See how the race car developer embraced digital transformation when designing a rolling road to tune cars.
Autodesk has sponsored this article.
Written by: Chan Solanki, Autodesk
Steller Group has established a reputation as a successful developer of racing cars on its own account—as a tuner and developer of both cars for competition and “supercars” for road use. The Steller Engineering team has designed, developed and supported competitors in the popular British Touring Car Championship and GT Championship, in historic racing and other specialist activities. The company has accelerated its digital transformation throughout its design and development process, including an advanced rolling road designed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The rolling road/wind tunnel hybrid puts cars in as close to real-world conditions as possible, preparing them for races and street use.

From Pen and Paper to Digital Delivery
Design and development in motorsport are at least as fast paced as the races themselves. Motor racing may look like an envelope-pushing activity (and it often is), but regulations designed to keep the more esoteric ideas under control often restrict innovation in the space. In the GT Championship, for example, the essentials of the car—engine, drivetrain and dimensions—cannot be modified. This means that race teams like Steller must be even more creative to gain a vital competitive edge.
“There’s nothing wrong with the traditional way, with pen and paper; it works, but it’s not as fast as doing things digitally,” says Max Daymond, technical director, Steller Motorsport. “We are trying to increase what we are doing in a digital way, to be faster and more productive.” While the pandemic has been inconvenient, Steller’s digital transformation has, perhaps ironically, been accelerated.
Seeing the Proof
Visitors to the site can see the transformation Steller Engineering is going through for themselves. The company has constructed a new building, which houses its rolling road—and it’s not just any old rolling road. Lockdown made the company embrace the need to diversify to offer services beyond the motorsport community while, at the same time, offering an advantage to its existing connections and customer base.
“As a racing team in an engineering company, we are perfectly placed to offer services to people’s supercars, as well as other race cars and specials. Our rolling road will be the most advanced in the U.K.,” Daymond says. It’s a bold claim, but he has evidence to support it. “It has the hardware of the rollers themselves to tune cars and measure power output—it’s rated to 2650 horsepower.” That is futureproofing taken to another level; it’s more than twice the output of the most powerful racing car currently available. But there’s more.
“In traditional rolling roads, people focus on the dyno itself, and things like keeping the engine cool are secondary,” Daymond says. Fans that blow cold air through the radiators are a bit of an afterthought and a necessary evil. As a result, they don’t usually attract much consideration.
Steller, however, has thought about cooling as a welcome, necessary part of rolling road use. “We have a bank of fans with a push-pull arrangement. We’re bringing air into the room, flowing it over the car, and sucking it out the other end,” says Daymond. The fans can be configured for front engine, rear engine or mid-engine vehicles, with all their different layouts and cooling requirements. The air must absorb heat density and draw it out of the building.

Steller is focusing on the volume of air flowing through the building, rather than just its velocity, and getting as close to ‘real world’ conditions as it can. The room can accommodate a saloon car and its opening doors, not just a single-seater Formula car. The ceiling is electronically actuated and can move up or down, so it can accommodate a Range Rover, a Mister T-style high-performance van or even a low-slung GT car. It’s not so much a rolling road as a hybrid wind tunnel.
Transformation Made Concrete
The project is a physical manifestation of how far Steller Engineering’s digital transformation has come. “We designed 99.9 percent of everything in Autodesk Fusion 360, including dragging in models from other companies and contractors,” says Daymond. The first design was definitely not the final iteration, but that isn’t a weakness; rather, it is a testament to the value of the company’s digital transformation.

“We looked at what we wanted to create, tried to figure out the best way to do it, and then found our ideas evolving as more people got involved. From pouring the concrete base onwards, we tried to make everything to as tight tolerances as we could while still working within the realities of life,” he says.
“There have been some ideas that people working on the project said could not be done. We would reply: This is what we want to achieve. This is why. We would have a conversation and work out how to get there. It may not be the first alternative, maybe it’s the second or third, but it’s such an investment for us that it has to be right when it is built, the first time.” After nearly two years of hard work and the involvement of CAD and CAE beyond what Steller, as an engineering company, had originally considered, its rolling road building is completed and in use.
The Steller Engineering rolling road is a triumph of cooperation. It demonstrates the value of breaking down barriers between different disciplines, from engineering design and computational fluid dynamics to construction. It is the best possible witness to the ‘great leap forward’ that Steller Engineering has achieved by embracing digital transformation.
Visit Autodesk to learn more about Fusion 360.