Controlling the past

Historic Motorsport Electronics

We all have our favourite cars from motorsport’s past, be it the legends of Formula 1 or iconic endurance racers. Some of the industry’s most well-known cars are still here and very much alive, running in historic racing classes or performing demonstration laps at some of the industry’s top events.

The late 80s and early 90s brought in a myriad of electronics to racing, primitive compared with today’s technology, but still with their unique complexities. It’s these complexities, coupled with the aging hardware and incompatible software, that can prohibit some cars from even turning on, let alone firing up.

At Cosworth Electronics, we have the capabilities to bring these cars back to life and into the 21st century, implementing the hardware of today to breathe new life into the cars that once dominated motorsport series around the world. 

Williams Icons

In recent years, we have been working with Williams Heritage, successfully integrating one of our motorsport ECUs - the MQ12Di - to run the FW14B, FW15, FW17 and finally the FW19. We also utilise our CDU 4.3 display for all garage fire-ups and warm up sequences. All the cars feature either a 3.0l or 3.5l Renault V10 engine revving to over 15,500RPM, meaning tolerances are extremely tight and accurate control from real-time data is vital.

The work involves a complete engine calibration as well as system integration with the Williams Vehicle Control Module (VCM) - this handles the active hydraulic systems and gearshift control. For these projects, we were fortunate to have Pi Autosim to reverse-engineer the original ECUs to give us a starting point with our calibration of the FW14B & FW15C. Once we had tested and reviewed the engine hardware, we generated a dataset and proceeded to do a full engine calibration on the dyno.

Following the completion of the engine calibration, our attention moves to the chassis integration. We worked alongside F1 personnel who have been designing the VCMs over the past 30 years, including Paddy Lowe, and those who are now managing the current F1 electronics team. The outcome of this is a complete, functioning car, including original dashboards, displays and switch gear.
 
Our more recent work involved the complete delivery of the Williams FW19, running the car at an event in Florida. Williams Heritage supports cars for its clients, along with some members of the race team that ran the cars back in 1997. The event marked another great success for Cosworth Electronics, and it was fantastic to help bring these iconic cars back to their former glory and most importantly, witness them being driven again.

Nissan’s Night Runner

Raceworks came to us looking for support with a client’s 90s endurance racer, the Nissan NPT-90; a legend in its own right, taking the victory and second place in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1991. Nowadays, one of the cars is owned by a private client of Raceworks. In order to be able to run once again at special events, the car required up-to-date electronics. 

For the NPT-90, Raceworks came to us for a fully customisable display with an interesting requirement - it needed to fit into the original dash surround. Usually with modern race cars, this wouldn’t even be a consideration, however over the years displays have become much wider to give drivers even more information without having to scale down the size of the fonts, numbers and icons. Thankfully for Raceworks, we have a variety of digital displays that all have differing form factors, enabling us to provide the ideal solution for the NPT-90. 

We assisted with the integration of our Intelligent Colour Display (ICD). A fully configurable, full colour 6.2″ TFT display, the ICD can also function as a data logger and control platform and features a powerful dual-core microprocessor and integrated graphics processor. As the display is fully customisable, period-correct graphics can be created to display data, keeping the look and feel of the car era-specific – a special touch that is loved by many of our clients. 

To find out more about our range of electronics head to the Products | Cosworth page or enquire by sending us an email to sales@cosworth.com