A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Virgin have several vacancies made available on Autosports website recently..So they are looking for R&D staff team leaders for all key areas in Development as a start..
Formula 1 and Racing as such is working on a networkstyle basis and not having the key people already safe as future employees is alarming at this time.Sure the people willing to change or available have forged new deals already.
So who is supposed to be on the market ..Aldo Costa ,Gustav Brunner(how old is the guy now?),Nick Wirth (!),Tomlinson (chief of Aero at williams ),Sam Michaels ...
that´s my thoughts Xactly ...who would go there Knowing what happened to wirth...you need a big bag of cash to lure some good personell there .It´s not only the money it´s the reputation as well...just think of Willis who now is with HRT ...did this help his reputation last year?
marcush. wrote:interesting shot from underneath the front wing..
Interesting... All the top teams have strakes under there making the wing act like a diffuser. I'm surprised that there's not even a crude version under there.
if you look closely you can see 2 strakes each side wich are only covering the forward two sections of the wing ...maybe these provide fixation points for longer strakes when the wing is monted to the car ...and these parts are sort of consumables?
what I find much more interesting is the apparant lack of a wide footplate beneath the wing endplate .I ilways thought teams use the big footplte the full length of the endplate..
compare to saubers footplate treatment:
beelsebob wrote:Interesting... All the top teams have strakes under there making the wing act like a diffuser. I'm surprised that there's not even a crude version under there.
Is it to help with a venturi, which should happen with or without rakes, or is it to better condition the flow for the rest of the car? I'm not being snide, I'm curious.
I think its design is just driven by drivability of the car. For example, strakes generate downforce yes, but these get annoying under yaw and pitch. The upward out edge reduces effects of pitch, maing the car more drivable under for example braking.
Furthermore about the car, I stand my point earlier that the car isnt bad, its execution is just sloppy, imo they can gain good time just by the building process. The gearbox and engine aren't helping either to the overall performance, which imo is more likely for performance lack then the car itself.
And what bothers me most is how people talk about how bad their approach is and how much better Team lotus is going while Team Lotus cant even get the power steering right.
wesley123 wrote:I think its design is just driven by drivability of the car. For example, strakes generate downforce yes, but these get annoying under yaw and pitch. The upward out edge reduces effects of pitch, maing the car more drivable under for example braking.
Furthermore about the car, I stand my point earlier that the car isnt bad, its execution is just sloppy, imo they can gain good time just by the building process. The gearbox and engine aren't helping either to the overall performance, which imo is more likely for performance lack then the car itself.
And what bothers me most is how people talk about how bad their approach is and how much better Team lotus is going while Team Lotus cant even get the power steering right.
I have to agree there. Look what HRT did with last year's chassis and new aero upgrades and internals. They are right at the door of Virgin. The Dallara chassis last year was described as garbage. I agree, if this team can build a proper chassis, I think they will look even better. They have a good designer. The constant management changes may reak havoc though.
at first sight it seems very hard to differentiate between engine gearbox aero human recources ,drivers,management, facilities and money and how much they contribute to total performance.
Comparing Virgins stance to Team Lotus it seems rediculous how close Virgin really are ....with Lotus having almost the complete design team from Force india ,Gascoyne -human recource wise they are well staffed.They have secured good sponsorship deals ,are stable and have good support managementwise,they have the
gearbox you would want to have ,the champions engine ...but all this just summed up to a 1 second gain and not the instant jump into Q2 as everyone expected...
KERS could have helped a bit ,true but the net gain might be less then expected when you need to tailor your car around it...Team Lotus would not have been able to go the RBR route so had to use the marelli/Renault setup...
Comparing Virgin to HRT clearly the speed difference between those two has not changed much .HRT last year had some catchup to do owed to the last minute start
and again this year.
But with all the genius present at HRT it is very surprising that Wirths creation is not dead last now by a big margin.HRT have a more modern Gearbox ,have better stance in terms of respected F1 people as well ..
So lets conclude: Not the top people in F1 ,not engines,not gearboxes,not drivers ,not management will provide the jump forward in this environment.
Sure a Cosworth engine is enough to score points in F1 ,if a Xtrac box is is debatable but a RBR or williams box alone is not setting the world on fire.
To me it seems very clear that F1 is an environment that needs time to develop a team and gel.not change every other minute ain areas that do not contribute much to success.You need a bunch of competent people and let them do their business ,sorting out the problem areas in order of importance.(lotus having power steering trouble since day 1...!)
Wirth maybe came in at the deep end but you have to see they solved all the issues over timeyet have reliability and the speed is coming with the years.But again we are starting at square 1 again now.
Team Lotus to Virgin, there is a few technichal differences, the fact that Team Lotus has the poorest CFD in the paddock, with exeption to Hispania and Virgin have now got the second best with the WRT facility in Banbury, however the MVR-02 was designed on the origional WRT site. This is miles ahead of what Team Lotus have.
Also Lotus have been spending alot of money on facilities than anything else, as one fith of their budtet for this and next seasonwill be spent on construction and start up of their wind tunnel. Thats where i think that Virgin have flattered to a point. Lotus have signed up with GE for the next 5 years with a 2 year option after that. GE will be supplying the team with start of the art tools for Rapid Prototyping and much more in the factory. A investment of $30m cash and $15m non cash each year from 2012. Also Lotus have signed up with Dell and TEAM for them to give them a better CFD facility. This is the same company that designed the BMW-Sauber Albert/AlbertII system in 2007/2008.
Id suspect that Team Lotus will be in the midfeild for 2012 and starting to push on in 2013. 2014 will see a fresh slate and this is where they could gon from strength to strength.
As for Virgin to Hispania, Hispania designed their car using cloud computing and used a cloud CFD program for this year, as for last year it was designed and tested in the Dallara CFD and wind tunnel for the first and only iteration of the car.
Hispania have been using a Tata CFD facility for the updates for the current car, and are imminently due to use all but one of their Straigtline days in the #2 Tunnel at Mercedes to verify certain aspects of ther current car, then update it one more time in Spa and then call it quits for 2011.
Hispania have a 2010 gearbox and this helps, id recon its worth half a second a lap over the 2003/2004 tech thats being used by Virgin.
Virgin have been in dire need of putting the car in a tunnel, and i think this will happen now. Verify the results of that to their CFD data.
Virgin are also in need of a better technichal network, not in terms of equiptment, but in terms of personell. Hispania are recruting and getting the right people, Lotus have the right people, i think Virgin will get some of the right people from McLaren now.
Its just a pitty they cannot buy the IP for a design that McLaren did not use on track for this or last season and go from there.
as we know Virgin have put their old car in the stuttgart tunnel already...maybe not the mega facility but still a full size tunnel with rolling road.
I still don´t see where Lotus have jumped ahead of Virgin technically with their new car...
Compared to last years green box and all the incredients one cannot understand that Glock regularly is in striking distance in Q1 ...and now we hear they have not followed up the blown difusser theme since Barcelona..could it be Virgin is on a par with lotus in Silverstone? that would point in a direction of Nic Wirth having really done a good job ....but then who cares.
