Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth

[marcush.]

Does anyone really know much about the McLaren collaboration? The wind tunnel, simulator, test rigs (?), some staff, but what is this compared to the Force India deal? Are McLaren are in any way involved with the design of the car?

And yes, i do think that the car performance is a gradual process of getting faster and faster. At least usually it is. Ofcourse it's much easier to take bigger steps forward from the back of the grid, but i think that challenging the midfield is out of the question. But we'll see how it goes in Melbourne.

On what grounds should it be a gradual process?
When you are close to optimum in all areas ..yes of course. But even Ferrari could close the gap to the front after starting out badly.
In a new team you should be able to make big leaps forward as you erase your deficits.Say race strategy : you got a tool that is developped over 8 years and don´t have to put in recources to develop something .The question is :what is it worth in a race ? 2 seconds ,10 seconds, a lap?
I feel at the rear of the pack there is no excuse for having slow stops .

But coming back to the Newey effect:Would Neweys latest creation be slower just because he was employed by Team Lotus? Or given he could take prodromou and Marshall with him Lotus would rise like a comete instantly?I´m sure they would.
The real thing is :If you have access to someone who really has the answers to questions you have not even thought about ,that´s when a team, finally makes progress.If you happen to have those people already and the structures are in place things fall into place quickly .see Sauber last year with the arrival of key .But now they have again hit a brickwall.Look at TR they seem to have found the key to their car now and it jumps up the order .Force India same unlock potential.It´s not a tenth per 1000 hours invested it is an answer to a problem or a genuine step out of the dark or grey -understanding of what you got and what makes things tick...
Virgin could ring the bell tomorrow id someone understood what is the main thing holding them back and how to right what is wrong.

[TzeiTzei]

Well you could be right. Guess we don't know until the cars go around in Albert Park.

It would be fantastic if Virgin managed to leap right in to the midfield. However after all talk and no trousers by Wirth this year, i will remain a bit sceptical. A pessimist is never disappointed .

About Newey it did take him three years and a major change in regulations to make any significant progress at Red Bull, but then again it's whole different story to make the big leap from midfield to the front of the grid than what it is to move from the back closer to the midfield.

The real thing is :If you have access to someone who really has the answers to questions you have not even thought about ,that´s when a team, finally makes progress.If you happen to have those people already and the structures are in place things fall into place quickly .see Sauber last year with the arrival of key .But now they have again hit a brickwall.Look at TR they seem to have found the key to their car now and it jumps up the order .Force India same unlock potential.It´s not a tenth per 1000 hours invested it is an answer to a problem or a genuine step out of the dark or grey -understanding of what you got and what makes things tick...
Virgin could ring the bell tomorrow id someone understood what is the main thing holding them back and how to right what is wrong.

Well said. =D> Let's hope they find some answers.

[siwillems]

seriously ,I do not subscribe to this opinion.
Who said car performance was a gradual iterative process and you could only that much per year by taking small steps?

Look ..you got the expertise of Mclaren designing the team .That´s expertise of a car challenging for race wins no seconds adrift.
You got access to race strategy software developped since 8 years.
You basically got everything you need to be running at the sharp end of the grid .
Mind you ,Force india made a huge jump forward when Mclaren was starting to support them ....So to me there is no obvious reason why Virgin should not be able to do the same.They got a weak tub design to carry over from Wirth ? well so it be and take a 2 seconds per lap penalty for this into account...

As for teamLotus ..the guys who came from FI will know about what Mercedes brought into the team but can they emulate all this? Being a user of the system does not tell you all about how it and will leave you in the dark about the implications that led to the system as you use it. So in effect you know what you want to achieve but are burried in trying to reverse engineer as you learn ..

for sure having the maclaren tie up will help to narrow the gap, but the fact is they still have a small budget, the staff within the team are compared to others till relative novices, the fuels compared to the other teams is slightly inferior, it all adds up. improvment compared to the competion unlock more sponsorship, technical patnerships etc etc it would have to e a huge miracle to design a car that would be succsesful inspite of all the other limitations, but fingers crossed it is'nt impossible i suppose.

[siwillems]

Well you could be right. Guess we don't know until the cars go around in Albert Park.

It would be fantastic if Virgin managed to leap right in to the midfield. However after all talk and no trousers by Wirth this year, i will remain a bit sceptical. A pessimist is never disappointed .

About Newey it did take him three years and a major change in regulations to make any significant progress at Red Bull, but then again it's whole different story to make the big leap from midfield to the front of the grid than what it is to move from the back closer to the midfield.

