New teams!

[V12]

OK, the dust from the Stefan/USGP/artist formerly known as Campos mess has settled and it's pretty much set in stone we'll have three new additions to the grid this year :)

They may have collectively gathered a bit of (IMO disrespectful) negative press over the winter, and yes, they'll probably all get hosed by the established boys in their first season, but I for one am really looking forward to seeing how they get on, particularly against each other.

So will it be Branson or Fernandes wearing the air hostess uniform come the end of the season? And will Hispania come from nowhere to blitz the both of them, or own the 12th row as expected? I thought I'd do a little summary of their plus and minus points as I see them at this present moment:

Lotus
STRENGTHS:
-A driver line-up that wouldn't be out of place in an established upper-to-mid grid outfit
-Mike Gascoyne, may have the odd reputed flaw, but has relevant experience in creating contemporary F1 cars, none of which have been dogs.
-Malaysian funding probably makes them the most solid financially of all the newcomers

WEAKNESSES:
-Entry was confirmed later than all the other new boys, the 127 will have had less gestation time than the Wirth and Dallara efforts.
-Could the will-they-won't-they situation regarding the wholesale move to Sepang destabilise them in the medium term?

Hispania
STRENGTHS:
-Dallara know how to build a good solid single-seater racing car, without doubt the leading "customer" formula car builder of current times.

WEAKNESSES:
-Drivers unproven at this level, Senna has promise, Chandhok less so.
-The car will hit the track for the first time in Bahrain
-Last minute ownership (Carabante) and organisational (Kolles) changes, there must be some gelling to do surely?

Virgin
STRENGTHS:
-Manor's strong record in lower formulae. While not a guarantee of F1 success, it must surely be a help.
-Good driver line-up, Lotus's maybe just shades it overall, but Glock has been Trulli's equal and di Grassi has earned his F1 shot after his long GP2 service.
-Seem to have a respectable collection of commercial sponsors aboard given their status as a new team, although how much are they all paying? Including Virgin for that matter?

WEAKNESSES:
-Operations fragmented between Manor GP (operational), Wirth Research (technical), and Virgin (marketing, etc.). The gelling of these three entities may be a potential for something to go wrong.
-CFD, could be the best thing since sliced bread, may acheive similar results on a fraction of the budget, but for now there must be some sort of question mark.
-Reliability, while testing teething problems are understandable, they've had more than Lotus, who have had less time to design and build their car.
-Virgin's commitment. Will Branson get bored a year or two down the line and decide he wants another challenge?
-Resources - they are proudly declaring their intention to stick to the spirit of original budget cap, will this hinder them in the development race?

After writing this down from my head, I must say Virgin have more "weakness" points than I would have thought, I would still rank them 1. Lotus, 2. Virgin, 3. Hispania at this point though.

[DazzlaF1]

OK, the dust from the Stefan/USGP/artist formerly known as Campos mess has settled and it's pretty much set in stone we'll have three new additions to the grid this year :)

They may have collectively gathered a bit of (IMO disrespectful) negative press over the winter, and yes, they'll probably all get hosed by the established boys in their first season, but I for one am really looking forward to seeing how they get on, particularly against each other.

So will it be Branson or Fernandes wearing the air hostess uniform come the end of the season? And will Hispania come from nowhere to blitz the both of them, or own the 12th row as expected? I thought I'd do a little summary of their plus and minus points as I see them at this present moment:

Lotus
STRENGTHS:
-A driver line-up that wouldn't be out of place in an established upper-to-mid grid outfit
-Mike Gascoyne, may have the odd reputed flaw, but has relevant experience in creating contemporary F1 cars, none of which have been dogs.
-Malaysian funding probably makes them the most solid financially of all the newcomers

WEAKNESSES:
-Entry was confirmed later than all the other new boys, the 127 will have had less gestation time than the Wirth and Dallara efforts.
-Could the will-they-won't-they situation regarding the wholesale move to Sepang destabilise them in the medium term?

Hispania
STRENGTHS:
-Dallara know how to build a good solid single-seater racing car, without doubt the leading "customer" formula car builder of current times.

WEAKNESSES:
-Drivers unproven at this level, Senna has promise, Chandhok less so.
-The car will hit the track for the first time in Bahrain
-Last minute ownership (Carabante) and organisational (Kolles) changes, there must be some gelling to do surely?

Virgin
STRENGTHS:
-Manor's strong record in lower formulae. While not a guarantee of F1 success, it must surely be a help.
-Good driver line-up, Lotus's maybe just shades it overall, but Glock has been Trulli's equal and di Grassi has earned his F1 shot after his long GP2 service.
-Seem to have a respectable collection of commercial sponsors aboard given their status as a new team, although how much are they all paying? Including Virgin for that matter?

