Meet The IAC: DALLARA
Dallara is the official racecar chassis manufacturer for the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC). The Leaderboard spoke with Giacomo Campione, manager of Dallara's U.S. operations in Speedway, Indiana, just down the road from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS). Celebrating ten years at Dallara, Campione leads a team of 40, overseeing purchasing, planning, manufacturing, sales and logistics across various business units.
Giacomo Campione - DALLARA
What is the mission of Dallara?
The mission of Dallara is to grow in high technology markets, and we are especially involved in automotive, racing, aerospace and defense. Through our core competencies, namely aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics, and design with composite materials, Dallara’s mission is to keep building knowledge to advance these industries, in the U.S., and around the world.
What do you consider the greatest value of the IAC?
The IAC is a very interesting engineering challenge, something that has never been done before. We are putting real racecars in the hands of university students from different countries to develop autonomous software to race at very high speeds around the world’s most famous racetrack. The value is educational for sure, but the amount of knowledge the students acquire will be so great, that it is hard to foresee the entire future value of the IAC.
From my personal experience of ten years in racing, this is truly a big engineering challenge, because of the combination of technical goals that must be achieved. The students will study and work with the latest technologies, with the challenge to safely and reliably “drive” an autonomous vehicle at the highest speeds in racing. Motorsports has a history of proving technologies, because if you can drive in harsh and challenging environments, then it might be easier to implement these proven technologies in personal and commercial vehicles.
The value for all the parties in the IAC is great visibility, because autonomous driving is the future. We can try to hide the truth or think that it won’t happen, but it will disrupt the entire transportation industry in the coming years.
Why is Dallara a partner in the IAC?
One of the biggest reasons for Dallara’s participation in the IAC is that we were able to provide a proven and reliable vehicle with a winning history of racing around the famed IMS oval and able to reach the high speeds that are required by the program. We won our first IndyCar race in 1997, and since 2012, have been the official racecar for the series and the Indy 500. Our factory is located near the IMS, and we work to be a good technical and engineering partner. When you roll out a new racecar, there can be a lot of problems and a lot of risk. The IAC wanted the most reliable vehicle with solid engineering so that the student teams could concentrate on the autonomous software part of the race.
Dallara is also a company that highly values education. Our founder, Gian Paolo Dallara, co-founded Motorvehicle University of Emilia-Romagna (MUNER), in the Provence of Palma, Italy, to grow the next generation of engineers and give back to the world all the knowledge he has built in his company. Students come from around the world for the two-year masters’ program supported by the motorsports community in the region.
How is the Dallara IL-15 being modified for the IAC?
The modified Dallara IL-15 is optimized to be the best racecar for safety and performance. The body, the monocoque,and the suspension are the result of years of knowledge put together to ensure it achieves the high speeds of oval racing (180-200 mph) in a safe and controlled manner. With the IAC, we also have new requirements, such as installing high-speed computers used to calculate the gigabytes of data needed to run an autonomous racecar and keeping them safe and cool.
What are your goals and expectations for the IAC?
What’s interesting to us is that we know how drivers behave while racing at high speeds. But how will computers behave? What if they are faster than a human driver? What if their reaction is slower? The use and misuse of the car typically is the foundation for a car design, where everything gets pushed to the limits. Maybe the next generation of race engineers and designers will need to rethink the car design, depending on how these new “brains” behind the wheel will operate.
All partners are working towards a successful race so that the student teams can showcase their capabilities in this very technically challenging competition. But, we also want the students to feel the unique experience of racing — to know the anticipation at the start of the race, exhilaration of competing, the smell of the raceway, the adrenaline and sometimes the loss of sleep leading to a big event trying to get everything ready. There is no school for race preparation, this is real life.