The real thing is :If you have access to someone who really has the answers to questions you have not even thought about ,that´s when a team, finally makes progress.If you happen to have those people already and the structures are in place things fall into place quickly .see Sauber last year with the arrival of key .But now they have again hit a brickwall.Look at TR they seem to have found the key to their car now and it jumps up the order .Force India same unlock potential.It´s not a tenth per 1000 hours invested it is an answer to a problem or a genuine step out of the dark or grey -understanding of what you got and what makes things tick...
Virgin could ring the bell tomorrow id someone understood what is the main thing holding them back and how to right what is wrong.

Well said. =D> Let's hope they find some answers.

I don't understand all tis wirth bashing, he said from the beggining that he was going to work on the flaws of the car and then creat a b spec car, then guess what they have just realised it was a good upgrade so they are going to implement it.

onsidering the budget and all, i think nick deserves a lot of credit, true if he had not been so hell bent on the cfd approach he would probably have more credibility on forums like this but christ it's the teams second season and after fixing the reliability of the car this year and the huge increase in cfd next years car would probably of been a good evolution fro this years, after all if nick wirth and his staff were that bad why has virgin taken so many of the old design staff onto there books?

[ESPImperium]

Ive just done some (lots actually as i now have accurate data on my Quali charts) calculations and Virgin need 1.082 of a second laptime increase to gap Team Lotus. They need 2.4 seconds to Vorce India/Williams and that puts them in the mid pack battle.

I think they have what it takes to get to Lotus for the end of they year, and with Symmonds help and McLarens help they can get into the mid pack next year. They are starting to sound like a F1 team of the future, but they now need to translate that into a F1 team of the future next year. The MVR-03 was designed for the first part of its early life in the new (former) Wirth Research CFD facility that was the most powerful untill Renault updatad theirs a few months back. I think the power of this CFD facility is gonna do good, however i think that McLaren are going to be optomising the CFD facility for Virgin as part of their deal. With the CFD and McLaren tunnel the MVR-03 looks to be a really strong contender for the mid pack for 2012 now.

However, they need to like Team Lotus use a race like Suzuka that had a 50% retirements rate last year to their advantage and try and score some points if they can, but getting a 12th would do for them as the €55m they would get from FOM would really help the team no end. Would probably secure the teams budget for 2012, whitch id recon they are looking at €80m for 2012 as they operated on €52m in 2010 and are operating on arround €65m this year.

They have Glock for the next 2 years as well, thats an asset, all they need is a good young driver, D'Ambrosio has done a good solid effort this year, but i feel that he will be pushed aside as theyre are more drivers out there looking for a seat next year that bring more money. Mikhail Aleshin id recon could be a shoe in with a sponsor budget of at least €20m a year could be another asset.

Virgin are on the rise, and i think they will have caught the mid pack and be mixing it in there for middle of 2012 with current potential developments on and off track.

Id recon that 2013 will see them make their first propper car and make their first propper challange in F1 at a decent performance level.

[TzeiTzei]

I don't understand all tis wirth bashing, he said from the beggining that he was going to work on the flaws of the car and then creat a b spec car, then guess what they have just realised it was a good upgrade so they are going to implement it.

The b spec car is the one they've been racing with since Turkey. And it didn't seem to make any difference to their performance. And i guess that's when it was decided that it was time for Wirth to go. The "silverstone upgrade" can't be that bad, as they have decided to put it to the car. Maybe it will give them a big boost in performance. Perhaps it might just be the key to correct the flaws of the current design and improves their pace a lot.

But remembering all the talk about challenging for Q2 and then seeing them actually going backwards relative to the other teams makes it quite hard not to blame Wirth. Perhaps with time he could have got it right, but unfortunately this is F1 and time is a luxury.

[siwillems]

I don't understand all tis wirth bashing, he said from the beggining that he was going to work on the flaws of the car and then creat a b spec car, then guess what they have just realised it was a good upgrade so they are going to implement it.

The b spec car is the one they've been racing with since Turkey. And it didn't seem to make any difference to their performance. And i guess that's when it was decided that it was time for Wirth to go. The "silverstone upgrade" can't be that bad, as they have decided to put it to the car. Maybe it will give them a big boost in performance. Perhaps it might just be the key to correct the flaws of the current design and improves their pace a lot.

But remembering all the talk about challenging for Q2 and then seeing them actually going backwards relative to the other teams makes it quite hard not to blame Wirth. Perhaps with time he could have got it right, but unfortunately this is F1 and time is a luxury.

True the b spec car was launched in turkey, but was'nt this the reworked version ironing the flaws out from the original b spec design, all teams have updates which don'y work so well, the difference being their budget is a fraction of the other teams and things take longer.


My point is things may not of been as bad as every one thinks they might of been, had the team kept wirth and all of the relocation happened including the partnership with maclaren i don't think they would be in any worse or better position, ultimatly wirth was an employee, and if the team wants to use a wind tunnel, despite his belief that this is a exuberant waste of money they could of still employed wind tunnel engineers to provide wirth with data to use. My belief is they needed some body to blame for the poor results and he was the right guy in the right place for it.

