Fisico will be fine - Lom
This weekend the circuit of Silverstone is the venue for the British Grand Prix. Yesterday there were 2 free practice sessions scheduled. Giancarlo Fisicella’s engine race engineer, Fabrice Lom, explains why his driver’s limited running yesterday won’t penalise him over the weekend.
"When we started the simulations of Silverstone a few months ago, we were pretty worried. They showed that the first corner would be taken flat out and that the engine would have a long continuous period of full throttle, from the final corner to the entry of Becketts. That kind of situation is very tough in reliability terms, and we adapted the specification of the B spec RS26 engine to suit this."
Denis Chevrier explained today that the high temperatures meant you had to adjust the acoustics of the engine. What does that mean?"Variable inlet trumpets, which allowed us to achieve maximum power over a wide rev range in recent seasons, have been outlawed by the regulations. But when the temperature increases, maximum power is reached at higher revs. The only way to achieve this power level at lower revs is to use longer inlet trumpets, which is what we did today."
Do the regulations allow you to do this?"Yes. The trumpets are considered to be engine accessories, that we can change at any time up to the end of qualifying. As soon as the car goes into parc fermé, we can’t touch it."
Your driver Giancarlo only did three laps today. Is that a problem for the rest of the weekend?"No. The software problem he encountered has already been solved. The running he missed out on today is not an issue, because we collected plenty of data at the last test we conducted here. So there’s no reason to worry – Fisico’s weekend is still firmly on track."
Source Renaultf1
