075: The Realities of Driving and Maintaining Your Own F1 Car.

David Higgins of Kinetic Simulation and Classic Revival drops into the podcast this week to give us some insight into creating no-holds-barred bespoke race cars from scratch, modernising and racing iconic motorsport legends, and owning and running your own real-deal Formula 1 car.

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David is probably best known for his work in motorsport engineering and aero design, but that’s just scratching the surface of what he gets up to on a day-to-day basis.

To find out more, we first look back at David’s journey from his early days spent racing his Dad’s classic Porsches and Formula cars, to getting a mechanical engineering degree at university, to eventually finding his feet, taking a punt, and starting his own motorsport design and engineering firm, Kinetic Simulation.

This has meant David’s had a hand in designing and testing plenty of fast projects, and time is spent in this episode discussing how simple aero enhancements have shaved seconds off his client’s cars.

We also take a detailed look at one of David’s most extreme projects — a modernised replica of a BMW E21 Group 5 race car, developed in collaboration with Kiwi company RaceLab. The project has gone through various iterations on its journey to where it is now as a full carbon fibre monocoque weapon with a stressed-member V8 and transaxle setup that should prove stupidly fast when finished.

While motorsport design, FEA, and CFD testing do play a big part in David’s day-to-day duties, there’s also the Classic Revival side to the equation. This is a family-owned group that David, along with his father and brother, use as an outlet for their passions — namely sourcing, restoring, and running motorsport icons of the 80s and 90s.

These include a GT300 Mazda RX-7, a Group C Porsche 962, and a couple of Leyton House Formula 1 cars — the latter of which we get into the nitty gritty of, discussing what the restoration process was like, what they’re like to work on, and what it takes to actually get them fired up and ready for a track session.

Follow David here:
IG: @aero_dave
FB: @Kinetic Simulation, @Classic Revival
WWW: kineticsimulation.com

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