Sauber C30 / Heritage HF1-018. Warning: F1 Car Content :)
Discussion
As many of you know I am lucky enough to work with a group of like minded individuals at an engineering company who are most well known for building modern era F1 cars for various uses.
I think we've just built the best thing ever!
Late last year Heritage F1 (if you've not heard of them then Google because they're awesome, awesome F1 people) came to us with a project in mind to build one of their Sauber chassis into a working car, with the twist that it had to be easy to run (no 20 person teams) and able to do serious KMs in between rebuilds with great reliability for tyre testing, TV work and general circuit use but that it also had to still be an F1 car with regards aero performance, pace and all round race car ability. In short a proper have your cake and eat it scenario with the car needing to show speed similar to a late V8/early V6 cars race pace but with the ability to do 5000KMs+ between major rebuilds.
As we love this sort of challenge, and the opportunity to build a no regulations applicable F1 car was hugely tempting we started the build in early January this year after several weeks of design and engineering work and performed the first shakedown this weekend just gone at Zolder.
One of the most difficult things on this project was delivering a powertrain option that had the ability to make upto 600bhp if required and a minimum of 500bhp in circuit use spec but was light enough and compact enough to package into a 2011 F1 car without compromising any of the aero surfaces AND had the ability to run several thousand KMs between service. After a lot of consideration we decided the best all round option was a variant of the Audi/VAG Formula car powertrain originaly used in FPA and developed further for F2, with better rad ducts and the option of higher intercooler performance we were able to make more power than the last evolution of F2 with only minor revisions to the engine itself and the fact that this powertrain delivered significantly more torque than an NA option coupled with the very efficient aero of the C30 chassis meant corner exit speeds and rates of acceleration were comparable to the original car in a surprising amount of areas.
We had a huge amount of design work to do on this program as a large amount of components were missing from the original car. We designed (and mostly built) in house a new pedal box, brake system, front suspension, steering column, pedal sensors, wiring looms, wing mounts, engine mountings, fuel system, electrical system, charge cooling, water system, pneumatic system, various chassis closing panels and structural elements etc. etc. etc. the list was massive, over 300 new components! However the upshot of all this careful design work was that the car complete was 0.45mm longer than the original, 0.22mm wider, weighed exactly the same 640KG with driver and had a front/rear weight split within 1% of the original car..... and every aero surface remained as per the original late season spec of the original car, in fact only two sections of bodywork are modified from original in two very small areas, these are not aero generating and you'd be hard pushed to spot them
Back to Zolder, the car ran 20 laps without a single issue. We have plenty of data to make some changes with and we'll develop the setup of the car further from this point to increase mid-speed stability and dial out some low speed understeer but for it to be this right out the box is a massive achievement and a testament to all the people who have worked so hard on creating it. Here's the video of the first few laps, which is worth far more than my bumbling explantions of it being quite fast:
https://youtu.be/XC_v4ca2WZw
It is an absolute spaceship. The combination of late era F1 aero and turbo power having maintained the aero and balance as per has resulted in something that is quick capable of giving late 90's and early to mid 2000 original F1 cars a clean pair of heels and the absolutely brilliant thing is that it is super easy to run - it doesn't need preheating, hyds flush packs, fueling rigs or offboard starters. A two person team can run it at competitive speeds for BOSS and European Hillclimb.
Few build pics:
First mock up ride height check.
Couple of component pics showing the new brake bias setup to replicate Saubers original bulkhead mounted bias bar and the new steel steering column to replace the original carbon column which would have needed replacement on a regular basis:
The office:
First complete shot on old wheels and old livery:
Ready to go out at the first test:
Oh and we retained the ability to run KERS if required, it still has DRS and we have the option to run current Pirelli if we want to.
Needless to say the guys at Heritage F1 are really pleased with it, as are we. Definitely a challenging project but a very rewarding one and to see the pace in the car out the box is a wonderful thing. Needless to say we are really keen to build a couple more on modern era chassis - maybe a Marussia and a Force India...... they would definitely make someone the ultimate track day car or a mega hill climb/BOSS race car, thinking about it you would struggle to privately own anything quicker as the current batch of hyper cars wouldn't see where it went
As always any questions ask away
I think we've just built the best thing ever!
Late last year Heritage F1 (if you've not heard of them then Google because they're awesome, awesome F1 people) came to us with a project in mind to build one of their Sauber chassis into a working car, with the twist that it had to be easy to run (no 20 person teams) and able to do serious KMs in between rebuilds with great reliability for tyre testing, TV work and general circuit use but that it also had to still be an F1 car with regards aero performance, pace and all round race car ability. In short a proper have your cake and eat it scenario with the car needing to show speed similar to a late V8/early V6 cars race pace but with the ability to do 5000KMs+ between major rebuilds.
As we love this sort of challenge, and the opportunity to build a no regulations applicable F1 car was hugely tempting we started the build in early January this year after several weeks of design and engineering work and performed the first shakedown this weekend just gone at Zolder.
One of the most difficult things on this project was delivering a powertrain option that had the ability to make upto 600bhp if required and a minimum of 500bhp in circuit use spec but was light enough and compact enough to package into a 2011 F1 car without compromising any of the aero surfaces AND had the ability to run several thousand KMs between service. After a lot of consideration we decided the best all round option was a variant of the Audi/VAG Formula car powertrain originaly used in FPA and developed further for F2, with better rad ducts and the option of higher intercooler performance we were able to make more power than the last evolution of F2 with only minor revisions to the engine itself and the fact that this powertrain delivered significantly more torque than an NA option coupled with the very efficient aero of the C30 chassis meant corner exit speeds and rates of acceleration were comparable to the original car in a surprising amount of areas.
