Renault’s super truck: Engineers home away from home
It is impressive, exciting, innovative and notable. Renault has come up with something which is bound to attract a lot of attention in the days to come. It’s the new Renault truck which weighs about 35.5 tones which custom built for Renault’s engineering crew. Such is the comfort level that engineers have called the super truck a home away from home.
The truck was specially designed for the engineers to be used during race weekends. It carries a working space for up to thirty people, and some of the major team decisions are made right here. It also serves as a rendezvous for the drivers for various debriefings as well as a safe haven for team engineers to store their data.
The Renault driver, Vitaly Petrov, while talking about the truck claimed that it is a hub of information from an engineering point of view throughout the race. Petrov told that all the required information comes from the super truck and everything gets decided right inside it, especially during the early days of the race weekend when practice sessions are being carried out.
Well, let’s give a peep inside the truck to see who is actually in there making all the shots from inside....
A team of engineers is stationed inside for both the cars on an individual basis that is monitoring every move that the car makes during a race. At the same time, when the race engineers are taking care of the cars from the pit walls and the garage, the back-up team in the truck has a performance engineer, and another control systems engineer who is supported by two other engineers for the engine. They are equipped with a vast display of computer screens and monitors in order to carry on their jobs efficiently.
Robert Kubica’s performance engineer, Jon Marshall, elaborated the engineers’ job by saying that each engineer has four monitors running with two laptops owing to the large number of software packages that they need to operate in order to monitor the car completely.
Moreover, he added that there is another bank of screens which look after TV feeds and timing data. Furthermore, there are web cameras setup in the garage that allow the engineers to keep a look on the car right there from the truck. Well, the truck is a big thing carrying more than 60 screens at a time.
While the race is in progress, the engineers in the control system make sure that all the systems in the car keep working properly, while on the other hand, the performance engineers keep a close eye on the systems in the truck at all times. They closely study the data to spot anything that could help them improve the performance of the cars or the drivers, after which they send relevant messages through radio to the race engineers. For example, it was the result of their quick reactions at Silverstone that the slow puncture on Petrov’s car was spotted at the right time which is why Renault was able to make a call in the pit, avoiding what could have been a dangerous situation.
After every race, drivers normally go straight to the truck for downloading their experience of the session in the traditional debriefing room.
After each of the races, the engineers analyze all the data that they had collected all through the race as well as through every word of the driver. It is more like a practice of searching for a needle in a haystack, but then that needle could play a major role for the team.
Out of the available data, analysis are made as to what went wrong, what went right and what were the factors behind the defeat or the win. Everything is examined closely and hence the strategies and plans of the team for the future races are tailored out of this data.
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