The new Penske Autosport Research Labs facility in Witney, UK has been further upgraded after a strengthening of its simulator capability was completed recently by the renowned AVL RACETECH and Ansible Motion companies
The DS Penske Formula E team will benefit from this investment in PARL’s facility as it looks to fight for the 2024-25 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.
The team had a recent boost after Maximilian Guenther’s ended its two year long win famine when he swept to victory at the recent Jeddah EPrix. The team, which is mostly run from DS’ facility in Satory near Paris, also has the technical input of PARL which was founded last summer.
Ansible Motion is a leading manufacturer of Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulators featuring advanced computational and mechanical performance capabilities. It has expanded its partnership with Penske Autosport via the delivery of four new Theta Seat Sport simulators.
This comes after Ansible Motion’s Delta S3 DIL simulator was fitted in to Penske Autosport premises last summer, meaning that the DS Penske team now has a multi-sim testing and development centre on site.
The new five-simulator setup enables the driver of the existing Ansible Motion Delta S3 simulator at DS Penske – featuring full dynamics, 48K image rendering, a full 360° wrap-around screen and real Formula E cockpit – to interact virtually in real-time on-track with four drivers in separate Theta Seat Sport simulators.
Phil Charles, deputy team principal and team president at DS Penske said that the expansion was desirable to allow multi-driver development in simulation programmes it undertakes.
“Having already experienced the superlative capabilities and engineering benefits of operating the Ansible Motion Delta S3 dynamic simulator – which we installed last year – we were keen to expand our simulator programme to include multiple, simultaneous drivers in order to explore inter-vehicle and inter-driver situations. Ansible Motion’s new Theta Seat Sport simulator suite is now enabling us to do this,” said Charles.
Also enabling the multi-sim setup is equally cutting-edge software from AVL RACETECH – a long-time technical partner of Ansible Motion and Formula E Notebook. The Austrian company is providing unified multi-simulator connectivity via its comprehensive vehicle modelling network,
Guillermo Pezzetto, global sales & business development manager racing at AVL RACETECH, said that the primary attraction to partnering with DS Penske and Ansible Motion was to “supply our state-of-the-art vehicle dynamics simulation tool for this innovative application. DS Penske’s multi-simulator solution enables the customer to simulate highly realistic race scenarios including traffic, thus creating a unique testing environment for the development of race car setups and energy management strategies.
“To maximize the benefits of this setup, the vehicle dynamics simulation used must be capable of realistically modelling the physical effects of running in traffic, which is exactly what our AVL VSM™ RACE software is doing,” added Pezzetto.
Theta Seat is a part of Ansible Motion’s range of static and compact DIL simulators intended for virtual system integration and vehicle product development. The newly-introduced Sport variant – the first in the company’s new motorsport product series – is designed specifically for motorsport applications, with a sophisticated, engineering-grade computational architecture that powers highly detailed vehicle and environment models, plus interconnection capacity for multiple networked DIL simulators.
Supported by a modular, plinth-based physical structure, Theta Seat Sport provides a scalable and reconfigurable architecture that can easily adapt to different race series and scale from affordable price point specifications with gaming-standard controls up to sophisticated, more immersive setups with multi-function racing steering wheels and upgrade kits for Ansible Motion’s existing supplemental cueing and active loading systems for steering torque, pedal actuation, harness tension, helmet force and high-frequency actuation.
Seamless integration with the world’s most advanced, engineering-grade driving simulation software – supplied by Ansible Motion’s sister company, rFpro – delivers real-world physics, high fidelity track simulations for Formula E, enhancing driver immersion alongside the cutting-edge vision, motion, and audio systems.
Dan Clark, managing director of Ansible Motion, added that PARL had “recognised the performance and multi-sim interconnection advantages of our newly configured Sport simulators, becoming the first to acquire a suite of these immersive development platforms.
“We have no doubt that the team’s Formula E title challenge in 2025 will be aided by this advancement in simulator capability,” added Clark.
“Our multi-sim technology opens up new avenues for development that weren’t possible before, and we are looking forward to introducing several new Sport products in the near term.”
Manufactured in the UK at Ansible Motion’s facility, Penske Autosport’s new Theta Seat Sport simulators were delivered in January 2025, just 3 months after order placement, and are already operational as the team competes in Formula E’s eleventh season.
Ansible Motion has over 14 years of experience delivering high-dynamics, high-fidelity, high-precision driving simulators to support success on and off track, at every level of professional motorsport, including F1, WRC, WEC, NASCAR, INDYCAR and Formula E.
DS Penske currently sits fourth in the 2024-25 teams’ standings, although it is just five points off leaders Nissan.
The team is awaiting the decision of Stellantis Motorsport to confirm its brand DS Automobiles participation in the Gen4 era of Formula E which begins at the end of next year.
