Technical articles

Enhancing the Art of Race Car Setup: The Ultimate Balance

November 27, 2024

by Rowland Jowett. Laptime simulation can be used to understand and manage how downforce or car setup in general interacts with tyre, brake, and fuel saving to give teams a competitive edge.

Save more fuel than Lando Norris: How to drive an F1 car efficiently

November 7, 2024

by Rowland Jowett. Uncover the magic behind how dynamic simulations can discover the fastest solutions and what these strategies look like in practice.

Fuel-Saving Secrets: Why F1 Cars Conserve Fuel While F2 Cars Go All Out

October 29, 2024

by Rowland Jowett. Ever wondered why F1 teams often under-fill their cars to save weight, unlike F2 teams that drive flat out? Did you know that F1 cars are more efficient than a Toyota Prius?

Lewis Hamilton’s First F1 Victory: Mastering Montreal’s Braking Challenge

October 14, 2024

by Rowland Jowett. Discover an untold story behind Lewis Hamilton’s first race victory in 2007 and explore how modern simulation technology could have simplified this monumental achievement...

Canopy in the Dynisma DiL

July 12, 2022

by Rowland Jowett As a former senior simulator test engineer I have spent many a day preparing for the next race event with F1 champions, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, in the driver-in-loop (DiL) simulator. I have become…

March 17, 2022

Overtaking Trends: The case for 2000bhp F1 cars Written by Rowland Jowett It would be convenient to make sweeping generalisations when it comes to car performance, for example, perhaps the short braking zones of F1 cars make them difficult to…

January 24, 2022

Overtaking Fundamentals: Action packed 2022 F1 season? Written by Rowland Jowett Perhaps the most exciting aspect of an F1 race is the tension surrounding an overtake. Over the years, F1 regulations have been shaped by the governing body and teams…

The Heart of F1

January 11, 2022

The Heart of F1 Written by Alex McCormick Racing or Playing Ping Pong? In this series of articles, we’re exploring what it is that sets one racing series apart from the others. Every racing series, formula, or championship has its…

December 7, 2021

The Soul of Formula E Written by Dr Oliver Watkins The Soul of a Series? When I was a much younger man, the F1 team I was working for decided that it would be a good idea to have a…

A Farewell To Truck Arms

October 6, 2021

Written by Dr. Oliver Watkins On November 7th 2021, NASCAR will race its Generation 6 car for the last time, and in so doing say goodbye to one of the most unusual suspension geometries in modern motorsport. Here at…

A Thousands of simulations to learn to sail an AC75? We only needed one

March 26, 2021

Written by Dr. Oliver Watkins In recent days, my LinkedIn feed has been full of justifiably delighted Quantum Black engineers talking about having trained thousands of bots to learn to sail the Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) boat for…

December 21, 2019

The racing format of Formula E provides incredible interest. Like other series, the cars qualify and line up on the grid in descending order of speed, but tight tracks, close racing and energy strategy decisions mean that overtaking is frequent.…

F1 Goes To Indy

December 13, 2019

The idea of an F1 team going to compete in Indianapolis is hardly a new one. The most recent example being McLaren’s disastrous foray in 2019, which resulted in an ignominious failure to qualify. However, what few people have asked…

October 2, 2018

There are some key facts about performance that almost every engineer in every F1 team should know. These are the “fundamental sensitivities” of the car. That is to say, if we change parameter “x” by a small amount, how much…

F1 vs Porsche 919 Evo at the Nordschleife

August 8, 2018

Would an F1 car beat the recent lap record around the Nürburgring Nordschleife of 5m19.546 set by the Porsche 919 Evo? We took a look at this question and by using our cloud computing simulation platform we’ve endeavoured to find…

April 26, 2018

In many race series, getting the most out of your tyres is essential for staying in the lead when it comes to pit stops. By and large F1 drivers are excellent at tyre saving. Many years of practice and staring…

Battery Thermal Management in Formula E

March 6, 2018

Energy strategy in Formula E is a major performance differentiator for race teams and getting this right is a great way to start your battle for the podium. However, at warmer races, not only do teams have to contend with…

February 28, 2018

As with any change to the F1 regulations, 2021 represents another opportunity to improve the racing spectacle, so we were interested to see if four-wheel-drive KERS could improve overtaking. Our simulations suggest that four-wheel-drive in the form of a front-axle…

October 25, 2017

There appears to be no slowdown in the relentless battle of auto manufacturers chasing down Nürburgring laptimes in order to gain a top spot at the ring and prove their engineering prowess. With a variety of cars running sub 7…

How to balance an F1 car through the corner?

September 14, 2017

Imagine you’re the race engineer for <insert your favorite driver name> and your aerodynamics department have just spent 3 months working on a new upgrade, your driver runs it and says: “it’s completely undrivable, there is too much understeer in…

August 25, 2017

The F1 teams have returned to work after a much needed mid season break, so it is with great anticipation that we watch to see how the championship battle will unfold. With only 14 points separating Vettel and Hamilton even…

Dynamic Simulation

May 2, 2017

We’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front recently, primarily because life has been anything but quiet serving our platform clients. The clients themselves have also been pretty busy and we were really pleased to see the usage stats tick…

January 30, 2017

Back in 2013 power deployment in F1 was a big deal. The new powertrains due to appear in 2014 required harvesting electrical energy from a turbo and under braking, then working out exactly where that energy should be fed back…

Aerodynamic Upgrades Facilitated: Isochronal Ratio

January 18, 2017

It is a mixed blessing when you hand a child an iPad on a long car journey. On one hand, you know that they will be so captivated by the slickness of the technology that you can guarantee a hassle-free…

September 19, 2016

We’ve had a number of excellent client meetings in the last few weeks, but one question has come up sufficiently often that it now qualifies as a Frequently Asked Question, and deserves a quick blog post to answer it. We’re…

Getting Started 3: matching telemetry

August 12, 2016

In parts 1 and 2 of our Getting Started series we covered how to sign-in to the platform, run a sweep of simulations, create a new car, and populate the car with the parameters of your own car. In this…

August 9, 2016

In the first instalment of this series we went through signing-in to the platform and running a quick car mass sweep for Barcelona with the default car. In this second instalment we will create a new car with our own…

Getting Started 1: sign-in, run a study

August 8, 2016

Since we revolutionised racing car simulation with the Canopy Platform, we’ve understandably had a lot of questions about how it works and how teams can use it whilst keeping all of their data secure. In this series of articles I’m…

July 14, 2016

These days simulation tools have a key role to play in almost all aspects of the operations of high-end racing teams. Throughout the life-cycle of a car, from concept design to race-weekend operations, the simulation tools used by the racing…

The Transformative Power of Speed

May 5, 2016

Welcome to Canopy Simulations. We are a new startup kicking off with one simple aim: to make cutting edge simulation fast, affordable and accessible at every level of motorsport. Between the members of our team we have 26 years experience…

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