Interview With Mark Preston, Chief Technical Officer, SAF1
Team
MP: We had our first shake down of the SA06 last week and
everything went quite well. We ran through a number of issues
as you do with any new car and everything was fine. We had
a few problems that we were able to sort out overnight and
then we continued with the second car on Thursday at Santa
Pod where we just checked out a few of the things we'd fixed
overnight. We were therefore mainly making adjustments to
get the right settings on the car and those sorts of things.
On the whole the shakedown went quite well so we're reasonably
happy.
Qu: Could you please explain about the new car and
the changes you've made?
MP: It is hard to describe because - as you know from when
Toyota started etc - it's an ongoing development. This development
really has focused on the rear end of the car which has a
new quick-shift gearbox from Honda R&D. It seemed to be
working quite nicely during our first running last week. With
the new gearbox comes a lot of integration. You've probably
seen that the previous car had a lot of compromises to get
the gearbox to match up with the engine, for example. The
rear end is now a lot neater; the gearbox is obviously made
for the engine, to fit with the hydraulics etc. Added to that,
obviously the SA05 had suspension from 2002 and tyres have
moved on a long way since then, so the rear suspension needed
a lot of attention. We did an amount of analysis at the start
of the year and, with running the SA05, we could at least
see the areas that we needed to change and we completed a
lot of work with Bridgestone and have developed a new rear
suspension. Coming with that, integrating the gearbox and
the engine together in a more efficient way, we've also saved
a lot of weight, so we now have a reasonable amount of ballast
on the car, a reduced centre of gravity and all those things
that come from the integration of the two areas. This should
give the race engineers a bit of room to play with weight
distribution which, as you know, is quite important for the
tyres nowadays. So there are a number of things that have
been modified in that area.
Then moving on you may have seen things like the rear lower
main plane on the car - the rear lower wing is very boring
on the previous car, but we didn't have time to come up with
something interesting, so now we're onto the twin pylon arrangement
which has allowed the lower main plane to become much more
aerodynamic which has then in turn allowed changes to the
floor and changes to the top bodywork. We have done a lot
more work on aerodynamics and you can see now the SA06 has
new sidepods, new style radiator inlet ducts, we've got new
top body, the heat shielding across the gearbox now integrates
properly with the engine …. so underbody and overbody
flow is a lot better because of the changes to the rear end.
Qu: What is the downforce gain from the old car to
the new car?
MP: Downforce gain I think is in the realm of 10%. I'd have
to check my numbers but I think that's right. Other areas
- we've got about 20 kilos more ballast so we've got a fair
bit of room to play with now where as we were very restricted
in the SA05. Moving forward to the front of the car, the monocoque
is heavily revised because we're going to have new front suspension,
but that’s not available until Turkey. The reason for
that is when we started doing work on the front suspension
we found not only were we obviously doing gains for the tyres,
but we had some aero gains and those aero gains knocked on
to some mechanical changes that we had to make and we therefore
decided that it was better to wait another race or two to
bring the more optimised package. The monocoque is revised
such that it can take new front suspension when it arrives
for the Turkish Grand Prix. In short, we have achieved weight
reduction, optimisation for the tyres and aerodynamic developments
all over the car.
Qu: Will it be still on a twin keel concept?
MP: No, it will be a zero keel. The car has been modified
so you can do that.
Qu: What is your estimation in gaining in actual
lap times?
MP: That's a hard question to answer right now. Obviously
I could do all sorts of simulations that could tell you anything
from half a second to five seconds depending on what you want
to believe, but obviously it's not going to be five seconds!
What do I believe? I'd rather wait and see tomorrow (Friday)
but we haven't even got the full new package on tomorrow.
We'll obviously still be optimising the car, as you saw from
the start of the year. We've been analysing our percentage
from the front of the grid and looking at our performance
over the season and you'll see that over the first eight races
we slowly increased our performance relative to the pole.
