Super Aguri shows off definitive bodywork

28 February 2006 - 17:20

Super Aguri ran a brief shakedown test a Silverstone today (Tuesday) and in the processs gave us the first look at the car they will start the 2006 season with. They've made all the changes I identified in a previous posting. The surpsise is how extensive the changes are. When you consider that this is only an interim car, their fabricators and aerodynamicists have been very busy. PItpass once again has a gallery from the test (which also included MF1). The changes as far as I can tell from the photos are:-

• Front-wing and nose: The front-wing is raised the regulation 15cm above the reference plane. As I predicted (when I thought the changes would be minimal), they kept the front-wing as-is and shortened the mounting to the nosecone. Surprisingly they've got a new nosecone. The new one has a slight droop at the tip. It's hard to imagine that droop - still far above the actual wing and far forward of the flap (compare with the Williams) - has much effect on the efficiency of the wing itslef. Did they have to make new nosecones to comply with increased crash-test requirements? (I'll have to check on that). It seems a strange use of resources otherwise, given how simplistic the front-wing is by current F1 standards. I predict they will be very short on front downforce with no spoon section in the centre of the wing, and with no add-on wings like the Renault or a second flap like the McLaren.
• Bodywork between the front wheels is raised by 5cm. This not only looses the lowest part of the twin keels, but also the small horizontal shelf at the bottom of them as well as a small turning vane mounted between that and the front of the main bargeboards. UPDATED: I've now seen photos of the car with the wheels removed and these parts are still there, just mounted higher.
  
• The rear wing is completely revised with the mainplane moving forward as per 2005 rule changes and the deeper endplates as per 2004 rule changes. There is a single flap also as per 2004 rules and the obligatory notch out of the endplate behind the flap. There are none of the now fashionable drag-reducing slots in the endplates ahead of the flap and the wing elements are two dimensional. This is to be expected - short on wind-tunnel time to fine-tune the interim bodywork and being short on front-end downforce anyway, the rear wing hasn't had the detailed design of other cars.
• The outter channels of the diffuser are now reduced in height as-per 2005 regulations. Although there aren't any photos of the rear of the car available (why is that, do photographers think nobody will be interested in the back or do they just get bored by the time the car has passed them?), you can now see daylight between the rear wheels and the central diffuser section from the side view.
• By far the biggest surprise is the revisions between the front and back of the car. The engine cover complies with the 2004 silhouette rule as expected. There is also a maximum-width airbox wing (not in some of the photos but it is in the autosport.com gallery).
• The sidepods are extensively revised as per contemporary trends. There is a small and somewhat inexplicable shoulder winglet at the top-outter leading edge of the sidepod, the sidepods are undercut quite significantly (compare with the definitive Toyota TF106B bodywork). The bodywork around the radiators is wrapped almost as tightly as many new 2006 cars and there is also a full array of winglets ahead of the rear wheels. Also featured is a large chimney. This was taped off for the Silverstone test due to the very cold weather here. If they can open that up for Bahrain it should leave them with enough cooling. The original Arrows bodywork didn't feature chimneys so I assume all cooling was from the rear - not possible with the tighter bodywork of the SA05.

In all then I'd have to say I'm surprised and impressed with the work Super Aguri have been able to accomplish in the short time available. While the front-wing is disappointing and the rear-wing not as developed as the competition (even at the back of the field), the central bodywork looks impressive. Whether it works as well as it looks is another thing entirely. The final Minardi - the PS05 - had some pretty contemporary bodywork last year and still struggled to beat a two year old Jordan (admittedly with a more powerful engine).

That Minardi suffered from a dire lack of wind-tunnel time and I expect the SA05 will be in the same position. It's not clear if Super Aguri received wind-tunnel models with the cars they bought from Paul Stoddart. If they didn't they surely wouldn't have spent the money to have one made and there probably wouldn't have been time to anyway. WIthout models all you can do is put the actual car in a full-size wind-tunnel (like the one at MIRA) and make up a few full-size parts and see how they work out. Thus, the large parts like the engine cover were likely designed "by eye" with the wings and winglets recieving the most development time.

I still think reliability will be the biggest concern for Super Aguri. Everyone expects them to be at the tail of the field with this car, so the most important thing will be to stay on track as long as possible to maximise their exposure (and to be fair, they will learn more as a team as well). With the strength of the Honda engine and the posibility that the new bodywork is effective, there is the slightest of chances that SA may outpace MF1, but it seems unlikely. Still, given the effort they have clearly put in to this car, I wish them all the best.

/ No comments / § ¶

Qualifying as "the show" - A1GP shows the way

25 February 2006 - 16:45

Over the past couple of years there has been an immense amount of talk about qualifying in Formula 1. The 2006 season sees the replacement of the unloved single-lap qualy format with a new and compelx system. I won't go into the details here, others have covered the details as well as the compelx strategies that the format will drive from the teams.

What bothers me is: why do we need such a complex qualifying system? The answer given by all those in favour of changing from the single-lap system was that it would "improve the show". It's true that the single-lap qualifying introduced in 2003 was very dull. As far as I remember the reason was that the small teams complained (read: Paul Stoddart complained), that they weren't getting enough TV time for their sponsors. Nothing much could be done about that in the race (it's the TV director's decision who to watch), but if the cars went one at a time in qualifying all teams would get equal airtime there at least. I seem to remember that there was also some spin back then about single-lap qualy improving the show because viewers would be able to see every qualifying lap in full unlike the old free-for-all qualifying. For 2003 only there was also the re-introduction of Friday qualifying which had been redundant since the number of teams dropped below the maximum grid size.

{ Read More... }

/ five comments / § ¶

Should F1 be a fuel efficiency formula? (NO!)

23 February 2006 - 15:27

As well as proposing a three year freeze on engine development from 2008 to 2010, FIA president Max Mosley has also touted the idea of scrapping current engine regulations in favour of a maximum amount of fuel per race from 2011 onwards. This "fuel efficiency" formula was proposed by the late Keith Duckworth. There are many reasons why this is a terrible idea but they fall into two main categories: The impact on racing and the cost of it all.

{ Read More... }

/ four comments / § ¶

More on 2008 rule proposals: Aerodynamics

22 February 2006 - 15:36

Another thing that's in the FIA's proposals for 2008 is bodywork homologation. Although they are not planning to make teams run the same cars for three seasons, the proposal is almost as bad, allowing them to only change the bodywork two times per season. God only knows how this is supposed to help with costs or competitiveness of the series. Perhaps they have the naive idea that if teams are only allowed to change the bodywork twice, that they'll do less development work in their wind tunnels.

Of course they won't. They'll still make many iterations of bodywork and test them both in wind-tunnels and at private tests away from races. And what's worse is that without the ability to measure their car's performance against the competition with each iteration of bodywork at races, they won't know how much of an improvement is enough. Instead of being more conservative with their development spending, they will be forced to spend everything they can for fear of being left behind, knowing that whatever new parts they bring to the race, they'll be stuck with for the next half season.

Fortunately Max Mosley says that this idea is unlikely to make it into the final regulations for 2008 onwards. Another controversial rule proposal is apparently unlikely to make it - that of "maximum downforce". Mosley says:-

It's interesting. A lot of people don't like what they call 'the bridge of doom'. The idea is you simply put weight on the car and, say, the maximum amount of weight allowed is 12,000 newtons and if it doesn't touch the ground it's illegal. You then make a nice rubber plank under the car, so if they do run it on the ground the cars will be seriously retarded. There are all sorts of things they could do to cause trouble.

But one, it's unpopular; two, it's more work for us; but three and most importantly, they wouldn't be working on downforce, but they would still be working on what is important, the ratio of drag to downforce, so you wouldn't solve the problem.

The only thing we could do is make a list of what they call interesting areas and try to eliminate them. But as fast as we get rid of them, they will find others. What we need to do is make sure the man who has the $100 million wind tunnel doesn't have a huge advantage over the man who doesn't.

Firstly I don't think anyone in F1 has a $100M wind tunnel. Although wind tunnels cost a lot of money, the cost of running a wind tunnel 24 hours a day for most of the year totally eclipses the cost of the tunnel itself. That aside, he is right to be suspicious of the impact of a maximum downforce rule. There is a parallel in Le Mans cars where engine power is restricted using an intake restrictor plate and so engine builders spend all their resources working in reducing internal friction instead. With a maximum downforce rule, teams would put the same resrouces into reducing drag. I don't have time to go into this right now (I promise to write an extensive article on overtaking in F1 at some point), but the ongoing reduction of drag in Formula 1 is one of the main contributors to a lack of overtaking and so encouraging it in the rules seems like a bad idea to me.

/ three comments / § ¶

Standard ECUs for Formula 1

22 February 2006 - 15:08

Cost saving goes beyond just the engine. The FIA also want a spec ECU (electronic control unit) from 2008 and today put out a tender for the supply of such a unit having many functions. The electronics are another area that is very expensive with many, but not all, teams manufacturing their own systems from scratch or having custom units made by suppiers such as Magneti Marelli. Renault were particularly proud last season with their unified electronics that combined engine and chassis electronics in a a single unit. Meanwhile the only bit of the electronics the fans get to see is the lights on the steering wheel.