WEAKNESSES:
-Operations fragmented between Manor GP (operational), Wirth Research (technical), and Virgin (marketing, etc.). The gelling of these three entities may be a potential for something to go wrong.
-CFD, could be the best thing since sliced bread, may acheive similar results on a fraction of the budget, but for now there must be some sort of question mark.
-Reliability, while testing teething problems are understandable, they've had more than Lotus, who have had less time to design and build their car.
-Virgin's commitment. Will Branson get bored a year or two down the line and decide he wants another challenge?
-Resources - they are proudly declaring their intention to stick to the spirit of original budget cap, will this hinder them in the development race?

After writing this down from my head, I must say Virgin have more "weakness" points than I would have thought, I would still rank them 1. Lotus, 2. Virgin, 3. Hispania at this point though.

I agree with most of what you say apart from 2 things, both to do with 2 of Virgin's "weaknesses" that you've pointed out.

Firstly, i've not seen Branson as the sort of man that gets bored easily, maybe you're likening him to Alex Schnaider who sold the Midland team to Spyker because he got "bored". Branson is not like that, he can see that there is a huge opportunity not only to be different from everyone else and to prove that a team can be run successfully on a small budget, but also from a business sense too, seeing it as an opportunity to promote the Virgin brand in an arena he had not touched until last season, plus the continued support going towards the new team suggests that after that season with BrawnGP, Branson seems to have got hooked on the sport. Schnaider was no businessman, he was like Abramovich when he bought Chelsea, the F1 team was his little toy and predictably he did what we all do when we got bored of our "toys", he got rid.

Secondly, the Resources bit, the team would not have committed themselves to the low budget if they were not confident that they could carry out the necessary development on the car. Plus with Wirth developing the car using his CFD method, it will be significantly cheaper for them to do that work.

[V12]

Fair point, I guess my question over Virgin's resources really ties into whether CFD will come up with the goods or not (and I personally hope it does, just trying to be as objective as I can).

And I suppose nobody can second-guess Richard Branson, except he did seem to lose interest in Brawn pretty quickly despite them hoovering up the opposition at the time. Yes he's got his naming rights with the Manor deal, which makes it a bit of a different situation, I guess.

[DazzlaF1]

Fair point, I guess my question over Virgin's resources really ties into whether CFD will come up with the goods or not (and I personally hope it does, just trying to be as objective as I can).

And I suppose nobody can second-guess Richard Branson, except he did seem to lose interest in Brawn pretty quickly despite them hoovering up the opposition at the time. Yes he's got his naming rights with the Manor deal, which makes it a bit of a different situation, I guess.

And a shareholding in the team too

Remember he did say he likes to support "the underdog" that may explain why he lsot interest in the Brawn setup.

[steveaki13]

I think Lotus will be winner of the new teams, and that Virgin should not be far behind them.

As for Hispania I'm not sure?

Dallara should build them a good chassis as you say, but with no testing of car or drivers they could struggle for pace and reliability.

So on the whole as stated above

1. Lotus
2. Virgin
3. Hispania

[ioan]

Fair point, I guess my question over Virgin's resources really ties into whether CFD will come up with the goods or not (and I personally hope it does, just trying to be as objective as I can).

All the teams use CFD, it's not like if Virgin are doing anything innovative.

The top teams + Sauber and Renault who got very powerful computing clusters that Virgin doesn't have use CFD at least as much if not more than Virgin do, however they also do check the CFD results with the use of wind tunnels.

Trying to beat the established teams using only half of the technology they use isn't smart and won't get them far up the grid.

[Robinho]

welcome back Mr Ray of Sunshine!

[Sonic]

Hi Ioan *waves*

Well my sig leaves no questions as to who I want to do best of the new entrants but that's not to say I want to see the other fail. I will be over the moon if Manors punt on new technology can see them upset the big boys (eventually) and just to see HRT on the grid is very impressive after the winter they've endured.

[Stuartf12007]

All will be mobile chicane's with an enormous amount of mechanical faliures.

Shame they all needed atleast 18 - 24 months to develop a proper reliable racing car.

[Malbec]

And a shareholding in the team too

Remember he did say he likes to support "the underdog" that may explain why he lsot interest in the Brawn setup.

Branson didn't lose interest in Brawn because it was no longer "the underdog", he lost interest because Brawn went from being a cobbled together backmarker to championship contender by the end of its first test session and started asking for sponsorship fees worthy of a team that fast.

Branson got more than his money's worth in terms of publicity from that deal.