I think that the same thing will start to happen from tomorrow
(Friday). We'll obviously be dialing in the car, understanding
the aerodynamics, understanding the set-up's, understanding
if the wind tunnel is completely correct or if we have to
do some adjustments - so I think the time will come in, probably
all the way up to Turkey where we get the front suspension.
We'll be optimising as we go, so I think that it will be difficult
to see what the actual lap time gain is because everybody
else is moving forward as well. Renault and Ferrari aren't
letting up, so they're obviously moving forward at a fairly
impressive rate so any easy lap time comparison will go out
the window because everyone else is moving forward so fast.
So if I said five seconds, if they've moved forward a second
then that will be irrelevant.
Qu: After all that work would one second will be
fairly disappointing for you?
MP: We'll have to see. At the last race we made a big gain
because we had the right tyre choice, so there's still a lot
in optimising the tyres, the temperatures…. This weekend
we will be slightly more conservative on tyre choice because
we do not know the SA06 car well yet. We haven't been able
to test it properly so that could have an effect as well,
so there's a bit of time still to be had out of the car. We
shall be working extremely closely with Bridgestone over the
weekend to see how everything is going and to see how we might
make different tyre choices for Turkey and future races.
Qu: When is the third car due?
MP: The third car is proposed for Turkey, as there has not
been enough time to get another SA06 ready by next week. We've
brought an SA05 with us as a back-up plan, just in case we
have any problems.
Qu: The monocoque has been revised for the new front
suspension package in the next race. Has the monocoque itself
has been revised in terms of weight?
MP: Yes. We have completed new homologation tests for the
FIA and there has been weight reduction and a reduction in
the centre of gravity.
Qu: And how about the shape of the monocoque itself?
MP: Aerodynamically there was no need to change the shape.
Qu: When did you start with the design work for SA06?
MP: We've known about the possibility of using this gearbox
since last year but we weren't able to utilise it for the
SA05, but I suppose you could say that we've been thinking
about it since the very start. Obviously we had to see how
the new Bridgestone tyres worked, so it took a race to two
to understand that and what we needed to optimise them for
our sort of set-up regime. We've been working on it, I suppose
since we finished the SA05 and it went off to our first race
in Bahrain. We could then concentrate on the new car so that
was back in March. But a lot of the concepts have been waiting
for the new gearbox and now that it is ready, we are able
to introduce things we wanted to bring into the team earlier
but could not.
Qu: Did you have some technical support from Honda?
MP: Yes, the gearbox is designed by Honda R&D and they
have been supporting us in the manufacture. We've had a number
of Honda personnel over at the factory working on the suspension
with us - Honda R&D in Japan has been great.
Qu: What's the plan for next year?
MP: I cannot tell you that yet! We have still got to get
the new suspension on the SA06 and then we'll figure out what
to do next year! Make it go faster?! I think that we really
have to see how our thoughts on say the rear suspension design,
aerodynamics, all works with this new car and see if we're
going in the right direction. If we're going in the right
direction then we'll continue down that road. If we believe
that we haven't, then we'll obviously have to go in a different
direction. But a lot will depend on the results from this
weekend and what we're building up to for Turkey and so we'll
see after that.
Qu: Does that mean, for next year, you're going to
start with a revised version of this year's car and then you're
going to have the new car in the middle of the season?
MP: No, no, a new car. We're finally ahead of the game. We
were behind the 8-ball when we started this season and so
we're just struggling to catch up - and I think we're almost
caught up now - so we can then go forward and produce a new
car.
Qu: So you're not thinking ‘we're going to
get a solution regarding customer cars’?
MP: We'll have to wait and see about that one. I'm not sure
what is happening there with the politics of the whole situation.
We have to assume that we will have a new car.
Qu: Did you have to complete the FIA tests for SA06?
MP: Yes we did. For the monocoque and rear impact obviously
because the gearbox is aluminum and brand new. They all went
a lot more smoothly than when we did them the first time because
we are a lot more organised now I suppose.
Qu: How difficult was it to have 2 cars ready for
testing last week?
