07/06/2011
NEWS STORY
Looking ahead to this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix, Ferrari chassis director, Pat Fry, believes that this season car performance is very much track specific and highly dependent on tyre choice.
"Barcelona is a very challenging track, where downforce and car balance are key, and you need to develop good tyre temperature especially on the hard tyre," he tells his team's website. "We have worked a lot on this factor and got a good understanding of it now and are working on fixing it for other circuits where this will be necessary.
"On the other hand, Monaco is a very unique track where you also need a lot of downforce, with the key difference being that car efficiency is not so important and also the driver does not need to attack on corner entry so much. Therefore the 150° Italia went well there, because our engineers did a good job, getting on top of car balance. In qualifying we struggled a bit and although we had a good pace in the race, of course it would have been better if we had started further up the grid, because Monaco can be a procession where you struggle if you are not right at the front. Having the Soft and Supersoft tyre also helped our performance."
Switching his attention to this weekend, Fry expects Montreal to present another interesting challenge: "The Canadian race can be a bit like Monaco in that it's all about traction and braking, although brakes come under far more stress here. Traction and how the car uses the tyres at corner exit will be the key to the life of the rear tyres. I expect we will have slightly less concerns about tyre wear than last year as the soft and supersoft compounds are now a little bit harder.
"Brake performance is heavily linked to the aerodynamics (because the smaller the cooling ducts, the better the aero efficiency of the car) and so we always try and run the brakes very hot as this means you get more performance out of the rest of the car. Montreal is an extreme track on a par with Singapore in terms of being the hardest on brakes, so in the factory we run the brakes on special dynos in order to tune the cooling levels required, to see how much margin we have and how extreme we can afford to be."
Fry reveals that there will be a few updates this weekend. "There is always a steady stream of updates coming through and this time we will have a few changes to the diffuser and rear wing, which will bring a reasonable performance step if everything goes to plan. Hopefully we are still closing the gap to those ahead of us, allowing for the fact that others are working too."
Fry has also had to adjust to his new responsibilities following the recent restructuring of the technical department. "I'm a little bit busier than I was, which I did not think was possible!" says the Englishman. "It's a great challenge, there are a lot of talented people here working very hard and if we can all come together to work out a sensible short term and long term plan, hopefully we can move forward very quickly."
If the Montreal track is hard on brakes, it also has a reputation for giving the F1 engines a tough workout. "Engine performance and also fuel consumption have been concerns here in the past," admits head of engine and electronics, Luca Marmorini. "However, these factors are not as significant as they are at Monza or Spa. It is more like Malaysia and Brazil, in terms of load on the engine and similar to Barcelona as far as how long the engine has to be on full throttle. In terms of fuel consumption, although it is high, the concern actually dates back to the time when refuelling was allowed, when it was very important to be able to run the race making just one pit stop as late as possible in the race, which in turn required a large fuel tank. Now that refuelling is banned, this is less critical."
Marmorini and his crew have plenty to work on this season, including the return of KERS. "KERS is very important and good useage can give you an advantage of say 0.4 seconds per lap," says the Italian. "But when it comes to overtaking, it does not increase a driver's chances that much. Even a boost of 80 horsepower for around six seconds does not give you so much more of a chance to overtake a car ahead of you. But the combination of KERS and the DRS works well for overtaking.
"This year, KERS has also been very effective in preventing overtaking moves," he continues, "we have seen drivers who make clever use of KERS being able to defend themselves from passing moves."
Speaking of the fact that each driver only has eight engines to use for the entire season, he says: "I think today every F1 engine has been designed to complete at least three races, even if individual strategies might see a power unit used for only two or as many as four Grands Prix. With the Ferrari engine, the drop in terms of performance from the first race to the third is very low, which is partly down to the work we have done with our partner Shell in terms of fuel and lubricant development. The driver will not usually feel any difference by race 3. However, engines also have to last for the following grands prix in free practice and we work on reducing engine loads in this situation so that the engine can complete around 2000 kilometres and, therefore, only during free practice sessions, the driver will actually feel some performance difference."