He went for Manor because they didn't demand much money for a title deal, problem is that they won't get that much publicity because they'll be at the back most of the time.

His business model has always involved lending his name and credibility with minimal investment and taking a large share of the rewards. Both he and Lloyds investment believe they'll make a profit from the Manor venture, that is the only reason they are investing. He doesn't love F1, he loves money and F1 for the moment provides the means to make that money.

As for Lotus vs Virgin I rate Lotus higher. They have solid staff taken from Toyota and have invested wisely. Re: Virgin I fail to see how CFD is better than CFD + windtunnel. Why are so many people falling for this 'CFD only' gimmick?

[Sonic]

I don't think anyone believes that CFD solo can be better than a combined program - however if it allows small teams on restricted budgets to get 99.9% of the way there and compete with the big boys without breaking the bank then its got to be a good thing?

[truefan72]

All the teams use CFD, it's not like if Virgin are doing anything innovative.

The top teams + Sauber and Renault who got very powerful computing clusters that Virgin doesn't have use CFD at least as much if not more than Virgin do, however they also do check the CFD results with the use of wind tunnels.

Trying to beat the established teams using only half of the technology they use isn't smart and won't get them far up the grid.

welcome back ioan :)

the way I see it:

Lotus
Virgin
Hispania

[wedge]

Lotus better than Virgin

Virgin are on the backfoot. Too early to blame CFD but known issues is the front wing failure (design/drawing board failure) and hydraulics - which won't be fixed in a hurry.

[Robinho]

Virgin seemto be just as fast if not faster than Lotus, which has to be their first aim - if they have managed to do it cheaper by not touching a wind tunnel then i'd say theCFD is a resounding success so far. whether they can effectively build on their baseline is going to be the acid test.

just conjecture from me, but from what i read, i imagine that Virgin/Manor/Wirth are pinning hopes on an being the absolute experts in the field for CFD and feel they have the ability to get more out of it than the other teams who are only using it as part of the process. if they can acheive this then they could have an absolute advantage for some time. of course this relies on them having the best minds and more advanced modelling than the other teams. i guess they feel they have the refinement required from using CFD to deisgn a car completley already and are in a position to improve and get ahead of the others - time will tell if they have managed to steal a march on the competition or if they are unable to get the finesse to close the gap from baseline to ultimate pace.

so far so good though, and it certainly adds an interesting sidebar if someone is doing something different

[F1boat]

I believe that Lotus will be by far the nest newbie team, while Virgin and Hispania will struggle.

[ioan]

just conjecture from me, but from what i read, i imagine that Virgin/Manor/Wirth are pinning hopes on an being the absolute experts in the field for CFD and feel they have the ability to get more out of it than the other teams who are only using it as part of the process. if they can acheive this then they could have an absolute advantage for some time.

There is no reason for Manor/Wirth to believe they are the best at CFD.
Also I see it differently, the other teams do not use CFD for only a part of the process, they use CFD for what CFD is meant to allow them to analyze the plethora of ideeas they have and chose the best ones that will be than tried in the wind tunnel and then only the best one will be produced.

From my POV Virgin/Manor/Wirth are only doing half of the job needed to produce a fast F1 car and as such their chances to get it wrong and lose important time producing bad performance upgrades are huge.

Anyway, this only my opinion and we'll have to wait and see what happens later.

[Robinho]

There is no reason for Manor/Wirth to believe they are the best at CFD.
Also I see it differently, the other teams do not use CFD for only a part of the process, they use CFD for what CFD is meant to allow them to analyze the plethora of ideeas they have and chose the best ones that will be than tried in the wind tunnel and then only the best one will be produced.

From my POV Virgin/Manor/Wirth are only doing half of the job needed to produce a fast F1 car and as such their chances to get it wrong and lose important time producing bad performance upgrades are huge.

Anyway, this only my opinion and we'll have to wait and see what happens later.

i agree it does appear to be a big risk, but they seem to have a very high confidence level in their ability to make it work, in spite of the otehr teams not believing it possible to rely purely on CFD.

you seem to have the same POV as most/all the other teams, who don't rely purely on CFD - yet Wirth obviously reckons he and his team can do the job with the tools they have, thats what makes me think that they belive they have the best tools at their disposal - and so far the results seem to look pretty good - they have a car that is at least as quick as the other new entrant who's run laps so far, and the problems they have experienced i don't think can really be put down to the CFD.

i'd love to think Wirth can prove the establishment wrong, but i do think that although they have a decent baseline, as the returns diminish they will probably struggle to close the gap as effectively as teams using traditional methods - time will tell, and Wirth's stock will rise rapidally if he can make it work - from what he's been saying the results they've had on track are exaclty as they'd received from the modelling, which is a decent start

[ioan]

As far as I know even Boeing and Airbus use wind tunnel to test what they get from the CFD, and they are the best overall in CFD usage, IMO. Also Boeing does work with Renault on CFD because they reckon that F1 teams have better understanding of CFD in certain areas.

