The day has come for HRT Formula 1 Team to officially open its doors to the new headquarters at the Caja Mágica in Madrid. The team has been preparing the move since last winter and even decided to skip the most recent Formula One test at Mugello to complete the move to Madrid.
This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
The Cosworth engine is belived to be a €8m deal, to give a team up to 24 engines a year for race, test and promotional events. It would be less if Williams and Caterham still had supply as Cosworth budgeted for a minimum of 3 teams paying €6m a year. This year HRT and Marussia are belived to be paying a premium, however Marussia have the Cosworth tie in for their roadcars and so will be paying less.
Cosworth havnt confirmed or denied a 2014 power train development, however it is belived they are working on something. However their problem is the development costs, they dont have the €40m and more a year to throw at a power train for 2014. Id recon they will have something, however i can see them being there for only one team for 2014 and that will be Marussia.
I think that HRT will be a PURE team beside Toro Rosso and posibly Lotus as well if they want to break with Renault and become a works team for PURE. There could be a posible 2 team maximum for Ferrari and Mercedes.
Cosworth is the cheapest engine supply, however Renault isnt too far behind at €9m with €1m suppliment applied from Total, otherwise it would be closer to the €10m that Mercedes and Ferrari give. The Cosworth however gives a team a opertunity to work with different oil and fuel suppliers, however at the moment Marussia and HRT run with BP fuels and Castrol Lubricants as they cant get a fuel/oil supply.
If HRT were to change engine supply to Renault, id say there would a posibility for Repsol to jump on the Renault supply as it would be a good marketing strategy for them in Spain. But lets not fantasize, HRT usually announce their next years deals at arround the 4th or 5th last event of the year, and i belive there will be a large ammount of information coming from the HRT team towards the end of 2012 for 2013.
I recon that HRT will give the rest of this year to learn and then dispose of this car, then with a new car and a stable base for the start of 2013 then improve more than they have done in any previous seasons. It looks as if they are trying to destroy the Hispania 2010-2011 immage, improve and rebuild the team in 2012 and in 2013 they will be in a fit and propper place to attack and re brand.
One thing is needed for the second half of the season is a better quality #2 driver, Karthekeyn is clearly lacking, he is arround 1.1 seconds in raw pace of PdlR. Id like to see a Dani Clos, Jan Charuz or Vatalerri Bottas in the seat, so that PdlR develops the set up and the hot shoe exploits it to its whole. In my opinion both drivers should be ideally within 2-3 tenths of one another, however it is acceptable to be up to 5-6 thenths off a team mates pace in quali in my oppinion. 2011 shows us that a young hot shoe can come in and destroy a more experienced team mate in this team, however this years more experienced team mate actually knows how to develop a car and has great tech feedback, a ideal driver to learn from for a few months before posibly leaping into a good mid pack car for 2013. However the HRT team do have Liuzzi on the books, a good driver that can jump in if needed.
They did know about it but I believe they thought they could handle it as they brought more updates throughout the weekend. Sadly it wasn't enough and it caught up to them during the race.
Luis Pérez-Sala, Team Principal:
"Before anything I would like to say that we’re very relieved because our mechanic, Craig, is well after this morning’s incident as we were all very worried. As for the racing, we tried out the wing that we specifically brought for this circuit and it seems like the car’s balance is good and it’s working as expected. Our only weak point was the brakes but it’s something we’re going to continue working on to improve. We’re comfortably inside the 107%, so this is confirmation that the wing is working well. Tomorrow we will evaluate again how the upgrades are performing but we’re running well”.
tommylommykins wrote:How come the comical brake problem was not noticed by the media before the race?
I assume that the team must have known after practice (and maybe before?) that they did not have brakes suitable for the race.
So why has nobody batted an eyelid about HRT being in such a state that they are only pretending to be able to race?
It was just the cooling ducts that wasn't right, but it's a huge assumption to thing they where pretending to race, didn't Glock retire with the same problem?
Canada is a known brake killer, all the teams struggle so it is not a 'comical' failure, just a typical failure in my opinion; plenty of teams have struggled there before. Six of the braking zones are considered hard and that is the highest of any track this year I believe. Also with the tiny rear wing they were among the fastest in the speed trap and so the higher top speed will attain a higher braking force, so a higher rate of wear and a higher temperature.
“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
― Vincent van Gogh
Montreal is a circuit purpose made for KERS. Harvesting some of the braking energy might unload the braking system. Thats provided one's still carrying the same mass.
Maybe it's because I work in a safety-critical field, but I would have thought that brakes were pretty fundamental -- the sort of thing where failure to work out exactly how much you need is unimaginable. I'd sorta see it a bit like fuel. If you get the fuel calculations wrong and drastically underfuel the car, then that's really, really embarassing. Surely it's the same with brakes? Getting it wrong so bad that you can't even go half distance is a failure on the same order of magnitude as getting the fuel so wrong that you can't even do half distance...?
What is more damning - is that Karun Chandhok in the 2010 Canadian GP finished the race. 4 laps down, but that means he completed 66 racing laps, so HRT DO have previous data on this.
Petroltorque wrote:Montreal is a circuit purpose made for KERS. Harvesting some of the braking energy might unload the braking system. Thats provided one's still carrying the same mass.
I'm not so sure to be honest. Because of the severity of braking in Montreal teams have to back off on the energy harvest rate, lest they cook their capacitors/batteries.
See that's what I don't get. Why don't the team take a bit of pain now, and start on the 2014 car, TODAY? Like this very moment. Now. 2014 would see a rework of the rear packaging and front wing philosophy amongst other things. They could steal a march on the others.
raymondu999 wrote:See that's what I don't get. Why don't the team take a bit of pain now, and start on the 2014 car, TODAY? Like this very moment. Now. 2014 would see a rework of the rear packaging and front wing philosophy amongst other things. They could steal a march on the others.
Because these guys have so few engineers that they barely get 1 car out... If they did this, they would be removing engineers from the 2013 car, and it wouldn't be ready at the first race.