Ford hopes this Hypercar will be its next Le Mans winner
Ford hopes this Hypercar will be its next Le Mans winner
福特寄望这款超级跑车能成为其下一辆勒芒冠军赛车
The car that Ford hopes will return it to overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans made its unofficial debut this week. Ford sent us some pictures of the still-unnamed car conducting its first track test at the colorful Paul Ricard circuit in Provence, France, where drivers Matt Campbell and Logan Sargeant started the hard work of making the car both fast and reliable.
福特寄望这款赛车能助其重夺勒芒 24 小时耐力赛的总冠军，该车于本周完成了非正式亮相。福特向我们提供了一些照片，展示了这辆尚未命名的赛车在法国普罗旺斯色彩斑斓的保罗·里卡德赛道（Paul Ricard circuit）进行了首次赛道测试。车手马特·坎贝尔（Matt Campbell）和洛根·萨金特（Logan Sargeant）已开始着手进行艰苦的调校工作，力求让赛车兼具速度与可靠性。
Ford already has four overall wins at Le Mans, owning the top spot four years in a row. But the last of these wins came in 1969, when a privately entered—and at that point outdated—GT40 managed to beat Porsche’s still-untamed 917 on the German car’s debut. The company returned to top-level endurance racing in 1982 with the C100 during the early days of the Group C regulations, but the car was uncompetitive and unreliable, and the program soon ended. In 2016, 50 years on from its first win, a class win in the GTE-Pro category added some more silverware to the corporate display cabinet. Now, the soaring popularity of the Hypercar category in the World Endurance Championship and at Le Mans has tempted it back to the fastest class.
福特此前已在勒芒赛场获得过四次总冠军，并曾实现四连冠。但最后一次夺冠还要追溯到 1969 年，当时一辆私人参赛且在当时已显过时的 GT40，在保时捷 917 的首秀中击败了这辆尚未驯服的德国赛车。1982 年，福特曾携 C100 赛车在 C 组规则初期重返顶级耐力赛，但该车缺乏竞争力且可靠性不佳，项目很快便告终。2016 年，在福特首次夺冠 50 周年之际，其 GTE-Pro 组别的胜利为公司的陈列柜增添了新的奖杯。如今，随着世界耐力锦标赛（WEC）和勒芒赛场上超级跑车（Hypercar）组别的日益火爆，福特再次被吸引回到了这一最快组别的竞争中。
Sports car racing can often get a little complicated, which is why there are two ways to go about designing a car to enter the Hypercar category. One approach—referred to as LMH—involves designing and building the entire car yourself. The LMH rules allow you to mount the hybrid system’s electrical motor on the front axle, as Ferrari, Peugeot, and Toyota do, or leave it out entirely, as in the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Everyone else uses the alternative LMDh approach, which requires the entrant to start with a carbon fiber chassis (or spine) from one of four approved race car manufacturers; in this case, Ford chose ORECA as the supplier. Each OEM also must use the same spec gearbox, electric hybrid motor, and hybrid battery, but they supply their own engine and software and design the bodywork. This is the approach used by Alpine, BMW, Cadillac, Genesis, and Porsche. McLaren and Ford will join them next year.
跑车赛事往往有些复杂，这就是为什么设计一辆进入超级跑车组别的赛车有两种途径。第一种被称为 LMH，即完全由厂商自行设计和制造整车。LMH 规则允许厂商将混合动力系统的电机安装在前轴上（如法拉利、标致和丰田），也可以完全不使用电机（如阿斯顿·马丁 Valkyrie）。其他厂商则采用另一种 LMDh 途径，要求参赛者必须使用四家获准赛车制造商之一提供的碳纤维底盘（或骨架）；福特此次选择了 ORECA 作为供应商。每家主机厂还必须使用规格统一的变速箱、电动机和混合动力电池，但可以自行提供发动机和软件，并设计车身外观。Alpine、宝马、凯迪拉克、捷尼赛思和保时捷均采用此方案，迈凯伦和福特也将于明年加入。
Overall levels of downforce, as well as the ratio of downforce to drag, are capped in both LMH and LMDh, and all the cars are subjected to the “balance of performance” process that levels the playing field. Like Cadillac, Ford has opted for a naturally aspirated V8 to power its Hypercar. In this case, it’s a 5.4 L V8 that’s derived from the “Coyote” V8 you’ll find in some Mustangs. The company could have simply used the same 5.4L Coyote that lives under the hood of Ford’s Mustang GT3 race car, but Ford Racing’s chief powertrain engineer, Christian Hertrich, told Road and Track earlier this year, “As we got into it, the speeds at which we need to push, the expectations, and really just competition level drove us into a lot of unique architecture and components.”
LMH 和 LMDh 组别对总下压力以及下压力与阻力的比例都有上限规定，所有赛车都必须接受“性能平衡”（BoP）流程，以确保竞争的公平性。与凯迪拉克一样，福特选择了一台自然吸气 V8 发动机来驱动其超级跑车。这台 5.4 升 V8 发动机源自福特野马（Mustang）上搭载的“Coyote”V8 发动机。福特本可以直接使用福特 Mustang GT3 赛车引擎盖下的那台 5.4L Coyote 发动机，但福特赛车部门首席动力总成工程师克里斯蒂安·赫特里奇（Christian Hertrich）今年早些时候告诉《Road and Track》杂志：“随着研发深入，我们需要达到的速度、预期目标以及真正的竞争水平，促使我们采用了许多独特的架构和组件。”
Ford hasn’t released any video from the Paul Ricard test yet, but it did post a dyno test to YouTube for those curious about what this V8 sounds like. The Ford Hypercar actually started initial shakedown testing on August 5 with Campbell, Mike Rockenfeller, and Tom Blomqvist. Ford says the testing “proceeded smoothly and according to plan.” Having verified that all the various control systems on this complicated hybrid race car were functional, it started the test program on Monday with Campbell (a multiple winner in Porsche’s 963 Hypercar) and the ex-F1 driver Sargeant, with Blomqvist set to join them in the next few days.
福特尚未发布保利·里卡德测试的任何视频，但已在 YouTube 上发布了一段测功机测试视频，供那些好奇这台 V8 发动机声音的人观看。事实上，福特超级跑车已于 8 月 5 日由坎贝尔、迈克·洛肯菲勒（Mike Rockenfeller）和汤姆·布隆奎斯特（Tom Blomqvist）开始了初步的试车工作。福特表示，测试“进展顺利，符合计划”。在确认了这辆复杂的混合动力赛车上的各种控制系统功能正常后，福特于周一开始了测试计划，由坎贝尔（曾多次驾驶保时捷 963 超级跑车获胜）和前 F1 车手萨金特参与，布隆奎斯特也将在未来几天加入他们的行列。