The manufacturer teams hate the idea of a spec ECU. I'd wager that the independent teams aren't so bothered as they would tend to buy their electronics in anyway, although they might do custom programming of traction control or active differential algorithms. According the Mosley in that massive interview I mentioned previously, the spec ECU will allow the teams to create custom ignition and fuel maps for their engines, but will not allow the software to be altered. This may finally allow to the FIA to ban traction control in a way that can be verified with no allegations of cheating. There is no doubt that it will effectively ban any innovation that requires electronic control as the FIA are intent that this will be the only electronic unit allowed in the car (other than transponders and radios that have specific controlled functions).

/ No comments / § ¶

More on engine homologation and costs.

22 February 2006 - 13:18

I worte previously about how engine homologation was not the answer to Formula 1's cost problems. To clarify, I wouldn't say that I'm any more in favour of a spec engine in F1 than I am in favour of an homologation period of several years for engine designs, but clearly something has to be done about costs and the engine represents a large part of the team budget that goes on something that makes very little difference. If you're going to effectively eliminate competition on the engine front, you might as well go all the way and some real benefits.

The real problem is that we now know too much. There was a golden era when smart people like Keith Duckworth (of Cosworth fame) could make considerable advances on a small budget (by current standards anyway). Now every advance is tiny and the cost ranges from considerable to increadible. As such you really have to question the point of continuing competition in englnes in motorsport. There isn't any category I can think of that allows for different engine designs without rules that constrain their development severely in the interests of safety or competition or costs. You could make an argument in the case of series like World Rally Cars or World Touring Cars where the car is ostensibly based on a production car, that the engine needs to be based on the model used in the production car. But that's not the case with Formula 1, Le Mans prototypes or many other forms of motorsport.

/ No comments / § ¶

Women drivers are the new, erm, black

21 February 2006 - 18:29

In addition to the headline grabbing Danica Patrick in IRL, Champcar now has Katherine Legge racing for Jimmy Vasser's PKV Racing and Vanina Ickx has joined DTM for 2006. Are there any more to come? Is having a female driver now an essential? I'd really love to see a competitive female driver in Formula 1, if only to make Bernie Ecclestone eat his words.

Katherine Legge tested for Minardi last year just before Paul Stoddart handed the team over to Red Bull. It was seen as a publicity stunt at the time, a not too many more people were convinced it was for real when she tested for PKV Racing the next week. So with the drive in the bag, it'll be interesting to see what she does this year. I know Champcar is a long way from the performance of contemporary Formula 1, but I'd like to think if she does well she might get a drive with a publicity hungry team. Alas, it's just a dream really - if Sébastien Bordais can't convert his Champcar success to F1, what chance does Katherine have?

Vanina Ickx is daughter of Grand Prix and Le Mans legend Jacky Ickx. She has mostly sportscar experience having driven in the FIA GT series as well as Le Mans. Unfortunately she hasn't landed a competitive drive in DTM - Vanina will drive for (Midland F1 boss) Colin Kolles's team in a 2004 customer Audi A4. Autosport report that Scottish driver Susie Stoddart (no relation to Aussie Paul) is a possible for a drive with Mercedes.

/ two comments / § ¶

Super Aguri makes public test debut

21 February 2006 - 17:05

F1 new-boys Super Aguri tested their interim car in public for the first time today in Barcelona. As everyone must have read by now, SA are planning to run a pair of modified Arrows A23 chassis fitted with the Honda V8 engine and 2006 regulation-compilant aero, until their definitive car (presumably based on a BAR design) is ready.

Pitpass has a gallery of shots from the Barcelona test and you can see from them that the car is still running it's 2002 aero package. They presumably are just wanting to test their mechanical modifications before they start testing new aero parts. The following is a list of changes that will be required:-

• Raise front wing - outter sections must be 15cm above the reference plane, central 50cm can be a low as 5cm above the reference plane. It is likely given the constraints on the team that they will just shorten the pylons that attach the wing to the nosecone and leave the wing itself as-is. This is what Jordan did at the start of the 2005 season for example.
• Remove lower 5cm of other bodywork between the front wheels. The one new aero rule for 2006 means that bodywork ahead of the mandatory flat-bottom must be 5cm above the reference plane. The Arrows A23 was the most extreme of cars designed when twin-keel suspension was in vogue with it's very high nose and twin keels extending down to the floor level to form a tunnel of sorts. It looks from the photos that the lower part of those keels is an add-on piece that can be changed or removed altogether.
• The silhouette of the engine cover needs to be larger. 2004 saw the introduction of two rules that changed the looks of the cars more than their performance. One of those rules prescribed a minimum area to be occupied by the engine cover when viewed from the side. It looks to me like the A23 doesn't meet current requirements even though it wasn't the most agressively small of designs fielded in 2002. Super Aguri will need to add a fin to the engine cover to bring it up to the regulation size.
• The side channels of the diffuser need to be lowered to the maximum height introduced in 2005 of 125cm. In theory they could just fill in the extra height to comply with the rules, but this would impose an excessive weight and drag penalty. They will want to make a new rear floor section to comply with the current rules. In their favour is that with the diffuser rules now stating that the whole of the floor in that area must be visible from below, a lot of the very intricate designs of the past are no longer possible. Thus, Super Aguri are not placed in such a bad possition.
  
• The rear wing is all wrong at present. On the A23 it is too far rearward, the endpates are not deep enough and it has three elements (two flaps) in the upper section. It's most likely the team will have to make an all new rear wing. 2004 brought the second of those largely cosmetic rules stating that the rear wing endplates had to occupy a minimum area. It also restricted the upper part of the rear wing to two elements in an effort to reduce downforce. Lastly, in 2005 the whole rear wing had to be moved forward, again in an effort to reduce downforce.

The test didn't go too well for Super Aguri with Taku-san only completing 3 laps before the car broke down with a hydraulics problem. They made it back out later in the day to do an additional 5 laps but Sato's best time was a massive 13 seconds off the pace of the fastest man of the day - Mark Webber in the Williams Cosworth. Hopefully they have a better day on Wednesday - if they're that slow with the 2002 aero package, I dread to think how far behind they'll be with the hacked-up aero that's compliant with 2006 rules. That new car can't come soon enough.

/ No comments / § ¶

Engine homologation is not the answer for F1

20 February 2006 - 18:08

Last Monday, Max Mosley gave a dinner for journalists to give them his view on motorsport and presumably how wonderful a job he's doing of managing it. Last Thursday Autosport.com carried a lengthy interview with Max by Jonathan Noble. It was actually very interesting and contained many surprises, at least for me, that haven't been widely reported. He admits mistakes over rule changes and also that some of the proposed rules for 2008 probably won't make it in. He also makes clear the FIA's new policy towards car manufacturers, at least in F1. I'll probably get a few more blog posting out of that interview, but for now I want to talk about one of the things that has got some attention from the press.

That is the subject of homologation, or "freezing" for people who find homologation too long a word to type. Max argues (quite convincingly for the most part) that by the time 2008 rolls around, two-race V8 engines will have been around long enough that most of the designs will be at approximately the same performance level. Therefore they can save the cost of a works engine programme for three years by homologating the design of each engine at the start of 2008 and until the end of 2010, all engines made by a particular manufacturer will be of the same design and secification as that homologated. Thus teams will spend the bucks to build enough of these very expensive engines for races and testing, but will save the much greater cost of developing newer, more powerful designs over that period. Max claims that engines for one team would cost about €8M to actually build, but that manufacturers are currently spending between €100M and €200M on their engine programmes.

That sounds great, saving all that money. But you have to wonder about the logic of it all. For homologation to be acceptable, the engines would have to be of roughly the same specification. If one manufacturer goes into the 'freeze' period with a 50bhp power deficit and they're stuck with that for three years, they might think twice about staying in the sport. If we then assume that the engines are equal then you have to question why on earth we would bother having 7 or 8 different manufacturers, why not just have one spec engine like Champcar and IRL now have? And of course if you have only one engine, you can find a much cheaper way to make that 750bhp target power that the FIA regards as safe. How about a nice 5 litre V10 for example? No need then for pneumatic valve systems or exotic surface coatings, thin-wall investment castings or anything remotely expensive. You could get the per-season cost of a team's engines down below €1M that way.

So why don't they? Because it takes away the central conceit of multi-make racing: That the equipment made by one manufacturer is better or worse than that made by another, and that the fans somehow care about that.

In the case of engines I have my doubts. Of course we couldn't have a McLaren Mercedes battling a Williams BMW in a world where all the cars used the same engine. But with the realisation that the engine doesn't play such a huge part in the performance of a modern F1 car, manufacturers are moving towards running their own teams rather than supplying branded engines. This is a return to the pre-garagista days where you had works Mercedes cars battling Porsches, Maseratis and Alfas. Now you have Toyota, Honda, BMW and Renault with their own teams and Mercedes owns a large percentage of McLaren. Williams would be happy to be just Williams if it meant they would save a lot of money and so would Midland F1 I'd wager and of course the two Red Bull teams are there to advertise a soft drink - the manufacturer of the engine couldn't matter less to them.

