Greece
has never hosted a grand prix, nor has it produced any F1 drivers, but
aerodynamics seems to be something of a forte for Greeks, including
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro’s Chief Designer, Nikolas Tombazis.
Passionate about motor racing, a seven year old Nik watched his first
grand prix on television.
"From then on, I was hooked!" he says.
"In 1978, when I was about ten years old, I was fascinated by the
aerodynamic aspect as this was the era of the ground-effect cars. I
used to read all the racing magazines and as I was quite good at
Physics and Maths at school, I decided it would be worth going for an
engineering degree in the hope of getting a job in motor racing. So I
went to England to study and then found my first job with Benetton in
1993, moving to Ferrari in 1997. Then I took a short "sabbatical" from
Ferrari for a couple of years but I am back now!"
Making a
rare trip to a grand prix in Melbourne, Tombazis had the pleasure of
seeing the car whose design he oversaw take its maiden win in great
style courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen. The team’s official website got him
to open up about the F2007 design philosophy and how it was
specifically adapted to this year’s new sporting and technical
regulations.
"You
always have to start with the previous year’s car as a basis, as every
car contains the accumulation of many years of details that we have
learnt as we go along and you cannot ignore that knowledge," began Tombazis.
"So, in many ways, this F2007 is an evolution and in other areas we
have taken big steps forward. Aerodynamics is still one of the primary
performance factors of the car so this is the area that guides the
whole project. The most upstream process is therefore the aerodynamics
which usually starts around over a year prior to the first race of the
season."
Apart
from the aerodynamic criteria, tyres are another crucial area that
stamp their mark on the basic concept of the car and for this year,
with Bridgestone returning to a supply monopoly situation, that meant a
step into the unknown.
"This
year the tyres were not known to us until very late in the process, as
Bridgestone had a new specification of tyre to supply the entire field
and did not want to give any team an advantage by letting them know the
specification any earlier. We had to leave a bit more margin in some
areas of the F2007’s adjustability in order to be able to adapt to
that."
With
just one tyre company and more restrictive rules regarding engine
performance, one could assume that all cars should produce very similar
levels of performance, but Tombazis does not feel the situation is
quite that straightforward.
"Tyres
are a constant this year, but how people manage their tyres is an
important factor and clearly aerodynamics does also have an effect on
the tyres. On the engine side, the level is frozen, but that does not
mean everyone has the same power, although aerodynamics is still the
biggest differentiator between the cars. In general, I think every
engineer would like to have much less restrictions than we have at the
moment, in fact no restrictions at all. But if this was the case,
Formula 1 would be totally unmanageable with cars that were much too
fast and dangerous. The rules are much more restrictive than back in
the 70s, but we can do much more within them, as our understanding is
so much greater."
While
technologies have evolved considerably since the 70s, the very basic
technique of playing with the weight distribution of the car is as
important as ever.
"As all the cars are built under the weight limit, we use ballast to distribute that weight to the optimum level," explains Tombazis.
"Then we try and find the best compromise between front and rear tyre
degradation, braking stability and traction through corners, so these
also influence optimum weight distribution."
This
factor has influenced an aspect of the F2007 design that caused
considerable interest when the car was first revealed, namely its
length.
"It’s
true we have lengthened the car and aerodynamic considerations have
been taken into account in doing this and it has been done in full
combination with studying weight distribution and other parameters such
as moments of inertia and the car’s centre of gravity," continues
Tombazis. "You have to put all these factors in a pot, find which are
the most and least dominant and thus find the best compromise. You can
lengthen a car in three ways, either by moving the front wheels forward
or the rear wheels backwards or a bit of both. If you move the wheels
backwards, you move weight distribution forwards, and if you move the
front wheels forward, you move the weight distribution backwards. You
can tune it to your heart’s content!"
This
weekend’s second round of the championship in Malaysia traditionally
provides the sternest test of a car’s ability to keep its major
components cool, while still maintaining its aerodynamic integrity.
However, Tombazis is confident that the Scuderia has got its sums right
with the F2007….
"Some
parameters are very predictable so the engine side of cooling and how
much you need to open up your bodywork depending on your radiator size
is very predictable and fairly feasible to calculate with a good degree
of precision. Unless you have underestimated the heat generated by the
engine, in theory you should not have to open up the bodywork in an
excessive way. You will see we won’t have any excessive openings in
Malaysia."
Apart
from providing the engineers with a chance to verify their cooling
calculations and prepare the car for the Malaysian GP, last week’s test
at the Sepang circuit was also the first session to be run under the
new agreement that means a car can only use one car for tests held
during the season, which are also restricted to just three days.
In
fact, this session was extended by one day as the new regulations allow
for an extension in the event of rain, which did affect the third day
of the test. The restrictions have altered the Scuderia’s approach to
on-track testing.
"When
we take a new development of a car to a race, we want to be very
certain a new component is performing as expected and is a real step
forward, therefore we need to test it first," says Tombazis. "So the
new testing agreements have focussed our approach within the limited
number of kilometres. We try to be as efficient in testing as at the
races. In the past we would not think twice to have a few more test
days to test even the minutest detail and we tended not to think about
the efficiency of our testing. Now we need to have as much of it worked
out before the start of the test and now it is best to sort out car and
systems reliability on the test bed."
Nik
Tombazis will only attend a handful of races this season as he is kept
busy back in Maranello, but this is of no consequence to him.
"The
part of my job that I enjoy most is the design of the car and for me it
would be impractical to go to all the races. Work plus family keep me
quite busy. I enjoy coming to a few and in an ideal world, I would like
to have a couple of clones of me, so that one could be at the races,
another back in the factory and another on holiday in the Bahamas!"
FUCK ISRAEL 