Formula One (F1) racing team BMW WilliamsF1 has used Linux-based supercomputers to treble its computational capacity for designing its new car, which was launched this week.

The FW27, the team's car for the 2005 Grand Prix championship, owes much to pre-testing modelling and simulations run on a powerful combination of computer systems, speeding development and allowing the team to conform to new regulations governing the sport.

The car's design required simulations of 1.3TB of aerodynamic data - the equivalent of more than 70,000 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

This analysis capability was vital, says Alex Burns, general manager of Williams Grand Prix Engineering.

'The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations we ran helped us get the traditional testing in the wind tunnel right, replacing trial and error,' he said.

The team had to increase capacity to analyse twice as many CFD and crash-test models than last year. The results affected the FW27's front and rear wings, as well as the brake and radiator ducts, without relying as heavily on wind tunnel testing.

Technology supplier and sponsor HP provided WilliamsF1 with a clustered Linux supercomputing infrastructure for running simulations. This connected to a utility computing system at HP Labs in Bristol, to provide flexible access to extra capacity as and when needed.

Tim Bush, manager of the engineering division of HP's High Performance Technical Computing division in Europe, which had close links to the development of Williams' technical environment, says last-minute aerodynamic regulations issued by the championship's governing body are a good example of when unplanned extra processing capacity is needed.

'What's really changing is the level of technical ability and speed of agility,' he said.

Frank Williams, WilliamsF1 team principal, told Computing: 'The CFD data was very predictive and very accurate. The practical part of testing, in the wind tunnel, was running behind the predictions of the CFD group. It's always a technical race to some extent in F1.'