Lotus Racing selects VI-Motorsport to optimize the setup of their racing cars
Marburg, Februay 5th, 2010 – VI-grade GmbH, the leading provider of best-in-class products and services to bridge the gap between real world testing and technical simulation, today announced that Lotus Racing has selected VI-MotorSport, VI-grade’s complete suite for system-level racing simulations, to optimize the setup of their racing cars.
Lotus Racing, the new Norfolk based F1 team, has purchased licenses of VI-MotorSport, a complete solution that includes advanced simulation tools such as Vi-grade’s flagship product VI-CarRealTime, VI-SuspensionGen, VI-Driver and VI-Animator.
“We were looking for a reliable solution that could enable us to test new designs very quickly” says Elliot Dason-Barber, Head of Vehicle Dynamics at Lotus Racing. “VI-MotorSport is the tool we needed to modify the setup of our racing cars, validating our new designs with the efficiency of a real-time solution. VI-Motorsport gives us the possibility to link activities done by engineering team with those performed on the track to search for maximum performance of the car. With one single vehicle model we will be able to run all different analyses needed in the development of a F1 car.”
“We are excited about the collaboration with Lotus Racing” says Diego Minen, Technical Director of VI-grade. “We are looking forward to supporting the success of this newborn racing team that joins today the community of our customers belonging to the racing industry.”
The VI-MotorSport simulation environment will be used by the Lotus Racing engineering department as a complete virtual product development solution. In particular, VI-Driver will be used to maximize the performance of the racing cars on different circuits, whereas the VI-Animator GUI will support the monitoring phase of all racing channels during the on-track tests.
About VI-Motorsport
VI-Motorsport is a software environment for vehicle modeling and dynamic analysis, which helps race cars designers and track engineers to predict vehicle performance when set-up parameters are modified, before the car is built and also in support of race events. VI-Motorsport is based on a faster-than-real-time simulation solver which can predict the virtual car behavior and has been extensively validated against test data in various race car series. The VI-Motorsport environment is complemented by the ability to create road data (both drivelines and tire contact profiles) starting either from GPS, laser or telemetry data measurements, or from a fully analytical description. VI-MotorSport will also write out data that is fully compatible with ATLAS from McLaren Electronic Systems, making it simple to integrate with existing tools. Finally VI-grade’s advanced driver model allows users to drive the vehicle model around the specified track. For all those companies involved in the process of finding best vehicle set-up and performance whilst at the same time limiting economic resources, VI- Motorsport is an unprecedented support and a revolutionary aid to the engineering team. VI-Motorsport includes following software modules: VI-CarRealTime, VI-Road, VI-Tires, VI-Driver, VI-Animator and VI-SuspensionGen.
About Lotus Racing
Lotus Racing was granted its entry to the 2010 Formula 1 World Championship in September 2009 and announced its driver line-up of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen in December. Under the technical direction of Mike Gascoyne, Lotus Racing is aiming to be the best of the new teams on the grid and with a strong driver pairing, Cosworth power and an army of fans around the world it has a strong chance of doing so. For further information about Lotus Racing please visit: http://www.lotusracing.my