Winner: WRC safety program - FIA Institute

The latest fruits of an ongoing research program into the safety of World Rally Cars were implemented in the 2008 WRC. Under the leadership of WRC project manager Andy Mellor, the FIA Institute has worked with teams to deliver a number of safety improvements.

First of all, drivers and co-drivers now have a 200mm gap between their seat and the car door – enough to save their lives in a 60km/h (37mph) direct side impact with a solid object, the equivalent of a 15m dive into solid ground or a 100g impact. The gap between the seat and the door is filled with energy-absorbing foam.

The second safety change involves the seats. For 2009, all WRC cars are required to have a new seat type. Stronger (and slightly heavier) than the previous seats, it has been designed to maximize pelvis, chest, head and shoulder protection. Crucially, it will also spread loads evenly through the occupant’s body in an impact.

In addition to the new seat, the FIA has defined attachment points and approved methods for integrating the seat rails into the chassis, imposing new regulations to this effect. The positioning of seatbelt anchorages has also come under scrutiny, with regulation changes ensuring they are located so that they tension up as early as possible in the event of an accident.

Winner: Windshear

Built by Jacobs Technology and opened in summer 2008, Windshear’s 290km/h (180mph) rolling-road wind tunnel is the first of its kind in North America, and only the third rolling-road wind tunnel of its scale in existence. More importantly, it is the world’s first commercially available, full-scale, rolling-road wind tunnel of its type.

Windshear is based in Concord, North Carolina, making it ideally situated for NASCAR teams; it is also available for hire to all motorsport teams and auto manufacturers, providing services previously available only to top Formula 1 teams. The wind tunnel accommodates full-scale vehicles, and provides constant airspeeds up to 290km/h (180mph) – a speed that can be reached from zero in less than a minute. The high-tech rolling road, supplied by MTS, is 3.2m wide by 9m long. The “road” is actually a continuous stainless steel belt just 1mm thick, and it is designed to last up to 5,000 operational hours. During testing, through-the-belt sensors measure the aerodynamic down-force under each tire.

Winner: Waste heat regeneration - Heat2power

Heat2power, a powertrain innovation company based in Paris, France, develops and commercializes waste heat regeneration technologies. It aims to make fuel savings and reduce CO2 emissions in tomorrow’s cars, trucks, ships and power generators.

With a background in the automotive industry, the company founders have analyzed the power flows in and around the combustion engine to find ways of improving its efficiency. This has led them to focus on the re-use of waste heat, and the heat from the exhaust in particular, because its high temperatures offer the highest regeneration potential.

They investigated over 40 technologies and found no single technology perfectly adapted for application to mass-produced vehicles. Heat2power has since then engineered a new variant of the old hot air engine concept that finally combines low cost, simplicity, ease of operation and maintenance, robustness, good controllability, high regeneration efficiency and high specific power without adding liquids to the vehicle.

Applied on a vehicle powertrain, this concept enables fuel economy but also extra power without extra fuel consumption. The combination of properties also makes it interesting for racing applications. In addition to power generation, endurance racing is the first niche aimed at.

Heat2power has selected two partners for its development: Solution F in southern France for its expertise in the designing, building and testing of engines; and ACTE in Belgium for its state-of-the-art heat exchangers. A joint development program began in 2008 and the first Heat2power-equipped engine is expected to run in January 2009.

Winner: X-Bow Race - KTM

The distinctive X-Bow Race is the first race car from Austrian motorbike specialist KTM, which has a long heritage in two-wheeled competition. Closely related to the standard X-Bow (the company’s first road-legal car), the Race version has been developed for GT racing in the hands of private customers.

In 2008 the X-Bow Race had a development season in the GT4 European Cup. Run by Reiter Engineering, the orange and black cars, which are built around an FIA-certified carbon-fiber monocoque, cleaned up in the Sports Light category (to be renamed Super Sport in 2009), finishing 1-2-3. An X-Bow even qualified on overall pole for one race, ahead of the more powerful GT4 sports cars, and scored an overall podium when the rain came down at Monza.

The race season was backed up by further development work in the wind tunnel and elsewhere by KTM and its partner, Dallara, to hone the X-Bow Race ready for delivery to its first customers in January 2009. The Audi-engined cars will be backed by a full customer support package.

Winner: Singapore Circuit

Many people’s highlight of the 2008 Formula 1 season was the floodlit Singapore Grand Prix, F1’s first ever night race. Lighting consultant Valerio Maioli S.p.A, rigged up some 1,485, 2,000W light projectors and 108km of power cables around the 5.067km, 23-turn track to create a memorable spectacle.

The circuit itself passed city landmarks and crossed the Singapore River on the Anderson Bridge (built in 1909 to handle bullock-carts!), while the cars hit speeds up to 298km/h on Raffles Boulevard, between turns 6 and 7. A sell-out crowd of 100,000+ watched the race trackside, while 30 million viewers in the five main European markets of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, are estimated to have watched the live TV coverage.

Jury member and motorsports writer, David Tremayne commented: “Creating Formula 1’s first-ever night race, around one of the Far East’s busiest cities, and doing so in an amazingly short timescale, was a stellar achievement by the organizers of the Singapore Grand Prix. The fact that they ‘got’ F1 so quickly, and staged a brilliant, technologically challenging event, was the icing on the cake.”

Winner: Bruno Famin, Peugeot Sport

Already a Le Mans Series race winner – and a PMW Expo Award winner – in its debut season of 2007, by 2008 the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP had been developed into the world’s fastest LMP car. A championship victory and the top step of the podium at Le Mans both eluded the team, but back at base in Vélizy, France, the engineering team led by technical director, Bruno Famin, already had one eye on 2009 and beyond.

Unveiled at Silverstone in September, the 908HY will be the world’s first diesel-electric hybrid LMP race car when it hits the track in 2009. The three key components of the 908HY’s KERS are a 60kW gear-driven electric motor-generator, which takes the place of the conventional starter motor; 600 lithium-ion cells divided into 10 battery packs (six in the cockpit instead of the conventional battery, and four on the left-hand side of the floor pan); and an electronic power converter (located in the rear part of the front left wing), which controls the flow of energy between the batteries and the motor-generator.

Under ACO rules, the 908HY will be permitted to race at Le Mans next year, but will not be classified. Such test races will be the perfect opportunity for Famin and his colleagues to hone this ground-breaking car for competition in 2010.

Winner: Franz Tost, Scuderia Toro Rosso

At the start of the 2008 Formula 1 season, most observers predicted a title battle between McLaren and Ferrari. Some thought that BMW-Sauber and Renault might challenge for victories. But nobody expected Scuderia Toro Rosso, formerly known as Minardi, to not only win a Grand Prix, but also to be a consistent front runner by the season’s end.

Working closely with Toro Rosso co-owner Gerhard Berger and technical director, team principal Franz Tost led the team’s march to the front of the grid.

“I was astonished to hear about this award,” said Tost. “I work in Formula 1 motor racing where, as in all sport, the only goal is to win races and championships. In 2008, Scuderia Toro Rosso won one Grand Prix. However, this means we therefore lost 17 Grands Prix and won no championships!

“However, Formula 1 is a team sport and I will agree that Scuderia Toro Rosso as a whole has done a good job this season, making steady progress throughout the year, finishing with a result that is dramatically better than those achieved in the first two years of competing in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship. This year we scored a total of 39 points, compared to one in ’06 and eight in ’07.

“Therefore, although I don’t feel that I personally deserve any special recognition, I am happy to receive this prestigious award on behalf of everyone who works for Scuderia Toro Rosso, as an encouragement to do even better in the future.”