BE AN ENGINEER
Tino Belli
Indycar’s head of aerodynamics shares his top tips from his multi title-winning career
When Ed Carpenter became the third driver with a Chevrolet aerokit in five days – after Helio Castroneves and Josef Newgarden – to suffer an airborne accident while practicing for the 2015 Indianapolis 500, Indycar officials took the unprecedented step of delaying qualifying to consider the impact of the radical new oval package. At the centre of the storm was Cardiff’s Tino Belli.
As Indycar’s director of aerodynamic development since 2014, he had overseen the introduction of kits from Honda and Chevrolet, so would be tasked with finding a more permanent solution to keeping cars on the ground than simply cutting boost.
Together with kit manufacturers Pratt & Miller (Chevrolet) and Wirth Research (Honda), Belli reintroduced a domed skid-plate and developed beam-wing flaps for the rear wing, designed to deploy at 130 degrees and increase downforce when cars spun backwards. After destructive testing at Texas A&M University to ensure the flaps could withstand extreme loads, the changes were successfully implemented for 2016.
The decision to drop the expensive manufacturer aerokits in favour of a universal bodykit to assist overtaking for 2018 then gave Belli a whole new set of challenges to overcome.
Perhaps then it’s little wonder that the ex-andretti Autosport and Panther Racing technical director has found setting the agenda more rewarding than simply responding to it as part of a team.
“I spent one week in every three from January [2017] until May in Italy windtunnel-testing ideas and trying to get the styling across,” reflects Belli.
“It was exciting to say, ‘There are no rules, we want it to look really nice and hit these performance criteria’.”
The shift from poacher to gamekeeper came at the behest of then-indycar president Derrick Walker, once a colleague on the ill-fated Porsche Indycar programme, who saw in Belli a well-rounded engineer.
Having started his motorsport involvement while a student at Imperial College London, where he rallied a Fiat 128, Belli progressed to March Engineering as the head of aero, alternating between the Bicester drawing office, working on the following year’s Indycar and F3000 designs, and race engineering Michael Andretti at the Barry Green-run Kraco team. After transitioning into the Porsche project, subcontracted to March and run by Walker in the US, Belli followed March boss Robin Herd into Formula 1, where he penned Fondmetal and Larrousse machinery on a tight budget – Belli estimates Fondmetal spent around $2million in 1991. But design wasn’t his only forte – he also turned his hand to writing lap time simulation software, windtunnel testing and track support.
That experience served him well for a long career in Indycar, where lateral thinking between driver and engineer can go a long way. Teaming up with Green once again after Larrouse went bust, he stayed with the team through its Andretti buyout and achieved four drivers’ titles (2004,
’05, ’07 and ’12) by prioritising rotation of engineers to ensure he always had experienced cover. For Belli, that’s a crucial trait of a successful team – particularly in a series with such a diverse range of circuits.
“We didn’t pigeonhole our engineers, we let our aero guys be aero guys for some years and then cycled them through design and development,” he says. “You have to have sympathy for people doing other tasks, and the only way that you can get that is by doing that task yourself.”