Smooth is Fast: Cooling

In the interests of maintaining the rate in which you progress through your laps, keeping temperatures in check is an extremely important aspect of any vehicle on the track. Sufficient cooling capabilities will allow you to continually push your vehicle without having to run cooldown laps in order to get back into the game.

One of the simplest things to address in a vehicle is how the air reaches your cooling components, such as your radiator or heat exchanger, then how the air exits. This all may come across as intuitive but generally, most vehicles don’t employ a very intuitive setup and they’re largely designed the way they are due to packaging reasons, costs, or balance when it comes to aerodynamics. Typically, you’ll want air to enter through a high-pressure zone (aerodynamically speaking) and then exit in-line with attached air-flow traveling over the vehicle surface. This is commonly demonstrated by a radiator being exposed within the front bumper of a vehicle and then the air that travels in through that opening and passes through the radiator and exits through a hood/bonnet vent. What isn’t as intuitive about this process, is that you want to ensure that the air is forced to travel through this path by eliminating all possible areas for pressure drops and paths for air to escape.

You should create an air-tight pathway by utilizing seals, tape, or solid ductwork, so that the air traveling through the radiator is thereby forced through the radiator and then subsequently out of the hood, where it is met with the air traveling over the hood, creating a small vacuum. If the air coming into the radiator is not completely sealed, the air will impact the radiator and spillover past any edges or openings within the ductwork. Additionally, if the air that passes through the radiator simply hits the engine, it then becomes dirty air and must find its own way to leave the engine bay. Some air will pass through the openings underneath the hood and some air will exit through the bottom of the engine bay and now disturb the air traveling past the underbody, adversely impacting aerodynamics.

By properly guiding the high-pressure air through your cooling system and out into a stream of air traveling over your vehicle, you can not only substantially improve the cooling effects of your components but also improve aerodynamics in the process. Additional improvements on cooling and aerodynamics can be had by changing the angle at which your radiator or heat exchanger is seated within the vehicle. Individual testing is required to find the optimal pitch for these items. By utilizing these aspects, you may have more consistent lap times with less or no cooldown period required, depending on track temperatures and how hard you are running the vehicle.

Source: Becker, B., (2019, February 04). Rocket science – achieving better engine cooling with proper aerodynamic principles. Retrieved April 01, 2021, from https://nasaspeed.news/tech/engine/rocket-science-achieving-better-engine-cooling-with-proper-aerodynamic-principles/