Castrol simulated a full F1 season and 24 hour race to test its oil

During a recent interview for a magazine feature, a Castrol engineer revealed to MOTOR that in testing its oil the research and development team ran a V10 engine as if it were in a Formula One season… then added a 24 Hour race onto that.

Expert technologist for the Castrol Edge product development team Dr Jonathan Green says the testing for engine oil almost always goes beyond the lab, though those tests are important too.

4

“The kind of programs I work on with Castrol EDGE tend to encompass an awful lot of engine testing,” Dr Green says.

“I think most people would be surprised at how exhaustive the testing is. There’s no stone left unturned in regards to which technical areas are looked at to receive these prestigious OEM approvals and the further work we conduct beyond that.

“The tests are very severe - it would be extremely difficult for a customer to drive a car as hard on the road – and even on the track – as some of these engines are worked.”

The recent example he gave us was a particularly extreme one, in which they simulated An Audi V10 engine running through the equivalent of an entire season of Formula 1, and then added what Dr Green called ‘a key 24-hour endurance race’ – think Le Mans or Nürburgring – onto that all on the same oil.

4

“We’ve run a V10 engine through a test cycle of a whole season of a major single-seater race series, simulating every track as driven by a professional race driver and then gone on to simulate, with the same oil in the same engine, a key 24-hour endurance race series’ all on the same fill of oil that’s just been topped up.

“Both the engine and oil made it to the end without any problems at all and in very good condition.”

For this engine to have replicated all of that, it would have had to run for the equivalent of around 6400km of hard driving.

Taking 2018 as an example for the F1 season, 21 races of around 305km plus the rough average 150 laps of the 25km ‘combined’ Nürburgring circuit adds up to the same as a drive from Brisbane to Melbourne, on to Alice Springs and across to Perth.

4

Google Maps reckons that’d take about 73 hours, but that length of time with the engine at race speed would get you a little further than Perth.

“This testing is not something that was required by the OEM,” Dr Green says, “but something we’ve done to push the limits when we asked ourselves ‘what’s the most severe thing we could do?’

“At the end of that the condition of the engine was amazing considering what it had been through. That’s far more severe than any consumer would ever subject their performance car to.”

For more from this interview, keep an eye out for the February 2019 issue of MOTOR Magazine.