MP: Very difficult, as you know I have not been present at
the last couple of races. It required me to be back at the
factory just to help guide and set the plans down. Obviously
I was involved with McLaren when we tried to do it with the
18A and even a big company like that found it difficult to
handle, so we had to be very, very careful about our outlook.
We said to ourselves ‘you have to go with two cars,
don't try and bring a third otherwise you'll make a mistake’.
It is better to take the performance gain a little bit later,
but not stop the car’s introduction because the gearbox
is obviously going to be better, the aerodynamics are obviously
going to be better, the weight etc. So we shall keep bringing
new parts to the car as fast as we can, like we did for the
first few races this season. We now have almost full-time
access to the BMT wind tunnel therefore our aero guys have
been sending us information through over the last couple of
days so I hope that we will be able to do even more than we
did in the first races and bring a continuous string of performance
changes to the car. Next week in Hungary there'll be upgrades
again, so the guys are going to have to work pretty hard next
Tuesday and Wednesday to make the changes.
Qu: How much work have you done in the tunnel?
MP: Ten weeks or so, so double the amount of time for the
SA05!
Qu: How much concern do you have about the reliability
of the car after just two days testing?
MP: Hopefully it should be ok but you can never predict things
like that. I don't think I can give a prediction because if
I knew the problems I'd prevent them beforehand. We'll have
to see and work very hard over the first two Free Practice
sessions and overnight if there are any issues. But because
the car is a lot more integrated, I'm a lot happier with the
quality. I think if you look at the car you'll see the difference
in the quality. You will see that we have not just done work
on straight performance gains. We've also done a lot of work
on making our internal systems a lot better so the quality
of the manufacture of the carbon parts etc and now we've got
our own composites facility in-house, we can bring a lot of
the work back inside, so I think the game has been upped in
all areas and therefore hopefully the reliability.
Qu: Have you changed the control system of the gearbox
and other areas?
MP: Well obviously they had to change for the quick shift
so the control systems have been a continuous development
process. We are finding our feet with the control systems,
the code and the electronics, which are supplied by Honda,
so we're now getting into more of a routine of being able
to say "Can we have this changed to the traction control?
Can we have this changed to the diff?" And our processes
are working better between the two groups, so we will continue
our development on the control systems and hopefully have
an even better launch, so we'll see how we go.
Qu: Are you confident about how the car will perform
in the hot weather races ahead?
MP: We are continuously receiving information from the wind
tunnel on heat control. It is hard to make a judgment like
that because we have only tested the SA06 on the Stowe circuit
at Silverstone and at Santa Pod, so at fairly low speed. We
shall have to see how that translates here at Hockenheim but
using previous experience, having the guys sending through
info from the tunnel, if there are any adjustments that need
to be made, we've got our plans laid out about how we'll handle
that situation.
Qu: Do you have a testing programme?
MP: We are going to ramp that up now as well and will finally
have a testing programme in place. The first test is in Monza
for the Monza race and we shall also run a fourth car at that
test. The test team should be up and running soon to operate
independently from the race team, which will be another big
step forward for us.
Qu: Will there be a test engineering department?
MP: At the moment it will be handled by the race engineering
department and we'll look at how we deal with that in the
future.
Qu: You have experience as an engineer, you are running
a reasonably small team with a reasonably small budget and
at the same time designing and making a new car! What do you
think when you look back over the last few months?
MP: I've enjoyed every minute of it, even though it's been
very hard. I think there's gains to be had as well because
we can't waste money on things that don't make the car go
faster, so when I am in the design office you will often hear
me saying “But if it won't make the car go faster, leave
it” or “Don't change it unless you can tell me
how it can make the car go faster!" I think that it is
hard to get the right balance between coming to the race tracks
and staying at the factory. I have to decide whether I am
going to come to every race or whether it's every two races
and that kind of thing, because even though we have email
and phones there is nothing like walking around the factory
and physically being present when developments are happening.
Qu: What are your objectives, where do you want to
be?
MP: The objective is that we want to be racing with Midland
F1 and finish in 10th place in the Championship.
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