This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Sauber Work on the Frontier Toyota Gather Momentum

Sauber Work on the Frontier

Not content with running "best of the rest," Peter Sauber's outfit is working hard to establish any advantage they can to bring them up to a potentially race winning speed, and it appears that they might have hit upon something that would offer them a decisive step forward.

As usual when developing cars, attempts to extract greater aerodynamic efficiency tend to come with a penalty - with pitch sensitivity being a common casualty of the quest for efficient downforce. There comes a point where the gains from increased downforce, or reduced drag, are more than offset by the difficulty of just keeping the car on the road, as ever smaller changes in pitch leave it prone to losing considerable downforce at critical moments.

Pitch sensitivity is, usually, due to a stalling effect under the chassis of the car, and less often the wings, as the angle of attack to the road changes. The effect, essentially, is that the air is failing to flow smoothly past the surface generating downforce, and instead separates from the surface, resulting in eddies and turbulence. This has the double whammy of generating drag, whilst significantly reducing the outright performance that the aerodynamic device was offering moments earlier. Needless to say, the car becomes an instant handful to control.

Even though a number of teams have researched this concept in the past, Sauber are now looking at the effect of "dimples" and small holes in aerodynamic surfaces, as they hope to pursue a new idea. Dimples, like those seen on a golf ball, are "turbulators," used to deliberately break up the smooth, laminar air flow in a controlled fashion. This causes a very thin, turbulent layer of air against the surface, which in turn forms a cushion, past which the remainder of the air flows smoothly. Key, though, is that, properly constructed, this turbulent cushion is also considerably less prone to stalling. Mind you, on the downside, it also has a fractionally higher inherent drag than the theoretical limit of a pure laminar system.

Early wind tunnel testing on (scale) models has shown the potential is certainly there: component testing has shown that putting a "surface" on critical areas offers some advantage - particularly under the low section of the front wing, on the plank itself, and through the diffuser. The small drag costs are clearly offset, allowing a more aggressive layout on the aerodynamic surfaces: slightly reducing the wheelbase (which increases pitch sensitivity) to improve the nimbleness of the car, offering greater turn in speed for cornering.

Now all they have to do is scale the concept up, and get it working on the race car!

Toyota Gather Momentum

Despite starting the season better than anyone in the paddock expected, there is no a sign of complacency at Toyota, as they continue gearing up to the challenge.

In private there is a lot of back slapping going on: scoring twice in the opening three races has come as an unexpected bonus, although at this stage, the Championship points themselves are actually a secondary consideration to being seen bettering Honda on the race track!

In fact, it is anticipating Honda's response to their poor season start that is driving on the developments coming on line over the remainder of the season. As things stand, Toyota are convinced their engine has been better than Honda's. For the opening races, they've estimated their outright power advantage as over 30 bhp - largely the result of the Honda units being run at restricted revs, admittedly. Relative fuel consumption has been hard to estimate, as Jordan and BAR have struggled through the races, so their strategies have not revealed much so far. Conservatively, Toyota are putting themselves behind, but only marginally.

Given Honda are taking a new engine to San Marino, Toyota predict something of a resurgence from BAR, and particularly Jordan. The Irish outfit appear to have a well balanced and aerodynamically efficient chassis this year, but are struggling on outright pace; no surprises that they complain that the engine is proving to be the weakest link right now. Given BAR's concurrent lack of pace, Honda have nowhere to hide from the accusation, either. Since returning to the sport, Honda have struggled to get on terms with the mid-field, let alone the front running engines. However, over the course of last season, they gave the impression that a corner had been turned, committing to developing a new, improved engine for this year. Along with an aggressive plan for improving it throughout the season.

Returning to Toyota's future, the team have plenty of plans to improve their performance in the short term. For now, changes to the basic chassis are restricted to managing Michelin's changing requirements: the current setup provides a solid and responsive baseline. Also, the engine is a powerful, reliable unit, so only a couple of serious evolutions are planned for this season.

Not so the aerodynamics: targeting efficiency is the plan, as drag in medium and high downforce setup is proving to be a limiting factor in deciding race strategy. The engine is powerful, but fuel efficiency drops alarmingly as downforce (and hence, drag) is increased. Towards this end, a new front wing is being tested to improve airflow around the sidepods; these, in turn, need to be altered to make better use of the cleaner air, which will reduce drag off the rear wheels, and clean up the airflow disrupted by hot air exiting the radiators. Wind tunnel figures show that some five percent improvement in efficiency is available, though it does not all appear to have translated into on track performance in testing.

Still in the pipeline, a more sophisticated diffuser is being worked on. This is promising a good increase in rear downforce, but only at a cost of increased pitch sensitivity - something that Gustav Brunner has worked hard to minimise so far. Should the sensitivity issue be solved, then it is still necessary to find more downforce at the front in order to maximise the advantage; and this is the key issue for the team: front downforce is a weakness that continues to provide work for the aerodynamicists.

Toyota's intent coming into this season was to prove that they had what it takes to compete, without embarrassing themselves. Following the BAR lesson, early reliability was targeted as a key factor: the more time spent on track, the more they could learn about racing, and the better they could judge how to improve the car. That priority is paying off handsomely: early advantage over Honda aside, the approach that has provided feedback from the opening races has already been key in deciding which areas to concentrate on over the remainder of the season. Just as critically, how the car responds to these new developments coming online will lay out the priorities for designing next year's car. After all, this season is just as much a building block as last year; the lessons learned here will dictate how to approach next season - where elementary mistakes will no longer be seen as just a part of the learning curve.