Looking for a wind tunnel? Check Brawn GP
November 14, 2009 by SJ Skid
Filed under Prime & Option
I have zero idea when this appeared, and I am not saying it is new — but I do think it is interesting.
At the Brawn GP website (where I just was, wondering if there was a response to Jenson Button’s little visit to Woking), I spied — for the first time, and I’ve been to this site plenty — a link to “Brawn GP Windtunnel.”
I can’t believe I haven’t seen it before, which makes me think it may be new. But at the same time, perhaps I somehow just never noticed it.
Nonetheless, if you have any need for a windtunnel, well, check here.
And, believe me, I am not overreacting. The contact information is prominently placed.
Here are the technical specs, for those interested:
Cross-sectional area: 5.2 m²
Working length: 6 m
Speed capability: 48 m/s
(173 kph/107 mph)
Yaw: 7.5 ° (model or road)
Does this strike anyone as strange at all, or it is just smart business in a down economy?
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Wind tunnel time is limited, no? So it makes perfect business sense to sell the time that they aren’t allowed to use anyway.
I think McLaren sold time in their wind tunnel to the British cycling team, so it seems to be fairly standard practise
I can’t imagine they advertised it on their website, though!
McLaren put an advert in the local paper The Woking Times selling wind tunnel time. They also used the paper to get rid of some stuff that had been in their loft for years. I bought Mark Blundell’s old BMX bike and my mum got Mika Hakkinen’s microwave cookery books.
I think this might be a surplus tunnel. The (ex) BMW tunnel generates wind speeds of 80 m/sec and has a 15 m square test section. 48 m/sec doesn’t sound fast enough for significant testing.
Aren’t the teams limited to a certain wind speed? Anyone have an idea what it is?
Also… 6m… Not enough to test 2 F1’s running line-astern even at 50% scale I would have thought.
Well the reason you haven’t seen it before is because its new.
Check out the announcement of the new windtunnel website in Brawn’s news section.
http://www.brawngp.com/readstory.asp?bgp=j%C1%AA%C0rZ%7Cf