Tata Group's CRL to help Force India design nextgen Formula 1 cars

Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, will develop the next generation Formula 1 car for Force India Formula One Team (FIF1) under a three-year multi-million dollar deal.

Under the deal, CRL will develop a fully automated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution for designing the team's next generation race cars as well improve aerodynamic efficiency in the current racing models.

Force India is India's first and only F1 team. This is also the first time that a Formula 1 team is leveraging an Indian high performance computing (HPC) organisation for their design activities, a CRL release said.

"In conjunction with physical wind tunnel and straight line testing, Force India relies on virtual prototypes and CFD methods to improve racing car aerodynamics and accuracy by conducting complex simulations without compromising processing times," the release said.

"The computing power provided by CRL will enable Force India to reduce its design cycle times, thus providing the team's drivers with the best chance of a strong result, it added.

CRL said Force India's design team will now have access to 'eka', India's fastest supercomputer and one of the most versatile supercomputers in the world that is capable of 133 trillion calculations per second!