turbulence would generate from too many vortices that come out of the bonnet, potentially harm rear wing aerodynamics.
The rear ends see more resemblance to its brothers and sisters with aero breed rear wheel pods. This just helps navigate the rear tyre wake and make sure it exits the car neatly and above the rear diffuser, but low enough it doesn’t extract downforce from the rear wing.
Finally the car sees the ‘swan neck’ rear wing pylons, a great aero benefit. It’s a great way to reattach the pressure layers to the main plane section. The swan neck creates a lot of lifts which is then used for downforce. The boundary layer would indicate a fully attached flow on the under section of the wing, which means more downforce is generated.
The mechanical side is also fairly conventional to help reduce costs. The engine is an Oreca sourced Nissan-Nismo VK50 engine, which is a V8 with exactly 420bhp.
When looking at the architecture of it, you witness the neatly designed Carbon Fibre plenum which sits onto of the air box. Overall the engine is quite small for a 90° mounted V8, but this is thanks to some neat packaging. The engine has no turbocharger, so is naturally aspirated, creating more room in the absence of the turbo and its intercooler.
The engine sits very low in the monocoque chassis and is very close to the driver. These cars are very small so called for some neat engineering in the chassis.
The engine manifold is of a simple construction, with a pipe coming from each combustion chamber. They are a steal and very short, as they feed to a final tailpipe. Interestingly the engine is pushed up against the bulkhead via Carbon Fibre composite pipes, which come from the bulkhead to the gearbox, with the engine in between.
The gearbox (also Oreca sourced) is a Hewland 6 speed concept. Coil sprung suspension lies on top of it in a very low profile which sees the Ohlins TTX dampers and rocker arms sitting on top of the transmission. The control arms are spread over the floor to the wheel hubs.
Overall the engine bay is very clean and simple, which is what you need in a tight budget as seen in LMP3. The oil cooler is on top of the gearbox, in-between the springs and dampers, where is easily accessible.
Suspension mounts are fixed on the gearbox, so no change can be carried out, but their current positions means the cars can sit lower to the ground – which isn’t a bad thing.
The car also sees double wishbones all round which have been manufactured from steel. They have been made by Ginetta and Judd and are billet machined, this then houses the two piston calipers brakes with 355mm rotors inside them.
The bulkhead has also been designed to help make it easier for the team to navigate. The anti-role bar is on show and so is the torsion bar suspension.
With this simplify engulfed into the cars design, Bolton University students have been able to run the car in the ELMS all year, start to finish, with 1 win to their name. LMP3 has provided some fantastic racing on a budget, and surprisingly it’s cheaper than owning and running a GT car.