• Random post alert. At work, there are three abandoned wind tunnels in a disused building at the top of the site. Almost nobody knows they are in there. Couple of reasons for this:
    -They are well concealed and you can only partly see one of them.
    -The aero team was wound up in the 1990s and none of that team remain.
    -Rumours on-site were that the tunnel (singular) was briefly rented out to a race team in the early 2000s.
    -Up until a couple of years ago another company was using the space for aero testing buildings and public spaces. They cleared out and left almost no evidence of being there.
    -Estates team are all fairly new and have never been in, so they didn’t know what was in the building and/or didn’t care.

    I found out what was in there, just by chance. You can see the back of one of the tunnels poking out the back of the building and I always thought that’s what it was. I managed to get in the building briefly, scouting for a new work space for my own project and found there are in fact three tunnels - two older concrete tunnels that look like they date back to the 1940s and a later tunnel maybe built in the 1960s. The two older ones appear to be deliberately concealed, so are not visible from the outside.

    So a bit of reading around turned up that a tunnel was used by McLaren F1 in the late 1990s and by the Super Aguri F1 team in the mid 2000s, who were Honda’s ‘B’ team. I got into the other end of the building on the day before we were all sent off site for the Covid-19 lockdown and found what I believe was the tunnel the F1 teams used. Pics to follow in the next couple of posts.

    What I ask: some of you know which F1 team I used to work for. It’s easy enough to find on here but please don’t spell it out in this thread. It’s also possible to work out what company I work for now if you read around a bit of aero testing history so, again, please don’t spell that out here either - thanks.

  • It’s also possible to work out what company I work for now if you read around a bit of aero testing history so, again, please don’t spell that out here either - thanks.

    My lips are sealed. Nice gig though.

    So, what would it take to get those wind tunnels running and calibrated again? And when can we visit?

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