What were the Bosch engineers in the Tanuki garage doing?

One question we heard pop up time and time again over the WTAC weekend, was “what are those Bosch engineers doing with Tanuki?” Indeed, amongst the familiar faces from GT Auto Garage and ChassisSim were three new ones – engineers from Bosch Motorsport Japan taking a short break from their usual work supporting Super GT, Super Taikyu and WEC programs to embed in the Nissan S13’s WTAC garage.

The three Japanese engineers initially cut a low profile, but as the weekend progressed their presence became noticed and they were even called in to provide support to the Hypercar Class’ Pagani Huayra R, which just so happens to run a full suite of Bosch Motorsport electronics – ECU, display, power distribution and of course Motorsport ABS!

And that ABS technology is the reason for the international visitor’s presence at WTAC this year. The Tanuki vehicle is fitted with Bosch Motorsport’s M5 ABS ‘Kit 1’, a high-featured version of the company’s popular technology which allows for custom configuration of the ABS mapping to extract every last drop of performance from the vehicle’s braking system.

Bosch Motorsport Dealer Ashley Field fitted a range of sensors, harnesses and transmitters to Tanuki in the leadup to the event.

This enabled Bosch’s Nomura-san and Shimizu-san to combine real-time data with feedback from Bathurst-winner Todd Hazelwood to refine the ABS system in the context of Tanuki’s aerodynamic characteristics, suspension and braking systems as well as track conditions.

Bosch Motorsport offers this specialised service to top-level race teams and motorsport programs around the world, but this is the first time that Bosch Motorsport Japan has supported an Australian customer with this custom calibration.

Typically this is executed as a standalone testing program, but time constraints meant that the data acquisition was done over Tanuki’s compressed Wednesday and Thursday testing schedule prior to competition starting on Friday. The extremely high grip and deceleration of Tanuki provided an opportunity to tweak several of the ABS kit’s 11 maps to give Todd Hazelwood maximum confidence into SMSP’s multiple heavy braking zones.

“The support from the Bosch Motorsport engineers working with the ABS system gave me the full confidence in the braking package to execute the lap that I did. For any driver to execute over one lap, that’s what you need”, said Hazelwood.

Hazelwood rounded out the weekend as outright winner with a blistering 1.18.1 lap, a new record for the car and over four seconds clear of the nearest competition. The glowing carbon rotors and stability in corner entry provided clear visual evidence that the Supercars co-driver had the braking system completely dialled in for that “One Perfect Lap”.

Bosch Motorsport Australia General Manager, Blake Jones, said: “One of our key strengths is our ability to bring global experience directly to Australian motorsport customers. This pilot program with the team from Tanuki was a huge success, and we look forward to discussing the potential of providing this service to more local customers in the future.”

To Learn more about Bosch Motorsport ABS, visit Bosch’s Motorsport ABS information page, or find your nearest Bosch Motorsport Authorised Dealers.