HRT F111 Cosworth

[ESPImperium]

can't the same be said for Virgin? They are still 4-5 seconds off the pace and Lotus are lapping them. They have gone backwards.

HRT WILL beat Virgin easily this year if they can get the cars together for the following races. They should be able to pull in more sponsors once they can prove the car is much better than last year and they are whooping Virgin. Just looking at the shots available of the guts on the HRT shows it's a very impressive piece of kit. It's light years ahead of last year's car in terms of design work. Look at the radiators and exhaust manifolds! Geoff Willis wouldn't put his name on anything to question his brilliance. The major cock up is the Cabarante's unwilling to sell off the entry and also losing the 10M they received from FOM. Kolles has been running the operation since last year with the DTM factory.

This whole CFD only approach has bitten Virgin in the ass and Sir Dick will be selling off very soon. I don't see him investing in a state of the art wind tunnel.

I think you pretty much have got it in those comments.

The F111 is light years ahead of the Virgin in terms of being a contempory machine in F1, The F111 has been all CFD appart from one week in the tunnel seemingly. The CFD used by Wirth is the same as last year for this car, the new Wirth Research labs are to be fully operational this April, and thats when they expect the MVR/02 to start making some inroads as the new Witrh Research Labs power will be the most powerful in F1 seemingly. They are hoping the 2012 car will be the one that makes the inroads, this will be too late i feel as Hispania could have a propper operational base by then and also Team Lotus will be in the midfield by then.

When it comes to the technology being used by Virgin and Hispania i feel that Hispania have an edge with the power train side of things, even though they have the same engine as Virgin. Virgins X-Trac engine is seemingly running from 2005 technology, as it isnt seemles shift; The Williams LG14 transmission that Hispania have bought for $5m a season is seemless shift and is only a year out of date, whitch isnt really that much out of date.

The Hispania just needs track time and it will beat the Virgins again, and maybes a freak result might just land them in the points, albeit it may be a single point for P10.

Im giving the guys at Hispania time, as thats what they need, im happy to give them 6-8 GPs, as thats what they deserve, a chance to show they can actually do something. Untill then im reserving full judgement.

[Muulka]

"Spanish team had to adapt last year’s front wing to the car because the new one failed the crash test."
"Some (parts) had to be taken to Australia by team members in suitcases, including team boss Colin Kolles whose own suitcase was rejected by the airline because it weighed too much. So former F1 driver and German commentator Christian Danner put some of the parts in his own luggage."

Source: http://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/F1-l ... 20590.html

SAAAADD

McLaren do this, as do pretty much all the teams.... Would you say that McLaren are "SAAAADD " ?

[bill shoe]

Im giving the guys at Hispania time, as thats what they need, im happy to give them 6-8 GPs, as thats what they deserve, a chance to show they can actually do something. Untill then im reserving full judgement.

Yep, the 2011 season is a 19 race championship. The competitive goal is to have the best possible finish at the end of that championship. I agree it's quite plausible that HRT will be ahead of Virgin at the end of the championship, and not necessarily due to a fluke result somewhere like Monaco.

I just hope HRT (and Virgin) make it to the end of the championship financially.

[Formula None]

[bot6]

Sidepods and engine cover all in one part...

That's got to be hard to make. Some impressive workmanship right there.

[marcush.]

why do you think it is impressive?
It has some backcuts so it´s presumably not a one piece mold ,ok and the guy doing the layup is maybe in need for a ladder or a bridge to place some plies.in the end it´s a big and heavy mold ..and if you are autoclaving it the thing (oven) must be BIG....the fitting of the part to the car is going to be the challenge methinks(not mounting it but fiddling of the trimlines and placing the fastners after laminating.
The question is how they treat potential updates..You can of course produce the big mold to produce a single part out of several sub components ,this way you can produce updates AND can return to old configurations easily + your needed storage room for molds will not explode...I´m sure for the big teams with the current rate of upgrades have to think about minimising mold volume/count production as well..This must be a nightmare to handle ....

[ESPImperium]

Hence why larger teams are now going down the road of having a seprate mould for the LHS Sidepod/RHS side pod and a mould for the engine cover. 3 moulds for 1 area. This was started back in 2008/2009 when the larger teams saw a more modular design was better. This way you could remove the engine cover to get to the 3rd damper to adjust it, 6 screws and youre there with a couple of guys, not 16 screws and half a dozen guys.

The Brawn BGP001 had 4 moulds, the Force India VJM/03 had 4 pieces at one point.

Modular design has still to hit the smaller teams, exept Virgin as they have modular bodywork.

Heres what Hispania should be aiming for:

[marcush.]

i don´t think you do well having a lot of esparate bodywork pieces.There is undoubtedly a loss in every joint you have on the car.so less joints,potentially better aero if you are able to get the big parts to a good fit.
Additionally more joints will inevitably raise the weight ,and inevitably there is more flex (unless you find additional monting points as you have parts to fit.
A team of the size of HRT potentially does better producing a single component + multipiece molds to produce different configurations?

[bot6]

It's all about trade-off between practicality (easily changeable, easily made small body parts) and weight/aero (bigger body parts -> less joints -> less weight and less aero disturbance from the joints).

I wasn't really talking about the relative merits of that trade-off when I made the first post (although it is an interesting one, possibly worthy of its own topic). I was just making the point that such a large and complex shape is quite challenging to make, from mould production to layup and cooking.

So for a team with limited resources, they show they do have some pretty interesting manufacturing capacities. I don't know if you guys play around with composites much, but that's really not an easy part to make, especially when considering the dimensional constraints to have it fit to the other panels. Compared to last year's car, this one is certainly much more complex, and they're doing most of the build in house so it's really a major step up compared to last year.

I really hope they get some sponsorship deal mid-season, because what they did technically looks promising. Financially they're a mess, but technically there really is something there.

[marcush.]

I would respectfully differ here and point towards current bodywork construction in DTM and LeMans prototypes which are truly complex and show substantial engineering work in the joints to the main structure.Or take a look at Mclarens sportscar.
This HRT piece is a skin not more not less so in todays 3d CAD/CAM world to produce the moldings to get out a surface wich fits is not that big challenge.How they produce the kjoints to the main structure is a different matter but tbh with just the skin to mate to those structures you either have your tolerances in check or it does not fit.

[bot6]

That's true for metals to some extent but not really for composites. Managing the whole contraction / dilatation / warping process during the cooking of the parts to get decent dimensional precision is quite a challenge, especially on such a complex shape. You can CNC the mould if you want (although generally they are still made by hand, even in F1), but the layup and cooking techniques still have a lot of unknowns.

I agree with you that many other teams, including in other series (like LMS where they do have quite complex bodywork) are able to do such things. But my point is that if you compare these parts we see here with last year's car, I think it does show sizable progress in the capacity of HRT to design and manufacture complex parts, and I think that's encouraging.

They're certainly doing a much better job on their own to make those things than what Dallara was doing last year (and they're supposed to be specialists!).

[mclaren777]

It's such a nice looking car. I can't wait to see how much faster they are in Malaysia.

[n_anirudh]

Hence why larger teams are now going...

Williams seem to have

[n_anirudh]

Double post

[furnik28]

3 peice bodywork is more coveniant as if the car gets wacked they hopefuly can just change that part