Formula 1 Store | Formula 1
News - September 2005 |
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23 September: Brazilian Grand Prix - FIA Friday Press Conference TECHNICAL
DIRECTORS: Q: We
have all been impressed with the reliability, but how marginal has it been, particularly Ross and Pat can you tell us about the
engines, of course we are not really asking for detail. Has it really been that tough to make these engines to last two races and
also to get the cars to the end? Geoff WILLIS: I think the level of skill and professionalism in the sport has steadily got better and better and compared to two or three years ago we are now running engines that are significantly lighter, more powerful, running for about five times as long, but then all the rest of the car is also extremely reliable. There is a strong level of competition so you are seeing people having to engineer their designs right close to the edge of their performance. So it is down to their procedures and processes and the very formal ways that people are working on their cars and engines to maintain that level of performance as well as that level of reliability. So yes, it is very tough, reliability has always been part of any sort of motor racing and it is as important now as it always has been. Ross BRAWN: I think fundamentally there is no difference in the engineering challenge between making an engine last 300km or 1,500km, it is the level of performance you try to achieve with that level of reliability. Each time you strip the engine you are looking for areas that are suffering or areas that are stressed and step by step you achieve the reliability you need. I think the thing that is a little frustrating at times is the time available to do the job, because if we were able to start again with a completely new engine this would not be the most efficient way. If you can start with a completely new engine design then you can incorporate the features you want to achieve reliability with best performance and I think we have all been working with compromised designs because these engines weren’t designed to last two races, they were designed to do short stints, certainly ours were. I think with the V8 engine that is coming it is the first time we will have a chance to design an engine from the very beginning knowing that it has to do two races and I think therefore the V8s could be even better than the ones we have now. It is a performance-reliability ratio. We could all blow our engines up tomorrow if we wanted to, that is not difficult. It is just the level of performance you can achieve with the reliability. The great thing about the engine is you can take them on a dyno and do a lot of the work at home. Sam MICHAEL: I think a lot of things have changed in Formula One, not just on engines but hydraulics, gearboxes, suspension, and the default system you have in place now is so rigorous. All the teams have a target of 100 percent reliability and it has been like that for a few years now and once you have so many people and resources dedicated to that you do start to make a breakthrough. I think what Ross said is right as well, the V8 is going to be even more because of the way the regulations are written. It is much easier for the engine manufacturers because of set weights and spacings to make sure engines have got plenty of weight in them and I think it is going to get better and better. Q:
Pat, what is it like to work with Fernando Alonso, what sort of a guy is he from a professional point of view? Q:
You have worked with both, and you mentioned the analogy with Michael there. What other differences or similarities can you see? Q: Geoff, I thought you were going
to be a bit more competitive than you have in the last three or four races, I thought you were going to work up to quite a bit of a
climax at the end of the season. Q: You now have your two drivers for next year, what happens to Takuma? Q: Has any decision been made about third drivers? Q: Ross, I don’t know how much development is going on for 2005, obviously it has taken
place on the 2006 already, but how do you know what direction to go given your tyre situation so far this year? Q:
Can you clarify something about Valentino Rossi testing? Apparently you said he would test every month and he said that would not be
possible. What is the situation? Q: Sam, a lot of people are thinking
that Nico Rosberg could be in a Williams for the next two Grands Prix. How race ready is he for Formula One? Q: Next year you are moving to
Bridgestones, did you have a choice? What was the situation? QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR Q:
(Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazetta dello Sport) Ross, coming back about Valentino. Can you clarify if it is true you have a commitment
from him if he becomes a Formula One driver he would just drive for Ferrari, and do you already plan some tests with him before the
end of the season? Q: And there is no exclusive contract that you are aware of with him? Q: (Anthony Rowlinson
- Autosport) Can I ask each of you if there is any more progress on resolving the FIA’s suggestion of a downforce limit in Formula