[marcush.]

ah ...I´m not bashing Nick Wirth here frankly quite the opposite.
To me he was the one with the hardest job ...No current formula 1 Knowledge.
A separate Race team not only in terms of geographical distance but also in terms of relationships with Wirth research only a supplier to Virgin.
I think he simply did not have the free hands to do what is needed and for sure he had simply underestimated some of the systems requirements as a direct consequence of no hands on experience from within a top team in F1.
LMP is a fine thing but firstly competitition is low with only Audi and Pegeot really top contenders and Porsche maybe.But the pressure to deliver is quite a few notches up in F1 and in ALMS he had Acura /TRD support big time not only financially but engineeringwise as well .You learn what you lost and who did what and how much it contributed to success only afterwards...
I think Wirth had done respectably considering the constraints and he is surely not to blame for the belated introduction of a valuable upgrade package.
I was a bit disappointed how conservative his approach was in terms of vehicle design but we will perhaps never know who drove the ship into that direction.
What I find bad style is Booth putting already resaponsibility towards Wirth for 2012 s contender-stating the tub design was already finalised and canot be changed
for next season.Myohmy...shut up and put your head down and come up with something
better than MVR-02 and leave behind the old stories.Symmonds has assumed leadership and no question about it he is responsible for next years car including concept.If the basic concept was deemed rubbish he should have better left the upgrade in the drawer and redo the conceptwork and adjust the tub design as much as possible.
I sure count on Mclaren to guide them into the best possible direction.
as for the turkey upgrade ,Glock has told in german tV repeatedly the main problem is the aero sesivity of the car to changing wind directions making tzhe car unpredictable.He also admits that the engineering team has difficulty to find the optimum setups and changes from FP3 to Q went wrong more often than not.
In Spa he told about a setup modification for Q to improve the front end but they went too far improving it too much ....so he ended up in big time oversteer ...also for the race.What I sure do not understand is :why does the team still not understand the car since turkey when no upgrades are coming ?Secondly I cannot understand why you don´t change your setup after realising the change was crap -given you are 22 anyways so what is lost starting from the pitlane when your balance is much better and you can have hopes to make your tyres live longer at higher speeds..

[siwillems]

I agree with you totaly about the lack of respect for the team at the moment. They have gone from newcomers learning the ropes and trying to find their way with simple evolution and good intentions to playing politcs and passing blame, i pressume this must be in part to ease any tensions that might arise from poor results next year between the team and marussia. Would be intresting if the car was a real stormer would they publicy thank wirth

[siwillems]

out of interest, does anybody know when they started development for this years and last years car

[marcush.]

VR01 had Monocoque design freeze in July 09 as stated in the James Allen interview
so the concept work has started way earlier of course .
This matches up nicely with Geoff Willis view of things : you should not be later than August in freezing tub design so as to be able to produce a first tub by the end of september.
Small team less workforce to split ,longer lead times in production ..easy maths you need to start earlier and freeze your designs earlier when your shopfloor level
staff is smaller.You need to outsource the tub? bang ,you need to find a production slot for the modelmaker ,the company that builds the molds and the company that does the layup and autoclaving ...more lead time necessary to make for a seamless production process..

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2010/03/v ... -research/

[ESPImperium]

Another potential boost for Virgin is that James Allen seems to thin the Virgin/McLaren tie-up is to include the McLaren Applied Technologies transmission that Force India currently use as well. If this is true, i can see Virgin move up quite quickly on what they currently have in terms of technology. Id say for them it would be worth half a second a lap??? Where as a team like Force India would only see a tenth or two.

Also more developments for Virgin as well before the seasons end are posible i think.

[marcush.]

the gear box as a gearbox is not worth a lot in terms of laptime ...how fast can you shift when it´s seamless quickshift anyways..so the transmission losses are one area where you could make some gains potentially and of course the supension pickups would be those of the works car ? That´s the start of a real good rearend solution.
With Virgin already sporting a low nose concept it should be easier for them to draw conclusions from the MCL squad ...it does make sense to adopt the same philosophies with aero development...so you can go into finer detail and dig deeper sharing the tunnel time ..

[timbo]

so the transmission losses are one area where you could make some gains potentially and of course the supension pickups would be those of the works car ?

Or it may use less energy to operate and less cooling, and can have more rigid assembly etc.

[tok-tokkie]

TzeiTzei, thanks for that analysis of the qualifying & race data. I find that quantifying of the difference between the teams very informative. I don't follow the performance of the mid field & tailenders so seeing what the differences are & therefore the targets for them is very helpful. I will bookmark that post for future reference.