Kelly Racing’s engineering team will use Autodesk Australia digital prototyping software for all the team’s CAD (computer aided design) development with maintenance and assistance coming from KarelCAD’s professional support team.
Kelly Racing’s Head of Research and Development David Swenson, who is also the Race Engineer for Rick Kelly’s #15 Jack Daniel’s Racing Holden Commodore, says that the Autodesk digital prototyping solution is the best available for motorsport and automotive applications. “The Autodesk suite of digital prototyping software is exactly what we need here at Kelly Racing,” said Swenson. “Its provision of a seamless range of tools will allow us to produce more integrated designs faster and more efficiently.”
“Engineering is such a huge part of what we do because so many components in these cars are custom made,” said Todd Kelly. “It’s forever evolving, all the suspension, anti-roll bars, uprights and diff-housings. The amount of change that’s been happening in all those areas in the last five years has been massive. The teams that are really good at designing those elements of their cars and have the engineering capacity to keep updating and improving – drawing those things and getting it made and getting it on the cars as fast as possible – are the teams that win races and ultimately win championships."
“So this relationship with Autodesk and KarelCAD is massive for us. It's a real performance component of what we do and as well as that, I love that part of things as well. “So to have a relationship with such a renowned company like Autodesk, and to have the ongoing support of KarelCAD’s expert team, is huge. It’s probably the biggest thing we've been able to lock away in the young age of our team on the engineering side of things.”
“The association with Autodesk and KarelCAD is major coup for Kelly Racing and their commitment to the team with our long term partnership is testament to their understanding and belief in our program and we look forward to sharing in much success together.” Karsten Hojberg, Director of Manufacturing Solutions, Autodesk Australia & New Zealand, expects Kelly Racing to benefit greatly from the technology now available to the team’s engineering department.
“Autodesk’s Digital Prototyping software is ideal for this environment and it’s a perfect fit for Kelly Racing,” said Hojberg. “It is going to allow Kelly Racing to explore ‘what-if’ scenarios in a risk-free, virtual environment allowing them to reduce the cost and increase the speed of their race car development.
It not only gives them the ability to visualise, simulate and engineer their cars but the digital prototyping software also gives them the ability to manage their data throughout the entire process.”
Kelly Racing will hit the track in two weeks time for the Nikon SuperGP on the Gold Coast for Races 19 and 20 of the 2009 V8 Supercar Championship Series on October 22-25 in Surfers Paradise, Queensland.