How do you go from front line to pole position?
QinetiQ is recognised as a European leader in aerodynamics. And not just because we're really good at making paper planes. We were pioneers of computational fluid dynamics. And after years of designing fighter jets, rockets, submarines, passenger aircraft, helicopters, battleships, trimarans and wave energy turbines, there's not much we don't know about the way things move.
So it's no surprise that from Williams in F1 to Team Jota at Le Mans, we're popular in the millisecond-hungry world of motorsport. We transformed our CFD expertise into CODAS, an aerodynamic software tool that allows racecar designers to optimise any aerodynamic shape by defining constraints with an infinite number of variables, such as geometry, multiple operating conditions, structures and materials.
Allowing everything from a component to the whole car to be optimised at design stage, the system can put a virtual F1 car through its paces in different scenarios, like Silverstone or Monaco, to see how it performs based upon different set-ups. But it still can't explain how Murray Walker made the safety car sound so exciting.