The EJ12 has its first run out.

But perhaps a unicorn would be a more appropriate image, because like the unicorn, a grand prix car is something of a mythical beast. The longest period of time it ever spends in one piece is the couple of hours on a Sunday, from when it leaves the pits to when it returns to parc ferme at the end of the race.
For the rest of its life, it is invariably reduced to its component form and by the time it appears at the following round of the championship, several of its components will have changed. The EJ12 that ran for the first time on January 21st will have evolved considerably by the time it takes to the track in Melbourne for the season opener.

When the first Jordan F1 car appeared in 1991, it was the work of a tiny team of designers and they actually used pencils and a drawing board! Today, a team of well over fifty people are involved in the design, most of which is done on computer.

In overall charge of the project is Head of Engineering, Tim Holloway. "My role is to oversee and coordinate the design, to get the car running efficiently in time for its first test," he explained.
"From its main concept to overall performance, the car is the responsibility of Technical Director Eghbal Hamidy. I have an input on the design, making sure we are moving in the right direction and the ideas we are trying are indeed practical. Eghbal works with a design team of around fifty people, operating under two joint chief designers, a head of aerodynamics and a design group. Within it there are six of us who thrash out and expand on ideas.
"The various areas then work on their programmes based on what comes out of the meetings. The car is designed by committee. It is impossible for one man to design an F1 car these days. Everyone is working flat out and it is still a difficult task. Within that committee, you have the mechanical designers, the composite designers, aerodynamic designers, the vehicle dynamicists and the race engineering department. Everyone has their input."

The Jordan factory.

Timescales
Pinpointing a specific date when design on EJ12 began is impossible, as some of the work carried out in the wind tunnel to improve EJ11 during 2001, has been carried over to the new car.
"We try to work out when we want the car to be launched and work back from the production schedule to see when each component must be designed, in order for it to be made in time," explains Tim Holloway. ""It�s like a handicap race, in that all the parts can start at a different date, but they all have to be ready at the same time."

Holloway was loathe to give out specific lead times for parts, but judicious use of thumb screws and strapping him to the seven post test rig in the factory produced a few numbers:

�	The whole chassis design programme lasts about 26 weeks, from initial design to having the first chassis in the workshop.
�	The longest lead times are the chassis assembly - and the gearbox - 6 weeks from initial concept to fitting on the car.
�	Suspension - an upright takes 10 weeks.
�	Rear pushrod about a month.
�	Dampers 6 weeks.
�	Front brake ducts one month.

"You could sign off parts much earlier, but the idea is to hold back as long as possible to maximise performance," says Holloway. ""Of course, you can always change the design of components during the season, but that is far more expensive than simply delaying their initial production to take in the latest results of research in the wind tunnel.

"Bear in mind this list is to produce one component and of course by the time we are setting off for Melbourne, we might need six of them. Of course that doesn�t take six times as long, as you can use more moulds. In reality the second edition of any part can take half or a third of the time."

The Monocoque
The single biggest component of a grand prix car is the monocoque and in one respect at least, it is also the most important, as it provides a survival cell for the driver. All current monocoques are made of carbon fibre composite, which combines light weight with incredible strength and the teams have to ensure that theirs can stand up to several crash tests devised by FIA, the sport�s governing body.

"Once EJ11 was up and running, we started thinking about EJ12," says Stephen Taylor, the man responsible for composite design at Jordan. ""The space envelope for the monocoque is decided by the wind tunnel, although not every aspect of it, as the wind tunnel people are not too concerned about things like the fuel tank capacity, or how the engine mounts to it, or the driver cockpit legality. We are quite tightly constrained now with legality concerns, because we have to meet a minimum cockpit size. The idea is to keep as close as possible to that minimum, to reduce the frontal area of the car. This is why a lot of the cars from the different teams look so similar these days."

The EJ12 monocoque.

The basic shape comes from the wind tunnel and it is then worked on to give it its starting surfaces - the nice swoopy curves, as well as turning the wind tunnel ideas into a practical piece of the car. All this is done using CAD (Computer Aided Design.) Input comes from various departments as to the architecture of the car, taking into account the size and shape of the fuel cell for example. The layout and positioning of the side impact structures - another safety feature - has a big influence on the shape of the tub, so they are designed as soon as possible. Space has to be found for them in the monocoque and they have to be as narrow as possible and as far back as possible.

"Once the bare bones are drawn up, we start to flesh it out to get the shape we want," continues Taylor. ""Beyond that, we start thinking about how we are going to manufacture it. For EJ12, we have put a great deal of thought into trying to "productionise" the car, even though it is never going to be like a road car, where years are spent working out the cheapest way to produce a new model. All we are concerned about is the quickest way to make it and get to our technical goal. This year we have come up with some new ideas in this area.

"We then look at the materials and the amount of them required. The monocoque is all composite construction, made up of a honeycomb, sandwiched between two layers of carbon fibre and has to meet a number of FIA tests, most of them static, where the car is subjected to loads on the roll hoop (structure behind the driver's head and in front of the steering wheel) and sides to check its structural integrity. We have a starting construction which we feel will meet the requirements. That is given to the Finite Elements Analysis guys who will check it and might suggest some changes, such as increasing the thickness of the honeycomb structure which makes up the shell, or the carbon skin thickness."

The monocoque has the longest lead time of any component on the car. The finished product might look like one part, but in fact it consists of several: a chassis top and bottom, a seat back bulkhead and a number of other sub-bulkheads to cope with the loads imposed by other parts, such as the suspension. The tooling to make all the parts gets under way as soon as the basic shape has been defined. The monocoque build begins even before all the final details have been worked out, so the design team is under pressure to come up with these as quickly as possible so that manufacture can work as a continuous process.

Parts such as the engine and suspension cannot be bolted straight into the monocoque. The tub has to have various "hard spots" built in, to accept bolts and brackets and these must all be designed in the right order to suit manufacturing. Typically, to go from an empty mould to a finished and fully machined monocoque, should take no more than two weeks. The first one might take a bit longer and the later ones about ten days. By the time all the equipment is shipped off to Melbourne for the first race, Jordan will have built a minimum of four monocoques, including the one used for the FIA crash tests. "It's a large and complex part," concludes Taylor. "And although it uses high tech design and materials, the actual build process requires very skilled manual work."