Well it does for me…and for all the F1/GT cars, so obviously it does work, but how. Now I’m not a boffin or a driving God, but I have done some work with SC-Power on this over the last few months and it does all seem to be working now, so here’s some basic explanations, so that you can make up your own minds.

Over the last couple of years I have been working with SC-Powers aero kit to improve the pace of the Monster Griff. As you all know - as I keep going on about it - my car is still road legal and therefore heavy and weight is the enemy when it comes to racing. As I still use the car on the road (very infrequently at the moment it’s true) I still need heaters, lights, roof etc and as we have a full road car tub (6+ ply as opposed to a Tuscans 3 ply) we have to look for other ways of getting it to go round corners. Aero has been the answer.

The principle of Aero is quite simple. More weight (downforce) without actually adding the weight (Mass) to your car. The aero wings act like an aircraft wing in reverse. Instead of lifting the car, they press it down onto the track generating many hundreds of kilos of “weight” as the car travels through the air.

However, it’s not quite that simple. Nothings for free and aero’s no exception. The downforce is achieved by forcing the air over the wings to press down on the car. This generates drag, which slows the car and adds turbulence to the air adding even more drag. The smoother the air goes past the car, the less drag and therefore the more speed so you have to ascertain if the drag on the straights is compensated for by the speed in the corners. So, we want enough downforce to make the car quicker in the corners but not so much that it compromises straight-line speed.

It’s generally agreed that aero starts to work properly at 80 mph and the most corner speed you are likely to achieve in the UK is around 110mph. This is the sweet spot. Below this and the effects reduce considerably and above this the drag overcomes the benefit. So an ideal aero track will have lots of high-speed corners leading onto medium straights…like Castle combe in Wiltshire.

As I write, we have just had the ‘Combe weekend in the 2009 TVR Challenge. With the tightening of GroupB regulations increasing this year, we weren’t sure where we would be on the existing times from the last Series visit in 2006. Marc Hockin in his Black Griffith held the “B” lap record. In ’07 trim it has severely lightened, had 17” & 18” rims and running a strong RV8 at around 330bhp. Marc is also a top driver. That year he lost GpB to an RV8 Tuscan by only 1 point so we didn’t expect to get too close to his record of 1:15:9.

As we had some engine gremlins over the weekend and were lucky to make it at all thanks to Dulfords, we had no testing and still found we still had a lack of punch from the corners. Excuses aside, we were delighted to see that we had already pipped Marcs time by running a 1:15:2 and I’m confident that with the engine sorted we’d be in the ‘14s. This has to be down to the aero. ‘Combe has a couple of very important high speed corners, two fast chicanes and only one long straight which has a kink in it anyway. Ideal for Aero.

So how did we achieve this in a track car? Well the final piece of the puzzle was running with the roof on. This keeps the air clean onto the rear wing and is well known to reduce drag and increase top end speed. Over the last two years we have tweaked the spring rates, increasing them dramatically to compensate for the downforce and I’m now pretty happy that the car is well balanced, and requires minimal trimming for the various circuits. The reason that it took so long to get the roof of is quite simple. I was too big! At 6’1” with a helmet on and sitting bolt upright in a race seat, I just didn’t fit in, so we had to drop the floor and for race regs, ensure the roof was tethered in several paces to stop it flying off as happened at Spa.

I will write a series of articles over the next couple of weeks, on each part of our aero package, explaining the benefits and logic behind them. They have varying degrees of effect, all of which add to the pace of my car, but not all may be suitable for your needs. Hopefully these articles will help you make an informed choice based on our experiences dicing with Race Griff and Tuscans.

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