If you accept that both performance and costs have to be curtailed somehow, the only other argument against a common spec engine is that with it you have somehow lost some of the interest of the ongoing battle between manufacturers and that they wouldn't have a way to show off their engineering prowess. However, that opportunity has already gone mostly under the current rules with their prescription of cylinder count, v-angle, bore spacing, materials, weight and even centre-of-gravity height. The intention of the 2006 regulations is to deter innovation in as many areas as possible. The intention of homologation is remove innovation altogether for three years. And with innovation gone, so is the battle between manufacturers that they believe the fans want to see.

/ one comment / § ¶

Mulsanne Mike talks about the Audi R10

18 February 2006 - 18:27

Mike Fuller, aka "Mulsanne" Mike of the excellent sportscar website Mulsanne's Corner, was interviewed recently by Steve Wilson of Highlands Today about the Audi R10. It's worth a read if you're at all interested in the car that is likely to dominate Le Mans in the same way the Audi R8 did for years.

Since I haven't talked about Le Mans prototypes on this blog up to now I should get down my feelings about the ACO's current rules and the involvement of Audi in the event. The rules for LMP1 give CI (compression ignitiion or diesel) engined cars a number of significant advantages over SI (spark ignition) engined cars. In this I fear the ACO have really shot themselves in the foot. Although two teams have previously tried to take advantage of the benefits awarded a CI engine, they were both underfunded privateer efforts. When Audi retired the R8 it was clear their next car would be diesel powered. Of course Audi has the budget to do the job properly and do all the testing necessary to make an innovative engine and gearbox combo reliable engough for the 24 hours.

{ Read More... }

/ one comment / § ¶

Sauber Group C car for sale

18 February 2006 - 17:24

It's amazing how many racecars make it onto the open market - even competitive Formula 1 cars can be bought for a lot less than most people would think. It's more a question of what you'd do with it once you'd bought it. Anyway, there's currently a Sauber Mercedes group C Le Mans car up for auction. OK, it's located in Florida and it's in pieces. And the lawyers are currently arguing about who really owns it. But imagine getting that up and running again for historic Group-c races - re-live the spirit of Le Mans!

Yes, this car was made by the same Sauber team that was sold to BMW last year. They raced sportscars for Mercedes before entering Formula 1 and bringing Mercedes back into Grand Prix racing (although in reality the engines were actually manufactured by Ilmor). Oh, and did I mention it was driven by Michael Schumacher before he entered Formula 1 with Jordan (who increadibly was paid by Mercedes Motorsport to give Schumacher his first F1 drive).

/ two comments / § ¶

Schumacher and Brawn to own F1 team?

18 February 2006 - 16:21

Eddie Jordan thinks that Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn could abandon Ferrari when their contracts expire at the end of this year and either start their own F1 team, or even take over Renault and run it as a privateer operation [longer story here for Autosport.com subscribers]. This comment is made by Jordan in the next issue of F1 Racing magazine.

Not having seen the full article yet, it's not clear what exactly leads Eddie Jordan to think this, whether he's heard anything specific or if he just thinks it would be a good idea. Unlike a lot of the idle speculation about ex-drivers buying into teams (remember the stories about Eddie Irvine wanting to buy Jordan and then Minardi?), this one makes a lot more sense. Firstly, both Schumacher and Brawn (particularly Schumacher) have become very wealthy as a result of their time at Ferrari and could afford a large percentage of the equity of an existing team. And with their reputations they would likely find it pretty easy to attract any additional investment they might need. If they bought Renault they would effectively be moving home back to the Benetton setup they left in 1996. Moreover they would be buying a team that knows how to win not just races but also championships. This makes it a much better proposition than when Alain Prost bought Ligier or if Eddie Irvine had bought Minardi.

Add onto that the Ross Brawn knows exactly what it takes to make a championship winning car. There are questions over whether Schumacher would be interested in being a team principle - performing Jean Todt's job at Ferrari - he's shown little interest in continuing his career in motorsport once his F1 driving days are over. There's no doubt in my mind though that if he was motivated to take on such a challenge, that he would be successful at it. Although Prost was a very successful driver, he didn't have the iron will that Schumacher does. Schumacher knows how to build a team around him even when he's not the owner or principle and no team-mate has ever got the better of him. That wasn't the case with Prost who was psyched out by Senna when they shared the duties at McLaren.

This is all just idle speculation though. Brawn has already said that he wants to retire from Formula 1 and is certainly wealthy enough that he never has to work again. Schumacher even more so can do whatever he wants with his life. If he desires the challenge of running a winning car then maybe he'll look into it but it seems unlikely. Although many team bosses raced cars in some capacity, the ones that stuck with team management the longest and had the most success, had little success as drivers. Conversely the best drivers who went on to run teams had little to only moderate success in Formula 1: Fittipaldi, Prost, Stewart; Jack Brabham won a world championship in his eponymous car, but sold the team to a driver of little note - Bernie Ecclestone - when he retired from driving. Bruce McLaren scored only one F1 championship win in his 37 drives for McLaren. Their success came under the direction of Ron Dennis - never a racing driver.

/ two comments / § ¶

McLaren Pimps Kimi's Ride!

15 February 2006 - 15:42

OK, I'm a bit late with this one, but I couldn't resist putting this together when I saw the new McLaren livery featuring enough chrome to impress even the most fly 'G' :)

McLaren claim to have been working on this special chrome paint finish for six months in order to make it suitable for Formula 1 cars. Mercedes did use it last year on Alesi's DTM car, but I guess this could be a different technology. Anyway it looks more interesting than the metallic grey they've been using in place of a real silver effect.

Now we just wait for the other team's drivers to complain about being blinded by the reflections from it....

/ four comments / § ¶

The poor state of Formula 1 team websites

14 February 2006 - 17:27

I'm cross-posting this to the Exaflop Technology Blog as well as The Racing Blog because although it's about Formula 1 websites specifically, the principles apply to all corporate websites.

Robert Scoble is famous for saying that if your marketing website doesn't have an RSS feed you should be fired. He's taken a lot of criticism for that stance and when I first read it I wasn't convinced it was that big a deal. However, I was recently compiling a list of Formula 1 team websites and was disappointed to find that only one of them had an RSS feed for it's news page. So I guess I'm now a believer.

For those not familiar with Formula 1 racing, there are currently 11 teams. All teams are required to design and manufacture their own cars (the engine may be bought in) to very high standards of both performance and safety. There are 18 races this year in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Annual budgets range from $40M to $300M and staff levels from around 100 to over 1000. 6 of the 11 teams are owned by or closely allied to major motor car manufacturers. So this is a big global business - a long way from the likes of Champcar or IRL - and only the best will do for even the smallest of F1 operations. Even the manufacturer owned teams depend on external sponsorship and sponsors require maximum exposure in order to justify the money they hand over. That makes every chance to expose and promote their sponsors very important to the teams. So you'd think they would put a lot of effort into their web presence....

Well in a way they do. Almost all the sites are slickly produced by experienced web design agencies. Unfortunately these design agencies seem most intent on fulfilling a brief that was penned by someone who knows nothing about web usability or even good web marketing - as long as it looks pretty on this person's screen, they are happy.

The following is a table of woe. As you can see, only Renault have an RSS feed for the news section of their website. Many of the websites are all-flash affairs. Now I don't object to the use of flash on a website, but if the entire site is one big flash file it makes it impossible to bookmark pages, navigate using the standard back and forward buttons, or copy/paste from press releases etc. And that's without going into many of the accessability issues that web-standards fanatics like to go on about. Those sites that avoid the all-flash fate then have a chance to fail by using Frames is such a way as to make the bookmarking of individual pages almost impossible.

Team Name (link)	RSS Feed	All Flash	Bookmarkable pages
Renault F1	X	-	X
McLaren	-	-	-
Williams	-	-	X
BMW Sauber	-	X	-
Ferrari	-	X	-
Red Bull	-	X	-
Midland F1	-	-	X
Scuderia Toro Rosso	-	X	-
Toyota F1	-	-	X
Honda	-	-	X
Super Aguri F1	-	?	?

Renault F1 is the only team to come out with full marks - fittingly for the 2005 world champions! Williams, Midland F1, Toyota F1 and Honda are almost as good, they just need to add an RSS feed so fans can keep up with their news more easily. The rest should hang their heads in shame, sack their current web partners and start again.

[Note: Super Aguri F1 haven't really got a website yet - they're got their work cut out getting a car ready for the start of the season being the new boys for 2006 - so I'm not rating them yet.]

/ one comment / § ¶

Scuderia Toro Rosso news

09 February 2006 - 17:50

Undoubtedly the story of the day is that Gerhard Berger is to become joint owner of Scuderia Toro Rosso (from hereforth to be known as STR for bevity's sake). The deal is a stock-swap with Red Bull getting 50% of Berger's shipping company and Berger's motorsport company getting 50% of STR. This makes Gerhard Berger the first ex-driver to try his hand at team management since the collapse of Prost in 2001. Of course STR is in a far more stable situation than Prost was - although with a 50/50 deal we wouldn't expect Red Bull to constantly pour money into the team for no reason, they will recieve money from Red Bull for running the two Red Bull drivers and carrying their sponsorship on the car. That will give them a fixed and stable budget to work with - something only manufacturer owned or backed teams usually have.

