In what area do you expect to see the evolutions increase? The 2017 F1 cars are distinguished especially by the very sophisticated bargeboards…
“Yeah, I think for us it’s a big area that has opened up significantly. It is also a cost effective area to develop, because while it may be complex it’s not very structural so it can be manufactured quickly and we can develop that area quite rapidly. It’s a very fluid area and I expect to see lots of changes in that area, then also in the floor area, front of floor (that sort of area), diffuser…
I imagine those updates coming regularly and I would expect less often for the front wing (but still more frequently that last year), because they are so complex and structurally very complex as well. They have to take a lot of load and they have to pass some rigorous FIA tests as well. So, it takes quite a long time to develop new concepts; little tweaks yes, but entirely new concepts take months. From the start of the concept to getting on the car takes four months. Because you have to design and the iterations in the wind-tunnel, which takes several months, then it takes two months to manufacture the very first one. And we don’t want to bring just one to the track.”
How do you choose the items you will develop? On a car, all the bits interact, because if you bring a new front wing it will change the flow structure at the back. The guys working at the rear of the car cannot work with the previous flow structure. How is it co-ordinated?
“That is a very good question. Everything is connected and everything starts at the front of the car and moves backward. So, if the front of the car changes, then everything changes downstream of it. So, what we tend to do, especially around the very back of the car, is make assumptions about what we think the air flow to the rear of the car is going to look like in the future if the front half of the car is developed. We don’t wait for the front to develop and then develop the rear. We will have rear packages developed that anticipate some development on the front and when that happens the rear is already there or very close to being ready to merge together with the front. So we don’t do them sequentially like that. There is some sequential development that goes on, but when we look at the new concept, we think the front groups are going to improve by so many percent. So, we assume that is going to happen and we’ll develop around there and then by the time it has been developed, the front that would have developed, delivered the extra percentage… It is quite a tricky puzzle to solve, because you don’t want to over assume, because if you do and they don’t deliver then you are left with a package you can’t put on the car, because the front of the car hasn’t been developed. You have to be cautious and don’t overdo it. That is where the delicate balance lies.”
