The IT crowd: CFD at Marussia F1

Formula One (F1) isn’t a sport for the little guy. You need access to world-class engineering expertise and millions of pounds’ worth of financial backing to compete against the likes of Ferrari and McLaren. But in relative terms, the Marussia F1 team — formerly known as Virgin Racing — operates on a much smaller budget than the big players. So when Pat Symonds, former executive engineering director of Renault F1 and now technical consultant for Marussia, was told the team wanted to achieve a podium place at the inaugural Russian Grand Prix in 2014, he knew he had his work cut out for him. ‘At the time we were setting this mission statement, McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari were the only teams that had a realistic chance of a podium finish,’ he said. ‘The only way we could do it was to really be novel. We weren’t going to do it in the period required just using traditional methods.’