Archive for 'launches'

The new Force India is unveiled to the world

The new Force India is unveiled to the world

The new Force India has a lot to live up to, last year they placed second at GP and so this year, logically they should be aiming for a win. I doubt whether that is there aim though, more likely reliability and constant points finishes would be, helped in no small part by the new points system.
With rumours about the financial uncertainty of the parent company circling they will want to ensure that they speak through the times on the track and I guess there is no reason to suspect that the new car will be any slower than the old one. They have two drivers who have a decent amount of experience though no one like Giancarlo Fisichella this year to develop the car. The new car looks much the same as the others that have been released, I guess that’s not all that surprising given the stability of [...]

Testing in F1 – what’s in store next week?

This week’s testing is almost over – that is if you count Virgin Racings shakedown at Silverstone a test, otherwise it was over on Wednesday. We got our taste of most of the big names in Valencia with Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and more having a day at least each.

The Virgin completes it’s first laps

The Virgin Racing VR-01 started it’s shake down at Silverstone today, completing it’s virgin laps. The car looks stunning, in part the colours and in part the design. The question remains though whether their design method will be able to compete with the other teams.
Timo Glock gave the car it’s firt few laps at Silverstone ahead of it’s test in Jerez next week, they’ll do more mileage tomorrow.
I’m still interested to know the design methodology, whether this is a completely human designed car that has been informed by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or whether they’ve closed the design loop and let the software – Nick Wirth’s CFDynamo – optimise the design. I know quite a lot about optimisation algorithms and only a few spring to mind that they could use and though the computational power needed would be immense, it is entirely possible. There doesn’t seem to be any [...]

The third day of testing with Button, Schumacher and Alonso, Ferrari top again

The last day of the Valencia test finished with Ferrari remaining on top and Sauber rooted in second place. Fernando Alonso had his first taste of a Ferrari today and didn’t disappoint the thousands of fans that turned up at the Spanish circuit by completing over 100 laps and posting the fastest time of the test.
Sauber also continued to impress by running second for the third day with Pedro de la Rosa confirming that their pace is as real as can be seen at this time of year, and that the other teams have some work to do. Jenson Button had a much more low key start to his McLaren career only posting the fifth fastest time and slower than Lewis Hamilton’s time yesterday.
The two rookies on track today sit at the bottom of the times with Hulkenberg someway off the pace. But at least they both got some miles [...]