We had a huge amount of design work to do on this program as a large amount of components were missing from the original car. We designed (and mostly built) in house a new pedal box, brake system, front suspension, steering column, pedal sensors, wiring looms, wing mounts, engine mountings, fuel system, electrical system, charge cooling, water system, pneumatic system, various chassis closing panels and structural elements etc. etc. etc. the list was massive, over 300 new components! However the upshot of all this careful design work was that the car complete was 0.45mm longer than the original, 0.22mm wider, weighed exactly the same 640KG with driver and had a front/rear weight split within 1% of the original car..... and every aero surface remained as per the original late season spec of the original car, in fact only two sections of bodywork are modified from original in two very small areas, these are not aero generating and you'd be hard pushed to spot them
Back to Zolder, the car ran 20 laps without a single issue. We have plenty of data to make some changes with and we'll develop the setup of the car further from this point to increase mid-speed stability and dial out some low speed understeer but for it to be this right out the box is a massive achievement and a testament to all the people who have worked so hard on creating it. Here's the video of the first few laps, which is worth far more than my bumbling explantions of it being quite fast:
https://youtu.be/XC_v4ca2WZw
It is an absolute spaceship. The combination of late era F1 aero and turbo power having maintained the aero and balance as per has resulted in something that is quick capable of giving late 90's and early to mid 2000 original F1 cars a clean pair of heels and the absolutely brilliant thing is that it is super easy to run - it doesn't need preheating, hyds flush packs, fueling rigs or offboard starters. A two person team can run it at competitive speeds for BOSS and European Hillclimb.
Few build pics:
First mock up ride height check.
Couple of component pics showing the new brake bias setup to replicate Saubers original bulkhead mounted bias bar and the new steel steering column to replace the original carbon column which would have needed replacement on a regular basis:
The office:
First complete shot on old wheels and old livery:
Ready to go out at the first test:
Oh and we retained the ability to run KERS if required, it still has DRS and we have the option to run current Pirelli if we want to.
Needless to say the guys at Heritage F1 are really pleased with it, as are we. Definitely a challenging project but a very rewarding one and to see the pace in the car out the box is a wonderful thing. Needless to say we are really keen to build a couple more on modern era chassis - maybe a Marussia and a Force India...... they would definitely make someone the ultimate track day car or a mega hill climb/BOSS race car, thinking about it you would struggle to privately own anything quicker as the current batch of hyper cars wouldn't see where it went
As always any questions ask away
Dedders said:
There’s not a lot to say other than that’s incredible and an amazing engineering achievement to get performance like that with 5k between rebuilds, I’d love to see this running in person
It will be out at a lot of events this year so plenty of chance to see it. It went from Zolder this weekend straight to Germany to film a TV advert with no more reprep than a wipe over, dip the oil and torque the wheels - it really is an incredible bit of kit and proof that you can have an F1 car that performs like an F1 car without the costs and maintenance if you are prepared to sacrifice some originality. We're over the moon with it.
It's a shame it's not in original livery (albeit, the original isn't exactly a classic) but it's great that the chassis is out there being used as a track car. Looking forward to updates because your threads are always great PPBB!
As an aside, how deep does your work go with HF1? I peruse their site regularly in case anything new pops up (not to buy, just to keep track of the cars) but I'd be dying to know the chassis number of the 198 they've got that runs the simulator if perhaps you knew? They have the numbers up for M198/01 and 195/04 and the likes, just not this one.
As an aside, how deep does your work go with HF1? I peruse their site regularly in case anything new pops up (not to buy, just to keep track of the cars) but I'd be dying to know the chassis number of the 198 they've got that runs the simulator if perhaps you knew? They have the numbers up for M198/01 and 195/04 and the likes, just not this one.
F1GTRUeno said:
It's a shame it's not in original livery (albeit, the original isn't exactly a classic) but it's great that the chassis is out there being used as a track car. Looking forward to updates because your threads are always great PPBB!
It is actually in original livery under the current wrap 
It's been built to race with all the things required of it to race competitively - it's just that it is also capable of doing the track car thing too. F1GTRUeno said:
As an aside, how deep does your work go with HF1? I peruse their site regularly in case anything new pops up (not to buy, just to keep track of the cars) but I'd be dying to know the chassis number of the 198 they've got that runs the simulator if perhaps you knew? They have the numbers up for M198/01 and 195/04 and the likes, just not this one.
PM me TwoStrokeNut said:
Wow, congrats. What an amazing project!
What sort of lap times was it doing at Zolder? It looks like late 1:30s from the video? Obviously just a shake down a lots more to come.
Wonderful!
Simulation says 1:13.9 at max attack... which would be a lap record. We weren't timing this weekend as it was just a demo event that we were using for shakedown and there were various other much slower cars on the circuit with us. Also it was finished the day before it left for Belgium and this was very much first run out - also Zolder with no run off is not where you want to be pushing in someone elses car at the best of times What sort of lap times was it doing at Zolder? It looks like late 1:30s from the video? Obviously just a shake down a lots more to come.
Wonderful!
To give some comparison this was running low boost (so only 400bhp) with no PTP or DRS, minimum shift aggresion and medium compound Avons. There is a huge amount more to come from it!
DanielSan said:
That’s a pretty epic build! I’ve always thought something like a triple or quad rotor rotary engine would be a good unit for something like this, 5-600bhp is more than possible on a bridge ported engine, N/A, mega responsive and a truly awesome noise
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