One, and how that may be policed if that does get introduced? SM: I agree with what Geoff said, particularly about GP2. They use a skirt on the side and they have front wings close to the ground. I think they’ve just done that by accident but they’ve obviously stumbled onto something that’s pretty good and initially I thought maybe it’s because there’s a big spread of talent in the field, but in reality there’s probably four or five very good drivers in the top five and even those guys are still overtaking each other. And if you look at the following and overtaking they’re doing on tracks where we wouldn’t get anywhere near ourselves, I think there’s definitely something to be learned from that. We’ve gone in the opposite direction over the last two or three years, particularly if you look at the front wings on a Formula One car. We’ve lifted and lifted them away from the ground, and for sure that hurts performance and reduces the lap times which was a first target, but it potentially also makes it very difficult to follow other cars. That obviously needs a bit more substantive work to work out the best way to go in Formula One. PS: I agree with what’s been said but I think there is on further aspect and that is that the FIA are very keen to limit the costs of being competitive in Formula One, and I think that’s a very correct objective to have. And I have a feeling that they believe that if downforce was ultimately limited, in other words, if the magnitude was limited, that it would go some way to reducing costs as well in that I think that they hope that less time would be spent in wind tunnels, etc etc. It’s partially true. I think that if the money is available, it will not actually stop you working in your wind tunnels because you might still be limited on the amount of downforce you have, but you will still be trying to produce that downforce with a minimal amount of drag. But the FIA’s brief, really, is to try and limit the added performance that you get by spending your next million dollars or whatever it might, and I guess it will do that. You will still spend your time in the wind tunnel, but the gains that you get from it, in terms of pure lap time, will probably be less, so there is another little aspect of it, that I think is quite interesting. I’m not sure how valid it is, but it certainly comes into the equation. RB: I think the reason we need a downforce… or we need to control the downforce is a lot to do with cornering speeds and the fact that we start to get close to the critical speeds that have been identified for safety reasons at a number of circuits. Every few years we change the bodywork and we all predict where we are going to be, and I would think that if not now, certainly next year most of the teams will be back where they were last year, so we’ve had substantial bodywork changes and we’re getting close to back where we were last year. Now if conceptually you could introduce a means of limiting downforce to a certain threshold then it would seem to be simpler to control cornering speeds in that way, and then the teams would be interested in efficiency and the behaviour of the cars and the stability of the cars, more than just the generation of downforce. I think along with that, the aspects of cars being able to follow each other is very important and I agree with what’s been said in that we’ve certainly gone the wrong route. I’ve commented on this before but I can remember a race a few races ago where I asked Michael ‘how much faster can you go,’ because he was part of the Trulli train that was going on at the time and he said ‘I’m going as fast as I can. I can’t go any faster.’ And Jarno pulled into the pits and he went 1.5 seconds faster. He didn’t have that performance in the car as far as he was concerned, because the car was behaving so badly behind the other cars. We’ve got to solve that because it does spoil the race. I don’t think we need a dramatic increase in the amount of overtaking that goes on, but we certainly should have close racing where cars can get next to each other and attack each other. A few overtaking manoeuvres in a race would be much better. At the moment you get within 50 or 100 meters of the car in front and that’s it, you’re finished. You can’t get any closer. Q:
(Dan Knutson – National Speed Sport News) To all of you: I would like your thoughts on Toyota’s progress this year. They’ve
made a big step, but has that been flattered slightly by the fact that, besides Renault, you have not had the best of seasons, and
also, how difficult will it be for Toyota, a relatively new team, to maintain this upwardly momentum in ’06? SM: I think they’ve obviously had a good year, regardless of where the other teams have, because even in the early parts of the year they were challenging Renault and McLaren as well. Obviously they don’t look as strong towards the latter half, but they’ve obviously done a good job and well deserve their position in the championship. They’ve obviously taken three or four years to get there and they are on that road now. PS: I think one of the things that’s interesting is that of course we’ve had some reasonably new rules this year: the aerodynamics were significantly different on the cars and I think Toyota came out of the gate running, they were quick from the start, and that suggests that they tackled that change very well. As the season’s gone on, they probably haven’t quite kept up the relative pace and maybe there’s been a bit of inconsistency but they are a relatively new team and consistency and development is something that is certainly helped by experience. As has been mentioned, they have got a big budget, they will get the job done, it is Toyota’s way of doing things but I do think that fundamentally, the step that they made this year was probably down to interpretation of the regulations or certainly getting the best out of the new regulations in the shortest time. GW: I think really I would be repeating much of what has been said so far: they clearly have made a lot better job of the task this year than last year and the challenge is always, as you build up in the level of your competition in the business, knowing why you are quick or why you are better or why you are worse. Any one year is very important for you to be able to continue that from year to year so I’m sure they will continue to be a serious player in the business but like us, they will be needing to work out what they have done well this year and what they have not done well this year in order to do better next year. Q: (Thierry Tassin – RTBF) Ross, can you please clarify when you
