MOTORSPORT: Alarm bells as F1 testing starts

Daniel Ricciardo is excited about Red Bull's new F1 car, even though he hasn't driven it yet, but its creator, Adrian Newey, is worried about the safety of the machinery that radical rule changes have produced

Ferrari fastest and most reliable on day one

World champion Formula One team Red Bull Racing has launched its RB10 model that Daniel Ricciardo will drive in the season starting in Melbourne in 45 days, but the 24-year-old Australian didn’t get a run in it on the first day of testing in Europe.

Sebastian Vettel, world champion the past four years, drove three installation laps at Spain’s Jerez circuit late in the day as Ricciardo looked on, awaiting his turn tonight or tomorrow.

“Car looks like a hot rod! It's got swag. Pumped!” tweeted Ricciardo – who has replaced Mark Webber – soon after the RB10 was unveiled.

But Adrian Newey, the genius who creates Red Bull’s machinery, lamented the ugliness of this year’s cars and raised safety alarms about their electrical systems and low noses.

“If you hit the back of a car (in front) square on, then you go underneath it and end up under the rear crash structure, which I think is a much worse scenario (than when cars behind were taking off after making contact with their higher noses),” Newey said.

He vigorously disagreed with the new rule requiring batteries to be housed under a car’s fuel tank.

“These batteries can suffer thermal runaway through impact, through causes that are difficult to predict, and once they go into that, with such a big battery pack, then it is very difficult to control that fire,” Newey said.

“I think also the voltages now are very high. Large DC voltages are very dangerous, and much more dangerous than an AC voltage, so for the whole of the pitlane safety is a big challenge with these cars.”

Reliability also is going to be an early-season issue with these cars with 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged engines and much more complex energy recovery and recycling systems.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had already predicted only half the field may finish at the Australian Grand Prix on March 16 and veteran former F1 designer Gary Anderson echoed that prediction at Jerez overnight. Anderson said this year’s cars were “10 times more complicated” than their predecessors.

Only 93 laps were completed by eight cars at Jerez overnight – barely the distance done by one car on the first day of pre-season testing last year.

And the fastest lap, by Kimi Raikkonen in Ferrari’s F14T, was more than nine seconds slower than the best a year earlier – 1 minute 27.104 seconds versus 1:18.861.

Mercedes had looked the best prepared team early, but Lewis Hamilton crashed its WO5 in the middle of the day after a front wing failure.

Ferrari’s 31 laps was more than twice the mileage of any team other than Mercedes, which got in little more than half the distance of the Italian squad.

While Red Bull only squeezed in three late laps, McLaren – still without a team principal after failing to make a podium last year – did not get its MP4-29 out of the garage because of electrical issues.

Even more embattled Lotus is not making it to the four-day Jerez test with its E22, while lowly Marussia was delayed at its factory and won’t be on track until at least Thursday.

Anderson, who has been a technical commentator for the BBC in recent years and is now doing a similar role for Autosport magazine and website, predicted teams would improve lap times 2-3 seconds this week but that the cars will “not show anything like the full potential” at Jerez.

“Nobody will have run [yet] with the full electrical power available or the true braking performance needed to charge the battery pack, so ... we are looking at a significant drop in lap time [to come],” Anderson told Autosport.

“They will get a lot sorted out [before the two other four-day tests in Bahrain].

“Will they be reliable in Melbourne? No, because the systems are complicated and nobody will be 100 per cent on top of it.

“There will be a lot of crossed fingers on the pit wall because you never know when you are going to hit problems that you haven’t yet catered for.

“It’s hard to predict how many will finish, some will be limping, but while in recent years we have been looking at 18-20 cars making the chequered flag in a normal race that will be massively reduced early on [in the season].”

Anderson predicted Red Bull would have the best car again.

“The RB10 looks a very logical, well-designed car,” he said. “That’s very unfortunate for anyone hoping to see F1’s dominant team struggle.”

Red Bull technical director Newey was more concerned last night about the cars this year’s radical rule changes have produced rather than whether his team remains on top.

For starters he said the low noses not only were ugly but could introduce new danger.

“The regulation has been introduced following some research by the FIA [the governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile] that the nose height reduces the chances of cars being launched – like with the accident that Mark Webber had when he hit the back of Heikki Kovalainen at Valencia a few years ago,” Newey said.

“I am concerned that the opposite may now happen – that cars now submarine effectively.

“So if you hit the back of the car square on, then you go underneath it and end up under the rear crash structure, which I think is a much worse scenario.”

Newey said of the low noses: “I think it is a shame if regulations create ugly solutions.

“It is not a strictly technical matter as we have to design a car that we feel gives the best performance regardless of the styling.

"But I think the shape of the cars, the sound of the cars, is all part of the drama of F1. And it is a shame if the cars are unattractive.”

Newey was also unhappy that he has had to place the RB10’s battery pack under the fuel tank in the centre of the car rather than leave it under the gearbox for better weight distribution.

“It [the new rule] was done on safety grounds [supposedly], but I am not sure why putting a battery underneath a fuel tank is safer than putting it behind the engine,” he said. “It is unchartered territory. These batteries can suffer thermal runaway through impact ... and it is very difficult to control that fire.

“It is probably [a case of] push it [the car] in the pitlane and watch it burn, frankly.

“I don't think it is a driver safety concern, because you know about it in a reasonable amount of time, but it is still a danger.

“For the whole of the pitlane safety is a big challenge with these cars.”

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.

MOTORSPORT: Alarm bells as F1 testing starts

Tags