F430 Scuderia Track-Prep Project
Creating a street-legal weekend warrior

Hi All:

A little bit of dust has settled around here this week, so we thought we'd share some shots, etc, of a recent build that we just finished. The project was a track-prep build based on a F430 Scuderia. There's a lot of ground to cover on this one due to the scale of the project. Maybe we’ll split this up into sections later if people care to see more detail, but for now we’ll just “begin at the beginning” to keep it simple.

Some of you may remember a track-prep project that we completed on different Scud last year: https://teamspeed.com/forums/458-430...ppression.html. We appreciated all the solid feedback on this project back then, considered it a “one off” project (which is common for us here), and moved along with other work. As it turned out, this earlier Scud project put a bee in the bonnet of another of our favorite clients who also happens to have a Scud. After a few project planning meetings, we came up with a program to address the safety, grip, power, and aerodynamic capability of what had been, up to that point, a car used primarily on the street.

Before everyone starts doing the “Challenge Car” analysis in their head, building one wasn’t really ever on this client's radar. There were (and still are) GT cars out there for purchase when we started, but that wasn't the client’s goal. We can appreciate some head scratching if that WAS the goal, but the idea here was a bit different. The owner loves his Scuderia (hard not to), and our focus on this project was on creating a safer, more capable track-day car, not a fire-breathing, full-out “race car”. Our aim was very much in keeping with an "RS" type concept, not a full "GT" concept, if you will. Clearly race cars are better at being race cars than even VERY capable street cars. What we were shooting for here was to provide safety and performance for a car that serves both masters. We're just trying to push the percentage of "track use versus street use" metric from 25%/75% to 75%/25%.

Building upon our prior Scud experience, we designed and fabricated a more substantial roll bar system. Both for safety and packaging reasons, we didn’t want to weld more structure into the floor of the car. So, our team came up with a steel plate system that was designed to fit “over” the inner sill of the car and secured to the chassis with a series of back-plates. This base served as a platform from which to build “up” into the cabin area, and helped to distribute the loads over a wider footprint. Although this bit took a lot of time and some tricky fabrication, it provided a very solid bit of packaging that we were pleased with.

From that base platform, we built up a front hoop and rear hoop, connecting them within a very tight dimension to the roof paneling. This car is quite tight up near the driver’s helmet area, so many hours (and some gnashing of teeth), were required to get the tubing in this area “just right”. The section across the top of the windscreen, for example, had the potential to block the driver's view, so some tricky work needed to be done in that area.

One of the main goals of the cage was to provide solid side-protection. Barrel rolling the car down the track is not something we considered terribly likely. However, spinning out and being t-boned was. We designed the roll bar base plates with this in mind, along with two additional side-protection bars on each side. These were designed to be removable, in case the car is driven on the street, but they afford super-solid protection in the event of cabin intrusion (which will hopefully never happen!).

Similar to our previous Scud bar work, the rear bar sections were carefully mated to backplates built into the chassis rails. The harness bar was carefully located to provide a safe, solid attachment point, and the overall design maximizes the available cabin space (which is tight in this car).

Redesigned door panels were fabricated to accommodate the uppermost side-protection bar on each side. It’s not that the OEM door panels are all that heavy, but to fit side-protection bars properly we needed clearance along a plane that intersected the OEM door panel trim. Having a side-bar right at one’s hip would defeat the purpose, so carbon-fiber panels were custom fabricated and fitted, along with Porsche-style pull-straps. The upper trim panel on each door was fabricated in aluminum, and then covered in alcantara. Here are a few shots...there are more on our Site, including some "work in progress" shots that some of you might find of interest.











The rest of the safety gear takes a nod from our prior Scuderia work, including 6-point Schroth harnesses, a SPA AFFF fire suppression system, Braille’s truly excellent carbon-fiber lightweight battery, and custom battery cutoff circuitry. The radio was removed, and a straightforward switch panel was fabricated to house the battery cutoff and fire system controls.



We also integrated a racing-style rear view mirror, along with a camera for a Race Keeper track telemetry system (the Race Keeper system is VERY impressive, btw). A 986 racesuit cooling system was fitted and plumbed, as well.

Capristo’s excellent sport exhaust system was fitted, including headers, cats, and valve-regulated silencer. The Capristo system is interesting, in that it comes with tailored heat-insulation jacketing. This, in an effort to keep engine bay temps down. The Capristo system sounds great, fits well, and produces a bit of power to boot.

To improve grip, 19” HRE P40S forged 1pc wheels were fitted, shod with one of our favorite “track day” choices, Michelin’s excellent Pilot Sport Cup rubber. The Michelin’s do a particularly good job over multiple sessions, in our opinion. The HRE’s were chosen for their relatively light weight, as well as the strength of a forged 1pc design (they happen to look great on the car too).

We’re making suspension changes step-by-step on this car, but fitting Novitec springs has already helped quite a bit, along with careful corner-balancing and alignment changes (which the Scud’s are sensitive to).

The final bit of work most recently completed was adding downforce to the car. Not so easy on Scuderia, as it's not a very common car to be modified. To that end, we contacted Taurino Racing, as they offer carbon-fiber GT-style aerodynamics for the F430’s (Taurino are great to work with). The F430 bodywork offered is not a direct bolt-on fitment for the Scuderia model, so we spent a chunk of time in fabrication to make things fit properly. The results are great, functionally, in terms of cooling, and in terms of downforce.







Between the carbon-fiber front spoiler blades and the rear wing (which has over 45 points of adjustment), we’ve been able to dial things in quite nicely thus far, improving lap times right away. Next step is to go with smaller wing endplates, as the ones fitted are really meant for extremely high-speed tracks, and that’s not where the car is being run.

All in all, a really satisfying project, and we’re most pleased that the client is happy with the results. There are likely only a few Scud's out there being put into this type of service, and certainly many of the details on this car are unique.

Getting the chance to really stretch our wings on these types of projects is what we enjoy most, and this project had a lot of little details that we really enjoyed working through. Can’t do any of this work without great clients, and we’re fortunate to have a deep bench in that regard. Credit goes to this client in particular, however, as he often offers us the project-scale necessary to do some of our best work.

For more photos and a bit more detail, please see our gallery on this car at Ai Design Scud Track Prep

 

Wow... great read and an amazing project. Thanks for sharing.

If you guys get any videos of it in the track it would be great to see them.

 

Love the roll bar!!!! Great job!!!

 

Will do...I expect that will happen before season's end. Thanks for the comment.

 

Holy coww-no-li

Featured on the magazine and facebook page!

 

Wow!!! This is amazing !!!

 

Very cool build, well done.

 

Awesome build and writeup!

 

Very impressive. Those safety features should certainly add to the drivers confidence. Great work!

 

very well done