The other thing that happened today is that the first STR car was revealed. Basically it's the old Red Bull car from last year with some modifications. They will claim it's a new car to satisfy the other teams (under the terms of the Concorde Agreement that governs F1, teams must construct their own car), but it's only different in a few select areas as far as I can see: the sidepods now have a modest undercut and the leading edge of the floor has a different aero treatment where the bargeboards attach). What's really telling is that STR are running a V10 engine with a restrictor plate under the temporary engine rules for 2006. They knew this since the rules were announced early last year so if they were designing a new car from scratch they would have made the air intake smaller to account for the restrictor. If you look at a photo that shows the air intake you can see that it is much bigger than the restrictor. That imposes an aerodynamic drag that could have been avoided. The roll-over structure that incorporates the air intake is almost impossible to change on a car without starting from scratch.

It remains to be seen if any of the other teams will protest the STR car for not being original. The most likely candidate would be Midland. Their sporting director Colin Kolles launched a stinging attack on STR already, stating his belief that the V10 equivalency formula was only put in place for Minardi and since STR is no longer Minardi and can afford to buy regulation V8s, they shouldn't be allowed to compete with the V10. Expect more political drama at the first round like we had last year.

/ No comments / § ¶

Heikki Blogging

09 February 2006 - 13:42

If you didn't already subscribe to the Renault F1 team blog that we mentioned recently, you might want to check it out now as test driver Heikki Kovalainen has just posted his first blog entry with the promise of more to come. It's nothing earth shattering, but it gives you an idea of what's involved in being an F1 test driver. He descibes flying home from the Valencia test on Ryanair - I bet you all thought they had private jets! :)

Renault's busy PR dept. also published a mini-interview with Heikki on their blog yesterday.

/ No comments / § ¶

Belgium Grand Prix is off for 2006

08 February 2006 - 10:13

We previously mentioned the speculation regarding the future of the Belgium GP for the 2006 season. Now it's official - Belgium had been removed from the 2006 calendar by the FIA making it an 18 race season (to the relief of team personel we assume).

The race was previously left of the calendar in 2003 after a row about the Belgium government's unilateral introduction of a ban on tobacco sponsorship. Before 2003 the race was promoted by one of Bernie's own companies (chaired by his wife). Spa was sorely missed though and with cooperation from the Belgium government, the race was back on the calendar for 2004. The terms of the deal, we are told, ensured that FOM would get their money for the race regardless over what happened with the contract guaranteed by the local government of the Wallonia region where the circuit is located. Arguments over local taxes (Spa is half in one local region, half in another and they both wanted to tax it), poor attendance and the high fee charged by FOM lead to the new promoter of the race, Didier Dufourny, filing for bankrupcy after losing a reported €15M on the 2005 race.

Bernie has since stepped in to promote the race again, but the poor state of facilites at the circuit for both teams and fans meant work needed to be done to keep his highness happy. It's now been concluded that there isn't enough time left to complete the extensive renovations demanded and so the race is off.

Spa Francorchamps has long been the fan's favourite circuit, to watch on TV anyway, and it was sorely missed in 2003. However, the 2004 and 2005 races were not classics and we now have the Istanbul round competing to be fan favourite with it's infamous turn 8 claiming many drivers during the inaugural 2005 race. That along with complaints about the 19 race season being too long, maybe it's not such a disaster that Spa is off the calendar again.

/ No comments / § ¶

A1GP: Fittipaldi replaces Nelsinho

07 February 2006 - 19:20

I only mentioned the other day that there might be some tension in the pits of A1GP team Brasil due to some highly negative comments made by Nelson Piquet about the Grand Prix Masters (which Team Brasil's boss Emerson Fittipaldi raced in last year). Today we hear that Nelson Piquet junior will not be racing for Brazil in forthcomming A1GP rounds - his place will be taken by Emmerson's son Christian Fittipaldi. We are told this is because of Nelsinho's committments in GP2, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was more down to friction between the two world champion fathers than it is about the availability of their sons to race.

/ No comments / § ¶

Two of the best quotes ever

06 February 2006 - 18:05

I'm cross-posting this to my personal blog as well as to The Racing Blog because I think these quotes are so great they deserve a bigger audience even though they are both from the world of motor-sport.

I mentioned the Ask Nigel collumn on Autosport.com before where he answers questions submitted by readers. In one question he's asked if it is "fair" that Valentino Rossi should be able to jump straight into Formula 1 with a top team when other drivers have built their whole careers on getting that same seat. It's not the answer to that question that got my attention though, it's the quote from Frank Williams..

Frank Williams said, years ago, after the death (from cancer) of 28-year-old Gunnar Nilsson, "Don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair - life is not fair, and the sooner you accept that that's the case, the easier it will be for you."

What I like about that quote is that he doesn't just say "life isn't fair, deal with it" like a lot of people do, he says "don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair". He's telling you accept the unfairness for your own benefit. Lets not forget that aside from his experience with Gunnar Nilsson, Williams himself was left paralysed from a car accident in 1986 and has gone on running his Formula 1 team with great success from a wheelchair. He is truely an inspiration, not only in what he's achieved, but in the outlook on life that's let his achieve it.

The other quote is from Nigel Roebuck's 'Fifth Column' in Autosport magazine. I don't know whether he's quoting someone else or whether he came up with this himself, but it's a good one. Talking about Ron Dennis signing Fernando Alonso to drive for his McLaren team in 2007 - a whole year ahead of his becoming available, he said "Long ago Ron Dennis realised that the things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first."

I don't take that to mean you should go out and grab whatever you can, hoarde it and stuff everyone else. What I think it means is when you have an opportunity to do something great, don't spent too much time worrying about whether it's the right thing or whether it's a classy thing to do. Just do it!

/ No comments / § ¶

Don't expect to see Piquet in the Grand Prix Masters

06 February 2006 - 17:03

The first ever race in the Grand Prix Masters took place last November to much fanfare. It received a lot of positive press and feedback from fans (in terms of message board postings and letters to magazines) was mostly positive. Nelson Piquet didn't take part in that first race in Kyalami which was won by his arch-rival Nigel Mansel. The news over the weekend is: don't expect to see Piquet in GPM any time soon.

Nigel Roebuck in his "ask Nigel" column on Autosport.com has been asked about other drivers and whether they might enter (John Watson and Carlos Reutemann). He assumed they'd been asked, but declined privately for various reasons. Nelson Piquet though has been quite forthcoming about his reasons for not joining the series. He regards his racing days as over (and presumably thinks the same about the other GPM drivers) and thinks the only reason to race in GPM is money. It's pretty harsh stuff although he stopped short of criticising the standard of driving in the first race, which I thought was pretty poor after Nigel and runner-up Emmerson Fittipaldi. In the interview Piquet goes on to brag about how he doesn't need the money on offer because of the success of his satellite tracking company - "Personally, I'm making a lot more than when I used to race in F1. In the next five years, I will gain double what Michael Schumacher has made in his entire career."

I wonder how Emmerson feels about Piquet's comments. Fittipaldi is the team principle of the Brazillian entry in A1GP which is driven by Nelson Piquet Junior all three of them were doing press for the first A1GP round at Brands Hatch last year (which was won by Nelsinho). Maybe the Brasil garage will be a bit frostier this weekend at the Indonesian round.

/ No comments / § ¶

McLaren Staff Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Ferrari)

02 February 2006 - 18:39

I mentioned the other day that there were rumours flying about senior staff at McLaren departing. McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh claimed that the two staff members in question would not be leaving, then that they would not be leaving untill the end of the year. Red Bull have confirmed they have signed Peter Prodromou and now Ferrari have announced they have contracted Nicholas Tombazis and he will start next month.

Tombazis was Chief of Aerodynaics at Ferrari previously and joined McLaren in the same position in 2004 before being promoted to Chief of Vehicle Projects. He rejoins Ferrari as Cheif Designer, replacing Aldo Costa (designer of the troublesome F2005) who gets a 'promotion' to Head of Design and Development Department, whatever that means.

We keep hearing how the departure of Adrian Newey won't affect McLaren due to the "matrix system" that he put in place to avoid critical dependencies on individuals. Even so, you can only lose so many tallented members of staff before you start to suffer and Ron Dennis knows as well as anyone that even if someone doesn't want to work for you any more, it's still in your interest to keep ahold of them to avoid them working for a competitor. He tried that with Newey, to stop him going to Jaguar a few years ago - offering Newey his choice of job description to stay at McLaren. Evidently he couldn't do the same with Tombazis. By the looks of it, Ferrari are doing the same with Aldo Costa - I mean I don't doubt that there is useful work he can do in managing the design department, but he's clearly no longer the man they want designing the cars.

/ No comments / § ¶

Renault launch team blog

02 February 2006 - 10:20

Renault F1 have added to what is already one of the best team websites by starting both a blog and a regular podcast. The blog isn't really saying much right now but it should get more interesting during the season. Of course it's PR - they're not giving away any secrets - but it's interesting that Renault are aiming at least some of their PR at the fans instead of the mainstream media - who let's face it, write pretty much the same stuff week after week regardless. In that sense it's much appreciated. Renault also engaged the fans via the Atlas-F1 bulletin board in comments made to a thread about the R26 (look for comments by username 'bpl' starting on the second page).

