Jenson Button doubts other teams will be pushing too hard to rush a Mercedes-style ‘double-DRS’ to their 2012 package.

The F-duct-style concept is, so far, the highest profile innovation of the season.

So with the FIA declaring it fully legal, and Nico Rosberg breaking through with his maiden pole and win in Shanghai last weekend, it seems a no-brainer that the other teams will now be following suit.

But McLaren’s Button doesn’t think so.

“I really don’t think it’s giving them that much — I think they’re just quick,” he is quoted by the BBC.

“From all our simulations, we don’t think it’s a massive margin at all. It’s a great invention on their part, but our DRS system is very good so I don’t think it’s giving them much over us.

“Obviously nothing in the race and in qualifying it’s minimal,” said Button.

His teammate Lewis Hamilton thinks the fastest cars so far are the Mercedes, the McLaren and the Red Bull.

“The Mercedes I think is now the quickest — particularly over one lap,” said the 2008 world champion.

“Not sure they are quickest in race pace. I think the Red Bull is probably the quickest in race pace. We have shown we have good qualifying pace and race pace.

“We are there or thereabouts and we have as good an opportunity as anyone.”

After a run of poor results for the Maranello based team, Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali says he wants to see a “strong reaction” this weekend at Hockenheim.

“Whoever does not believe we can win the world championship should find another job,” he insisted.

Domenicali said abandoning the 2010 car to focus on its successor is not yet a consideration.

“Before making calculations we must take home podiums and victories,” he said in an interview with La Stampa. “There is a tide of points at stake.”

Domenicali said he can understand some recent criticism of Ferrari, but reveals he was “hurt” when it was suggested the team is in “disarray”.

One criticism is that while Red Bull pioneered the blown diffuser and McLaren the F-duct, Ferrari has recently been light on innovation.

“We have done less visible things: the wheels, some aerodynamic. But I do accept the criticism: some striking solutions have come out.”

He defended the arguably erratic performances so far of team newcomer Fernando Alonso.

“Driving for Ferrari has a different weight. Some say that once you are in the car it is all the same, which is absolutely not true: the pressures on our team are not comparable to the other teams, Red Bull, McLaren or Mercedes.”

Domenicali believes Ferrari is simply in a period of “renewal”.

“To win, you need to go through those periods. After a wonderful time, the basic rules have changed: at first everything was unlimited but now you must think about budgets and simulations.

“Imagine that tomorrow all football is played on synthetic grass; the sport is the same, but the preparation, the materials, the techniques would all change.”

According to simulations done by Sauber, Silverstone is not set to become the fastest circuit on the formula one calendar.

When the British track’s new Arena layout was launched, organisers indicated that Monza could lose its mantle as the F1 venue with the highest average speed.

While actually adding more slow bends to the layout, the new half-mile Arena section is indeed due to make Silverstone faster on average.

But to investigate the claim that Monza could be knocked off the perch as F1′s fastest, Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport commissioned a study with the help of the Swiss team Sauber.

A simulation lap of the revised layout processed by Sauber’s famous Albert II supercomputer projected a laptime of 1.31.0, resulting in an average speed of 233.4kph.

Monza’s average speed is about 248kph.

The Sauber simulation, however, shows that the new right-hander at the abolished Abbey chicane will be taken at 279kph, followed by a 281kph left sweep, making it the fastest chicane on the calendar.

(GMM)

The competition between the development departments of the Grand Prix teams will be played with the same intensity as the position of duels on the track. Indeed, the pressure to succeed, under the working Formula 1 specialists in recent years grown more and more: Who wants to stay competitive and at the top, must evolve continuously. The cars are compared to the season opener in Bahrain has become consistently faster by about one second.

