The future of manufacturing competitiveness may depend less on building faster prototypes and more on building better virtual ones. As digital engineering reshapes product development across industry, technologies once associated primarily with elite motorsport are increasingly becoming central to how manufacturers design, test and optimise products long before physical production begins.
That trend is reflected in a new collaboration between Siemens and the ORECA Group, the motorsport engineering organisation behind a number of high-performance racing programmes. The company has selected Siemens’ Simcenter software, part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, to support computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and composite structural optimisation across its racing vehicle development programmes, including the Le Mans 24 Hours hypercar programme with Ford Motor Company.
Although the announcement centres on motorsport, its wider significance lies in the continued convergence of digital simulation, digital twins and software-driven engineering. These capabilities are increasingly being adopted across manufacturing sectors seeking to shorten development cycles, reduce reliance on physical testing and improve product performance before production begins.
For manufacturers facing growing pressure to reduce development costs while bringing increasingly complex products to market more quickly, the ability to validate engineering decisions in a virtual environment is becoming a core element of digital transformation.
Virtual engineering is changing product development
Engineering has traditionally relied on successive rounds of physical prototyping to validate design decisions. While simulation has been part of product development for many years, advances in computing power and software integration are allowing manufacturers to model far more complex interactions between different engineering disciplines before a product is ever built.
ORECA has replaced its legacy CFD environment with Siemens’ technologies as it seeks to expand the use of advanced simulation across its racing programmes.
The company says the new environment will improve simulation efficiency while enabling more advanced multiphysics analysis and stronger workflow integration across its engineering teams.
Rather than examining individual engineering disciplines in isolation, multiphysics simulation allows engineers to understand how aerodynamic, thermal and mechanical factors interact simultaneously. That provides a more comprehensive understanding of how products are likely to behave under real operating conditions.
The approach reflects a broader shift in manufacturing, where digital transformation increasingly focuses on creating connected engineering environments rather than deploying standalone software tools.
By linking design, simulation and optimisation more closely together, manufacturers can identify potential performance issues earlier in development, reducing both engineering risk and the need for costly physical iterations.
Digital twins continue to move into mainstream manufacturing
At the centre of Siemens’ approach is the digital twin, which enables engineers to evaluate and refine designs in a virtual environment before committing to production.
ORECA is using Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to support CFD workflows and carry out complex multiphysics simulations combining aerodynamic, thermal and brake-related effects. Simcenter Optistruct is being used to optimise carbon fibre composite layups, helping engineers balance stiffness and weight in components where performance is critical.
Jean-Philippe Pelaprat, head of aerodynamics at the ORECA Group, said the organisation had been seeking a simulation environment capable of supporting faster and more streamlined workflows from design through simulation while enabling new forms of multiphysics analysis. He said Siemens’ software gives engineering teams greater flexibility to conduct more advanced simulations and optimise composite structures within a demanding motorsport environment.
Siemens says the collaboration forms part of its wider focus on digital twin technologies and software-driven engineering. According to the company, these approaches support virtual-first development by reducing reliance on physical testing while enabling continuous performance optimisation throughout the engineering process.
Sam Mahalingam, executive vice-president of Simulation, HPC and AI at Siemens Digital Industries Software, said the collaboration demonstrates how simulation-driven engineering enables organisations to explore new design approaches by combining advanced CFD and composite optimisation within a digital twin environment. He said the technologies are intended to support innovation in some of the world’s most demanding engineering programmes.
While motorsport often serves as a proving ground for advanced engineering techniques, the underlying technologies are increasingly relevant far beyond the race circuit. Automotive manufacturers and companies across advanced manufacturing face many of the same pressures to improve product performance, shorten development times and manage increasingly complex engineering requirements.
As digital transformation continues to reshape manufacturing, competitive advantage is likely to depend not only on how efficiently products are made, but also on how intelligently they are engineered before production begins. The growing use of simulation-driven development suggests that, for many manufacturers, the most valuable factory may increasingly be the virtual one.
