F1-Blog

Jarno on the TF106B

Jarno Trulli has recently come out with some comments on the recently released TF106B car that was introduced at Monaco for the Toyota team.

Jarno is hoping the new specification car will show it's abilities at this weekend's Silverston GP, "Monaco was not the right place to judge the TF106B but the car behaved well in the race, It has also showed promise during testing so I'm confident the car is a step forward but we can't yet say how much.

The car at the moment is not all to my liking so we have to work on that. I am having a little struggle to drive this car at the moment, but I am sure we will work it out."

The TF106B was introduced in the attempt to solve some of the tyre issues the team are having (in similar vain to the Honda team). The B specification has not solved all of those problems, but Jarno says it's a step forward, "The tyres, they do look better," he said. "We have made an improvement, but in getting temperatures into the tyres we are not completely on top of the problems yet. As for Silverstone it is very difficult to judge, we will see."

Performance and V8’s

The new V8 engine rules where designed to bring the speed's in F1 down. However this has been shown on many occasions this year to be a little bit of a mis-truth. Michael Schumacher has proved it again setting the fastest time at Barcelona last week.

Michael set a time of 1:13.471 at the track during testing, this betters Jenson Button's 1:13.552 set at the beginning of last year.

Monaco again proved that the pace of the V8's is not as slow as people would think it should be, with the fastest lap within a second of the year before; Even tracks with long straights have proved to be only marginally slower than the year before.

This gap will only decrease over the rest of the year as new parts, and better understanding of the engines comes to the teams.

I would speculate that the performance of the cars as a whole will be on a par with last years cars by season end, some of that will be from the improving engine performance, but mostly the fact that the V8's are smaller and allow for a better aero package.

STR to keep the V10 alive

Scuderia Toro Rosso may be the old Minardi squad in essence (well not really since becoming Red Bull 'B', they spend more on their hospitality than Minardi used to spend in a year!), and are currently running the V10 due to the agreements that were in place at the takeover. However Dietrich Mateschitz has upset a few members of the grid by saying that they will possibly run the same restricted V10 in 2007 as well.

That does not bode well for some of the other teams that are already struggling, both Midland and Super Aguri have asked for the team to not score manufacturers points next year unless they run V8's.

Yes there may be agreements in place for supply of Cosworth V10 power in 2007, but Cosworth I'm sure would rather retire the 'old' unit's and concentrate on just running the V8 power plants.

Let's hope all the teams are on a more even footing next year, because the V10 is a clear advantage even if it is crippled somewhat.

Keith Duckworth RIP

Keith Duckworth the designer of possibly the most famous F1 engine of all time the Cosworth DFV!

The 3.0ltr V8 engine won everything going in F1 for years (154 victories over the various generations of the engine) and some would say the 'new' V8's in F1 for next year owe a lot to it's existence.

Keith was an engineering student at The Imperial College of London and then joined Lotus as a transmission engineer under the tutelage of Colin Chapman no less; at Lotus he famously joined forces with Mike Costin and Cosworth was born. 

The company started to make a name for itself when Ford asked them to build two race engines, these where the now famous 1.6ltr FVA (F2) and the 3ltr V8 DFV. The DFV was not however used solely by Ford as teams you now know all used it to make there names, these include Williams, Brabham and McLaren (The engine was also used up until the 80's in IndyCar to great success). Ford also asked them to build the Cosworth BDA for use in F2, however this engine actually came to fame in the Ford world rally cars of the era.