Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth

[Pierce89]

...and steering feel).

I think that depends upon which driver you ask actually. Heikki doesn't seem to mind!

I think it's hilarious that Trulli can't touch Heikki, then he says it's because "I'm so sensitive i can feel the tiniest change etc." I think it's time Jarno moved on, if he was so "sensitive" he should have the feel to maximize an imperfect car yet he's infamous for not being able to do so.

[bar555]

New mirror mountings since Turkey
http://formula1techandart.wordpress.com ... ce-turkey/

[marcush.]

neither HRT nor Lotus have made big inroads in jumping ahead of Virgin speedwise.Lotus seems to be unable to release the potential -with superior engine gearbox,human recources ,finance etc and HRT must be considered superior with a much more sophisticated/up to date gearbox package and big names on the payroll designing the car...
But:No ,the MVR-02 is not falling behind at all ,it is indeed also not falling apart as well.Glock is bemoaning setup issues and sensivity to sidewinds and claims they cannot release the potential that s there....My view is :Virgin was not patient enough and anyone who thinks a MCL consultancy started in july this year will turn around the ship significantly -eg constant challenge for Q2 and regualr points challenging pewrformance is a bit too much on the romantic side.
Lotus will be very lucky to get a surprise point this year but they are clearly a long shot from fullfilling their targets for 2011 .´MVR02 is in my view what was possible with the recources experience available and of course Virgins approach .

[PhillipM]

...and steering feel).

I think that depends upon which driver you ask actually. Heikki doesn't seem to mind!

I think it's hilarious that Trulli can't touch Heikki, then he says it's because "I'm so sensitive i can feel the tiniest change etc." I think it's time Jarno moved on, if he was so "sensitive" he should have the feel to maximize an imperfect car yet he's infamous for not being able to do so.

I have wondered if it's not the power-steering on the car, but rather the feedback from the Pirelli's, the shoulder area is very stiff, that could well be what is causing the oscillations he reports through the steering/

[marcush.]

well...it should be well possible to find out which is which ,don´t you think so? steering system induced oscillations can be separated from tyre induced ones..Trulli clearly says he is reacting to things produced by the car fooling him into feeling something which has no relevance to the forces created at the contact patch (which is not what he actually said ,but I think what he intended to say).

I´d say this is one area where you can see that driving a simulator car will not provide any useful help refining your driving of the actual car..if the feelings you are reacting to are not relevant to feeling the limit it´s all just for the bin.Driving a car by sheer confidence and godgiven trust it will stick is not really what driving at the limit should be.

[marcush.]

surprise surprise Pat symmonds has found out the planned and binned upgrade for Silverstone was not so bad after all .In fact it proved good enough in CFD to come into production now and will be introduced in Monza ...
So ,that´s how I like an expert hired to the team.First fire all the technical leaders call their work a heap of crap ,lean back familiarise yourself with the tools already installed and come back on your original call and say ah its a good upgrade worth introducing ..
holy --- ..they lost 4 races of improved performance...due to that.

[TzeiTzei]

Autosport interviewed John Booth.

- they are in the middle of moving the team to Branbury where the design team was already. The race team will move there after Brazilian GP.

- doesn't think that having design team and race operation in different factories had much to do with bad performances, but having two companies with different commercial interests didn't work.

- Pat Symonds has been gathering a design team. Lot of the people came from Wirth Research, but there are also a lot of new faces. Describes Symonds' role as being a full time consultant. "Nine days a week".

- gives a lot of credit to McLaren. "They pressed the button from their side even before the paperwork was signed. I think the wind tunnel situation was sorted, and we have already been using the race strategy software for four races now on the pit wall, which works great as you can imagine. They spent eight years developing it and we get to play with it! The first time we used it, we realised how much we were fishing around in the dark…

The relationship extends all the way to even advice on purchasing materials; it is a real broad spectrum of assistance."

- they will have an update for Monza. New engine cover, side pods, exhaust and rear floor. It was originally made by Wirth, and they were supposed to have it in Silverstone. The reshuffle within the team made them scrap it, but after Symonds took a look at it, he decided it was worth doing. Actually i don't think Virgin have ran the EBD in races. They had it in Turkey and Spain practices, but they took it off. Without proper engine mapping i don't think it will make a huge difference in perfomance anyway, but bringing upgrades to the car is good anyway. Because the car really can't get much worse than what it is now.

