- 11 Nov 08, 12:59#80511
Heres the link printed out:- 
In the Ferrari v McLaren fight for this year's world championship, the development race - that frenetic fight back at the respective factories to find yet more time from the car - was always going to be key.
Ferrari began the year with what appeared to be a slight performance advantage and Lewis Hamilton did not initially like the MP4-23 as much as the 2007 car. Of late McLaren appears to have leapfrogged ahead. That - and the reasons behind it - suggest that the enormously deep resources of the team's MTC Centre in Woking may finally be making the critical difference.
Ferrari's technical resources are not at the same level. What they've enjoyed these years past is a superb understanding, along with facilities that are adequate. It has allowed them to keep things relatively simple, to focus on what they know is important, to properly translate some of the superb talent in their organisation.
Every change impacts every other part
But as an example of where it's at technically, it's a team that has only just begun development of its own driving simulator. McLaren's has been in operation for over two years and played a critical part in the huge performance advantage Hamilton enjoyed over the Ferraris at Hockenheim.
Ferrari led the way in simulation tools a decade ago, but McLaren was never far behind and in recent years has probably surpassed it. Earlier in the season, those simulation tools were telling the engineers the potential of the MP4-23 was not being fully accessed by the way the team was running it on a race weekend.
McLaren's design philosophy with this generation of cars has long been for a maximum area (in plan view) front wing. It generates plenty of front downforce - extra valuable with this generation of Bridgestone front tyre that needs to be loaded up hard to work properly - but the airflow it creates behind the wing has traditionally made keeping adequate flow to the sidepod radiator intakes quite a challenge.
The more front wing you run, the less useful air is available for the radiators and so the bigger the intakes have to be, at the expense of drag. It's a very fine line and difficult to know exactly where to draw it. Every change made impacts on every other part of the car and the optimum point is forever evolving, CFD and windtunnel programmes constantly refining.
Lewis Hamilton's natural driving style asks a lot of the front of the car. If the front end grip can support him, he's fine with whatever the back wants to do; in fact he even uses a sliding rear to help get a quicker direction change sometimes. It's spectacular in slow and medium-speed bends. The McLaren is a car that works its front tyres very hard, generates a lot of load from them, which suits Hamilton fine, but in long-duration fast corners it tends to overheat them - on Lewis's car in particular. So the tyre performance degrades, they are still too hot by the time he gets to the next braking zone etc.
The data was telling the team that if they surrendered some front end grip, the reduced tyre load would actually help the car overall. Furthermore, if they surrendered it in such a way as to improve the flow to the radiators, they could have a more aerodynamically efficient car into the bargain. That was great, except for one thing: it went totally against Hamilton's preferred driving style.
But the figures were just too good to ignore. For Silverstone they introduced their four-plane front wing. The extra plane made the wing more sympathetic to airflow changes, made the car more consistent, and peak front downforce will actually have reduced because the extra slot sits where once there was wing surface area.
Judging by the fact that with this change came a reduction in the radiator apertures, the wing change probably also fed the rads with better flow, thus reducing the drag for a given level of downforce - and probably fed the rear end of the car with better downforce-producing airflow too. Hamilton was quick with it in Silverstone testing but struggled in qualifying. That struggle was negated on race day by the rain that played beautifully into his hands.
The role of the simulator
But he couldn't rely on rain for every race and before Hockenheim work was needed in dovetailing his style with the demands of the updated car - and that's where the simulator came in. By the time of Germany he'd adapted fully to the new balance, allowing him to fully access the potential that the data had said was there all along. Heikki Kovalainen by contrast was not yet at ease with it, had a gurney fitted to the front wing to give him more front end - and couldn't use the lower-drag radiator covers as a result.
It was only as the race unfolded in Germany that Ferrari got to appreciate just what gains McLaren had made. But they haven't been only in aero. Engine specs might have been frozen since the end of 2006, but that hasn't stopped development of the fuels, lubricants, internal coatings, airbox and exhaust acoustics. As a result the Mercedes motor now works significantly better than when specs were frozen. One team, having completed an acoustics check, believes the Merc is now the most potent engine in the field, slightly ahead of Ferrari, and almost 40bhp up on Renault.
Then there's the matter of the McLaren's trick four-paddle steering wheel. This has been on the car since the beginning of the season. Every car on the grid has a cockpit-adjustable engine torque setting; this is fully legitimate. The McLaren has the same feature but instead of incorporating the control in the middle of the wheel, it's done by flaps beneath the gearshift paddles.
Ergonomically it's massively better, allowing the driver, if he so chooses, to change gear and torque setting at the same time by using two fingers simultaneously. It's interesting, incidentally, that this feature created quite a stir when details were published in a newspaper post-Hockenheim when actually we revealed it in Autosport's post-Silverstone Tech Focus two weeks earlier.
Ferrari has quite a job on its hands now. But never underestimate its ingenuity.

