Preparations by BILSTEIN and Aston Martin for the first joint race at the 41st ADAC Zurich 24-hour race (May 19-20, 2013) at the Nürburgring are in full swing. In order to optimally prepare the Modular Damper System (MDS) of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3 branded in blue and yellow in BILSTEIN colors for the endurance test in the Eifel region, engineers from BILSTEIN and Toyota Motorsport simulated the specific track conditions of the Nordschleife on the BILSTEIN motorsport chassis. The all-day sequence was carried out on the Formula 1-tested four-piston test system from TMG in Cologne-Marsdorf.
After the test and setting drives as well as the first valuation race for the VLN endurance championship on the Nürburgring had to be canceled due to the winter road conditions in the Eifel, the coordination process started without reference values from practice in the "gray hell" of the TMG test site. Actually, the promising attitude for the combination of MDS and British sports car know-how should first be looked for and found on the track under competitive conditions. In order not to leave anything to chance, the managers of both companies had agreed on the additional test and adjustment campaign in Cologne.
The focus was initially on the collection of meaningful data. For this purpose, the Aston Martin completed a simulation on the four-piston test system several times, in which striking key points of the Norschleife were compressed. This was followed by a run that corresponded exactly to a complete lap on the Nordschleife. On the basis of the knowledge gained in this way, the engineers determined in the next step which spring rate in combination with the BILSTEIN motorsport suspension offers the best performance. This was followed by the exact setting of the damping force. For this purpose, the technicians meticulously played through all possible variants of the rebound and compression stages, both on the front and rear axles and in the ratio of the front to rear axles, until the optimal set-up for the Aston Martin was established.
With the independent damping force adjustment in rebound and compression and the associated wide range of individual adjustment options, the MDS from BILSTEIN offers all the requirements for successful motorsport. Thanks to ten clearly perceptible clicks from one (soft) to ten (tight), the damping system can be optimally adjusted to the high demands of the 24-hour race in the Eifel. In addition, the adjustment options of the dampers, which are manufactured using single-tube gas pressure technology, allow precise adaptation to the specific chassis properties of the Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3 due to the exemplary reproducibility of characteristics.
The latest findings on whether the set-up on the test bench actually met the requirements on the track was collected by the technicians from both camps at the only Nordschleife test of the Aston Martin as part of the 55th ADAC ACAS H&R Cup, the second valuation race of the VLN endurance championship.
Source: BILSTEIN press | Woermann