I do not know what Wirth did/does in order to believe that they are so good at CFD that they can do better than teams who have been using CFD for F1 design for over a decade so maybe he is right, but I doubt it.

As far as them being as fast as Lotus, they didn't design and build their car in less than 5 months.

Back to the question in the starting post, I believe that Hispania should not be discarded so easily, they might have some teething problems due to their total lack of testing but their chassis might be a better starting point.

[Big Ben]

i agree it does appear to be a big risk, but they seem to have a very high confidence level in their ability to make it work, in spite of the otehr teams not believing it possible to rely purely on CFD.

you seem to have the same POV as most/all the other teams, who don't rely purely on CFD - yet Wirth obviously reckons he and his team can do the job with the tools they have, thats what makes me think that they belive they have the best tools at their disposal - and so far the results seem to look pretty good - they have a car that is at least as quick as the other new entrant who's run laps so far, and the problems they have experienced i don't think can really be put down to the CFD.

i'd love to think Wirth can prove the establishment wrong, but i do think that although they have a decent baseline, as the returns diminish they will probably struggle to close the gap as effectively as teams using traditional methods - time will tell, and Wirth's stock will rise rapidally if he can make it work - from what he's been saying the results they've had on track are exaclty as they'd received from the modelling, which is a decent start

It´s kind of relative. You may try to rely purely on CFD if your goal is not to finish last (which is what they probably want this year) but you need the best tools you can get to fight with the best ones. I think CFD can get you halfway (or maybe even less) but I doubt it it can get you to the top.

[Robinho]

As far as I know even Boeing and Airbus use wind tunnel to test what they get from the CFD, and they are the best overall in CFD usage, IMO. Also Boeing does work with Renault on CFD because they reckon that F1 teams have better understanding of CFD in certain areas.

I do not know what Wirth did/does in order to believe that they are so good at CFD that they can do better than teams who have been using CFD for F1 design for over a decade so maybe he is right, but I doubt it.

As far as them being as fast as Lotus, they didn't design and build their car in less than 5 months.

Back to the question in the starting post, I believe that Hispania should not be discarded so easily, they might have some teething problems due to their total lack of testing but their chassis might be a better starting point.

agreed, i think the Dallara chassis should be a very ecent starting point and assuming they are able to run reliabley they'll soon make upt he lost time from testing, i expect them to start slowly but more than likely be on a par and even ahead of the new teams after a few races.

as for Wirth i can only assume that because he has designed cars using only CFD in Sportscars and won he belives that the theory will translate to F1, i admire his optimism, and i think he might do better than we expect, but i do think it will be a good few years before his way is the best way. that said, Porsche have apparently gone to him since his Acura LMP's have beaten them in the states.

fair point on Lotus, they've done an incredible amount in a vey short time

[K-Pu]

Everybody seems to agree on the hypothetical competitiveness of the Dallara chassis, and in fact I´d love it to be true. But the a priori weak driver lineup and the total lack of testing will send them to the back of the grid.

Regarding Virgin, I think they can do it reasonably well, and if they do so, CFD will become much stronger since other teams will also start to use and develop it. Maybe it´s the future or maybe it´s a fiasco (I don´t really have a clue), but I have the feeling of it being on the right path.

[ioan]

Regarding Virgin, I think they can do it reasonably well, and if they do so, CFD will become much stronger since other teams will also start to use and develop it. Maybe it´s the future or maybe it´s a fiasco (I don´t really have a clue), but I have the feeling of it being on the right path.

Make no mistake, everyone else on the grid is making extensive use of CFD, this isn't new.

Believing that you can be competitive with using only CFD is the only innovation from Virgin/Manor, however there is and will always be a difference between theory (including mathematical models used in CFD) and real life (the wind tunnel and ultimately the race track).

CFD isn't new, in fact it has been used for many years now, and quite a few years ago Sauber and recently Renault have acquired computer clusters with with huge computing power for their own use of CFD, as probably did Ferrari and McLaren but without making a big fuss about it, still they have at least one wind tunnel at disposal, some even several ones. And some of them event went as far as building wind tunnels big enough to accommodate 1:1 scale models and 2 cars running in front of each other, simply because mathematical models can not, at least yet, be used to model reality, and there is still not enough computing power available to make it real time either.

