This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Playing the Game All Go for 2003

Playing the Game

When the FIA sat the teams down to force through far reaching changes, it was largely expected that sparks would fly. The big three, in particular, have invested considerable money into gaining advantage in the electronics and software for traction and launch control, telemetry and real-time updates: losing these features represents the loss of a lot of development effort.

However, there is a lot of sense to accepting the proposals in some form, provided they are unilateral and are adequately policed, as they are key to all the teams achieving some of their goals for the year.

In the normal run of things, one of the biggest factors for relative performance in Formula One, is change. It provides the big teams with an opportunity to react to the new situation, and put together an innovative solution that leaves the competition behind. One of the reasons teams like Arrows and Prost were able to score points before going under, is the stability of the rules; they close the gap to the leaders, leaving a chance to score when things go pear shaped at the front. Dropping electronic assistance, in any form, will put the onus back on the teams and manufacturers to produce drivable cars, and their drivers to make the most of them.

Of course, that's not so good for the backmarkers, as they also have to react to these changes; however, the reduced cost from not only being able to scrap most of the electronic and software development, but the reduced testing time, will add up very fast. The performance cost would not be worth it, though, if it was not for the fact that these changes will increase the odds of driver error. This, in turn, increases the chances that a backmarker can score surprising results.

And then, for the mid-field teams, there is that most vital of all reasons for accepting these changes - they provide a great excuse to give the sponsors when the team fail to take third place in the Championship. Considering almost all the midfield teams, as usual, will claim to be chasing third or fourth spot this year, all but one of them are going to need something to blame when they fail!

All Go for 2003

Given the Technical Working Group's agreement with the FIA over the forthcoming changes, all the teams are able to continue working towards Melbourne uninterrupted, and the newly launched have been as keen as any to do so.

The media has already slated Jaguar's new car for its conservatism - though none have actually seen it perform so far. Considering the results the team had with their adventurously designed predecessors, which were notorious for failing to deliver, perhaps the approach makes sense.

At any event, in introducing a new, wide-V engine, Jaguar have decided to benefit from the expensive lesson of Benetton's last season. Benetton struggled in the first year of the wide-V Renault engine, as the unit flexed under torsional load; given that the engine is a stressed chassis member, the flex was directly translated into the handling characteristics of the car: the season was dismal. In light of that experience, (and who better to relate it than chief aerodynamicist Ben Agathangelou, who came from the team) being conservative when putting a new engine into the car makes a lot of sense. The 90-degree engine that Cosworth put together is not as wide as the 111-degree Renault unit, but it is still interesting. Power is expected to top 870bhp, with revs to 19,200 rpm by the start of the season: alongside the wide angle, that makes it about as competitive as any front running unit.

To date, Jaguar has mainly put the new car through straight-line tests - looking at the aerodynamic efficiency, and updating engine mappings. Initial running shows the relatively simple design meets its stated objective of being solid, reliable, easy to understand and set up, and offering a solid platform from which to work. This is in some contrast to the other major Ford-powered team of 2003, Jordan.

The new Jordan is, according to the team at least, something of a work of art. Considering the reduced resources they had for the effort, it is impressive that this car is essentially new: to take advantage of the new engine, it really had to be. The Ford unit it now uses is considerably lighter than the Honda plant being replaced, and the whole back end, including a new gearbox, had to be revisited to integrate it properly.

On its first public outing, there were teething troubles, including a fire in the engine compartment, then gearbox problems, keeping the running to a minimum. Unlike the competition, Jordan have not put any time into running new components in their old car, so they are facing the steep curve of discovering and resolving all the flaws in the package as it rolls out; accordingly, whilst disappointing, these issues are not really unexpected. It does mean that, rather than getting straight to grips with setting up the car, a lot of time is spent on what amounts to shakedown work, working up the stress loads on the chassis, hydraulics, electronics, gearbox and engine, in order to bring the flaws to the fore without a catastrophic failure on a 'hot lap'.

Renault, on the other hand, have beavered away all through the off-season, morphing last year's car into the recently released model. Just about all that remained to be revealed at the launch was the new aerodynamic package, which sees the team drop the nose: this flies in the face of the current convention, though it is a packaging rather than aerodynamically driven feature. The remainder of the car has been run, so no-one anticipates losing a significant amount of time to problems with this package: learning how it behaves under different setups, alongside tyre testing, is now the priority.

BAR are also claiming to have made serious progress over the off-season. Their new car boasts a heavily revised Honda engine: admittedly, whilst enhanced, the power levels are still shy of BMW and Ferrari, but in shaving a few kilos off the unit and lowering the centre of gravity, packaging is easier. Alongside the new engine, the design should have taken kilos off the chassis, without compromising strength and rigidity: and just as importantly, the car is actually simpler, being made from fewer components.

If the revisions work out on track, then BAR will be taking a significant step forward, coming in with a performance somewhere close to that Ferrari showed at the end of the season; however, there are some question marks to be resolved before all that pace can be unlocked. Top of these, the new chassis has some rigidity issues; the nature of the construction has given it a non-linear torsional flex. This means that, initially, it appears to resist torsional forces well, but as they load up, the chassis flexes, and the more it flexes, the more prone to flexing it becomes. The impact to performance, and identifying the best route to redressing it, are important elements of the roll out.