The next step was to create a state-of-the-art wind tunnel, but realising that building one from scratch would cost at least \u00a3100m, Lewis embarked on a hunt for the next best thing: a disused railway tunnel. An online search showed him various possibilities in Wales and the Pennines, but it soon became clear that the ideal option was 15 miles from the company\u2019s office in Brackley.<\/p>\n
His initial encounter with the Catesby Tunnel was sobering. \u201cIt was overgrown, and it was flooded,\u201d Lewis recalls. \u201cI think the gravel had been taken for the Daventry bypass, and the drains were smashed. But we decided we could risk some money on it and see how far we could get.\u201d<\/p>\n
In spite of its abandonment, structurally the tunnel was in solid fettle. \u201cI\u2019m not an expert on tunnels,\u201d Lewis adds, \u201cbut when I did an inspection with the engineer for the British Railways Board (Residuary), he said that it was as good a tunnel as you can find in the country. It was one of the later ones to be constructed, and it was in great condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aerodynamic excellence<\/p>\n
Two decades later, the vision has come to fruition \u2013 although the journey was not without bumps. Planning permission was granted in February 2017, but the pandemic, issues with fire regulations \u2013 and the unexpected ecological side-issue of the colony of bats that now largely lives in a sealed compartment at the north end of the tunnel \u2013 meant that it was almost six years before the facility was operational.<\/p>\n
Still, the drains were fixed, a flawless tarmac road was laid, and as of the end of 2022, Lewis runs the tunnel as an aerodynamic test centre where luxury car manufacturers can gauge the effectiveness of their vehicles, and professional cycling teams can compare skinsuits and wheel configurations in the pursuit of \u201cmarginal gains\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next step was to create a state-of-the-art wind tunnel, but realising that building one from scratch would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[309,591,59,57,58,50,64082,5438,387,56,54,55,157732],"class_list":["post-723003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-england","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-northamptonshire","tag-standard","tag-travel","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}