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Team: James Allison (TD), Naoki Tokunaga (DTD), Tim Densham (CD), Dirk De Beer (HA), Gerard Lopez (Chairman), Eric Boullier (TP), Patrick Louis (COO), John Mardle (OD), Steve Nielsen (SD), Alan Permane (CRE)
Drivers: Kimi Räikkönen (9), Romain Grosjean (10)
I thought it was a reasonable thing to do because if you can generate downforce from the front of the floor on back then it's got more potential. That's why Red Bull were sending guys down in winter testing to look at it. Sadly, they didn't develop it enough and I'm not convinced it's because they couldn't. They got distracted hugely by financial and driver issues.MarkedOne8 wrote:I think that front exhaust system was big fail and big problem.
http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/70284.htmlOne thing that seemed to be lacking from last year's car was low-speed traction, has that been a particular focus this year?
Your right in saying low-speed traction was a problem last year's car, we struggled all year with that and we struggled all year with rear tyre wear. We had higher than average rear tyre wear and that is why we raced so poorly towards the latter half of the season when everybody else had developed a nice rear-blown diffuser, which gave you a load of extra downforce on exit. But it hasn't been a particular focus, I think the focus has been to deliver as much downforce as we possibly can. It just so happens that the car does have very strong traction and both drivers are reporting that it stays good and stays nice. We have to be a little bit careful because Jerez is a funny place and we've been quick here before and gone to other places and struggled a bit. But I don't think we're going to be like that this year, when we look at what the aerodynamics are doing it's incredibly stable, the platform. There's nothing nasty going on at all so I'm very confident we'll take this to another track and have equally the same performance.
Are you quite glad to see the back of the exhaust-blown diffuser now?
It's easy to say yes because we're going relatively well this week, or we think we're going relatively well this week. If the regulations hadn't changed we would have done a rear-blown floor and, OK it would have been against second generation ones, but I think we would have very quickly caught up with the others. Overall I suspect it's good for the sport.
Romain Grojean made a seemless return to F1 with Lotus last week © Sutton Images
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The other change which hasn't been as widely reported is the stricter tests in the stiffness of the front wing, which has caused a lot of teams to add a bit more weight up front. That came regulation came through quite late, did it cause you to backtrack on anything?
It just caused a bit of a design panic, honestly. People had a few sleepless nights over Christmas about that, but things like that aren't difficult because you've got a specification, in this case the wing must not bend anymore than this much when this load is put on it, and you just go away and design the wing to it. It was last minute, but I think it's good for the sport that they're doing it, but I know it was hard work for everyone to get that done and designed and made.
Last year you upgraded your windtunnel from 50% to 60% of full size, is that now all working correctly in terms of correlating with the track?
As well as you can measure aero at a regular track we've been doing it and it's been in very good correlation to our windtunnel. So we're happy that that's all up and running and that's fine.
Has that been a big contributor to the success this week?
Well I suspect it has, but the success this week has been a tricky one because we haven't changed anyone or anything back at Enstone. We had a concept that we thought would work very well last year and it didn't. We didn't, and I think this is well reported, see the downforce on track that we saw in the wind tunnel. If we had done it would have been a totally different story. We're now seeing the downforce on track that we see in the windtunnel and we've got a decent car. There is no magic bullet, it's just hard work and the car is behaving as it should be. But nothing else has really changed apart from moving those exhausts away and now everything is a lot more predictable and clearer. It's certainly made looking at downforce figures and performance a lot more straightforward at the circuit.
Talking about Enstone and the resources there, do you think the gap between you and the top four teams is greater than it was in 2005 and 2006 when you last won a championship?
Honestly, I don't really have a feel for that. I know what we have, the hours our guys do and how much the windtunnels work and stuff, so it's difficult to answer. I know McLaren are able to churn out parts incredibly fast. I'm sure design-wise we're the same, but they may have a bigger manufacturing capability than maybe even Ferrari and Red Bull, but that's just the impression we get. We're not a million miles away and if we put a good car out there is no reason why we can't win the championship.
The target is fourth, do you think that's a bit conservative then?
The target is fourth, and who knows, we haven't seen Mercedes yet and we've only done a couple of days winter testing. Although we look good, we're still a long, long, long way from talking about podiums and winning races - that's all to come. All we can say is that everything is in the right direction. We've got a reliable car, a car the drivers are happy with and a car that's well balanced and appears to be delivering the downforce we think it should be delivering, so we've got a good platform to build from. We've got two excellent drivers; a world champion who looks as good as he ever looked honestly, and a young kid who's obviously quick as well and has got a fantastic opportunity to suck as much information from Kimi as he can.
You mean updates that will be introduced in next races or these updates are already implemented?Blackout wrote:Next updates: (IMO atleast)
-Venturi effect FW pyllons
-vanes above the splitter
-Sauber style wings above the sidepods
-Completely revised sidepods
_they are lower
_radiators are more angled and lower
_exhaust manifolds swept forward closer to the rads and are higher
_engine cover is less angled/more horizontal, like the FI
--> more undercut sidepods
-no more gurneys on the diffuser, winglets instead (like RBR, Macca...)
-vertical fins behind the diffuser
which is synonymous with hindsight.raymondu999 wrote:As is ringosight
