Hispania F110

[ESPImperium]

Hispania HRT - Williams agreement

http://www.hispaniaf1team.com/en/home/1 ... illiams-f1

Leaving Virgin the only Xtrac customer for 2011. Sensible thing would be for Virgin to go to Williams for the same deal. Personally if i were Hispania and Virgin, id also pay williams for their Flybrid KERS next year as well, as this way they will be generating a engineering package that they can all (Williams-Hispania-Virgin) benifit from as more gearboxes, KERS and Cosworth CA2011s in a package mean more data and better relyability i think.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

+1

Logical move for Virgin, I expect them to be on the blower to Frank as we speak.

[FW17]

How much was the Xtrac deal worth? 2m or 5m USD?

[scarbs]

Alas Williams KERS is not part of the agreement...

[forty-two]

But I'd be willing to wager that Williams would be more than happy to supply their KERS system to a team such as Hispania, who would be unlikely to take points away from Williams.

Not only would this bring in some cash, but the increase in units produced would possibly also yield an economy of scale in terms of production costs, as well as the above mentioned increase in available data to help Williams to tune and develop their system.

Haven't williams licensed a similar KERS unit to Porsche? or did I dream that?

[feynman]

I'd give the v1.0 Williams KERS a miss if I was a sensible HRT ... That sounds way too much like jumping out of the XTrac hydraulic frying-pan and straight into the flywheel fire.

Job 1 is concentrate on finishing some races ... well actually job 1 is find a chassis, well actually job 1 is find some money, and a factory, then the chassis, then finish some races then worry about 6 seconds of power boost in 2nd gear corners.

[forty-two]

I'd give the v1.0 Williams KERS a miss if I was a sensible HRT ... That sounds way too much like jumping out of the XTrac hydraulic frying-pan and straight into the flywheel fire.

Job 1 is concentrate on finishing some races ... well actually job 1 is find a chassis, well actually job 1 is find some money, and a factory, then the chassis, then finish some races then worry about 6 seconds of power boost in 2nd gear corners.

All good points, but isn't KERS actually mandatory for 2011?

[spinmastermic]

Plus Williams are switching to battery KERS

[ESPImperium]

I'd give the v1.0 Williams KERS a miss if I was a sensible HRT ... That sounds way too much like jumping out of the XTrac hydraulic frying-pan and straight into the flywheel fire.

Job 1 is concentrate on finishing some races ... well actually job 1 is find a chassis, well actually job 1 is find some money, and a factory, then the chassis, then finish some races then worry about 6 seconds of power boost in 2nd gear corners.

All good points, but isn't KERS actually mandatory for 2011?

Williams Flywheel KERS V1.0 isnt any longer, its more like V3.0 now, and with Porsche having input it could be closer to V5.0 as well, and as said above Williams now have battery KERS as well as they took alot of the Toyota guys at the beginning of the year, and those guys were developing the Toyota KERS whitch was rumored to be as good as the McLaren/Mercedes unit in terms of power and relyability, the only downside to it was its weight.

If i were Hispania, id buy the Flywheel KERS for 2011 from Williams, if only to stay where they are.

Rumor has Hispania are looking for a facility thats as cost effective as what Lotus currently have. Small, intimate and cost effective as the Toyota facility would cost in the region of $10m a year to run, where the Lotus facility is in the region of $2.2m a season to run.

[feynman]

Last I heard was that Williams were struggling badly with their flywheel design, (abandoned?) I would realistically put a "0." in front of all those version numbers you listed, I don't think anyone has actually made it up to v1.0 for an F1 specification. It is OK for buses and Porsches, but the laws of physics are proving as stubborn as ever.

If, as HRT, you decided not to be a test mule for F1-flywheels, and choose battery KERS, then why wouldn't you use whatever Magneti Marelli had lying about going spare, rather than subsidise a Williams R&D battery KERS effort?

[ESPImperium]

Last I heard was that Williams were struggling badly with their flywheel design, (abandoned?) I would realistically put a "0." in front of all those version numbers you listed, I don't think anyone has actually made it up to v1.0 for an F1 specification. It is OK for buses and Porsches, but the laws of physics are proving as stubborn as ever.

If, as HRT, you decided not to be a test mule for F1-flywheels, and choose battery KERS, then why wouldn't you use whatever Magneti Marelli had lying about going spare, rather than subsidise a Williams R&D battery KERS effort?

