Tag Archives: virgin racing

Feb201008

Rob

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Rain forecast for Jerez test, who will the rain master be?

The second pre-season test is to take place later this week at Jerez, and the forecast is for rain. It’s a shame as it will render most of the comparisons meaningless as the rain tends to skew the times.
It does mean that the driver comparisons become more interesting though, with Michael Schumacher back will we see some blistering lap times for the Mercedes or will they just run tyre evaluation programs? Some of the younger drivers such as Sebastien Vettel and Adrian Sutil have been vying for this crown since Schumacher left so perhaps they’ll all be after that title in the test.
With Red Bull and Force India set to release their cars and join the testing fray along with Virgin we should at least see how last years title contenders stack up against the first of the new boys and everyone else. The Virgin will want to be [...]

Feb201005

Rob

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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.

Feb201004

Rob

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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 [...]

Feb201003

Rob

0

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 [...]

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