Diesel wrote:Yes the RB wings were probably taken to the track by one of the engineers in the boot of his car.
BUT, The Oz GP is on the 27th, that's just under 2 weeks away... I'm pretty sure they can get a good half dozen wings out there by then if they needed to.
Yes-no...having only tested this wing on one car, to what appears to be mixed results, it doesn't make a lot of sense to devote a lot of resources to producing many of these units.
As this wing is essentially an unproven prototype, Merc will likely have produced only one set of tools and fixtures for it's components - only one of a given component can therefore be produced at a time, figure 2-3 days total process time before an individual tool is freed up and prepped to go again. But to maximize autoclave usage, they'd want to fit as many components in as possible in a single go - so before a batch starts, all the parts have to be laid up first - total start laying up to done cooking would be 3-4 days per batch, in my estimate.
If they're doing secondary bonding to join parts together, that's another day or two of cycle time.
These parts all need to go through the quality checks - a single rejected part will throw off the balance of components, and need to be replaced.
Assuming all goes well, the part needs to be tested in a load frame, and it's dimensions checked and rechecked. Pity if the team were slapped with a penalty because a dimension was off, or the car were unbalanced by a wonky wing.
THEN, the thing needs to be painted and stickered.
Then it has to be shipped to Australia.
I'd say 3 is the realistic max to hope for between now and then.
