Team: Mark Smith (DD), James Key (TD), Akio Haga (Project leader), Simon Philips (HA), Mike Wroe (Head of Electronics), Dan Carpenter (Head of mechanical design), Vijay Mallya (TP), Otmar Szafnauer (CEO) Drivers: Adrian Sutil (14), Tonio Liuzzi (15)
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
bar555 wrote:
5. Horizontal extension of the endplates , reduces front wing’s pitch sensitivity
8.There is a small cut deep at the outer second plane extremities to reduce drag on long straights .
Can anyone explain how 5 and 8 work? How does the horizontal extension reduce pitch sensitivity and how does the cut reduce drag on long straights? Thanks bar555 for the picture and analysis!
One thing is for sure, many teams will have a couple of small tweaks, but nothing spectacular like a new wing or such.
Id say either Malaysia or most likley Barcelona will be more probable. Take Lotus as the prime example, they have new suspension parts and a couple of other things coming for Malaysia, and they have a new gearbox coming for Barcelona.
This should see a 75% improvement in lap time, whitch is about 3 seconds.
If Force india were to come up wit a new front wing worth 0.5 of a second, thats roughly about a 20% improvement in lap time roughly. Highly cynical that a front wing can improve that much. Im tryacking the improvement in each car this year, race by race. So far Best is Ferarri, worst is Hispania. The hierarchy is this so far:
Ferarri, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams, Force india, Renault, Sauber, STR, Lotus, Virgin and Hispania at the rear. Thats all on % gain to P1 in Quali laps.
No way will Lotus gain 3 seconds in the next few races, it'd be a tall order to do that over the course of a season.
It'll be interesting to see how FI do over the next few races, especially if they are bringing upgrades. They are up there with the "best of the rest" at the moment which is a fine achievement for a small team.
ESPImperium wrote:One thing is for sure, many teams will have a couple of small tweaks, but nothing spectacular like a new wing or such.
Id say either Malaysia or most likley Barcelona will be more probable.
Barcelona is the place where ALL the teams will bring significant updates to their respective cars; this is common practice. So no wonder if we see some upgrades worth 0.5 seconds!!!
czt wrote:No way will Lotus gain 3 seconds in the next few races, it'd be a tall order to do that over the course of a season.
It'll be interesting to see how FI do over the next few races, especially if they are bringing upgrades. They are up there with the "best of the rest" at the moment which is a fine achievement for a small team.
They're so slow they could probably find that at thenext race with improved suspension!!
of course those who lag behind have a bigger scope for improvement ,as the area where they lack is unlikely to be a single item.
Lotus ,Virgin and Hispano are new in the business as teams so I understand they will not be able to extract 100% out of their package when the established teams struggle to do so.
This is a variable that is surely bigger than for FI ,TR,or Sauber ,so I´d say for
Lotus and Virgibn at least they ran sub optimal ,whereas Hispano could not even really set the car up...with one of their machines running in Qualy for the first time.
As for those 3 tenths of a second with a front wing alone ..the question is what have these guys done before ,if this kind of step is possible after years of development..
My honest opinion is ,if you are close to what is possible ,the net gains just have to be of homoeopathic size given the rules do not give scope for big improvements.
If you do not work on the right component ...eg you have not identified the area of your individual weakness ,I guess improvements are not even possible.
It is a common belief but not fact that aero is the only and important area where gains could be made..
At the same time ,we all saw the hopping Macs which lost 7 tenths in a twisty sector ...and I´d attribute this more towards mechanical issues...
"We have some new developments on the front and rear wing," he revealed. "I'm pretty hopeful it will be a step forward as every upgrade we made last year was positive, so the correlation from the wind tunnel seems to be working well.
And the part I highlighted caught my attention. Force India has been doing everything Mallya has said they would do. They have slowly but steadily improved, and it is obvious Mallya intends to develop this team into a respectable force.
And they have a darn good track record. Last year we saw their upgrade path improve the car each iteration, to the point where Fisichella almost won Spa. His car definitely was good enough.
So when I examine Force India, I see a team that appears to be doing it correctly, and believe their upgrades will be just as effective as they were last year.
Racing should be decided on the track, not the court room.