We've worked hard to refine the car - Key

It’s often said that a new racing car is a little like a new baby. And much like an expectant father Spyker technical director James Key had to be patient until the time came for the new F8-VII to take to the track at Silverstone last week.

Christijan Albers and Adrian Sutil both drove the orange car and, apart from the German’s off after he touched a damp kerb, it was a very satisfactory shakedown. The real development work is already underway at Barcelona this week, where both men are putting more miles on the new car, and James and the rest of the technical team can start to get to grips with it.

In designing the car, James Key and his crew drew on lessons they learned with last year’s machine.

"We’ve worked hard to refine the car," James said at the Silverstone launch last week. "It’s a much more refined car than we had last year, and we’ve identified weaknesses that we had with the M16 of 2006 and tried to address them, so the quality of the product is better.

Things like the body fit, for example – it’s not something you talk about much, but it is significantly better. We’ve also taken weight out of the car to allow us more flexibility with the set-up and the weight distribution, which is fundamental for the tyres."

The team is also getting to know its new engine: "We have a good working relationship already, with the support of Ferrari. Needless to say it’s a very good unit, and the way it talks to the chassis means that we’ve got a lot of strength in the control systems too, so we’re pretty hopeful with that area now, which has opened up more scope."

James was keen to point out that the F8-VII as it is now is very much a base on which the team intends to build over the coming months, as aerodynamic and other developments come on stream.

"Another strength that we have with this car is its development potential. It’s still very early days for it, and we’ve got some good aero development coming up. I think the potential in the car is significant. So we’ve got something to start the season with, and we’re going to build on it. We’re not scratching our heads, we know what to do with it."

One frustration for Spyker this winter was the lack of testing prior to the launch of the new car, but it was a calculated decision. The effort involved in creating an interim car would have taken resources away from the F8-VII, and that was a compromise that the team did not want to make. Asked if he thinks that the team missed out, James admitted that there would have been benefits.

"I think ‘yes’ and ‘no’! No in that we’ve been able to direct our resource 100% onto the new car, without having to go through the process of an interim car. We just didn’t have time for that, and wouldn’t have been able to do it in time.

But inevitably yes, in that you’d like to go testing, there are new tyres to understand for 2007, there are systems on the engine that you want to understand early as well, and we haven’t been able to do that. But there are B-spec car plans, and we spoke quite early about doing some re-engineering work on the car, and I think we can overcome that small setback later in the season."

However, one advantage is the team’s longstanding relationship with Bridgestone, which goes way back to the Jordan days of 1999.

"We’re long serving customers of Bridgestone, we’ve been with them many years, we’ve got some very good technical links which we’ve developed. I think because of the situation without the testing we’ve had to rely on their feedback, which has been very good. They’ve answered a lot of our questions very patiently and clearly. And we’ve also had historic data too, which we’ve been looking at very carefully.

So we had the 2007 tyre models from Bridgestone, and we looked at that compared to ’06 and ’05 to see if we could spot trends, and make some decisions from there. Their support has been pretty fundamental."