/ No comments / § ¶

Super Aguri shows off definitive bodywork

28 February 2006 - 17:20

Super Aguri ran a brief shakedown test a Silverstone today (Tuesday) and in the processs gave us the first look at the car they will start the 2006 season with. They've made all the changes I identified in a previous posting. The surpsise is how extensive the changes are. When you consider that this is only an interim car, their fabricators and aerodynamicists have been very busy. PItpass once again has a gallery from the test (which also included MF1). The changes as far as I can tell from the photos are:-

• Front-wing and nose: The front-wing is raised the regulation 15cm above the reference plane. As I predicted (when I thought the changes would be minimal), they kept the front-wing as-is and shortened the mounting to the nosecone. Surprisingly they've got a new nosecone. The new one has a slight droop at the tip. It's hard to imagine that droop - still far above the actual wing and far forward of the flap (compare with the Williams) - has much effect on the efficiency of the wing itslef. Did they have to make new nosecones to comply with increased crash-test requirements? (I'll have to check on that). It seems a strange use of resources otherwise, given how simplistic the front-wing is by current F1 standards. I predict they will be very short on front downforce with no spoon section in the centre of the wing, and with no add-on wings like the Renault or a second flap like the McLaren.
• Bodywork between the front wheels is raised by 5cm. This not only looses the lowest part of the twin keels, but also the small horizontal shelf at the bottom of them as well as a small turning vane mounted between that and the front of the main bargeboards. UPDATED: I've now seen photos of the car with the wheels removed and these parts are still there, just mounted higher.
  
• The rear wing is completely revised with the mainplane moving forward as per 2005 rule changes and the deeper endplates as per 2004 rule changes. There is a single flap also as per 2004 rules and the obligatory notch out of the endplate behind the flap. There are none of the now fashionable drag-reducing slots in the endplates ahead of the flap and the wing elements are two dimensional. This is to be expected - short on wind-tunnel time to fine-tune the interim bodywork and being short on front-end downforce anyway, the rear wing hasn't had the detailed design of other cars.
• The outter channels of the diffuser are now reduced in height as-per 2005 regulations. Although there aren't any photos of the rear of the car available (why is that, do photographers think nobody will be interested in the back or do they just get bored by the time the car has passed them?), you can now see daylight between the rear wheels and the central diffuser section from the side view.
• By far the biggest surprise is the revisions between the front and back of the car. The engine cover complies with the 2004 silhouette rule as expected. There is also a maximum-width airbox wing (not in some of the photos but it is in the autosport.com gallery).
• The sidepods are extensively revised as per contemporary trends. There is a small and somewhat inexplicable shoulder winglet at the top-outter leading edge of the sidepod, the sidepods are undercut quite significantly (compare with the definitive Toyota TF106B bodywork). The bodywork around the radiators is wrapped almost as tightly as many new 2006 cars and there is also a full array of winglets ahead of the rear wheels. Also featured is a large chimney. This was taped off for the Silverstone test due to the very cold weather here. If they can open that up for Bahrain it should leave them with enough cooling. The original Arrows bodywork didn't feature chimneys so I assume all cooling was from the rear - not possible with the tighter bodywork of the SA05.

In all then I'd have to say I'm surprised and impressed with the work Super Aguri have been able to accomplish in the short time available. While the front-wing is disappointing and the rear-wing not as developed as the competition (even at the back of the field), the central bodywork looks impressive. Whether it works as well as it looks is another thing entirely. The final Minardi - the PS05 - had some pretty contemporary bodywork last year and still struggled to beat a two year old Jordan (admittedly with a more powerful engine).

That Minardi suffered from a dire lack of wind-tunnel time and I expect the SA05 will be in the same position. It's not clear if Super Aguri received wind-tunnel models with the cars they bought from Paul Stoddart. If they didn't they surely wouldn't have spent the money to have one made and there probably wouldn't have been time to anyway. WIthout models all you can do is put the actual car in a full-size wind-tunnel (like the one at MIRA) and make up a few full-size parts and see how they work out. Thus, the large parts like the engine cover were likely designed "by eye" with the wings and winglets recieving the most development time.

I still think reliability will be the biggest concern for Super Aguri. Everyone expects them to be at the tail of the field with this car, so the most important thing will be to stay on track as long as possible to maximise their exposure (and to be fair, they will learn more as a team as well). With the strength of the Honda engine and the posibility that the new bodywork is effective, there is the slightest of chances that SA may outpace MF1, but it seems unlikely. Still, given the effort they have clearly put in to this car, I wish them all the best.

/ No comments / § ¶

Qualifying as "the show" - A1GP shows the way

25 February 2006 - 16:45

Over the past couple of years there has been an immense amount of talk about qualifying in Formula 1. The 2006 season sees the replacement of the unloved single-lap qualy format with a new and compelx system. I won't go into the details here, others have covered the details as well as the compelx strategies that the format will drive from the teams.

What bothers me is: why do we need such a complex qualifying system? The answer given by all those in favour of changing from the single-lap system was that it would "improve the show". It's true that the single-lap qualifying introduced in 2003 was very dull. As far as I remember the reason was that the small teams complained (read: Paul Stoddart complained), that they weren't getting enough TV time for their sponsors. Nothing much could be done about that in the race (it's the TV director's decision who to watch), but if the cars went one at a time in qualifying all teams would get equal airtime there at least. I seem to remember that there was also some spin back then about single-lap qualy improving the show because viewers would be able to see every qualifying lap in full unlike the old free-for-all qualifying. For 2003 only there was also the re-introduction of Friday qualifying which had been redundant since the number of teams dropped below the maximum grid size.

{ Read More... }

/ five comments / § ¶

Should F1 be a fuel efficiency formula? (NO!)

23 February 2006 - 15:27

As well as proposing a three year freeze on engine development from 2008 to 2010, FIA president Max Mosley has also touted the idea of scrapping current engine regulations in favour of a maximum amount of fuel per race from 2011 onwards. This "fuel efficiency" formula was proposed by the late Keith Duckworth. There are many reasons why this is a terrible idea but they fall into two main categories: The impact on racing and the cost of it all.

{ Read More... }

/ four comments / § ¶

More on 2008 rule proposals: Aerodynamics

22 February 2006 - 15:36

Another thing that's in the FIA's proposals for 2008 is bodywork homologation. Although they are not planning to make teams run the same cars for three seasons, the proposal is almost as bad, allowing them to only change the bodywork two times per season. God only knows how this is supposed to help with costs or competitiveness of the series. Perhaps they have the naive idea that if teams are only allowed to change the bodywork twice, that they'll do less development work in their wind tunnels.

Of course they won't. They'll still make many iterations of bodywork and test them both in wind-tunnels and at private tests away from races. And what's worse is that without the ability to measure their car's performance against the competition with each iteration of bodywork at races, they won't know how much of an improvement is enough. Instead of being more conservative with their development spending, they will be forced to spend everything they can for fear of being left behind, knowing that whatever new parts they bring to the race, they'll be stuck with for the next half season.

Fortunately Max Mosley says that this idea is unlikely to make it into the final regulations for 2008 onwards. Another controversial rule proposal is apparently unlikely to make it - that of "maximum downforce". Mosley says:-

It's interesting. A lot of people don't like what they call 'the bridge of doom'. The idea is you simply put weight on the car and, say, the maximum amount of weight allowed is 12,000 newtons and if it doesn't touch the ground it's illegal. You then make a nice rubber plank under the car, so if they do run it on the ground the cars will be seriously retarded. There are all sorts of things they could do to cause trouble.

But one, it's unpopular; two, it's more work for us; but three and most importantly, they wouldn't be working on downforce, but they would still be working on what is important, the ratio of drag to downforce, so you wouldn't solve the problem.

The only thing we could do is make a list of what they call interesting areas and try to eliminate them. But as fast as we get rid of them, they will find others. What we need to do is make sure the man who has the $100 million wind tunnel doesn't have a huge advantage over the man who doesn't.

Firstly I don't think anyone in F1 has a $100M wind tunnel. Although wind tunnels cost a lot of money, the cost of running a wind tunnel 24 hours a day for most of the year totally eclipses the cost of the tunnel itself. That aside, he is right to be suspicious of the impact of a maximum downforce rule. There is a parallel in Le Mans cars where engine power is restricted using an intake restrictor plate and so engine builders spend all their resources working in reducing internal friction instead. With a maximum downforce rule, teams would put the same resrouces into reducing drag. I don't have time to go into this right now (I promise to write an extensive article on overtaking in F1 at some point), but the ongoing reduction of drag in Formula 1 is one of the main contributors to a lack of overtaking and so encouraging it in the rules seems like a bad idea to me.

/ three comments / § ¶

Standard ECUs for Formula 1

22 February 2006 - 15:08

Cost saving goes beyond just the engine. The FIA also want a spec ECU (electronic control unit) from 2008 and today put out a tender for the supply of such a unit having many functions. The electronics are another area that is very expensive with many, but not all, teams manufacturing their own systems from scratch or having custom units made by suppiers such as Magneti Marelli. Renault were particularly proud last season with their unified electronics that combined engine and chassis electronics in a a single unit. Meanwhile the only bit of the electronics the fans get to see is the lights on the steering wheel.