“The racing teams have realized that the incessant development is during the season just as important as the conceptual design of the next car,” said James Allison, Technical Director at Renault. “Today we hold for our R30 to each Grand Prix, a new package ready parts, whose size is roughly equivalent to those improvements we have introduced in the past, every third or fourth race.”
“We are there but no exception. Every team that wants to stay at the top, must rise to this challenge. This means for our colleagues in the workshops that they have to work so hard, and at such a high time pressure than ever before . The new front wing, which will celebrate its debut in Valencia, provides an ideal example of this: He is already the eighth variant, which comes this year for use – in the ninth race of the season! ”

But where does this escalation? A major factor provided by the new technical regulations, which came at the beginning of last year in force, so is still relatively young, always – and therefore much room for improvement, provides the enabling virtually every week important development steps. This applies in particular to the aerodynamics. Furthermore: Since modifications of the engine are not allowed to search for possibilities for improvement focused almost exclusively on the chassis of the cars.
“As further develop all vehicles on the grid with incredibly high speed, always, we need to bring any improvement found immediately able to use in order to remain competitive,” says Allison. “Previously, we have combined the optimization of a package, which is then flowed into a stage of evolution of the car. This we can not allow today. Each Grand Prix that you wait means lost performance.”

“The heavy workload meets each individual,” said Allison. “The workshop is constantly under the high pressure, constantly develop and produce new parts and need. We are therefore constantly faced with the difficult task of finding a healthy balance between major stages of development and reasonable workload.”

It seems almost an irony of fate that this once again increased rates of development associated with the prohibition of testing during the season goes. But while earlier, thousands of miles on the Grand Prix circuit in Barcelona have been scrubbed to run the team today in the central simulation computer at full speed to check for new parts and votes for their usefulness.
“Thanks to this advanced tools we can use the advantage that we bring some modifications on the track, set with an accuracy that is different from the real output by less than 0.5 percent,” said Allison. “For mechanical parts, we rely on computer simulations, whose results are then verified on test stands. With special durability testing arrangements, we can expose those individual components of loads and forces that occur in the context of a Grand Prix.”

Besides the incessant improvement of the current Grand Prix racer to run the latest from the beginning of summer and work on for next year seater. “We stand every time a difficult compromise on how much we already want to invest in the future without losing its competitiveness in the current season,” says Allison.

Early simulations show that next year’s formula one cars will be about two seconds slower per lap.

Last year, teams including Brawn, Williams and Toyota stunned their rivals by designing cars with the controversial rear aerodynamic concept.

Once the FIA declared the concept legal at the end of a bitter dispute, all the other teams hurriedly introduced double diffusers and then based their 2010 cars on an even more developed understanding of the concept.

But for 2011 the conventional diffusers will return, and it is hoped that in conjunction with the major aerodynamic rule changes introduced for 2009, the double diffuser ban will slow the cars and make overtaking easier.

It is exactly one year ago that Red Bull – not one of the original diffuser teams – introduced its first double diffuser at Monaco.

“If you compare where it’s evolved to today, it’s just monumental,” team boss Christian Horner said in the Principality in 2010.

He revealed that “basic simulation” shows a lap time loss “in the region of two seconds, maybe more” for the non-diffuser cars of 2011.

“It will be a big change and it’s going to be an interesting challenge,” Horner added.

“Engineers tend to be creative people and I’m sure they’ll claw back some of that (laptime loss), but it’s certainly a significant reduction in downforce for next year.”

(GMM)

The Technical Director of Sauber, Willy Rampf has played down the relevance of the good times that the team got at the tests in Valencia.
Sauber was the second fastest team during the three days, with its pilots Kamui Kobayashi and Pedro de la Rosa who established lapping times very similar to the Ferraris’. However, for Rampf, it’s still too soon to know if the car is as competitive as times suggest.
“That is even harder to evaluate this year than in the previous ones,” he said. “All I can say is that our car is giving the expected performance based on our simulations and measurements in the wind tunnel. The tremendously different fuel load makes it impossible to make an absolute comparison with the other teams’ cars.”
He added that the relationship between the new drivers and the team is going extremely well.
“The two pilots are new in the team and we are about to meet the rest, but, the work relationship between drivers and team has had a good beginning. It’s clear that Pedro has great experience which gives him an wonderful base of technical knowledge that is very valuable for all who are involved. Kamui rapidly receives his impressions through him, which means he can give the engineers the necessary information to perform the necessary changes. Together, pilots and engineers are already working productively.”
Rampf explained they will do small modifications to the car’s engine to cover this week’s tests at Jerez, mostly at exhaust level. Sauber will be one of the teams doing tests as of next Wednesday with Red Bull, Force India and Virgin, all of them making their 2010 debut in the group test.