Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Felipe Massa and Esteban Gutierrez have both been handed three-place grid penalties for impeding rivals during qualifying at Barcelona.

Revised Grid

01 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:20.718
02 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:20.972
03 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:21.054
04 Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1:21.177
05 Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:21.218
06 Romain Grosjean Lotus 1:21.308
07 Mark Webber Red Bull 1:21.570
08 Sergio Perez McLaren 1:22.069
09 Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:21.219 *
10 Paul di Resta Force India 1:22.233
11 Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:22.127
12 Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso 1:22.166
13 Adrian Sutil Force India 1:22.346
14 Jenson Button McLaren 1:23.166
15 Nico Hulkenberg Sauber 1:22.389
16 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1:23.260
17 Pastor Maldonado Williams 1:23.318
18 Giedo van der Garde Caterham 1:24.661
19 Esteban Gutierrez Sauber 1:22.793 *
20 Jules Bianchi Marussia 1:24.713
21 Max Chilton Marussia 1:4.996
22 Charles Pic Caterham 1:25.070

http://www.planetf1.com/driver/18227/8706565/Massa-and-Gutierrez-penalised

McLaren opted not to run its latest-specification front wing in qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix because it did not have the chance to check it would pass the FIA's bodywork flexibility tests.

A pair of new front wings reached Barcelona overnight, but ahead of Saturday morning practice the decision was made not to risk running them without checking.

"It was very tight," said team principal Martin Whitmarsh when asked why the new front wing design was not used.

"We were unable to be confident that they complied legally and we took the decision that unless you are confident in the compliance of the wings then you shouldn't use them."

McLaren had hoped to test the flexibility of the parts on the FIA test apparatus but did not get the opportunity to do so before free practice.

While the wings complied with the regulations when tested in-house, the team did not want to leave itself open to disqualification should its tolerances have been incorrect.

"You will see people queuing down at what is known as the 'bridge of doom' and it's the tests that go on there that determine whether the car is legal or not.

"We and other teams test parts before they are here, the tolerances of stiffness and dimensions is very tight.

"Everyone does their own test but everyone tests on critical issues on the FIA equipment.

"If you can't do that, given the tolerances, you have got inherent risk."

Whitmarsh did not blame the FIA for not being able to test the wing, accepting that the apparatus did not have to be available to McLaren when it wanted to use it.

"The hope was that we would have the ability to get onto the rig but in fairness to the FIA, they have got no obligation to make it available to use early on a Saturday morning so there is no criticism of them - that was the chance that we took.

"Without that check, it wasn't prudent to go forward."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/107364

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Had I known the diff between R32 and R33 suspension I would have R33 suspension. That ship has sailed so I'm doing my best to replicate a drop spindle without spending $4k on a Billet one.
    • OEM suspension starts to bind as soon as the car gets away from stock height. I locked in the caster and camber before cutting off the kingpin. I then let the upright down in a natural (unbound) state before re-attaching it. Now it moves freely in bump and droop relative to the new ride height. My plan is to add GKTech arms before the car is finished so I can dial camber and caster further. It will be fine. This isn't rocket science. Caster looks good, camber is good, upper arm doesn't cause crazy gain and it is now closer to the stock angle and bump steer checks out. Send it.
    • Pay careful attention to the kinematics of that upper arm. The bloody things don't work properly even on a normal stock height R32. Nissan really screwed the pooch on that one. The fixes have included changing the hole locations on the bracket to change the angle of the inner pivot (which was fairly successful but usually makes it impossible to install or remove the arm without unbolting the bracket from the tower, which sucks) and various swivelling upper arm designs. ALL the swivelling upper arm designs that look like a capital I (with serifs) suck. All of them. Some of them are in fact terribly unsafe. Even the best one of them (the old UAS design) shat itself in short order on my car. The only upper arm that works as advertised and is pretty safe is the GKTech one. But it is high maintenance on a street car. I'm guessing that a 600HP car as (stupidly, IMO) low as you are going is not going to be a regular driver. So the maintenance issues on suspension parts are probably not going to be a problem. But you really must make sure that however your fairly drastically modded suspension ends up, that the upper arms swing through an arc that wants to keep the inner and outer bolts parallel. If the outer end travels through an arc that makes that end's bolt want to skew away from parallel with the inner bolt, you will build up enormous binding and compressing forces in the bushes, chew them out and hate life. The suspension compliance can actually be dominated by the bush binding, not the spring rate! It may be the case that even something like the GKTech arm won't work if your suspension kinematics become too weird, courtesy of all the cut and shut going on. Although you at least say there's no binding now, so maybe you're OK. Seeing as you're in the build phase, you could consider using R33/4 type upper arms (either that actual arm, OEM or aftermarket) or any similar wishbone designed to suit your available space, so alleviate the silliness of the R32 design. Then you can locate your inner pivots to provide the correct kinematics (camber gain on compression, etc).
    • The frontend wouldn't go low enough because the coilover was max low and the upper control arm would collapse into itself and potentially bottom out in the strut tower. I made a brace and cut off the kingpin and then moved the upright down 1.25" and welded. i still have to finish but this gives an idea. Now I can have a normal 3.25" of shock travel and things aren't binding. I'm also dropping the lower arm and tie rod 1.25".
    • Motor and body mockup. Wheel fitment and ride height not set. Last pic shows front ride height after modifying the front uprights to make a 1.25" drop spindle.
×
×
  • Create New...