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| Race truck office |
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| Engineers area in race truck |
On our travels around the world, the first thing when we arrive in the garages is sort out the electric power supply for our teams equipment and also for the trucks. I will start first with power needed for the trucks. Whilst some of the race trucks are fitted with generators, we cannot have these running all the time so we need to connect to a mains power supply. This is so that the lighting inside the truck can be used and also for office lighting(some trucks have lovely offices in them). Obviously there may be the need to use the race truck as a workshop so wall sockets for power tools, laptops, TV,s etc. will be required.
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| Portimao electrics with race truck supply plugged in. |
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You may have noticed that there is normally a thick electrical cable, on the ground, between the truck and the garage. This will be our power supply to the race truck.
Please try not to trip over it as many people do !!!!
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| Race truck tail lift and hand control |
This will normally be a 3 phase cable, 440V ,32 or 64 amps and will have a large red coloured plug on it. Some teams will use a single phase cable, 220-240V 16amps which has a blue plug on it. This electrical supply can also be used to provide power for the tail lift at the rear of the truck
Once we have power to the truck, we can now
turn our attention to the garages.
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| Tyre warmers need power.....and lots of it. |
We need to find a way of dividing the electrical supply to provide enough power for additional lighting, laptops, mobile phones, TV,s electrical chargers for wheel nut guns, electronic set up scales, wheel aligning equipment, even fridges and water coolers and most important of all, tyre warmers. If the team has the money, they may have 3 sets of warmers for slicks and 3 sets for wet tyres. Some teams will even have 4 sets of each. And that is just for 1 car. When all of these tyre warmers are switched on, there is a very high current and if the electrical system is not suitable, too many amps can be drawn through the system and trip fuses in the main power supply boxes will shut the whole garage down.
NOT WHAT YOU NEED JUST BEFORE QUALIFYING OR A RACE.
It is the job of the Truckies to set up and distribute the power when it is needed most and in the safest way possible. Some circuits we visit, have very poor electrics and teams may have to use the generators which are fitted to the tyre trolleys. Or if there are not enough garages to give to each car, the teams may have to run 2 cars in each garage. THEN IT CAN GET VERY DIFFICULT. The Truckies will have to use every means possible to ensure that they have enough electricity. Sometimes, we will even have to plug electrics into another teams garage. Thankfully, this is rarely needed. There are formulae to calculate power requirements, Volts x Amps =
Watts. But we do seem to find that plug it in, turn it on and see what
happens works best. We can also encounter different voltages and amps in
the countries we visit. The most common is 220-230V around European
circuits but we also have to deal with 110V in Brazil, USA and Japan.
Then we have to rely on big generators that the circuits will arrange
for us.
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| Monza garage electrics | | | | | | | | | | | |
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| Curitiba garage electrics......no good |
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| Generators at Curitiba......Yes please |
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| Electrical boxes set up to provide power for tyre warmers |
This job of adequate electrical supply is yet another unseen part of a race teams preparations and yet another job that is normally performed by the Truckies. Some circuits are great, there will be more than enough power supply for everything. But as you can see, at other circuits, we have to be innovative and manage as best as we can.
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| Fun with an electrical socket |
