Lotus E20 Renault

[stefan_]

Crap! Terrible news.

[marcush.]

600.000€ for a tub? jesus how much are them paid those laminators? In my book a tub is sure some square inches of cloth and honeycomb but the main issue must be labour ...assuming a guy is worth 80or so € per hour you are claiming they need 6000 or something hours to lay up a tub? in other words ,to get a tub ready in 6 weeks that is 12 guys working flatout 7 days a week
12 hours per day..sorry don´t buy that.Somethings wrong in this calculation.
i believe 600 to 1000hours is a possibility all things counted...but the cost is not just stemming from material and labour to produce the actual bit ...the real work has gone into producing the molds .

[bosanac1]

autosport thinks its engine mounts and lotus will likely require new chassis

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97620

[Owen.C93]

600.000€ for a tub? jesus how much are them paid those laminators? In my book a tub is sure some square inches of cloth and honeycomb but the main issue must be labour ...assuming a guy is worth 80or so € per hour you are claiming they need 6000 or something hours to lay up a tub? in other words ,to get a tub ready in 6 weeks that is 12 guys working flatout 7 days a week
12 hours per day..sorry don´t buy that.Somethings wrong in this calculation.
i believe 600 to 1000hours is a possibility all things counted...but the cost is not just stemming from material and labour to produce the actual bit ...the real work has gone into producing the molds .

I think there's something like 300-500 layers for the tub. Not exactly an easy job.

[marcush.]

think about it...12 guys assembling themselves around the tub..impossible.How many people and time you need to build six tubs ..not to speak of wings bodywork and suspension....

[ajdavison2]

According to boullier on formula1.com, Lotus will be back on track tomorrow.

[dren]

I thought he said they would be back on track by the next test?

[Maynard G. Krebs]

Off til next week? That's a lot of ice cream for Kimi.

[Maynard G. Krebs]

Big blow, Lotus is packing up and heading home :
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97616

That is a big blow. This also means that they will have to re-crash test a chassis as well as its outside the homologation of the design they submitted.

This is as big a blow to the team as the one they had last year loosing Bobby K in my opinion.

Their E20-03 will also have to be modified as well, and also when it comes to E20-04 onward the solution should be in the build.

Im now looking at Lotus to have the E20 with 6 chassis by the end of they year now. Id recon they will run with 01 to 03 for the first 4 GP, then go toMugello with the first of the new homologation, then have brand new chassis for the rest of the year.

This is costly on a financial sence as well, as a Chassis to 2007/2008 costs cost arround €600,000, so id recon this is close to the €700,000 mark now, if not more. It also diverts resource away from dialing in performance into the car as well in a set up stand point at present and later a aero point of view as well.

Or it could just be a suspension pick up point is cracking under stress, so they need to slap a couple more layers of CF on there and repaint.

[stefan_]

We Can Work it Out
Lotus F1 Team will not run for the remainder of the second test at Barcelona, scheduled from today until Friday.

Barcelona test finishes early for Lotus F1 Team
Lotus F1 Team will not run for the remainder of the second test at Barcelona, scheduled from today until Friday.

During initial runs this morning with Romain Grosjean at the wheel, the team identified an issue with the chassis. After investigation at Enstone, initial plans to bring out chassis E20-01 to Barcelona have been held in order to give the team enough time to rectify the situation.
Lotus F1 Team will be back on track next week in Barcelona (1-4 March)

James Allison, Technical Director:
“Before we were due to fly chassis E20-01 out to Barcelona in replacement of chassis E20-02 - damaged this morning - we ran a series of simulations at the factory based on the data provided by our brief running on track today. As a result, we were able to identify an area which requires some additional work. It will be more productive for us to carry out these modifications to both chassis at Enstone rather than send E20-01 out to this week’s test. We’ll put the right measures in place and we will be able to fix the problem before next week.”

Eric Boullier, Team Principal:
“Not running this week has been a tough decision to take, but we feel that our choice is the right one. On the positive side, we have quickly identified the issue with the chassis and our design office has already devised a solution. We will be present at next week’s test in Barcelona. We draw faith from the fact that the E20 was quick out of the box in Jerez and showed its reliability there. We have a lot of work ahead of us over the next week but everyone at Enstone is ready for this challenge.”

via lotusf1team.com

[ESPImperium]

600.000€ for a tub? jesus how much are them paid those laminators? In my book a tub is sure some square inches of cloth and honeycomb but the main issue must be labour ...assuming a guy is worth 80or so € per hour you are claiming they need 6000 or something hours to lay up a tub? in other words ,to get a tub ready in 6 weeks that is 12 guys working flatout 7 days a week
12 hours per day..sorry don´t buy that.Somethings wrong in this calculation.
i believe 600 to 1000hours is a possibility all things counted...but the cost is not just stemming from material and labour to produce the actual bit ...the real work has gone into producing the molds .

I think there's something like 300-500 layers for the tub. Not exactly an easy job.

That includes labour, materials, mould production and associated costs like running the autoclaves. The only area it dosnt touch is R&D costs. The fact that many of the top teams now use a single mould production technique (Lotus does i know that) that increases the production cost as the mould is harder to produce.

The only teams that use a twin mould production are, Force India, Caterham, Marussia and Hispania. The twin mould method decreases cost by arround 40%, but also provides less stiffness in the chassis, however the stifness strength is virtually minamal, theres something like 1% in it, but 1% is worth something like 10% extra torques or something when the power of the engine gets transmitted to the track. The single mould method seemingly gives a car an extra 3 to 4 meters extra traction off of a corner, whitch over a track with an average 8 slow to medium speed corners is 32 meters extra, whitch is effectivly a tenth and a half extra pace for a little extra effort and cost.

Its a trade off in effect, the smaller teams cant afford a single mould so go for a twin mould due to cost and time constraints, but as more teams use it, costs will come down, however thats down to how complex the tub structures become as the R&D guys are always looking at carbon lay up methods and as theese become more advanced, costs will rise still futher. And i doubt the FIA will get into how the teams produce a chassis any time soon.

Just for comparison, a open topped LMP1 can cost €850,000 and a enclosed version now generally costs €1.1m plus. Audis cars last year cost a reported €1.35m a chassis last year, and McNish and Rockenfeller have 2 chassis to thank for their life. However a LMP1 chassis has to be built to have a life span of arround 70,000km, a F1 chassis generally has a life span of arround 11,500km, however many chassis do much more than this, but it isnt the case now post in season testing ban, many chassis pre in season testing ban could do 15,000km. easily. F1 chassis problems can be delt with easily, LMP chassis arnt as easy to fix.

[piast9]

I am quite surprised. How it is possible that a flaw in the construction of the tub didn't show during the load tests in the factory and showed after just few laps on the track? I assume they do stiffness tests after manufacturing the tub. If the steering felt strange right from the start so the flaw was serious.

[marcush.]

ok ..with all associated mold production ,we get a bit closer ,but then as you produce more tubs those cost can be spread wider ,as i don´t think it´s a lost core?

Sure I have seen R30(?) /1 and /2 molds of the tub which looked like complete tub molds.it´s entirely possible but still I don´t get what does make it such expensive.

As for the AUDI it´s a whole different story as it is a very complicated story ,with roof and door fittings you name it...

[Gridlock]

Reading the aforementioned Autosport article would answer a lot of these questions:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97620

Lotus may have a full spec chassis rig, that can replicate any corner accurately on a jig (a la McLaren) but they may not.

[strad]

How it is possible that a flaw in the construction of the tub didn't show during the load tests in the factory and showed after just few laps on the track?

Nothing like thrashing it about to show the weaknesses.