[christophulus]

I think we've got three pretty solid new teams, which is a bonus. They all seem to be securely funded, although obviously not to the same level as the existing teams, but won't be a complete embarrassment like some of the efforts in the early 90s.

I think Lotus is going to be best of the new boys though, followed by Virgin then HRT. Although they will definitely occupy 10th-12th in the constructors championship..

[Sonic]

Make no mistake, everyone else on the grid is making extensive use of CFD, this isn't new.

Believing that you can be competitive with using only CFD is the only innovation from Virgin/Manor, however there is and will always be a difference between theory (including mathematical models used in CFD) and real life (the wind tunnel and ultimately the race track).

CFD isn't new, in fact it has been used for many years now, and quite a few years ago Sauber and recently Renault have acquired computer clusters with with huge computing power for their own use of CFD, as probably did Ferrari and McLaren but without making a big fuss about it, still they have at least one wind tunnel at disposal, some even several ones. And some of them event went as far as building wind tunnels big enough to accommodate 1:1 scale models and 2 cars running in front of each other, simply because mathematical models can not, at least yet, be used to model reality, and there is still not enough computing power available to make it real time either.

All very valid points. As we all know the only reason Manor have gone down this route is financial.

Newey believes that the technology is 20 years away from being able to better Wind tunnel so -lm not gonna question him, but as I've said before if Wirth can take Virgin 99% of the way with CFD program alone then he's doing a small team a great service.

[Malbec]

CFD isn't new, in fact it has been used for many years now, and quite a few years ago Sauber and recently Renault have acquired computer clusters with with huge computing power for their own use of CFD, as probably did Ferrari and McLaren but without making a big fuss about it, still they have at least one wind tunnel at disposal, some even several ones.

There is only one thing I disagree with in your posts on this thread, and that is the number of teams using CFD and how long for. They all do, every single one of them except for Virgin.

When David Richards took over BAR in 2003 his remit was to return the team to competitiveness AND make it profitable. I remember even then he talked about using his CFD team to do work other than design the F1 car, he seemed particularly proud that the CFD team had designed an inhaler for asthma for a drug company. That was 7 years ago.

And no, Virgin doesn't have a fancy setup, they don't have a supercomputer. I'm not a computer expert but from the description I've heard its a series of affordable machines set up in parallel.

I suspect Virgin will be able to get a decent car going but the problem is when it goes wrong and an update doesn't work on track as CFD claimed it should. What are they going to do next? How do they figure out where things went wrong and why it doesn't work? I bet they'll have to rent a windtunnel to work things out or run the risk of not being able to trust their CFD anymore.

[ioan]

I suspect Virgin will be able to get a decent car going but the problem is when it goes wrong and an update doesn't work on track as CFD claimed it should. What are they going to do next? How do they figure out where things went wrong and why it doesn't work? I bet they'll have to rent a windtunnel to work things out or run the risk of not being able to trust their CFD anymore.

There is another way, the flow vis and cages of arrays methods used by McLaren during recent times but it requires them to use their limited number of engines in order to get the data they need so at the end of the day it still isn't as convenient as a wind tunnel.

[Easy Drifter]

Heeeeeeeeeeeee's Baaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :p
Hi Ioan.

[jens]

In the case of Lotus I'm personally actually not that concentrated in comparing them to other new teams (although initially it's inevitable), but I'm going to follow the gap between them and established teams to see, if and how is this going to reduce. In Autosport.com Gascoyne has given a good explanation, why their car looks so outdated, especially sidepods. Due to lack of time they had no engine data and data from other suppliers, so they needed to play it safe and design a car they would be sure is reliable and has enough cooling. I'm looking forward to see their car being already visibly much-improved by the time of the Spanish Grand Prix. I hope that by 2011 they can already fight in the midfield and get a few points on merit.

In terms of Virgin CFD is an interesting gamble and so far one could say that they are not embarrasingly off pace, so a full-CFD approach for a struggling backmarker team may be acceptable if they are lacking cash. However, I suspect this factor and lack of funds is going to make their way in reaching the level of established teams more difficult and if they are capable of achieving that one day despite all disadvantages, then hats off! If they can start matching established teams with a full-CFD approach, this may raise some eyebrows from the experienced people in the paddock. But at the moment it may look like a long shot. However, Virgin Racing may have on trump-card in the long run if in the process of implementing cost-cutting measures wind-tunnels would be banned one day!

HRT - I'm not sure about their long-term prospects, which IMO is a bigger concern now than their car. The team might have been saved for now, but do they have the funds and businessplan to keep going for many years to come? So far the saving of the team has looked like a rushed emergency enterprise. Only time can tell, what will the future bring to them.