- "I am finding out now that Pat is a very cautious fellow. The other one we were working with promised the earth, whereas Pat is the total opposite and very realistic." I can't really disagree with this comment after hearing all the stuff Wirth has said, and then seeing how it has translated to real track performance.

- About next year's car, the monoque was already designed before Symonds took over, and they didn't have the time to start changing it much. However i don't think this will end up being a huge problem, as they have quite a lot other things to improve. They did change the suspension a little, but otherwise Booth is quite happy with how the car works mechanically. He predicts quite a big change to the back of the car, and also expects there to be a significant improvement in performance during the season.

- and finally: "The troubles are never behind you in F1. But we are starting to thoroughly enjoy it now. To have somebody like Pat Symonds running your design department, and being technical partners with McLaren, you could not have much more positive steps than that?"

So, it looks like a brighter future for the team. Altough i don't think Symonds is an expert in aerodynamics, i still see that he can sort of guide the design team to the right direction. Symonds input combined with the McLaren deal will probably enable them to make a big step forward. I'm not expecting them to be challenging the midfield, but to get where Lotus is right now would be a good start.

[ESPImperium]

If they leave this season challanging Team Lotus its not a right off, however that is quite a step change as Team Lotus often lap Virgin every race now, so that is roughly a 1:30 race time decrease, whitch over a normalised 55 lap race thats 1.38 second increase in performance. But to my data, ideally if they can gain a 1 second a lap increase of performance, that would make they quite a credible team going into 2012.

I think they will be making some Q2 performances in 2012, but not 2011.

Taking the fact that Team Lotus are 1.5 seconds slower than the mid feild of STR/Force India/Williams babble id recon that both teams will make a step towards the middle of the pack for 2012, but id recon that they will be able to both bolt on arround 1.2 seconds in the closed season.

However the new testing shedule for 2012 will make the teams alot closer for the start of the season as well.

[TzeiTzei]

I've done some statistics about qualifying & race pace. The qualifying times are an average gap to the fastest time in qualifying. From each team i've taken the fastest time either driver has set regardless of the session (Q1/Q2/Q3). Red Bull has been fastest in every qualifying so far this season, so their average is naturally 0,000. If it has been unequal conditions (like in Spa), then i haven't included those sessions.

QUALIFYING
1. Red Bull-Renault +0,000
2. McLaren-Mercedes +0,567
3. Ferrari +0,736
4. Mercedes +1,268
5. Renault +1,725
6. Force India-Mercedes +2,163
7. Sauber-Ferrari +2,227
8. Williams-Cosworth +2,241
9. Toro Rosso-Ferrari +2,748
10. Lotus-Renault +4,412
11. Virgin-Cosworth +5,756
12. HRT-Cosworth +6,765

I've done the same with fastest laps. No wet races included. I adjusted the numbers so that RB which have the lowest average act as 0.

FASTEST LAPS
1. Red Bull-Renault +0,000
2. McLaren-Mercedes +0,283
3. Ferrari +0,613
4. Renault +1,182
5. Mercedes +1,546
6. Sauber-Ferrari +1,722
7. Williams-Cosworth +1,738
8. Toro Rosso-Ferrari +1,949
9. Force India-Mercedes +2,040
10. Lotus-Renault +3,643
11. Virgin-Cosworth +5,030
12. HRT-Cosworth +5,520

From these figures it's pretty easy to see that the three new teams still have a lot of work to do before they can seriously challenge the midfielders. Lotus need to find around 1,5s/lap, and Virgin 3secs. Now i think it is possible for Lotus to get quite close to the teams infront next year, but for Virgin it would be a successful season just to be where Lotus is at the moment. IMO catching the midfielders by three seconds is out of the question.

[marcush.]

seriously ,I do not subscribe to this opinion.
Who said car performance was a gradual iterative process and you could only that much per year by taking small steps?

