A race against time

Toyota Motor Corporation’s Motor Sports Unit Development Division develops race vehicles in a variety of top motor sport categories. The division conducts research and development on race cars at the company’s Higashi-Fuji Technical Center.

The Motor Sports Unit Development Division (MSUDD) of Toyota Motor Corporation has been using STAR-CD software and Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software for many years to develop race vehicles in a variety of top motor sport categories. The division conducts research and development (R&D) on race cars every day at the company’s Higashi-Fuji Technical Center, located at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

One of the roles of the MSUDD is to develop vehicles for the FIA World Endurance Championship, which includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It also conducts R&D on engines and cars for domestic (Japanese) race series such as the Super-Formula and Super-GT series. MSUDD managers, Yuichiro Kato and Teppei Hojo, consider computer-aided engineering (CAE) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to be critical to the company’s successful design of race cars.