ThyssenKrupp Magazin

10 BOBSLEIGH RACING
The bobsleigh conceals high technology. Klaus Nowak seeks to use new production materials, new processes and new applications
to secure a place at the top for such pilots as Susi Erdmann.
Into the curve in the steel chassis
a row he races down the bobsleigh track in Winterberg, afterwards expressing great
satisfaction that the new material means a time lead of two tenths of a second, would
you believe.
The symbiosis seems strange. On the one hand, a bob lacking every driving
comfort, uninsulated the bob riders crouch above the runners on the bare floor,
squeezed tightly into the fuselage (made of carbon fiber) like herrings in a tin. But who
is looking for traveling comfort during the experience of taking it to the limit the body
gets with the most violent of sideways accelerations, beyond the everyday, really taking
you to the edge of intoxication?
“I’m not the kind of person who uses normal steels for the bob,” Nowak says to
distance his tuning work from the series production of the fast sleds (he also does
“tuning” for skeleton and tobogganing). That is an ambitious task, “because highalloy
steels are hard to get under control when you are working them. For Susi Erdmann
I used forged amagnetic steels to build her new runners. During the run they
conduct heat very badly, which is an advantage.”
INTO THE WIND TUNNEL
Let’s put that more formally: the structural steel ST 37-2 (general structural steel, tensile
strength 360 Newton per millimeter) is not really Nowak’s material for bob use. The
friend of screws rather than welding (because of the frequently undefinable states of
stresses) tends to prefer high-alloy steels of a kind (to name a very simple example)
such as X 7 Cr 13. “You have to have a lot of experience with the materials,” he continues,
“because an unmanageable steel tries to go in all possible directions, you have
to begin to dress it because of the precision. But the result is extraordinary.” There he
stands, next to his “apprentice” Stefan Drescher, in a small workshop in Winterberg –
a kind of shrine into which no stranger has entry. Piece by
piece the bob is taken apart, slowly it becomes visible what
kind of high technology is hidden in the inside of the highgrade
steel machine. With a careful hand Nowak presents
his newest milled leaf spring, made of low warping, precipitation-hardening
steel, followed by the steering head,
runner blades, stabilizers and everything else that is part
of the technical witchcraft. Witchcraft? Despite all the emotion
Nowak radiates, in his reserved, almost introverted
For Klaus Nowak and his protégé Stefan Drescher, the
computerized data analysis of production materials and
bobsleigh races is of paramount importance. Success
requires a very considerable technical effort.
TK Magazine | 1 | 2004 |