If they aggreed to be the R&D test mule, they could get the technology for free, and for a team like Hispania, that could save a couple million that would be spent on the car in aero development for instance.

As for the MM KERS, they dont manufacture a general purpose KERS to my knowlege. They have 3 diffrent bespoke solutions, the Magnetti/Ferarri, Magnetti/Renault and Magnetti/Toyota solutions, each tailored to each diffrent engine. A process that takes arround 6-8 months to do.

As for the 2011 Hispania, the design they are heading for is one based uppon the TF110 chassis, as im thinking they have bought the licence to build that chassis and modify it to their needs, whitch will probably see the Hispanias take a simmilar leap that Lotus are expecting/expected to take for 2011.

If Hispania get a decent package together with a decent driver line up, with decent finance and facilities for 2011, id expect to see them at the rear of the mid-feild for 2011 as their average posistion, but sometimes going better. Id expect to see them sign Pedro De La Rosa for 2011 as a race driver with a pay driver with a decent ammount of money behind him that can do more than Yamamotto. Id expect to see them get Christian Klien as the test & reserve driver as well and a young guy for development purposes.

Personally id put Klien into a race seat and then try and sign up a driver with some money where therer is some coming at current, someone like Mikhail Aleshin from World Series by Renault (he has a simmilar ammount of money as Petrov) and then try and get a driver who has experience with a big team under his belt for Test & Reserve purposes, im thinking Brendon Hartley or Luca Filippi or develop Dani Clos into the Spanish teams mould.

I do have worrys about Hispania, but i have less worries about them than i do Virgin and their approach.

[feynman]

Which is exactly where we came in at the top of the page .... they have dropped XTrac for 2011 precisely because they, and Lotus, were sick of mopping up hydraulic fluid from the garage floor every time the car got spun up.

The small teams don't have the time, resources or money to be debugging other peoples prototype technology. It kills them quicker than anything else.
Big teams have the luxury to try things out and blow things up.
With a small factory and limited engineering, the HRTs et al need plenty of track time just to figure out how their car works ... so signing up for flywheels, two chances, slim and none, and slim just left town.

They'll buy shrink-wrapped off the shelf, partner as much as they can for previous year tech, and spend what little money they have left on a chassis.

I remain unconvinced by all this Toyota talk, I doubt it. Big talk of buying IP and factories for tens of millions, when the only car development all year has been a single gurney-flap, to service a revolving door of 80's-style pay drivers, doesn't much add up. An Epsilon deal makes too much sense, but has stubbornly proved impossible thus far, egos I guess, and I don't see how that changes till someone has to call in the liquidator.

I can't decide if it is HRT or Virgin who are most likely to go bye-bye over the winter; poor old Wirth/Booth, saddled with Branson's legendary inability for his hands to reach his pocket, and now lumbered with a gearbox that XTrac had projected 3 customers paying for, not one, that'll surely improve quality.

[ESPImperium]

I think Scarabs has more or less the points we have both raised in one article on his blog: http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2010/11/0 ... logy-deal/

Essencially, they are trying to get the fundementals together before moving to else where.

I can see all of the 2 new teams this year making it to Bahrain 2011, but the mannaer that 2 make it there is the question, Lotus will be there, who will be there with them.

Hispania has good vibes, but talk of the Toyota IP and buy out of the Toyota Motorsport GmBh facility, but untill a press release is issued, all remains uncertain.

Virgin, their approach is looking shaky, but with Wirth Research moving to a new facility this year, and Manor GP also expanding, the team has the technichal base, but maybes not the finance or technichal savvy to see that if they want to be better they should share technology with another team for a while. They need Branson to dig a little deeper, his current $12.2m venture per season isnt enough. If he wants to get better results, he should look at Red Bull as his buisness model.

But i have a feeling that both will make it, but both may have the same or simmilar start to 2011 as they had in 2010, however anything else will be better than what 2010 was for Hispania.

[PlatinumZealot]

Buying that Toyota chassis is probably the best thing they can do at this stage. Just imagine the unspeakable difficulty of developing a whole new car when you don't even facilities of your own then compare the relative ease of buying that Toyota car and having Toyota gmbh, not HRT, modify the rear end of it for next year. You got your reliable cosworth engine and your fancy williams gearbox and to top it of you now have a ready built mid field challenger - Easy peasy plug and play compared to anything else.

[JGomezH]

Ex Telefonica chairman Juan Villalonga, new Hispania-HRT investor.

http://www.hispaniaf1team.com/en/home/1 ... nia-racing