Being organized is possibly the best trait a race engineer can have. Oftentimes, proper documentation of the race car’s setup as well as session conditions is the starting point for diagnosing setup issues. As Antonio’s first boss once told him, “Always start with the basics”. Antonio’s experience on teams fielding factory drivers, young talents, and amateurs have allowed him to develop a methodology of how to approach race car setup. Communicating with the driver during the session to offer advice, receive feedback, encourage, and manage their morale is a skill Antonio has recently developed as well. Having worked with a wide range of cars has helped Antonio understand how to properly fuel a car for a stint, or race distance. It may seem simple at a glance, but understanding a car’s fuel system, and knowing how much buffer fuel to add is important to ensure the car finishes the race. Correlating post-session pump-out numbers to monitor fuel system performance and reliability is also critical during a race weekend.

Lap Time Simulation has been a tool added to the arsenal of many racing teams in the past decade, starting in series such as F1, but now trickling down to GT teams as well. ADS Motorsports Consulting offers multiple simulation types depending on what the team is looking to achieve. A point-mass model is suitable for evaluating common performance sensitivities. Lap time in relation to mass, fuel consumption with respect to mass, and aero coefficient sweeps are some good examples of this. Fully transient simulations that consider suspension geometry and more complex tire models can be helpful for setup. Using logged data, track modeling and vehicle model correlation can be carried out to ensure that the simulation will produce accurate and useful results. The theoretical mechanical balance can be calculated for corners of different radii, while end of straight ride height and rake for aero performance can also be investigated. Finally, it is also possible to assess different driving lines, as well as vehicle balance.

No matter the level of your driver, using logged data to assess vehicle and driver performance is a standard in every racing team. Logged data without an experienced engineer to make sense of it is fairly useless. ADS Motorsports Consulting uses math channels in combination with metrics tracked over multiple sessions to help display vehicle trends, while also aiding the correlation between performance and external factors such as ambient and track temperature. In Antonio’s experience, using driver-oriented analysis layouts in combination with onboard video has proven to be a powerful driver coaching tool.

The design of a successful race car requires a thorough understanding of the many subsystems that compose it. ADS Motorsports Consulting starts by setting well-defined targets for the race car, considering both performance and reliability, and uses those targets to dictate the design. Antonio’s experience in FSAE and consulting work has seen him lead race car design and philosophy, while also partaking in exercises such as spring rate and roll gradient selection. Antonio has experience in aerodynamic philosophy for new race car platforms, as well as integrating aerodynamics into existing non-aero race cars. Designing for reliability, tire selection, design for trackside adjustment, and designing for driver ergonomics and comfort, are also some areas of Antonio’s experience.

Arguably Antonio’s most knowledgeable category, aerodynamic design is tediously difficult, but when done correctly yields great results. As in race car design, aerodynamic design is very target-oriented, and some of those targets are derived using point mass simulations mentioned above. Antonio’s understanding of center of pressure placement and the sensitivity of different aero devices leads to designs that produce high-performing and stable race cars. ADS Motorsports Consulting provides general directions for aerodynamic philosophy for a platform, the selection of airfoils and the design of high lift devices, the design of composite structures, as well as the design of the mounting devices for aerodynamic elements.

A personal favourite field of mine, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), is the use of a computer model of both the environment and the geometry of interest, to simulate a flow that results from a set of initial conditions. CFD is typically employed fairly early on in the aerodynamic design process in an iterational loop where designs are trialed and improved based on the analysis following a study. An accurate and robust CFD model not only produces trustworthy results, but also saves on testing and manufacturing costs as the project progresses. In motorsports, CFD models are created for the design of aero packages or are used to evaluate the performance of a current vehicle or package. ADS Motorsports Consulting got their start in CFD as the Head of Aerodyanmics and CFD for their FSAE team, where they design multiple aero packages, and conducted case studies to evaluate the improvements offered when coupling super computing power and CFD.