Racing Point is still getting to grips with its 2020 car according to technical director Andy Green, but so far the Silverstone-based outfit likes the numbers it's seeing from its new pink charger.
The team's RP20 has been branded a Mercedes W10 look-alike by its rivals, a perception Green understands given the almost identical design and aero approach followed by this year by the team.
The concept appears to be effective based on Racing Point's performance in pre-season testing. But Green insists the team is only halfway through fully understanding its 2020 contender.
"I’d say we’re still in the experimental stage," Green said, quoted by RACER. "Still running through lots of different set-ups.
"It’s a very different car to anything we’ve ever had before. So as we expected really, it’s taking a bit of time to understand how we go about changing the balance of the car for the different types of conditions, different types of corners, different tires.
"There’s a lot of work to do and I’d say we’re probably about halfway through it," he added.
"So it’s going to be interesting going to Melbourne, which is really where we turned our focuses (during testing), trying to understand how we change the car for all the different tracks that we’re going to, not necessarily optimizing it for Barcelona.
"But, so far so good. The car is responding, which is great, and we can move the balance from one end to the other and I think the drivers can feel the car underneath them.
"It gives them confidence to drive and gives them confidence to push, which is good.
"When conditions got tricky (in Barcelona), the car exhibited some really good trace compared to last year’s car, so it was very encouraging."
When it comes to validating on the track a car's wind tunnel and simulator data, the numbers don't lie. And Green is happy with the underlying correlation registered so far.
"I’d be lying if I said we weren’t happy with where we are, we are happy," he said.
"The level of performance that we’re seeing from the car is – it’s sort of as we expected after we got the data out of the tunnel, we got it in the simulator when the drivers drove the car a couple of weeks ago they were massively enthusiastic about it.
"They were prepared for what was to come, we were just unsure whether we’re going to realize the full potential of what we’re seeing in the simulation work.
"Everything that we’ve seen so far suggests that we’ve transferred across from the model size to the full size."
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
