Before the Super Final of the RCCO World eX Championship at Suzuka, the grid stopped racing for a while to listen to a special guest. Ellen Lohr is still the only woman ever to win a DTM race at Hockenheim in 1992. Today she is Director Motorsport at AVL RACETECH in Graz, where her job sits much closer to the world of sim racing than most people would expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She began with a compliment. World eX drivers stay connected and talk to each other while they race, and Ellen recognised that immediately. \u201cIf you are able to drive and speak, you are very advanced,\u201d she said. On AVL\u2019s professional simulator in Graz, she explained, that is the first thing drivers have to learn. \u201cAnd that is not as easy for some as it looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AVL is the world\u2019s largest privately owned automotive supplier, with around 11,500 employees, roughly two thirds of them engineers. It is a pure engineering company that rarely manufactures anything itself. Its motorsport arm, AVL RACETECH, works across a wide range of series, from Formula 1 down to Formula 4, Super Formula, Super GT, Supercars, IndyCar, LMP2 and Hypercar. On Formula 1 she said only: \u201cWe build more than one and less than five Formula 1 engines\u201d \u2013 meaning the development and engineering, not the manufacturing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ellen was offered the job during the COVID pandemic and accepted straight away: \u201cWhat a dream job that is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simulation sits at the centre of what AVL does. The company builds digital twins, which are detailed mathematical models of a car and its tyres. Teams use the same model on the test bed, in the driver-in-the-loop simulator and to prepare for race weekends. For its Formula 2 partner Invicta, AVL runs around 500,000 laps with 500,000 different setups before every event, and two IndyCar teams now run as many as 800,000. Engineers can then pick the setup that suits their goals, for example saving the front-left tyre or adding rotation at the end of a straight. \u201cThe times where you sit down and think, \u2018Eh, what could I do?\u2019 \u2013 they\u2019re over,\u201d Ellen said. \u201cIt\u2019s done before the race (weekend).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AVL has a top-level simulator of its own, but it also runs a range of small rigs with one to three screens, much like the setups in World eX. These are used to test its software across different price levels, often with gaming hardware that AVL has adapted. For one NASCAR team, the engineers built a sequential gearbox from gaming components, replacing the USB connection with Ethernet or CAN bus because the data has to arrive fast enough. When karting drivers moved into Formula 4, AVL fitted an original steering wheel to the big simulator so the experience matched the real car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this is now coming to drivers outside the big teams. In March 2027, AVL plans to launch \u2018Go Race\u2019, a scaled-down version of its professional software with a gaming-style interface. The first cars will be LMP2, several GT3 models and Formula 4, and some tracks have been laser-scanned for it. \u201cYou can only change exactly what you change in reality,\u201d Ellen said, which makes it an engineering tool in a gaming environment. Getting the development right was not what delayed the launch. The licences for the tracks were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Ellen, \u2018Go Race\u2019 is about more than software. Formula 4 testing alone can cost 80,000 a year before a driver even reaches the first race, and she has seen how much the sport has changed. \u201cI come from a motorsport world where you, with a small family team, could get somewhere,\u201d she said. She won the German kart championship with her father and a single mechanic, \u201cwho was not even a real mechanic\u201d. AVL wants to make that kind of route possible again: \u201cWe want to give more people the chance to have a professional preparation, though they may not have the money to drive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AVL is also pushing driver research further. Together with Manchester University, the company is developing a way to measure drivers\u2019 brain activity using EEG with around 35 sensors. One question fits World eX particularly well: how much of a driver\u2019s brain capacity is in use when the engineer speaks to them in the middle of a corner? If two drivers set the same sector time, the one using less capacity will tire more slowly and handle radio traffic better. \u201cA simulator \u2013 it\u2019s never-ending,\u201d Ellen said. \u201cThere is constantly something going on which you can make better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her own view of sim racing has changed completely. \u201cI was a typical old-fashioned race car driver six or eight years ago. Sim racing? No, no. These times are over. This is real good sport.\u201d Does she race in the sim herself? \u201cOn our big simulator, I get ill, unfortunately.\u201d The smaller rigs, she said, are fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sustainability, the theme behind Racing for the Climate e.V., is part of AVL\u2019s work too. The company has built a hydrogen combustion engine, deliberately designed to keep costs low. It uses a standard Audi engine block, unchanged, with a cylinder head from a Rally2 car, and the only costly parts were the prototype hydrogen injectors. \u201cWe think it is a technology for the future,\u201d Ellen said. AVL works closely with H24, a project that started with a fuel cell and now runs a hydrogen combustion engine. She also gave credit to Toyota, which she sees as clearly leading the field, and noted that simulation plays a big role in AVL\u2019s hydrogen work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Motorsport itself is booming, she added. AVL RACETECH has just had its three best years for turnover in the 25-year history of AVL’s motorsport business, and Formula 4 grids around the world are full. Ellen enjoys it, but she still has a racer\u2019s instinct. \u201cWe are all competitive, otherwise we would not be in this kind of sport, no?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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