https://www.racefans.net/2019/10/01/fer ... ain-wolff/loner wrote: ↑01 Oct 2019, 13:16as things stands not even the Mercs will challenge Ferrari next year , Jos is right its frustrating however from what i collect of infos Ferrari explored the grey area in the regulations and can have about 50 hp more in certain moments during qualifying and race its kinda outsmarting the rivals, how long it will continue like that and how long it will take the other 3 manufacturers to discover this secret is yet to be seen, if it wasn't for the SC Mercs wouldn't win in Sochi.Wouter wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019, 22:00Through a Skype conversation in the tv programme Peptalk on Ziggo Sport father Jos looks back on the performance of his son in Russia, and he looks ahead to the remaining races of the season.
It should not take too long before he is going to deliver what we are all hoping for and he can challenge for the world title. “No, that is what we think too”, says the father of Aston Martin Red Bull Racing driver who today celebrated his twenty-second birthday: “We should have been closer, but that is more difficult than we thought. It is very frustrating. In the last races before the summer break it went really well, but after the summer break we did not progress while the other teams did. Max cannot change that, we depend on the team, the car is a bit behind, the engine is a bit behind, more work has to be done on this combination if we want to challenge for the world title next year.”
Verstappen senior continues: “We are very concerned if there will be any improvement in the short term, we will talk to the team to see what can be done. We depend on the equipment we get and at the moment it is not good enough.”
Asked if it is discouraging now and then, Jos answers: “Seeing Max’ performance, put him in a good car and he will challenge for the world championship. We are now working with Red Bull for a couple of years, but it still does not look that we will be able to challenge for the world title next year. Looking at the last couple of races it seems that we will be half a second short in Japan. Of course we will try everything to close the gap, but half a second you cannot catch up in two weeks’ time. The expectation was to close the gap to the competition, but at the moment it does not look like it. We have to work hard to close the gap, otherwise next year will be lost too.”
perhaps Jos need to be very careful before taking any big decisions concerning of his son.
“It’s certainly an outlier because normally with maturing regulations to find these big steps is certainly unusual,” said Wolff.
“So as it stands it has become an engine formula, yes. We all need to understand how we can increase our engine performance and at the same time find the right power-to-drag ratio and understand the tyres, it’s a combination of these.”
He said the team will scrutinise their power unit closely to work out how to close the gap to Ferrari. “I think we need to look at all areas of the engine, if there’s some innovation that we should have spotted.
“Certainly in terms of the combustion in the engine, thermal efficiency gains that we can achieve from year to year, we’re speaking about not several percentages, we’re speaking of something below a per cent that is something that you can physically extract, year on year development. And with good mature regulations like we have now probably even less.
“So you need to be clever and innovative on all the other bits in the engine whilst daring a hundred percent of the regulations.”
However Wolff does not believe the team needs to change the philosophy behind its downforce-orientated car design for the 2020 F1 season. “It’s something we are looking at but you need to put it into perspective between a draggy a car and a not-draggy car,” he said.
“Probably the two extremes that you see on-track on the whole grid you would find two-tenths difference. This is what you can what you can extract in putting lots of bits of the car versus having a streamlined car. So it has not such a big specific effect – it has an effect but it’s not the main effect.”