after Jaguar revealed plans for a hybrid-electric car in 2010.
The C-X75, which later featured in the James Bond film Spectre, would be built by newly established WAE, with 250 of the £1 million cars produced. However, the 200mph C-X75 hit the skids two years later when Jaguar abandoned the project, leaving WAE seeking new avenues to pursue.
“We were a one-project business when the C-X75 was pulled,” says managing director Craig Wilson. “We had to build from there with other work: it’s made us resilient.”
And that’s where the electric bike, drone and fridge came in, as WAE sought new applications for Williams’ technology.
The bike - built with Brompton - uses motors, batteries and control modules incorporating kinetic energy recovery systems from a race car. In Formula 1 racing events, these harvest energy generated during braking, storing it to give an extra boost when the driver needs one.
The drone, an Airbus project called Zephyr, uses ultralightweight materials developed in F1 so it can stay aloft longer, as well as battery technology.
And the fridge mimics a race car’s aerodynamics to “shape” air flowing down from the top of a chiller so less spills out, meaning that less energy is needed.
As well as cutting power bills for supermarkets, the system means customers are no longer forced to walk down the aisles shivering as chilled air leaks away. While each of these products highlights WAE’s three main areas of expertise - energy storage, lightweight components and aerodynamics - the company’s skills are not limited to this.
Data captured from cars roaring around tracks at 200mph has helped to develop a system that gathers information for the Army’s new Ajax armoured fighting vehicles.
The crash-resistant carbon-fibre “safety cells” in which racing drivers sit have been adapted to make protective pods that can transport babies. And Williams has used its knowledge of aerodynamics to make soap powder production at Unilever more efficient.
Defence applications
Meanwhile, defence companies have sought out help with the Typhoon fighter jet, and devices which sniff out chemical weapons in the air.
Away from the racetrack it’s not just a one-way street. “We get a lot of approaches from people with interesting ideas,” says McNamara, adding the company has set up a £20 million “foresight fund” to invest in start-ups.
He said: “We’ve got people out there looking at what’s going on - new ideas that we might not see outside the Formula 1 bubble.”
The business picks its partners carefully. Some projects might not bring in a fortune, but the interest they generate helps to build the brand probably the Williams group’s biggest asset.
Examples include a solarpowered fridge to put on the front of bicycles selling ice cream, and a better hand bike for Paralympian Karen Darke. None of this will change the world but it is headline-grabbing. WAE won’t disclose exact figures but Wilson says the company - which had just a few dozen staff when it was launched - is profitable.
Revenue is “around £40 million” and the firm now has 250 employees. That it is in the black isn’t surprising. While Wilson - a veteran of the car industry - is tightlipped about exactly what WAE is working on, he does let slip that it’s not just niche products and small businesses that his company is collaborating with.
Power storage solutions
Areas where Williams’s racetrack expertise is proving beneficial include speeding up production and better batteries.
“The big manufacturers can’t wean themselves off prototypes,” he says. “In racing you do things much faster, coming up with new products in the fortnight between races with computer modelling and simulation.”
Making a virtual prototype is not only faster than a physical one, it’s cheaper because electrons are free.
And it’s not the only example of major players wanting to tap into WAE: it currently makes batteries for Formula E electric racing and the big car manufacturers are desperate to learn from this.
“Things move so fast in racing but it’s also happening outside of it now,” Wilson says. “Just look at batteries: it’s gone from car companies saying ‘let’s look at this’, to ‘we want high-performance batteries and motors now’.” The racing mentality also extends to staffing and the company’s ethos. “In racing there’s nowhere to hide, you push boundaries or you’re not on the podium,” he says.
Paul McNamara | Technical director, Williams Advanced Engineering