Virgin MVR-02 Launch

Its been clear ever since Team Lotus have pulled away by over 1 second and HRT have been banging on their door that Wirth's CFD-only route possibly hasn't worked and clearly the car Nick has designed is far too slow.

Ever since Team Lotus and HRT started serious windtunnel work and development of their cars, Virgin have stagnated, they have made progress but nothing near the gains that the other two have made. This is quite obviously unacceptable for a team and car that is still 3-4 seconds off the pace. They might have added parts that bring 1-2 tenths but if the rest of the field find 4 tenths, relative to the other teams they go backwards. This might be ok if you are Sauber or Force India, but Virgin really need to be finding whole seconds of pace...especially considering this is their second season and they should have been able to use their debut experience to develop a much faster car from the start as we saw with Lotus.

Whether this was due to not having a proof of concept with a windtunnel isn't clear, but its very clear that the VR-01 and MVR-02 have been far too slow from the start and haven't made enough progress though development in the season. Something had to be changed.

In theory, Wirth has proved you can design an F1 car with 100% CFD-only resources. But he has failed to prove you can design a competitive F1 car and keep a high level of development through a season.

It already started smelling a bit off when we heard (and saw!) that the 2010 Lotus T127 was an extremely conservative design which was created for reliability before speed (by a team of 3 or so people apparently). The VR-01 only barely beat the T127, even when it was super-compact due to the fuel-tank design error! (thats comparing times when they had similar running)
You would have thought that a car designed in CFD with much more time spent on it and designed somewhat for speed would have at least been able to match and beat the conservative T127 much more consistently.

It wasn't a surprise this year when it turned out the T128 was/is even further ahead and HRT have begun to catch them.
 
Seismica
Lol :D

I think Symonds is going to attempt the Technical Director role through his consultancy role (As he can't be in F1 full time due to the ban - Not sure when it expires).

I think limited resources and lack of wind tunnel testing to back up the figures they were getting out of CFD were what caused it. I doubt anyone could do significantly better with the same resources, but inevitably whoever follows will do better because they've decided they now want to test in wind tunnels...
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I agree with everything you said. Symonds is technically banned until 2013 but he can work in a consultancy role and set up his team.

Peter.
Wirth is probably the best Virgin have available to them at the moment. He wasn't exactly doing a bad job, the 2011 car was so little of a difference over the 2010 car because it was designed on the old computers, rather than the new, far more powerful computers they have now. And this year so far has really been spent trying to sort out the reliability problems that plagued them all of last year. Only now has Wirth started to rollout the upgrades to the cars, bu they haven't really broken in the upgrades, especially the blown diffuser, as yet, hence their lack of improvement.

Wirth and CFD was going to carry them a long way. CFD has potential to kick windtunnel design off the throne as the major method of car design in not only F1, but in LMS as well. And it's for sure easier to work with and probably cheaper to run.
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Well a lot of people are yet to be convinced that a pure cfd route is the way to go.
 
Wirth designed an Acura LMP car, that showed promise and could knock on the Audi's door. F1 and LMP are a different kettle of fish, but if it's doable to make a competitive LMP car with CFD, it's doable in F1, albeit not as easy.
 
Firstly, lets take note that the original design of the Acura ARX was basically just a modified Courage design.
Secondly, the Acrua's were only really successful as LMP2 cars, the LMP1 ARX-02 never really proved itself - sure it qualified well but in the races it wasn't anywhere near the diesels.
Thirdly, its hard to really prove the CFD-approach worked as the budgets in LMS racing differ wildly. While they may have been successful in LMP2, most LMP2 teams simply buy a mass-produced (well, mass relative to the Acura) chassis such as a Lola and similarly an engine deal. Acura were developing their own car and engine so were clearly spending a good deal more money and spending more time developing the core designs.
The ARX-02 didn't compete much and again its hard to judge because Audi and Peugeot would have had vastly bigger budgets.
 
Peter.
Wirth designed an Acura LMP car, that showed promise and could knock on the Audi's door. F1 and LMP are a different kettle of fish, but if it's doable to make a competitive LMP car with CFD, it's doable in F1, albeit not as easy.
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Which is why they're now competing with the Hrt's and not the lotus' and the Toro Rosso's.
 
Ardius
Its been clear ever since Team Lotus have pulled away by over 1 second and HRT have been banging on their door that Wirth's CFD-only route possibly hasn't worked and clearly the car Nick has designed is far too slow.
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I don't think the problem is that they've built a slow car. The problem is that they've built a car that is aready at the zenith of its development cycle. They can't get any more speed out of it because there is no more speed to be had. They've just piqued too soon.
 
But they are not doing it as a charity are they. They are not adopting a team and receiving a postcard every month of smiley Virgin faces holding up a banner saying "thank-you for the wind tunnel use!".
McLaren must be getting paid good money for their action, which they need now they are independent.
I see McLaren as a downward trending team, like Williams.
 
Why? Because they're leasing out their facilities to Virgin? They're already doing it with Force India, and have been for years with no downturn. I think you're just an anti-McLaren fan, inventing fantasies that seem them sliding down the grid.
 
I think McLaren are doing the same thing they did with Force India - lending some of their staff almost to "prove themselves" as a kind of challenge. One of the management guys they sent to Force India was quickly brought back to McLaren if I remember right (Andy Stevenson?) after their quick turn-around of success in 2009.

Its also a very handy way to make some money off their facilities that perhaps aren't used 100% of the year. There are limits to wind-tunnel use and so on, so while they can't use it, they can sell the use of it to other teams to help recover the costs of maintaining it.

It also allows McLaren to place their young-driver programme somewhere perhaps if they can't provide a seat.

Oh, and I've just thought, perhaps its also to help line-up some customers for a McLaren-manufacturered F1 engine for 2014?
 
I'm not an anti-fan like you and Ferrari, in fact I would support McLaren more if they continue to do worse, as I like supporting the under dogs. At the moment I like to see Sauber do well, and also hope to see Lotus fight for a few places higher up.
But it does look like McLaren are on a downward trend for success. And they will get less money if Ferrari beat them to 2nd place in the Team championship, I'm not sure if the situation is that bad yet though.
 
Moot
But it does look like McLaren are on a downward trend for success.
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Why? Because they'er leasing their facilities out to Virgin? Like I said, they're already doing the same with Force India. They're currently second in the Constructors' Championship, and they're the only team that has beaten Red Bull. How does that put them on a downward spiral?
 
Maybe I speak too soon, It's the impression I get, from past form not specifically connected with partnerships they are making.
I was thinking they could do with some financial boost to raise their game, and this could help them.
 

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