Look ..you got the expertise of Mclaren designing the team .That´s expertise of a car challenging for race wins no seconds adrift.
You got access to race strategy software developped since 8 years.
You basically got everything you need to be running at the sharp end of the grid .
Mind you ,Force india made a huge jump forward when Mclaren was starting to support them ....So to me there is no obvious reason why Virgin should not be able to do the same.They got a weak tub design to carry over from Wirth ? well so it be and take a 2 seconds per lap penalty for this into account...

As for teamLotus ..the guys who came from FI will know about what Mercedes brought into the team but can they emulate all this? Being a user of the system does not tell you all about how it and will leave you in the dark about the implications that led to the system as you use it. So in effect you know what you want to achieve but are burried in trying to reverse engineer as you learn ..

[Mandrake]

A flaw in your statistics concerning race pace is also that not every car is pushed to the limits in every race. New soft tires, low fuel at the end of the race can spoil the whole data. We've seen that several times that for instance a Williams has done a pretty quick lap!

[marcush.]

fact is Virgin is a long way from able to be challenging lotus for position and it is not that far in front of HRT in terms of speed .
And Virgin is behind HRT in the constructors.
So you need to throw it all in to not be dead last again.You can give up later on this ...As all that´s needed is a single good result..
Lotus not the one swith the best reliability ....so who knows when you got a car that is not breaking up and you find a bit of speed as well you might well be able to spring a surprise...obviously not a points finish but hey.

Brings me back to my theory of optimising your car for a single event or a certain kind of tracks (as FI did noit long ago).

I think a small team like Virgin should concentrate their work on a few tracks and put more percentage of their budget behind say Monaco/Hungary or Canada/Spa/Monza
to have a relatively more developped package there even compromising their car concept for the other tracks doing this.
Say Renault or Sauber put 500.000€ in their Monza specific aerokit when Virgin has only 1mill€ for aero development for the whole year giving them a measley 50k for their monza aero ..But how about really building the car for Monaco or Monza ,adjusting the fueltanksize and everything for that event makingg no consideration for other races .I think with that approach it might well be possible to jump up the grid a fair bit in that one event.
If one ofr your two heros gets a straightforward race and bags a result -this should be enough to jump the other newbies in the finasl standings.
So the first step is to look for the right venue to build the car for -high level of attrition is something boosting your chances...

[TzeiTzei]

A flaw in your statistics concerning race pace is also that not every car is pushed to the limits in every race. New soft tires, low fuel at the end of the race can spoil the whole data. We've seen that several times that for instance a Williams has done a pretty quick lap!

Yeah i'm aware of that. But i don't know if there is any better way of measuring the race pace. Maybe the average lap time but that could be even more unreliable. I've also thought that some odd results don't make such a difference when you include the whole season in to the data. But who knows...

[gridwalker]

Brings me back to my theory of optimising your car for a single event or a certain kind of tracks (as FI did noit long ago).

That is all well and good when you know that you will remain within 107%, but this is a big risk when you are perilously close to the back and struggling for money : sponsors won't be happy if the gamble backfires and they don't get the exposure they have paid for.

[TzeiTzei]

seriously ,I do not subscribe to this opinion.
Who said car performance was a gradual iterative process and you could only that much per year by taking small steps?

Look ..you got the expertise of Mclaren designing the team .That´s expertise of a car challenging for race wins no seconds adrift.
You got access to race strategy software developped since 8 years.
You basically got everything you need to be running at the sharp end of the grid .
Mind you ,Force india made a huge jump forward when Mclaren was starting to support them ....So to me there is no obvious reason why Virgin should not be able to do the same.They got a weak tub design to carry over from Wirth ? well so it be and take a 2 seconds per lap penalty for this into account...

Does anyone really know much about the McLaren collaboration? The wind tunnel, simulator, test rigs (?), some staff, but what is this compared to the Force India deal? Are McLaren are in any way involved with the design of the car?

And yes, i do think that the car performance is a gradual process of getting faster and faster. At least usually it is. Ofcourse it's much easier to take bigger steps forward from the back of the grid, but i think that challenging the midfield is out of the question. But we'll see how it goes in Melbourne.