Motor racing is supposed to be a testbed for advancing the capabilities of everyday cars. However, it’s becoming difficult to see a connection between Formula 1 and anything people drive on the road. Formula E, on the other hand, has an increasingly direct link between the two as BEV sales grow. During the recent Berlin E Prix race weekend, I talked to the Jaguar Formula E team and its technology partner Tata Consultancy Services about exactly how that works.
“A digital twin of the car acts like the real car, including everything from the powertrain and chassis models to how it feels to the driver in terms of setup changes and how much energy we use,” says Barclay. “These are things that we can try in the virtual world with what we call a Driver in the Loop simulator.” This is where the driver can test race strategies in the virtual world before reaching the race location. “If we've practiced enough, we can know how we think the race will go.
Similar techniques can be used to improve the performance of road cars, as well as accelerating the development of safety features and autonomous driving. “We use all the same analysis and data logging tools as we do in reality,” says Cassidy. “To save costs, we're limited on what sensors we can use on the car, whereas in the simulator, we can measure everything we want. A better correlation with reality means we can learn more on the simulator than we do at the track.