Winning Formula

As the bark from Formula 1 racing cars shakes Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix, wordless thoroughness reigns at the futuristic-looking bottom of a of the heading teams, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes.

This weekend, all at this out of the ordinary automobile plant in Woking, Surrey, is about winning the race on Sunday, so technicians will be hard at work as usual.

But for a section of the McLaren Group, feat on the racetrack is merely a means to an end.

Meet McLaren Applied Technologies - a subdepartment specifically dedicated to expanding the home-grown Formula 1 expertise in to the non-F1 world.

Sure, other F1 teams moreover make products that are not right away connected to Grand Prix racing - such as Red Bull's appetite splash or Ferrari's roadcars.

But McLaren is focusing more on creation allowance from the focus of technologies created for F1 cars to compromise challenges off the racetrack.

McLaren's many important product, on top of its thoroughfare cars, is probably the ultra-light carbon-fibre racing bike, Venge.

Developed in partnership with US cycling definite Specialized, it is mentioned to be the fastest road-racing bicycle in the world.

"Their expertise in CO technology and computing systems is exceptional," says Specialized investigate and growth executive Eric Edgecumbe.

"After spending only a partial amount of time together you realised that you common a few really core, deeply hold doctrine about winning at the highest level."

The partnership has yielded results.

The initial time the bike raced, it won the Milan-San Remo race - that at 298km is the longest veteran one-day race.

But there are lesser-known areas of application, too.

One slicing corner technology is McLaren's modernized telemetry system, that uses sensors to guard information feeds and thus capacitate real-time plan and preference making.

"We've motionless to take the aspect of remote condition monitoring of the car, and request it to monitoring of people," explains Geoff McGrath, the head of the Applied Technologies department.

As he walks along a unconventional pure walkway, dangling only beneath the ceiling, Mr McGrath says that the definite has already used this technology on patients undergoing a weight loss programme at a hospital in Norfolk.

The patients had medical sensors bending up to them, transmitting information to the doctors.

"In the difference of the people on the programme, they basically had their GP with them, in their pocket," Mr McGrath explains.

"They could have successive monitoring and moreover successive communication and feedback."

If patients are meddlesome in an early warning, athletes might wish to make key improvements in performance.

The technology has already been used to sight UK athletes in a number of Olympic disciplines - for instance, in canoeing.

"McLaren's pocket-sized sensors go inside the paddle, so every time an contestant relates force on the water, the sensor measures it and transmits the information back to see how swift the vessel is going," explains Scott Drawer from UK Sport, a open body for directing the growth of competition in the UK.

This present feedback helps athletes make more sensitive decisions about when to rest and how to change techniques, thus accelerating their rate of growth - and stepping up their chances of success in competitions.

The sensors were moreover commissioned in to the sleigh of the GB Women's bobsleigh team, that won the Women's World Bobsleigh Championships in Lake Placid, US, in 2009.

But applications in modernized telemetry can go over assisting patients and athletes, says Mr McGrath. The network could be used, for instance, in a workplace.

"If you wish your employees to handle well and broach the most appropriate optimal results, wouldn't it make clarity to take caring of the holistic health, wellbeing, and work-life balance?

"Well, if you do not portion that opening and the conditions, how can you presumably optimise and broach the best?

"For example, an executive who wants to broach high performance... wants to know when his highlight turn is peaking, or know that he has not entirely recovered after a bad night's nap - and that he'd improved be clever before carrying out a press discussion on TV initial thing that morning."

Another engaging focus of F1 technologies is a motorsport simulator.

Not all racing teams have their own, but McLaren has two.

One is used to pattern the F1 race cars and sight the drivers, vouchsafing them "drive" on practical circuits, really ample similar to personification an ultra-complex video game.

The second one, that is now being built, will be used by other motorsport companies, together with is to McLaren thoroughfare car.

The splendid make up is shaped of a outrageous semi-spherical shade that provides a 180-degrees view.

A chair is commissioned on rails in front of it, and a absolute sound network imitates the real-world environment.

Once seated, a motorist gets a entirely immersive deception of driving, with the "car" relocating similar to a actual one.

"It is a network to allow engineers to pattern a car," explains Mr McGrath.

"They erect a automobile in the practical world, then put the motorist in the practical model and validate."

But McLaren is not the only F1 definite meddlesome in apropos a player outward the Grand Prix world.

Williams F1 has created flywheel appetite storage technology - an substitute to a containing alkali battery in hybrid cars - and it has been used to power the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid.

ATT Williams F1's arch executive Alex Burns says that the flywheel is a great way to save fuel - and it could be applied to town buses, trams and other vehicles that end and beginning frequently.

"We're moreover building a ample incomparable chronicle of this flywheel technology that may be used to lower the complete appetite expenditure of a metro sight as it goes from hire to station," Mr Burns says.

Williams has its own simulator too, that the company is moreover bettering for non-racing vehicles.

F1 companies expanding outward the core of their competition have not similar reasons for carrying out so.

Williams, for instance, may be diversifying in to non-F1 areas to secure new income streams and change out its F1 income, according to Christian Sylt from Formula Money magazine.

But whatever the reasons, future for "spillovers" is great - and Eric Edgecumbe of Specialized believes that it is vicious for F1 teams to search for it.

"They can pick up a lot about what motivates people in their shopping decisions, and they can moreover pick up a great treat about what motivates F1 fans, and because they are captivated to and desirous by a group over another," he says.

But in the end, it all depends on the teams' strategies and the really reasons because they are on the track.

"Some really focus on the engineering and innovation. For others, it is more about prominence and brand approval - they do not expect to win and may not expect requesting the engineering developments," says Professor Rick Delbridge of Cardiff University, the writer of a inform on cutting-edge F1 technologies.

"And firms similar to Williams and McLaren are excellent examples of British enhancement and engineering, undeniably important to the country's repute over F1."