DrRacing's Blog

Hi!

I am Andrea Quintarelli! Welcome to my Blog!

I am an italian vehicle Engineer and I started work on racecars in 2003. In my first years I worked mainly with Italian teams involved in single seaters (like Target Racing, BVM and Corbetta Competizioni), from the beginning as Data Engineer and then as Race Engineer.
Before that, I was for several years a kart driver and competed at national level in Italy.

Formula 3 was the car on which I worked the most. An amazing car for sure. Formula 3 was back then one of the few series in the world with rules allowing proper development work, with boundaries set more by teams resources than by the regulation. That proved to be an exceptional school for many talented drivers that eventually landed to Formula 1 (Vettel, Hamilton, Rosberg, Kubica, Norris, Sainz just to say a few).

Teams had to buy a chassis and an engine, anyway. Dallara has always been a market leader for chassis. They operated for a long time as the sole existing supplier, but this never took anything out to the quality of their products. Working on their cars has been an amazing learning experience and had set pretty clear and high standards in my mind.

This proved very useful in 2006, when the team I worked for (Target Racing) was the only one operating and developing the SLC R1, one of the very few non-Dallara cars, running it in the German Formula 3 Championship.
The car was pretty good, but because of budget issues we couldn’t push the development as hard as we wished. It was anyway a great experience. We had some good results, like a pole position at the Nürburgring.

I kept working on Formula 3 cars until 2010, first still in the German Series and then in Italy, where i engineered a car in 2009. Again budget issues braked us but working on the Dallara F308 was a blast. A real aero car, very ride height sensitive. I also designed some small bit and pieces to improve our setup and that car was also the subject of my master thesis.

During these years, I grew experience on data analysis, car development and design, driver coaching, simulation and car setup.

In 2010, I worked for the first time on a touring car: I was Johhny Herbert Race Engineer at Motorzone Racecar, a team involved in Superstars International Series.

The Championship was a series where big V8 (nearly stock) Sedans competed on some of the  most important european tracks and in Kyalami, at the end of the season.
It wasn’t a spec series, so even if rules were pretty tight, there was still scope for teams to show their strengths. Setup options were pretty open, and races were normally very exciting.

In the mean time, i finished my vehicle engineering studies in Modena with a master degree work on a multibody-dynamic simulation of a Formula 3 car.

Between 2009 and 2010 i have been also Modena University Formula Student Team Leader, driving the design process of our 2010 car and managing team organization. Formula Student (or Formula SAE ) is a competition where Universities from all around the world build and run a small single seater.
It’s a real racecar and projects are evaluated not only in terms of performance, but also, from a design and marketing point of view.

I also had a chance to manage the design office of a small race car company for about one year. The company produced mainly bike engined, small (and light) single seaters and prototypes.
During my time there, we designed from scratch a completely new car aimed to race in a higher class (FIA CN2), with a 2 liter engine. Unfortunately the project never saw an end, because the company faced financial issues.

In the last few years, i mainly worked on the simulation side, focusing on vehicle dynamics topic and supporting teams running mainly in Endurance Racing. One of the highlights was surely the chance I had to support CORE Autosport, in 2018 and 2019.
In 2018 in particular, the team debuted in the DPi/LMP2 class with an Oreca07 and no experience at all with car and tires. It was a steep learning curve and a fantastic experience, culminated by a final overall second position in the championship standings, after fighting for the win until the very last laps of the very last race (Petit Le Mans, in Road Atlanta).

In this Blog, i would like to share with you my thoughts, my experience, my ideas and doubts about racecars and talk about my projects. Enjoy!