are allowed to use the extreme weather tyres during a Grand Prix? Q: (Thibault Larue - Sport Auto) Question for Geoff: it’s a specific question as to what you are
expecting from Rubens on the very first day of your co-operation, I mean in testing in November or December? Are you expecting to
make him work on a specific area or to let him give you his general feeling of the package, and are you expecting he will give you
new technical direction immediately? Q: (Steve Cooper – F1 Racing) To Ross and Jeff, you’ve both had
quite extensive experience of running a V8 now and I wonder if you’ve noticed any unusual anomalies or any kind of weird
characteristics which you hadn’t expected and whether we’ll see F1 cars next year perhaps being a little bit different from what
they are this year? GW: Well, I suppose the correct answer is that we are planning not to have any anomalies with a V8. We did run a V8 earlier this season, very much in very early prototype form. Since then, Honda have been working on more stages of prototypes, a lot of dyno running, and we will be back running when testing starts again after the end of the season. Certainly, I personally don’t have any experience of running a V8 in Formula One but Honda have a lot of experience running V8s and it’s a very big programme for them, and I think we will be well prepared for next year. As Ross says, the exciting bit and the difficult bit about a big change in the rules is you don’t really know where the benchmark is and I think that will be quite interesting for the early testing of the V8s when all the teams are trying to work out whether they have got it right and whether they are strong in the right areas. As well as being reduced capacity in a V8, we also have other changes. There are some material changes in the engine for cost control reasons and also the removal of the moving trumpets. That will have an effect on the torque characteristics of the engine, particularly during the start which is another new challenge and something we won’t have a good measure on until we get track testing. Q: (Anthony
Rowlinson - Autosport) Do you think McLaren may have established a decisive performance advantage this year which would lead to a
period of domination in the sport for the next two or three years or do you think too much will change next year for that to take
place? PS: Yeah, McLaren have done an excellent job and they have got a very fast car but we are still pushing, you know, and we have several things here, so I hope we take it right to the end. There is no precedent that says that the domination they have now is going to set the standards for future years. The domination they have had is nowhere near as marked as we’ve seen from Ferrari in the last few years. We’ve seen that things do turn around, it always happens in sport. They have a fast car but at the end of the day the championship is decided on points and points come from every aspect of the team, not just the speed of the car, it comes from the reliability, it comes from teamwork, it comes from everything. And one has to say they are not dominating in that area, we are leading the championship. It is something that we certainly are not going to forget and I hope you guys don’t. SM: I think the same as well. I think the thing that we just talked about, the engines, is definitely going to throw another factor in there. It could re-set everybody and move all the teams around quite a bit, regardless of chassis performance. They definitely have had a stronger car at some places this year. Earlier in the year, obviously you could see Renault dominated for the first three or four races when McLaren struggled. It is nowhere near the type of domination we have seen over the last four or five years with Michael. RB: I think teams do get impetus: there is the inertia that gets going and you get confidence and you are more comfortable with making the decisions you need to make, but I think regulation changes throw in a potentially disturbing factor in there and I think we have not come out of the past regulation changes very well, the last year’s regulation changes. I think when there is no regulation changes you have a logical evolution of the cars. Next year there are more regulations changes again which actually are very substantial because they involve not only the engine but the level of drag you can carry on the car, the type of tyres that maybe you want with the power outputs, there are some small aerodynamic changes to the regulations next year, so it’s not a very continuous year from this year to next year and that always gives the potential for someone to get it wrong and someone to get it right. But undoubtedly McLaren have a very quick car. They’ve not been able to capitalise on it as much as they probably would have like to have and they will have that inertia taking them through the winter into next year but regulations changes can definitely throw a double six in there. Q:
(Steve Cooper – F1 Racing) There was a meeting this morning to discuss the proposals for qualifying next year. Are you aware of
what’s going on are you just having to build cars to regulations that you are just imagining at the moment. What is actually
happening with qualifying? 2005 Brazilian Grand Prix - Main Page
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