The manufacturer teams hate the idea of a spec ECU. I'd wager that the independent teams aren't so bothered as they would tend to buy their electronics in anyway, although they might do custom programming of traction control or active differential algorithms. According the Mosley in that massive interview I mentioned previously, the spec ECU will allow the teams to create custom ignition and fuel maps for their engines, but will not allow the software to be altered. This may finally allow to the FIA to ban traction control in a way that can be verified with no allegations of cheating. There is no doubt that it will effectively ban any innovation that requires electronic control as the FIA are intent that this will be the only electronic unit allowed in the car (other than transponders and radios that have specific controlled functions).

/ No comments / § ¶

More on engine homologation and costs.

22 February 2006 - 13:18

I worte previously about how engine homologation was not the answer to Formula 1's cost problems. To clarify, I wouldn't say that I'm any more in favour of a spec engine in F1 than I am in favour of an homologation period of several years for engine designs, but clearly something has to be done about costs and the engine represents a large part of the team budget that goes on something that makes very little difference. If you're going to effectively eliminate competition on the engine front, you might as well go all the way and some real benefits.

The real problem is that we now know too much. There was a golden era when smart people like Keith Duckworth (of Cosworth fame) could make considerable advances on a small budget (by current standards anyway). Now every advance is tiny and the cost ranges from considerable to increadible. As such you really have to question the point of continuing competition in englnes in motorsport. There isn't any category I can think of that allows for different engine designs without rules that constrain their development severely in the interests of safety or competition or costs. You could make an argument in the case of series like World Rally Cars or World Touring Cars where the car is ostensibly based on a production car, that the engine needs to be based on the model used in the production car. But that's not the case with Formula 1, Le Mans prototypes or many other forms of motorsport.

/ No comments / § ¶

Women drivers are the new, erm, black

21 February 2006 - 18:29

In addition to the headline grabbing Danica Patrick in IRL, Champcar now has Katherine Legge racing for Jimmy Vasser's PKV Racing and Vanina Ickx has joined DTM for 2006. Are there any more to come? Is having a female driver now an essential? I'd really love to see a competitive female driver in Formula 1, if only to make Bernie Ecclestone eat his words.

Katherine Legge tested for Minardi last year just before Paul Stoddart handed the team over to Red Bull. It was seen as a publicity stunt at the time, a not too many more people were convinced it was for real when she tested for PKV Racing the next week. So with the drive in the bag, it'll be interesting to see what she does this year. I know Champcar is a long way from the performance of contemporary Formula 1, but I'd like to think if she does well she might get a drive with a publicity hungry team. Alas, it's just a dream really - if Sébastien Bordais can't convert his Champcar success to F1, what chance does Katherine have?

Vanina Ickx is daughter of Grand Prix and Le Mans legend Jacky Ickx. She has mostly sportscar experience having driven in the FIA GT series as well as Le Mans. Unfortunately she hasn't landed a competitive drive in DTM - Vanina will drive for (Midland F1 boss) Colin Kolles's team in a 2004 customer Audi A4. Autosport report that Scottish driver Susie Stoddart (no relation to Aussie Paul) is a possible for a drive with Mercedes.

/ two comments / § ¶

Super Aguri makes public test debut

21 February 2006 - 17:05

F1 new-boys Super Aguri tested their interim car in public for the first time today in Barcelona. As everyone must have read by now, SA are planning to run a pair of modified Arrows A23 chassis fitted with the Honda V8 engine and 2006 regulation-compilant aero, until their definitive car (presumably based on a BAR design) is ready.

Pitpass has a gallery of shots from the Barcelona test and you can see from them that the car is still running it's 2002 aero package. They presumably are just wanting to test their mechanical modifications before they start testing new aero parts. The following is a list of changes that will be required:-

• Raise front wing - outter sections must be 15cm above the reference plane, central 50cm can be a low as 5cm above the reference plane. It is likely given the constraints on the team that they will just shorten the pylons that attach the wing to the nosecone and leave the wing itself as-is. This is what Jordan did at the start of the 2005 season for example.
• Remove lower 5cm of other bodywork between the front wheels. The one new aero rule for 2006 means that bodywork ahead of the mandatory flat-bottom must be 5cm above the reference plane. The Arrows A23 was the most extreme of cars designed when twin-keel suspension was in vogue with it's very high nose and twin keels extending down to the floor level to form a tunnel of sorts. It looks from the photos that the lower part of those keels is an add-on piece that can be changed or removed altogether.
• The silhouette of the engine cover needs to be larger. 2004 saw the introduction of two rules that changed the looks of the cars more than their performance. One of those rules prescribed a minimum area to be occupied by the engine cover when viewed from the side. It looks to me like the A23 doesn't meet current requirements even though it wasn't the most agressively small of designs fielded in 2002. Super Aguri will need to add a fin to the engine cover to bring it up to the regulation size.
• The side channels of the diffuser need to be lowered to the maximum height introduced in 2005 of 125cm. In theory they could just fill in the extra height to comply with the rules, but this would impose an excessive weight and drag penalty. They will want to make a new rear floor section to comply with the current rules. In their favour is that with the diffuser rules now stating that the whole of the floor in that area must be visible from below, a lot of the very intricate designs of the past are no longer possible. Thus, Super Aguri are not placed in such a bad possition.
  
• The rear wing is all wrong at present. On the A23 it is too far rearward, the endpates are not deep enough and it has three elements (two flaps) in the upper section. It's most likely the team will have to make an all new rear wing. 2004 brought the second of those largely cosmetic rules stating that the rear wing endplates had to occupy a minimum area. It also restricted the upper part of the rear wing to two elements in an effort to reduce downforce. Lastly, in 2005 the whole rear wing had to be moved forward, again in an effort to reduce downforce.

The test didn't go too well for Super Aguri with Taku-san only completing 3 laps before the car broke down with a hydraulics problem. They made it back out later in the day to do an additional 5 laps but Sato's best time was a massive 13 seconds off the pace of the fastest man of the day - Mark Webber in the Williams Cosworth. Hopefully they have a better day on Wednesday - if they're that slow with the 2002 aero package, I dread to think how far behind they'll be with the hacked-up aero that's compliant with 2006 rules. That new car can't come soon enough.

/ No comments / § ¶

Engine homologation is not the answer for F1

20 February 2006 - 18:08

Last Monday, Max Mosley gave a dinner for journalists to give them his view on motorsport and presumably how wonderful a job he's doing of managing it. Last Thursday Autosport.com carried a lengthy interview with Max by Jonathan Noble. It was actually very interesting and contained many surprises, at least for me, that haven't been widely reported. He admits mistakes over rule changes and also that some of the proposed rules for 2008 probably won't make it in. He also makes clear the FIA's new policy towards car manufacturers, at least in F1. I'll probably get a few more blog posting out of that interview, but for now I want to talk about one of the things that has got some attention from the press.

That is the subject of homologation, or "freezing" for people who find homologation too long a word to type. Max argues (quite convincingly for the most part) that by the time 2008 rolls around, two-race V8 engines will have been around long enough that most of the designs will be at approximately the same performance level. Therefore they can save the cost of a works engine programme for three years by homologating the design of each engine at the start of 2008 and until the end of 2010, all engines made by a particular manufacturer will be of the same design and secification as that homologated. Thus teams will spend the bucks to build enough of these very expensive engines for races and testing, but will save the much greater cost of developing newer, more powerful designs over that period. Max claims that engines for one team would cost about €8M to actually build, but that manufacturers are currently spending between €100M and €200M on their engine programmes.

That sounds great, saving all that money. But you have to wonder about the logic of it all. For homologation to be acceptable, the engines would have to be of roughly the same specification. If one manufacturer goes into the 'freeze' period with a 50bhp power deficit and they're stuck with that for three years, they might think twice about staying in the sport. If we then assume that the engines are equal then you have to question why on earth we would bother having 7 or 8 different manufacturers, why not just have one spec engine like Champcar and IRL now have? And of course if you have only one engine, you can find a much cheaper way to make that 750bhp target power that the FIA regards as safe. How about a nice 5 litre V10 for example? No need then for pneumatic valve systems or exotic surface coatings, thin-wall investment castings or anything remotely expensive. You could get the per-season cost of a team's engines down below €1M that way.

So why don't they? Because it takes away the central conceit of multi-make racing: That the equipment made by one manufacturer is better or worse than that made by another, and that the fans somehow care about that.

In the case of engines I have my doubts. Of course we couldn't have a McLaren Mercedes battling a Williams BMW in a world where all the cars used the same engine. But with the realisation that the engine doesn't play such a huge part in the performance of a modern F1 car, manufacturers are moving towards running their own teams rather than supplying branded engines. This is a return to the pre-garagista days where you had works Mercedes cars battling Porsches, Maseratis and Alfas. Now you have Toyota, Honda, BMW and Renault with their own teams and Mercedes owns a large percentage of McLaren. Williams would be happy to be just Williams if it meant they would save a lot of money and so would Midland F1 I'd wager and of course the two Red Bull teams are there to advertise a soft drink - the manufacturer of the engine couldn't matter less to them.

