From the track to the road

What benefits has motorsports ever given to the motoring industry? This question sits on a chair inside my head every time I watch a motorsports event on TV. It started two years ago after a not so faithful motoring aficionado shot a query while I was staring at the idiot box one Sunday Night. I answered “Well... many. Too many to enumerate now.” My eyes too fixated on the racing, I forgot all about it and soon the question was never answered.

Well, let me write about it then. Every weekend, in racetracks all over the world, vehicle manufacturers, race teams consisting of engineers, mechanics and drivers pitch their products against each other in tests of performance and endurance. This events are mostly sanctioned by a governing entity called the Federacion Internacional de Automobile (FIA). This entity foresees all aspects in Motorsports from the technicalities to the most important aspect in the sport which is safety.

In the eyes of the consumer aficionado, motor racing is purely entertainment. To the manufacturer, it represents one of the best forms on marketing and product promotion, as it is instinctive for the consumers to connect the racecars with the cars that they drive on the road. But to the FIA, motorsports is a testing ground for new technology, fostering innovations in terms of making cars more efficient and safe.

In reality, a racecar is built on a totally different platform as compared to its road-going brother. So what then are the benefits?

Let us talk about the safety contributions first. Sadly, safety advances in motorsports have, with a few exceptions, come as the result of tragic consequences. Five-point safety harnesses, fire retardant fuel cells, on-board fire extinguishers, purpose-built racing seats, rollbars and head and neck restraints(HANS) were all solutions to dangers that were exposed in motor racing. You don’t see all these in roadcars but what you see are road worthy equivalents. Take the development of better seatbelts and the introduction of the side impact beams on the door of roadcars. This were all borrowed technology from motor racing and most of these important pieces of safety technology are not visible to the untrained eye .

Like most race cars, production cars use independent suspensions. These suspensions allow each wheel to move without affecting the movement of the other wheels. These improves handling, stability and ride quality.

Disc Brakes were introduced in Motor Racing in the 1950s. This gave teams more powerful brakes and easier downtimes and maintenance. Most of the productions cars up to this date uses this technology.

Semi Manual Gearboxes or clutchless manual transmissions are racing innovations that allows drivers to shift gears quickly and make sure that they shift into the correct gear. The typical Honda Jazz has this featured.

The ERS or Energy Recovery System that uses heat generated when braking and thermal energy from exhaust gases to create extra power like Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) are innovations introduced in Formula One in the last few years. I don’t see any reason why these avantgarde innovations will not hit the road soon.