Faster than ever before
Friday, August 22, 2008
Expect lap records across the A1GP calendar to be broken this season, because it looks like the new A1GP Powered by Ferrari car is going to be rather fast.
Testing this week has indicated that the new racer is already more than two seconds per lap quicker than its predecessor, and there is likely to be more speed to come.
Extensive running was carried out on the first ‘production-specification’ version of the car at Silverstone’s International layout this week, with this final design derived following thousands of laps testing and honing the yellow prototype model. This week was the first time the new race car has run on a circuit extensively lapped by the first generation of A1GP racer. Lap times were roughly two seconds per lap quicker than the best ever produced by the previous generation of car at the same venue, even at this relatively early stage of the car's development.
It is likely to mean that as A1GP travels the world for its fourth season, lap record after lap record will go to a new owner.
That previous best effort at Silverstone, set by A1 Team Germany’s Christian Vietoris, was in the original car’s third year of development, after the teams and drivers had run it in anger at race track across the world for two seasons. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that even more speed will be found in the new car when teams and drivers start to extract the most out of its potential.
Jonny Kane and Danny Watts, who also extensively tested the first generation of car, were the drivers behind the wheel this week. Watts predicts could be as much as five seconds per lap quicker when the teams run it in anger.
“If it is a two seconds lap quicker now, with the development that the teams will put it under in the heat of battle, I’d say there is another two to three seconds to be found,” Watts told A1GP.com. “So I’d say it could be about four to five seconds per lap quicker – and that’s even being realistic rather than just saying any number.”
The new car is bigger and more powerful, with the new Ferrari V8 engine outputting in more than 600bhp.
“The test was very encouraging and both test drivers gave very useful feedback,” said A1GP’s general manager for technical and operations, John Wickham. “The brakes have much, much better performance, the engine is stronger, and it is more powerful and has more torque. We have obviously moved forward with this car.”