If you accept that both performance and costs have to be curtailed somehow, the only other argument against a common spec engine is that with it you have somehow lost some of the interest of the ongoing battle between manufacturers and that they wouldn't have a way to show off their engineering prowess. However, that opportunity has already gone mostly under the current rules with their prescription of cylinder count, v-angle, bore spacing, materials, weight and even centre-of-gravity height. The intention of the 2006 regulations is to deter innovation in as many areas as possible. The intention of homologation is remove innovation altogether for three years. And with innovation gone, so is the battle between manufacturers that they believe the fans want to see.

/ one comment / § ¶

Mulsanne Mike talks about the Audi R10

18 February 2006 - 18:27

Mike Fuller, aka "Mulsanne" Mike of the excellent sportscar website Mulsanne's Corner, was interviewed recently by Steve Wilson of Highlands Today about the Audi R10. It's worth a read if you're at all interested in the car that is likely to dominate Le Mans in the same way the Audi R8 did for years.

Since I haven't talked about Le Mans prototypes on this blog up to now I should get down my feelings about the ACO's current rules and the involvement of Audi in the event. The rules for LMP1 give CI (compression ignitiion or diesel) engined cars a number of significant advantages over SI (spark ignition) engined cars. In this I fear the ACO have really shot themselves in the foot. Although two teams have previously tried to take advantage of the benefits awarded a CI engine, they were both underfunded privateer efforts. When Audi retired the R8 it was clear their next car would be diesel powered. Of course Audi has the budget to do the job properly and do all the testing necessary to make an innovative engine and gearbox combo reliable engough for the 24 hours.

{ Read More... }

/ one comment / § ¶

Sauber Group C car for sale

18 February 2006 - 17:24

It's amazing how many racecars make it onto the open market - even competitive Formula 1 cars can be bought for a lot less than most people would think. It's more a question of what you'd do with it once you'd bought it. Anyway, there's currently a Sauber Mercedes group C Le Mans car up for auction. OK, it's located in Florida and it's in pieces. And the lawyers are currently arguing about who really owns it. But imagine getting that up and running again for historic Group-c races - re-live the spirit of Le Mans!

Yes, this car was made by the same Sauber team that was sold to BMW last year. They raced sportscars for Mercedes before entering Formula 1 and bringing Mercedes back into Grand Prix racing (although in reality the engines were actually manufactured by Ilmor). Oh, and did I mention it was driven by Michael Schumacher before he entered Formula 1 with Jordan (who increadibly was paid by Mercedes Motorsport to give Schumacher his first F1 drive).

/ two comments / § ¶

Schumacher and Brawn to own F1 team?

18 February 2006 - 16:21

Eddie Jordan thinks that Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn could abandon Ferrari when their contracts expire at the end of this year and either start their own F1 team, or even take over Renault and run it as a privateer operation [longer story here for Autosport.com subscribers]. This comment is made by Jordan in the next issue of F1 Racing magazine.

Not having seen the full article yet, it's not clear what exactly leads Eddie Jordan to think this, whether he's heard anything specific or if he just thinks it would be a good idea. Unlike a lot of the idle speculation about ex-drivers buying into teams (remember the stories about Eddie Irvine wanting to buy Jordan and then Minardi?), this one makes a lot more sense. Firstly, both Schumacher and Brawn (particularly Schumacher) have become very wealthy as a result of their time at Ferrari and could afford a large percentage of the equity of an existing team. And with their reputations they would likely find it pretty easy to attract any additional investment they might need. If they bought Renault they would effectively be moving home back to the Benetton setup they left in 1996. Moreover they would be buying a team that knows how to win not just races but also championships. This makes it a much better proposition than when Alain Prost bought Ligier or if Eddie Irvine had bought Minardi.

Add onto that the Ross Brawn knows exactly what it takes to make a championship winning car. There are questions over whether Schumacher would be interested in being a team principle - performing Jean Todt's job at Ferrari - he's shown little interest in continuing his career in motorsport once his F1 driving days are over. There's no doubt in my mind though that if he was motivated to take on such a challenge, that he would be successful at it. Although Prost was a very successful driver, he didn't have the iron will that Schumacher does. Schumacher knows how to build a team around him even when he's not the owner or principle and no team-mate has ever got the better of him. That wasn't the case with Prost who was psyched out by Senna when they shared the duties at McLaren.

This is all just idle speculation though. Brawn has already said that he wants to retire from Formula 1 and is certainly wealthy enough that he never has to work again. Schumacher even more so can do whatever he wants with his life. If he desires the challenge of running a winning car then maybe he'll look into it but it seems unlikely. Although many team bosses raced cars in some capacity, the ones that stuck with team management the longest and had the most success, had little success as drivers. Conversely the best drivers who went on to run teams had little to only moderate success in Formula 1: Fittipaldi, Prost, Stewart; Jack Brabham won a world championship in his eponymous car, but sold the team to a driver of little note - Bernie Ecclestone - when he retired from driving. Bruce McLaren scored only one F1 championship win in his 37 drives for McLaren. Their success came under the direction of Ron Dennis - never a racing driver.

/ two comments / § ¶

McLaren Pimps Kimi's Ride!

15 February 2006 - 15:42

OK, I'm a bit late with this one, but I couldn't resist putting this together when I saw the new McLaren livery featuring enough chrome to impress even the most fly 'G' :)

McLaren claim to have been working on this special chrome paint finish for six months in order to make it suitable for Formula 1 cars. Mercedes did use it last year on Alesi's DTM car, but I guess this could be a different technology. Anyway it looks more interesting than the metallic grey they've been using in place of a real silver effect.

Now we just wait for the other team's drivers to complain about being blinded by the reflections from it....

/ four comments / § ¶

The poor state of Formula 1 team websites

14 February 2006 - 17:27

I'm cross-posting this to the Exaflop Technology Blog as well as The Racing Blog because although it's about Formula 1 websites specifically, the principles apply to all corporate websites.

Robert Scoble is famous for saying that if your marketing website doesn't have an RSS feed you should be fired. He's taken a lot of criticism for that stance and when I first read it I wasn't convinced it was that big a deal. However, I was recently compiling a list of Formula 1 team websites and was disappointed to find that only one of them had an RSS feed for it's news page. So I guess I'm now a believer.

For those not familiar with Formula 1 racing, there are currently 11 teams. All teams are required to design and manufacture their own cars (the engine may be bought in) to very high standards of both performance and safety. There are 18 races this year in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Annual budgets range from $40M to $300M and staff levels from around 100 to over 1000. 6 of the 11 teams are owned by or closely allied to major motor car manufacturers. So this is a big global business - a long way from the likes of Champcar or IRL - and only the best will do for even the smallest of F1 operations. Even the manufacturer owned teams depend on external sponsorship and sponsors require maximum exposure in order to justify the money they hand over. That makes every chance to expose and promote their sponsors very important to the teams. So you'd think they would put a lot of effort into their web presence....

Well in a way they do. Almost all the sites are slickly produced by experienced web design agencies. Unfortunately these design agencies seem most intent on fulfilling a brief that was penned by someone who knows nothing about web usability or even good web marketing - as long as it looks pretty on this person's screen, they are happy.

The following is a table of woe. As you can see, only Renault have an RSS feed for the news section of their website. Many of the websites are all-flash affairs. Now I don't object to the use of flash on a website, but if the entire site is one big flash file it makes it impossible to bookmark pages, navigate using the standard back and forward buttons, or copy/paste from press releases etc. And that's without going into many of the accessability issues that web-standards fanatics like to go on about. Those sites that avoid the all-flash fate then have a chance to fail by using Frames is such a way as to make the bookmarking of individual pages almost impossible.

Team Name (link)	RSS Feed	All Flash	Bookmarkable pages
Renault F1	X	-	X
McLaren	-	-	-
Williams	-	-	X
BMW Sauber	-	X	-
Ferrari	-	X	-
Red Bull	-	X	-
Midland F1	-	-	X
Scuderia Toro Rosso	-	X	-
Toyota F1	-	-	X
Honda	-	-	X
Super Aguri F1	-	?	?

Renault F1 is the only team to come out with full marks - fittingly for the 2005 world champions! Williams, Midland F1, Toyota F1 and Honda are almost as good, they just need to add an RSS feed so fans can keep up with their news more easily. The rest should hang their heads in shame, sack their current web partners and start again.

[Note: Super Aguri F1 haven't really got a website yet - they're got their work cut out getting a car ready for the start of the season being the new boys for 2006 - so I'm not rating them yet.]

/ one comment / § ¶

Scuderia Toro Rosso news

09 February 2006 - 17:50

Undoubtedly the story of the day is that Gerhard Berger is to become joint owner of Scuderia Toro Rosso (from hereforth to be known as STR for bevity's sake). The deal is a stock-swap with Red Bull getting 50% of Berger's shipping company and Berger's motorsport company getting 50% of STR. This makes Gerhard Berger the first ex-driver to try his hand at team management since the collapse of Prost in 2001. Of course STR is in a far more stable situation than Prost was - although with a 50/50 deal we wouldn't expect Red Bull to constantly pour money into the team for no reason, they will recieve money from Red Bull for running the two Red Bull drivers and carrying their sponsorship on the car. That will give them a fixed and stable budget to work with - something only manufacturer owned or backed teams usually have.

