Formula One team Sauber Petronas has deployed a £2.25m supercomputer in an attempt to significantly improve the aerodynamic performance of its cars for the 2005 racing season.

Computer modelling has become a crucial factor to complement wind tunnels used by F1 teams to enhance their vehicle's performance.

The leading team, Ferrari, has been a leader in the field, installing computer systems several seasons ago to streamline its race-winning cars.

Today, seven out of the 10 racing teams use computer modelling to improve aerodynamic performance.

Sauber Petronas team principal Peter Sauber says aerodynamics has always been a key factor in F1.

'Even if we go back 20 years in Formula One, aerodynamics was important, but in the last 10 years it's become critical. Some people say 70 per cent of the performance of an F1 car is due to aerodynamics.'

Just a year ago Sauber launched a $55m wind tunnel big enough to test wind flows on a full-size car, rather than using scaled-down models.

'This was the foundation for our assault on aerodynamics,' he said.

Now, to enhance this facility, the team has added a 2.3 teraflop supercomputer, which will allow its engineers to design and optimise parts virtually, before producing and testing them in the tunnel.

Torbjorn Larsson, head of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at Sauber Petronas, says wind tunnels are extremely valuable tools, but are enhanced with computer modelling.

'Wind tunnels produce very accurate "aero maps" very quickly, but you actually have to produce a part in order to test it, which makes the process very expensive,' he said.

'With CFD you can get a fundamental understanding of parts, and you have no constraints in your testing, such as dealing with 900 degree Celsius exhaust fumes exiting the car. Also, it's fairly cheap.

'On the downside, the process is slow and does have limits. For instance, modelling the affect of one vehicle's turbulence on another is extremely computationally intensive,' he said.

To overcome this, the new system - called Albert - is 30 times more powerful than the team's previous system and a contender for the Top 500 list of supercomputers.

Although just installed last month, the new system is rapidly proving its performance advantage.

The Linux-based system runs on 530 AMD Opteron 64-bit processors, has one terabyte of memory and 11 terabytes of hard disk space, all of which weighs in at 18 tonnes.

Albert's computational power is already helping, as the team attempts to calculate how to optimise the forces exerted on a vehicle during a race.

'Understanding the down-force exerted on cars during a race is a crucial factor in overall performance, and CFD can help us understand how this works,' said Larsson.

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'Drag on a car is our enemy, down-force is our friend,' he said.

As a car's aerodynamic efficiency is affected by its exterior shape, Larsson has to model a car down to the tiniest detail, which is where Albert's power comes into play.

'Before, to simulate one full car without Albert took two full weeks, now we can do it overnight,' he said.

'Several years ago, Sauber Petronas didn't do any computer modelling. Today, no serious player in this business could dream to compete without CFD.'