Pre-production testing

By May 2008, the first car was completed and shipped to Ferrari’s own test track at Fiorano where it began a relentless testing schedule across Europe via Imola, Jerez, Mugello, Paul Ricard and Magny Cours, before it was joined three months later by the first production car at a cold and wet Silverstone in autumn.

With just two months to go before the season started, the test car had completed over 5000km with very few issues. Those that did raise their head were reported back to the design team, a solution identified, prototype parts made and shipped out before being signed off for application to the ‘production’ cars, after having proved themselves at the next test session.

But even with such an intense preproduction testing schedule, problems were still being identified during the season, as parallel testing was undertaken. One such issue related to the fuel system after the cars tested at Kyalami in South Africa, as Travis recalls: ‘Due to the heat and altitude, the fuel was boiling in the tank and vaporised by the time it reached the injectors. This caused huge misfires. We had to develop a suitable low-pressure scavenge pump set up and pressurised accumulator system, which meant heating a full fuel tank to 60degC in the middle of the factory floor to simulate the problem before developing a solution, manufacturing a grid full of kits and shipping them out to be fitted weeks before the race.’

Which leads us on to the question, how did a relatively small group of engineers build 25 cars in such a short period of time, while at the same time ensuring the individual teams had long enough to learn how they went together prior to the first race?

Travis explains: ‘The teams were all invited to book their build slot and send over their own team of mechanics. We would then have three to four cars being built at the same time under the supervision of our three primary mechanics.’

Build Process

This also led to Travis asking himself how he would best like to approach the race engineering of a one-make series.

‘So we built a full vehicle dynamics programme for the teams to do their own simulations. We got it ready for the first race, with Karl Niklas giving lectures to all the teams on how to use it. We gave the teams everything, so they didn’t need to develop their own programmes.’

As for transport between races. ‘There were two 747s with the whole grid in. They were full of ‘shack packs’, moved by Delivered on Time [DoT], the freight company. Ultimately, they were the biggest creditors, and the cars were sold to a South African buyer [AFRIX Motorsport] in 2015 to settle that debt.’

With mention of the series’ demise put aside, the collaboration, ingenuity and organisation shown by Travis and his team ensured the 17 teams that contested the first race at Zandvoort on 5 October 2008 were able to get up to speed quickly, compete on a level footing and set lap times over three seconds faster than had been achieved in the previous generation of A1GP car. And do all of that in front of packed grandstands.

‘The timeframe for a hi-tech car, despite being one-make, was a credit to everyone involved. I don’t know how we managed it all, but everything just seemed to drop into place,’ Travis says while reflecting on the enormity of the project, before concluding, ‘It was an honour. We were the only people to build a Ferrari-badged car outside Maranello. It was definitely one of the best projects to have worked on.’