In the Ferrari v McLaren fight for this year's world championship, the development race - that frenetic fight back at the respective factories to find yet more time from the car - was always going to be key.
Ferrari began the year with what appeared to be a slight performance advantage and Lewis Hamilton did not initially like the MP4-23 as much as the 2007 car. Of late McLaren appears to have leapfrogged ahead. That - and the reasons behind it - suggest that the enormously deep resources of the team's MTC Centre in Woking may finally be making the critical difference.
Ferrari's technical resources are not at the same level. What they've enjoyed these years past is a superb understanding, along with facilities that are adequate. It has allowed them to keep things relatively simple, to focus on what they know is important, to properly translate some of the superb talent in their organisation.
Every change impacts every other part
But as an example of where it's at technically, it's a team that has only just begun development of its own driving simulator. McLaren's has been in operation for over two years and played a critical part in the huge performance advantage Hamilton enjoyed over the Ferraris at Hockenheim.
Ferrari led the way in simulation tools a decade ago, but McLaren was never far behind and in recent years has probably surpassed it. Earlier in the season, those simulation tools were telling the engineers the potential of the MP4-23 was not being fully accessed by the way the team was running it on a race weekend.
McLaren's design philosophy with this generation of cars has long been for a maximum area (in plan view) front wing. It generates plenty of front downforce - extra valuable with this generation of Bridgestone front tyre that needs to be loaded up hard to work properly - but the airflow it creates behind the wing has traditionally made keeping adequate flow to the sidepod radiator intakes quite a challenge.
The more front wing you run, the less useful air is available for the radiators and so the bigger the intakes have to be, at the expense of drag. It's a very fine line and difficult to know exactly where to draw it. Every change made impacts on every other part of the car and the optimum point is forever evolving, CFD and windtunnel programmes constantly refining.
Lewis Hamilton's natural driving style asks a lot of the front of the car. If the front end grip can support him, he's fine with whatever the back wants to do; in fact he even uses a sliding rear to help get a quicker direction change sometimes. It's spectacular in slow and medium-speed bends. The McLaren is a car that works its front tyres very hard, generates a lot of load from them, which suits Hamilton fine, but in long-duration fast corners it tends to overheat them - on Lewis's car in particular. So the tyre performance degrades, they are still too hot by the time he gets to the next braking zone etc.
The data was telling the team that if they surrendered some front end grip, the reduced tyre load would actually help the car overall. Furthermore, if they surrendered it in such a way as to improve the flow to the radiators, they could have a more aerodynamically efficient car into the bargain. That was great, except for one thing: it went totally against Hamilton's preferred driving style.
But the figures were just too good to ignore. For Silverstone they introduced their four-plane front wing. The extra plane made the wing more sympathetic to airflow changes, made the car more consistent, and peak front downforce will actually have reduced because the extra slot sits where once there was wing surface area.
Judging by the fact that with this change came a reduction in the radiator apertures, the wing change probably also fed the rads with better flow, thus reducing the drag for a given level of downforce - and probably fed the rear end of the car with better downforce-producing airflow too. Hamilton was quick with it in Silverstone testing but struggled in qualifying. That struggle was negated on race day by the rain that played beautifully into his hands.
The role of the simulator
But he couldn't rely on rain for every race and before Hockenheim work was needed in dovetailing his style with the demands of the updated car - and that's where the simulator came in. By the time of Germany he'd adapted fully to the new balance, allowing him to fully access the potential that the data had said was there all along. Heikki Kovalainen by contrast was not yet at ease with it, had a gurney fitted to the front wing to give him more front end - and couldn't use the lower-drag radiator covers as a result.
It was only as the race unfolded in Germany that Ferrari got to appreciate just what gains McLaren had made. But they haven't been only in aero. Engine specs might have been frozen since the end of 2006, but that hasn't stopped development of the fuels, lubricants, internal coatings, airbox and exhaust acoustics. As a result the Mercedes motor now works significantly better than when specs were frozen. One team, having completed an acoustics check, believes the Merc is now the most potent engine in the field, slightly ahead of Ferrari, and almost 40bhp up on Renault.
Then there's the matter of the McLaren's trick four-paddle steering wheel. This has been on the car since the beginning of the season. Every car on the grid has a cockpit-adjustable engine torque setting; this is fully legitimate. The McLaren has the same feature but instead of incorporating the control in the middle of the wheel, it's done by flaps beneath the gearshift paddles.
Ergonomically it's massively better, allowing the driver, if he so chooses, to change gear and torque setting at the same time by using two fingers simultaneously. It's interesting, incidentally, that this feature created quite a stir when details were published in a newspaper post-Hockenheim when actually we revealed it in Autosport's post-Silverstone Tech Focus two weeks earlier.
Ferrari has quite a job on its hands now. But never underestimate its ingenuity.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Abe Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. Abe Lincoln
Abe Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. Abe Lincoln