KIVI Innovation Drinks Twente: Formule 1

De oude Formule 1-auto van Daniel Ricciardo

De zaal zat goed vol!

Onze 3 sprekers en de dagvoorzitter

Jan Lammers en Jan Smilde

While outside of the Waaier, a Red Bull F1 car was showcased, inside a large crowd of more than 400 students, engineers and interested, enjoyed the stories and technical insights provided by three outstanding speakers.

Jan Smilde, managing director of Red Bull NL, spoke about his Red Bull mission of ‘giving you wings’. He elaborated on how Red Bull is not meant as a soft drink, but as a stimulant to spike your concentration and focus, when you really need it. Red Bull supports young athletes in almost every category of sports and brings them to the top. Just like they helped Daniel Ricciardo from a very young age. With some eye-catching footage of Red Bull Sports including Formula 1, Jan Smilde warmed everyone up for the next speaker: Jan Lammers.

Lammers captivated our audience with his personal anecdotes. His message: you can not win a race on your own, while you can easily lose it on your own. Remarkable was Jan Lammers’ view on modern racing. Modern systems and regulations such as the DRS, can be compared with giving a marathon front runner a backpack of 10 kilo’s. In Lammer’s opinion, racing is more exciting, when a driver really needs to push to the limits to overtake. Lammers finds himself a lucky guy, feeling to have experienced so much of the Racing sports world, that he sometimes feels like a 200 year old.

The evening concluded with racing car engineer Ton Serné. To his disappointment as a mechanical engineer, car aerodynamics have won more attention compared to the car mechanics in modern F1 car engineering. Serné explained what reporters mean when talking about ‘balancing a car’. This is all about balancing the lateral forces on the back and front wheels of the car, alligning the centripetal force and  the centrifugal force. Which can be achieved by stiffening or softening the anti-roll bar or the springs.

You can find his presentation via the link on the right.

We would like to thank our speakers, as well as Saskia Monsma, senior lecturer Automotive at HAN University of Applied Sciences and board member Automotive Division KIVI, who chaired the day.