Why you should care about motorsport

When you think of motorsport the squealing tyres, record-breaking lap times and chequered flags might be the first things to come to mind. Yet, while the adrenaline-fuelled race day is the mainstay of any competing team’s calendar, it is just the tip of the iceberg. Take Le Mans for example, it is not just a race; it’s the proving ground for new technology. Large teams of engineers will have worked tirelessly to make sure their car is reliable enough to endure the gruelling test – if a car can survive 24 hours being driven to its limits, it can probably cope with the school run.

Winning at Le Mans has helped to launch brands on a global stage. Prior to the 1950s Jaguar was little known outside of Britain, yet in 1951 it didn’t just compete against formidable brands like Bentley, Ferrari and Aston Martin, it beat them. Then in 1953, Jaguar took first place again. Jaguar’s winning C-Type was the only car in the race to be fitted with disc brakes which were less likely to overheat than the drum brakes everyone else was using. This allowed Jaguar to push its car harder for longer without worrying the brakes would fade. Why does this matter? Well, although the concept of disc brakes had been around for a while, cost had prevented them from becoming mainstream. Jaguar showed how much more effective disc brakes could be and led the way for them to be introduced onto mass-production cars, improving their stopping power and making them safer.

Another manufacturer which did things differently at Le Mans was Mazda. In 1991 Mazda’s 787B was the first Japanese car to ever win the race and it remains the only winner to use a rotary engine, swapping regular pistons for a spinning triangular rotor. Originally invented by German engineer Felix Wankel in the early twentieth century, rotary engines proved challenging to manufacture. While other manufacturers gave up on rotary engines, Mazda persisted, and it has been dining out on its Le Mans win ever since. This unwavering commitment to rotary engines has resulted in iconic models like the RX-8 and more recently Mazda even added a rotary engine as a range extender to its eccentric MX-30 crossover.

We’ll grant you; rotary engines are niche. However, there’s plenty more conventional technologies we’ve gained from motorsport like turbochargers which became prominent from the 1970s onwards. More recently, hybrids have been introduced to help reduce fuel consumption during both endurance racing and Formula One with much of this technology finding its way into everyday road cars. This brings us nicely to the hybrid Renault Captur we’ve been living with recently. At first glance this compact crossover bares absolutely no resemblance to an F1 car, however the Captur’s complicated clutchless gearbox was inspired by the lightweight system used in hybrid F1 cars – the initial prototype was even built using Lego Technic which is indisputably cool.
On a wider scale, F1 has given us the paddle gear shifters you’ll find in sports cars. The concept of regenerative braking you’ll find in electric or hybrid cars also has F1 roots and started out as the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) used on race cars.

Yet, the introduction of battery power is not the only alternative fuel used in racing. The annual 24 hour race at the Nürburgring sees an eclectic mix of over 100 cars across 20 categories taking to the circuit. Unlike the hypercars of Le Mans the cars are more closely related to road-going models, and they are driven by a combination of professional and amateur drivers. In 2013 Aston Marin entered a Rapide S adapted to run on either hydrogen, petrol or both fuel types. Since then, various teams have competed using alternative fuel and this year there were two classes devoted to it. While some teams entered cars running on biofuels which use biomass materials like maize or sugar cane, others used e-fuels (also known as synthetic fuels) produced chemically using electricity. This not only helps to reduce the carbon emissions from motorsport, but e-fuels and biofuels could ultimately power road vehicles in the future.

It’s clear we’ve already gained a lot from motorsport and there’s much more to come. Just like the Apollo missions to the Moon resulted in everyday items such as memory foam mattresses and cordless power tools, there’s more to the pursuit of a podium finish than first meets the eye. Motorsport has given us innovations we now take for granted which is why it matters much more than you might think.