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Dearborn, Mich. — Ford Motor Company takes racing as a serious part of its business when it comes to developing passenger cars and trucks.
During the past decade, there have been quite a few Ford engineers who were, or still are, on lend to racing teams in Champ Car, Formula One and NASCAR. Each year, engineers are selected to work with some of the teams competing at the highest levels of motorsports.
Following their involvement in racing, these Ford Racing graduates bring back their experiences and new skills to many of Ford's production-vehicle programs. Ford regards the racing assignments as a training ground for ambitious engineers, as well as a proving ground for methods of development.
"In racing, they see immediate results. It’s like having a Job 1 every Sunday,” says Dan Davis, director, Ford Racing Technology. “When they come back after one or two years, they are very impatient. They come back with a different attitude.
“The great thing about racing for engineers is that there is such a competitive environment to work within. You learn to develop creative solutions within set rules, but you have to learn to make decisions quickly and act on them.”
That race-day experience and the work ethic mentioned by Davis proves valuable in Ford’s attempt to quickly bring exciting new vehicles to market. For example, Ford’s GT performance car program went from concept to production in half the time a typical vehicle is developed. The GT development team included several Ford engineers that worked in Ford Racing’s engineering rotation.
More recently, Ford Racing “graduates” including Hau Thai-Tang, Jay O’Connell and Kerry Baldori have made a difference with cars like the hot-selling 2005 Mustang, the 2007 Shelby Cobra and the 2006 Ford Fusion.
KERRY BALDORI – FORD FUSION VEHICLE ENGINEERING MANAGER
Kerry Baldori has had a career any automotive enthusiast would envy. Beginning in his first days on the job, Baldori has been involved in suspension development for some of the most exciting projects in Ford Motor Company. His resume includes suspension development for the 1993 Mustang Cobra, Mario Andretti’s team with Newman-Haas Racing in Champ Car racing, the 1995 and 2000 Cobra R, the SVT Contour, and the Volvo S60/V70 R series.
Baldori’s greatest challenge, so far, is the post of Vehicle Engineering Manager for the 2006 Ford Fusion. In this role, he oversees all technical aspects of the car, and is responsible for integrating the work of multiple engineering disciplines, comprising hundreds of engineers. The position has given Baldori an intimate understanding of the character and capabilities of the Fusion. But the lessons learned in two years in Champ Car racing still have relevance today.
“My experience in racing really allowed me to learn a lot in a really short period of time,” said Baldori. “It's not the same as being here at Ford. Racing is so fast paced, and there is always continuous improvement that’s happening. You’re given a set of constraints, but you can do anything within those constraints. We didn't have the types of constraints we have here. There’s things here we have to worry about like cost, customer satisfaction, and things like that that can limit what you can do.
“Everybody on the race team knew what their job was. I was able to learn a lot in a very short period of time and learn about a lot of different things. I was able to apply that knowledge a lot quicker and easier. With racing, you come up with a design and give it to the fabricator, come up with a set-up using a computer, and tell the guys what you want on the car and they go do it.
“Racing also gave me the sense of urgency and the ability to use common sense to help solve issues. Whether it’s going from practice to qualifying, or qualifying to race, you are always trying to make improvements. If you have a problem, you have to break it down looking at data. You try to take the data related to the driver comments and come up with a change to the car to make it better. That environment really helped me focus myself to now where I am responsible for a whole car as far as its handling and ride. It helped me think a lot clearer as to what I need to do and when. I probably would have picked that up working on a car program, but it isn't as fast paced or intense as in racing.
“The racing experience has given me a lot more depth; to see how aerodynamics, tire pressure, spring settings, weight distribution all affect a car in one afternoon. It would take you six months to do that here at Ford.
“I also spent a lot of time applying the CAE software tool to race car set-up. That really helped relate the capabilities of computer aided engineering to what was applicable in the real world. We still use that tool as part of vehicle sign-off for cars and trucks. It’s also used as a predictive tool as far as chassis settings on new programs.”
HAU THAI-TANG - DIRECTOR, ADVANCED PRODUCT CREATION AND FORD SVT
Like many Ford engineers that have worked in motorsports, Hau Thai-Tang uses skills developed during his racing engineering rotation to improve on production programs like the 2005 Mustang, Lincoln LS and other Ford products. In 1993, Thai-Tang worked with Newman/Haas Racing and Nigel Mansell in the PPG Indy Car World Series (now Champ Car). Mansell, in his rookie year, earned seven poles and won five races and went on to win the 1993 PPG Indy Car Championship. Thai-Tang and the team worked intensely on vehicle dynamics, such as suspension geometry, aerodynamics and tire characteristics.
