By Will Gray, England
Atlas F1 Technical Writer

Following the Canadian Grand Prix at the fast Gilles Villeneuve circuit, the Formula One teams head to the Nurburgring track for this weekend's European Grand Prix. Atlas F1 Technical Writer Will Gray previews the challenges the engineers will face in the Eifel mountains.

Once again, the teams are faced with a very different challenge when they head to the German Nurburgring circuit in the Eifel mountains for this weekend's European Grand Prix. Once a classic 14 miles long track known as the Nordschleife, the newer version of the circuit is a much tamer beast and drivers claim it now lacks character and is not at all challenging.

But for the engineers it presents a real test of their abilities as, most significantly, no team will have tested their latest machines on the circuit, leaving them with a limited time to achieve the perfect set-up.

That will put the engineers and drivers who work well together at a major advantage, and will make any time-stealing problems in the practice sessions even more important as although the teams will have developed a rough set-up through their computer simulation programmes back in the factory, they will need all the time they can get to hone that set-up.

It is an extremely different circuit to the Montreal track on which the cars were last driven in competitive action, and one of the most important areas that the engineers will be concerned with is temperatures. But it is not the heat that is worrying the teams this time around, it is the low temperatures in the mountainous area which will create great challenges, particularly with the tyres.

The cold conditions will mean tyre compound choice and development will be very important as the cooler track will allow softer compounds to be used for a longer period of time. The degradation and deterioration of the tyres will be less with lower temperatures and the two tyre companies, Michelin and Bridgestone, will be working hard to develop improved compounds for the event.

Ralf Schumacher has acknowledged that the Michelin tyres on his Williams car do not work so well in cooler conditions, so things could be a little tricky for the winners of the last race in Canada if Michelin's rubber does not improve. Again, a lack of testing will cause problems for the teams as they try to match the tyres, car and circuit, and any rain is expected to cause them even more trouble.

But even in the dry the track has so many different challenges, with great variations in gradient, that the engineers have a tough time in compromising one level of set-up with another. However, in general the teams will be setting their cars up with almost maximum downforce as the circuit is particularly twisty, and the teams who can efficiently add more downforce to their cars will benefit most.

All teams will be concentrating on the slow to medium corners which make up much of the track - in fact, there is just one real high-speed corner around the Nurburgring, so all the teams will be looking to maximise the pick-up out of slower corners.

That is an important area for traction control, which most teams appear to have now got to grips with, and it also seems that the teams have finally sorted the problems with launch control, although they remain very secretive over what systems they are or are not running.

The chicane is a particularly important area of the circuit, and one that will challenge the engineers' skills in suspension set-up as they must ensure a smooth ride through that part as well as optimising the performance of the car around the rest of the track.

The race usually provides some excitement, particularly at the start, where the narrowness of the track and the tight first bend combine to create a real bottleneck where keeping out of trouble is as important as gaining places.

But for race action you should be looking to the pitstops because most passing is done there rather than on the track. It is not easy to pass around the twisty track and moving off the racing line immediately makes the car difficult to handle.

That means that there should be some interesting strategies on race day, and the choice of a one or two stop race could be one way of overhauling rivals. However, it will be a risk if anyone goes against the trend and, with low tyre-wear expected, the smart money would be on a one-stop strategy - so the race for the fastest pitstop could well be the race for victory.