The other thing that happened today is that the first STR car was revealed. Basically it's the old Red Bull car from last year with some modifications. They will claim it's a new car to satisfy the other teams (under the terms of the Concorde Agreement that governs F1, teams must construct their own car), but it's only different in a few select areas as far as I can see: the sidepods now have a modest undercut and the leading edge of the floor has a different aero treatment where the bargeboards attach). What's really telling is that STR are running a V10 engine with a restrictor plate under the temporary engine rules for 2006. They knew this since the rules were announced early last year so if they were designing a new car from scratch they would have made the air intake smaller to account for the restrictor. If you look at a photo that shows the air intake you can see that it is much bigger than the restrictor. That imposes an aerodynamic drag that could have been avoided. The roll-over structure that incorporates the air intake is almost impossible to change on a car without starting from scratch.

It remains to be seen if any of the other teams will protest the STR car for not being original. The most likely candidate would be Midland. Their sporting director Colin Kolles launched a stinging attack on STR already, stating his belief that the V10 equivalency formula was only put in place for Minardi and since STR is no longer Minardi and can afford to buy regulation V8s, they shouldn't be allowed to compete with the V10. Expect more political drama at the first round like we had last year.

/ No comments / § ¶

Heikki Blogging

09 February 2006 - 13:42

If you didn't already subscribe to the Renault F1 team blog that we mentioned recently, you might want to check it out now as test driver Heikki Kovalainen has just posted his first blog entry with the promise of more to come. It's nothing earth shattering, but it gives you an idea of what's involved in being an F1 test driver. He descibes flying home from the Valencia test on Ryanair - I bet you all thought they had private jets! :)

Renault's busy PR dept. also published a mini-interview with Heikki on their blog yesterday.

/ No comments / § ¶

Belgium Grand Prix is off for 2006

08 February 2006 - 10:13

We previously mentioned the speculation regarding the future of the Belgium GP for the 2006 season. Now it's official - Belgium had been removed from the 2006 calendar by the FIA making it an 18 race season (to the relief of team personel we assume).

The race was previously left of the calendar in 2003 after a row about the Belgium government's unilateral introduction of a ban on tobacco sponsorship. Before 2003 the race was promoted by one of Bernie's own companies (chaired by his wife). Spa was sorely missed though and with cooperation from the Belgium government, the race was back on the calendar for 2004. The terms of the deal, we are told, ensured that FOM would get their money for the race regardless over what happened with the contract guaranteed by the local government of the Wallonia region where the circuit is located. Arguments over local taxes (Spa is half in one local region, half in another and they both wanted to tax it), poor attendance and the high fee charged by FOM lead to the new promoter of the race, Didier Dufourny, filing for bankrupcy after losing a reported €15M on the 2005 race.

Bernie has since stepped in to promote the race again, but the poor state of facilites at the circuit for both teams and fans meant work needed to be done to keep his highness happy. It's now been concluded that there isn't enough time left to complete the extensive renovations demanded and so the race is off.

Spa Francorchamps has long been the fan's favourite circuit, to watch on TV anyway, and it was sorely missed in 2003. However, the 2004 and 2005 races were not classics and we now have the Istanbul round competing to be fan favourite with it's infamous turn 8 claiming many drivers during the inaugural 2005 race. That along with complaints about the 19 race season being too long, maybe it's not such a disaster that Spa is off the calendar again.

/ No comments / § ¶

A1GP: Fittipaldi replaces Nelsinho

07 February 2006 - 19:20

I only mentioned the other day that there might be some tension in the pits of A1GP team Brasil due to some highly negative comments made by Nelson Piquet about the Grand Prix Masters (which Team Brasil's boss Emerson Fittipaldi raced in last year). Today we hear that Nelson Piquet junior will not be racing for Brazil in forthcomming A1GP rounds - his place will be taken by Emmerson's son Christian Fittipaldi. We are told this is because of Nelsinho's committments in GP2, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was more down to friction between the two world champion fathers than it is about the availability of their sons to race.

/ No comments / § ¶

Two of the best quotes ever

06 February 2006 - 18:05

I'm cross-posting this to my personal blog as well as to The Racing Blog because I think these quotes are so great they deserve a bigger audience even though they are both from the world of motor-sport.

I mentioned the Ask Nigel collumn on Autosport.com before where he answers questions submitted by readers. In one question he's asked if it is "fair" that Valentino Rossi should be able to jump straight into Formula 1 with a top team when other drivers have built their whole careers on getting that same seat. It's not the answer to that question that got my attention though, it's the quote from Frank Williams..

Frank Williams said, years ago, after the death (from cancer) of 28-year-old Gunnar Nilsson, "Don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair - life is not fair, and the sooner you accept that that's the case, the easier it will be for you."

What I like about that quote is that he doesn't just say "life isn't fair, deal with it" like a lot of people do, he says "don't make the mistake of thinking life should be fair". He's telling you accept the unfairness for your own benefit. Lets not forget that aside from his experience with Gunnar Nilsson, Williams himself was left paralysed from a car accident in 1986 and has gone on running his Formula 1 team with great success from a wheelchair. He is truely an inspiration, not only in what he's achieved, but in the outlook on life that's let his achieve it.

The other quote is from Nigel Roebuck's 'Fifth Column' in Autosport magazine. I don't know whether he's quoting someone else or whether he came up with this himself, but it's a good one. Talking about Ron Dennis signing Fernando Alonso to drive for his McLaren team in 2007 - a whole year ahead of his becoming available, he said "Long ago Ron Dennis realised that the things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first."

I don't take that to mean you should go out and grab whatever you can, hoarde it and stuff everyone else. What I think it means is when you have an opportunity to do something great, don't spent too much time worrying about whether it's the right thing or whether it's a classy thing to do. Just do it!

/ No comments / § ¶

Don't expect to see Piquet in the Grand Prix Masters

06 February 2006 - 17:03

The first ever race in the Grand Prix Masters took place last November to much fanfare. It received a lot of positive press and feedback from fans (in terms of message board postings and letters to magazines) was mostly positive. Nelson Piquet didn't take part in that first race in Kyalami which was won by his arch-rival Nigel Mansel. The news over the weekend is: don't expect to see Piquet in GPM any time soon.

Nigel Roebuck in his "ask Nigel" column on Autosport.com has been asked about other drivers and whether they might enter (John Watson and Carlos Reutemann). He assumed they'd been asked, but declined privately for various reasons. Nelson Piquet though has been quite forthcoming about his reasons for not joining the series. He regards his racing days as over (and presumably thinks the same about the other GPM drivers) and thinks the only reason to race in GPM is money. It's pretty harsh stuff although he stopped short of criticising the standard of driving in the first race, which I thought was pretty poor after Nigel and runner-up Emmerson Fittipaldi. In the interview Piquet goes on to brag about how he doesn't need the money on offer because of the success of his satellite tracking company - "Personally, I'm making a lot more than when I used to race in F1. In the next five years, I will gain double what Michael Schumacher has made in his entire career."

I wonder how Emmerson feels about Piquet's comments. Fittipaldi is the team principle of the Brazillian entry in A1GP which is driven by Nelson Piquet Junior all three of them were doing press for the first A1GP round at Brands Hatch last year (which was won by Nelsinho). Maybe the Brasil garage will be a bit frostier this weekend at the Indonesian round.

/ No comments / § ¶

McLaren Staff Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Ferrari)

02 February 2006 - 18:39

I mentioned the other day that there were rumours flying about senior staff at McLaren departing. McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh claimed that the two staff members in question would not be leaving, then that they would not be leaving untill the end of the year. Red Bull have confirmed they have signed Peter Prodromou and now Ferrari have announced they have contracted Nicholas Tombazis and he will start next month.

Tombazis was Chief of Aerodynaics at Ferrari previously and joined McLaren in the same position in 2004 before being promoted to Chief of Vehicle Projects. He rejoins Ferrari as Cheif Designer, replacing Aldo Costa (designer of the troublesome F2005) who gets a 'promotion' to Head of Design and Development Department, whatever that means.

We keep hearing how the departure of Adrian Newey won't affect McLaren due to the "matrix system" that he put in place to avoid critical dependencies on individuals. Even so, you can only lose so many tallented members of staff before you start to suffer and Ron Dennis knows as well as anyone that even if someone doesn't want to work for you any more, it's still in your interest to keep ahold of them to avoid them working for a competitor. He tried that with Newey, to stop him going to Jaguar a few years ago - offering Newey his choice of job description to stay at McLaren. Evidently he couldn't do the same with Tombazis. By the looks of it, Ferrari are doing the same with Aldo Costa - I mean I don't doubt that there is useful work he can do in managing the design department, but he's clearly no longer the man they want designing the cars.

/ No comments / § ¶

Renault launch team blog

02 February 2006 - 10:20

Renault F1 have added to what is already one of the best team websites by starting both a blog and a regular podcast. The blog isn't really saying much right now but it should get more interesting during the season. Of course it's PR - they're not giving away any secrets - but it's interesting that Renault are aiming at least some of their PR at the fans instead of the mainstream media - who let's face it, write pretty much the same stuff week after week regardless. In that sense it's much appreciated. Renault also engaged the fans via the Atlas-F1 bulletin board in comments made to a thread about the R26 (look for comments by username 'bpl' starting on the second page).

/ No comments / § ¶