Multimatic Motorsports has completed an initial aerodynamic evaluation test at Catesby Tunnel, a newly-opened aerodynamic testing facility owned by ARP (Aero Research Partners). It is the first facility of its kind in the UK and only the second in the world.
The team ran its Mazda DPi race car up to 120mph through the tunnel, measuring its aerodynamic behaviour. The team compared the results to a comprehensive data set previously gathered from 40% scale and full-size wind tunnel testing, Computational Fluid Dynamics development and five years of competition in IMSA’s top-level championship. It found a high correlation to the existing performance data.
The Catesby facility began its life as a dual rail Victorian railway tunnel, with the first steam locomotives running through it in July 1898. It closed to trains in 1966. A multi-million-pound transformation has turned Catesby into a state-of-the-art aerodynamic vehicle testing facility. The tunnel still carries vestiges of soot from coal-burning trains, which has stuck to many of the approximately 30 million bricks required to construct the perfectly straight 2.7 km long tunnel, boasting a massive cross-section, 8.2m wide and 7.8m high.
Catesby Tunnel turns the traditional practice of using a wind tunnel on its head; as Multimatic Motorsports boss, Larry Holt, explains, ‘Compared to conventional wind tunnels, this is better because it’s real. In a moving ground plane wind tunnel, the car is stationary, the wind is blown over it by a massive fan and flow conditioning set-up, and a belt is arranged to move under the car at a coordinated speed. It’s a very sophisticated configuration, but the car is still stationary. Catesby facilitates measuring the aerodynamic performance of a vehicle moving through the air.’
‘The car is subjected to influences like gusting wind, rain and other changing environmental conditions that affect air density; all of the variables that come with driving in the real world. Catesby provides the real world without the weather. You have a moving car, a road surface, a controlled environment, and we can run 24 hours a day, whatever the season – it is a perfect 2.7kms of controlled atmosphere. That’s the kind of consistency you need when you are chasing incremental gains.’
Multimatic driver, Andy Priaulx, was behind the wheel of the Mazda RT24-P throughout the test. He commented, ‘When you’ve been a racing driver for as long as I have, you don’t often get to…
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