Brand Hatch, 11th May 2013 - Indonesia’s Sean Gelael is getting set for the fourth weekend in the ultra-competitive FIA Formula 3 European Championship, which brings the teams and drivers back to the UK to race on the very short Brands Hatch Indy Circuit.
With a lap time of 40 seconds, you may think that this is not a difficult circuit to learn. On the contrary, with high-speed off-camber bends and very short straights it is a relentless track, where the driver must maximise his performance 100 per cent.
Brands Hatch opened in 1950 and its first decade of use was based very much around the strong Formula 3 movement, where competitors raced tiny lightweight cars powered by 500cc motorcycle engines. In the 1960s a longer version of the circuit was opened and, from 1964 to 1986, this track near London alternated with Silverstone the right to host the Formula 1 British Grand Prix.
For the 18th and 19th May, 16-year-old Sean and his 30 international Formula 3 rivals will be competing on the short circuit, but the racing cars used today are very different to those from the 1950s, especially when it comes to the engines…
Modern F3 cars are powered by two-litre, production-based engines, which are limited to approximately 220bhp by an air restrictor, which has a diameter of 26mm. Gelael’s Double R Racing Dallara uses an engine based on that found in the Mercedes A-Class, but with a host of modifications carried out by HWA, the German manufacturer’s motorsport tuning house.
Anthony ‘Boyo’ Hieatt, the team principal of Double R Racing and Sean’s race engineer, explains: “The biggest single difference is weight. All the components are really light and there is hardly any weight on the engine, crankshaft and flywheel. Also, the compression ratios are much higher, and everything is more aggressive in the fuelling. This means that the throttle response is razor sharp. It responds instantaneously – it is one of the most responsive engines in any form of racing car.
“We still have the A-Class engine shell, but all the materials and internals are different, and it is designed to fit perfectly into the Dallara. This gives us a base engine weight of 80kg without the exhaust and clutch. It is incredibly rigid, with all the cylinder heads and cam covers designed to be as rigid as possible. This means all the power goes straight to the gearbox.”
The air restrictor keeps the revs down, prolongs engine life and also means that the cars are not too fast for the level of experience of the drivers. “Without the restrictor, we would easily have 330-340bhp, which from a two-litre engine is very good,” adds Hieatt. “The restrictor is like trying to drink water through a straw, and with the age of the drivers you would not want them gulping anything more powerful!”
Maximum speed depends on gearing. All competitors must use the same six-speed sequential Hewland racing gearbox, and are limited to a maximum of 30 different gear ratios. For circuits with very long straights, such as the Macau Grand Prix, this means a very high top speed – Hieatt says the maximum he has seen there is 282km/h. Brands Hatch, on the other hand, is all about mid-range punch and Sean and his rivals are unlikely to see anything higher than 225km/h as a result.
Still, the F3 car’s 0-100km/h time of 2.5 seconds is spectacularly more than anything they are ever likely to experience in a road car!
Once again, Gelael arrives at a track at which he has no experience – straight from school exams in Indonesia – so he will be up against it, especially as some of his rivals have completed more than a thousand laps of Brands. On such a steep learning curve, a good performance in the midfield will be a very good result.
