Lap Time Simulation for Racing Car Design

A number of handling models of a small high performance formula type racing car have been produced. These have been used to optimise the performance of the vehicle whilst under going simple manoeuvres and around a complete race track. Recently the vehicle was fitted with a data acquisition system and objective data was taken of the vehicle's handling performance.

The paper details an investigation into the accuracy of two (a simple and more sophisticated) vehicle handling models in predicting the actual vehicle's performance from the data collected by comparing measured and simulated results. The investigation studies the steady state and transient response of the vehicle up to the limit of the vehicle's handling performance.

A description is also given of the use of the more sophisticated model in a virtual race track simulation where it is used as a development tool to tune the performance of future vehicles.