Once Thai-Tang came back to passenger vehicles, his race training followed him closely. On the Lincoln LS team, there were no less than five race team engineers from various Ford Racing assignments from SCCA to Formula One—and their background paid off in the development of the LS.
While there may be a general notion of racing as being a comparatively subjective endeavor, Thai-Tang points out that with few exceptions race engineers don't drive cars, so they must supplement their understanding of a driver's impressions gained during tests and races with objective information. This same approach is necessary for effective consumer vehicle development.
“Since coming off the racing projects I have worked on a number of development projects,” Says Thai-Tang. “I would say there are some major differences between racing and vehicle engineering. In racing you only care about one metric. Did the change make the car go faster or not? It was not hard to debate if you were successful or not. You found out after the lap if it had worked.
“In production vehicles, you are trading off all these attributes. An example would be the suspension. Ultimate handling would be great, but you have things like ride comfort and optimizing cost and value. That’s one key difference. The other is the time horizon. In racing it’s much faster. You may go to Phoenix, which is a short oval with one car set-up, and the next race would be at Indy. The team would tear the car down and put a new suspension set-up and aero package.
“Race deadlines do not move. I feel that mindset is very important in the production environment. They start the Indy 500 on Sunday at 11 a.m., and if you are not on the grid they start without you. In a vehicle production environment the deadlines are not treated as rigorous. I think in both environments you have resources that are different. In racing, it wasn’t always about the money. Well-funded teams were not constrained by money; the major constraint was CART-legislated test time. With the large teams and small teams CART would say, ‘You only have 10 days to test,’ which was a constraint to everyone. The teams that worked hard at the shop and had a car that was ready to hit the track with a close set-up were successful in testing and on race day.
“In a production environment, it’s not the legislative test times, it’s the number of prototypes, budgets, headcount, resources, so there are some differences and similarities. One other big thing in a racing environment as a race engineer: you can’t drive the car like in vehicle engineering. You are reliant on the driver to provide feedback and you make tuning decisions based on that. In the production environment, we are tainted by the fact that it’s almost too easy to jump in a development car and do an evaluation drive. That’s one of the things—the discipline learned from my motorsports experience—I’m trying to bring into the group. Let’s not just jump in a vehicle and do an evaluation drive, let’s define the problem, take objective measures and make our decisions based on data.”
JAY O’CONNELL, CHIEF ENGINEER, FORD SPECIAL VEHICLE TEAM
Jay O'Connell worked on Lincoln LS vehicle dynamics development, served as manager for Ford's Champ Car racing program and has raced IMSA GTU cars at Daytona.
A graduate of Cornell University, Jay’s racing experience started with the engineering school’s Formula SAE team. As a senior, his team won the 1988 Formula SAE competition, spearheading what became a steady stream of wins (eight) for the university for many years.
O’Connell started at Ford Motor Company in the fall of 1988 and was assigned to the Specialty Car Development program.
In 1993, Lincoln began development on a new sports sedan called the LS. O’Connell was responsible for setting up a target for front-to-rear weight distribution for the emerging platform.
“From racing, the first thing you do in a race car is lay out where are the major masses going to be located, and what is front/rear weight distribution,” he says. “That is the main driver for getting the right braking and traction and so forth. So I approached the Lincoln LS design the same way. Coming from the Thunderbird and Mark VIII experience where weight distribution was a design fallout, the LS team wanted to make the weight distribution the design driver. So, with the Lincoln LS, I lobbied to move the front wheels forward, put the battery in the trunk, get more weight on the drive tires and those concepts survived all the way into production.
“When the DEW98 (Lincoln LS Platform) team formed and was an official program, we started development in early 1995, I jumped onto that program and followed it all the way into production in 1998. I was very involved in the development, including the shock absorber settings, and with my racing background I worked on high-speed aerodynamics of the car. We were developing the car to be sold in Europe to compete against the BMW 5 Series. Up to that point, we were traveling to Germany twice a year for three years (’95,’96 and ’97) to develop the car in Europe. It was a challenge driving the car on the Nurburging, and I had the chance to use my racing background, at Daytona, IMSA GTU, and SCCA World Challenge Series, to develop that car.”
In 2003, O’Connell took a sabbatical from Ford and went to work for Canadian-based Multimatic Motorsports. At Multimatic, he helped develop the Grand-Am Ford Focus Daytona Prototype that competed and won its class in the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2003. After the success of the Daytona Prototype, Ford Racing awarded Multimatic the task of developing the FR500C Competition Mustang. O’Connell was key in developing chassis and suspension upgrades for Ford’s effort in the Grand-Am Cup Series, which has won four of the first six races in the series.
Currently, Jay O’Connell has returned to vehicle development as Ford Special Vehicle Team Chief Engineer. His recent projects include the SVT Shelby Mustang GT500 and the Ford Adrenalin Sport Utility Truck.
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