Allison broni zawieszenia typu pull-rod

Opublikowany przez 30 Jan 2015 | Komentarze: 1

W 2012 roku zespół Ferrari zaskoczył wszystkich wykorzystując przednie zawieszenie typu pull-rod w swojej nowej konstrukcji. W opinii wielu ekspertów jednym z elementów, który przyczynił się do słabych wyników kierowców włoskiej ekipy w ostatnich latach. Niektórzy sądzili, że pojawienie się Jamesa Allisona zmieni podejście włoskich inżynierów i tegoroczna konstrukcja ponownie będzie korzystała z zawieszenia w konfiguracji push-rod.

Ferrari nadal idzie ścieżką obraną w kilka lat temu i Allison w jednym z pierwszych wywiadów opublikowanych po prezentacji bolidu broni tej decyzji. W jego ocenie pull-rod o ile nastręcza kłopotów w fazie projektowej, to nie powinien mieć znaczącego wpływu na zachowanie bolidu. Do tego w rok po wielkiej rewolucji w przepisach jest wiele obszarów wymagających większej uwagi niż zawieszenie. W okresie przygotowań włoski zespół poświęcił wiele uwagi opracowaniu wydajniejszego chłodzenia dla jednostki napędowej oraz bardziej optymalnego wykorzystania energii elektrycznej.

“We’ve tried to make sure the weaknesses we felt were particularly notable on the 2014 car were put right for the 2015 car.”

“The back of the car is something that is noticeably different to the 2014 car, where we have been successful in pulling the bodywork much tighter to everything under the skin.”

“That’s been done through a lot of work not just in the wind tunnel but also in the design heart of the company to try and find radiator designs that were fundamentally more efficient. So for every square centimetre of radiator we’re able to extract more cooling this year than last and therefore able to close the car down at the back significantly.”

“I think all the cars on the grid this year are going to be more appealing around the front because after a few years of trying I think we’ve finally invented a regulation that gets what we wanted from a safety point of view but also doesn’t create the rather unappealing features of the last few years.”

“So I think everyone will look a lot prettier from the front and the 2015 Ferrari is, I think, nice in that regard.”

“Every year you set out which areas of the car you think you should put your effort into to try and improve them. These are decisions that need to be taken quite carefully because when you make a choice of working on one part of the car, because you don’t have infinite resources, you’re effectively making a choice not to work on the other part of the car.”

“So when you decide what to work on you have to pick quite carefully the things that you think are going to bring the maximum amount of return for your effort. And push-rod, pull-rod on the front, it has pros and cons either side.”

“Pull-rod is probably harder to get light and stiff but it’s probably a bit easier to get an aerodynamic performance from it. So it’s swings and roundabouts. It was an area of the car that was something that wasn’t felt to be a problem on last year’s car and therefore not an area that really merited investment of effort in this time around on the SF-15T.”

“We had a number of issues with last year’s engine and power unit.”

“Early on in the season the power delivery was not particularly sophisticated and quite tough for the drivers to get the type of throttle response that they wanted.”

“It was improved a lot during the season and we take that a step further for the SF15-T.”

“A definite weakness of last year’s car was that the amount of electrical energy that we were able to recover from the turbo was not really good enough for producing competitive power levels during the race.

“It was one of the reasons Ferrari’s qualifying performance was relatively stronger than race performance last year.

“We have tried to change the architecture of the engine to make it a better compromise between qualifying and racing performance.”