The end of the blown diffuser beneficial for small teams?
The FIA has decided to ban the blown diffuser concept for 2012 and according to Pat Symonds, who works as a consultant for Marussia, this could allow smaller teams to be more competitive as it was a complicated concept to implement.
Pat Symonds was hired as a consultant by the Marussia team, when it was still called Virgin Racing. The former technical director of the Renault F1 team believes that the ban on blown diffusers, decided for 2012, is a good thing for the smaller teams.
«The major change for 2012 is the fact that the blown diffuser is banned. For small teams like ours (Marussia) this is not a bad thing. It was difficult to understand and make it work, and the new regulation makes things a bit easier,» confided Pat Symonds at the Autosport International show.
This concept, implemented by the Red Bull team, has been copied with varying degrees of success by the other teams on the grid. But it was a system that was complicated to set up and even more difficult to make work well. The smaller teams – mainly the three new ones, Caterham, Marussia, and HRT – did not have as many personnel as their rivals and therefore could not dedicate as much time to the development of this system.
Marussia employs a total of about 170 people – compared to Red Bull’s 650 employees and the 550 people at Lotus and Mercedes. It’s a huge challenge, and we have a mountain to climb, but there’s such a great spirit and such ambition, and I am really enjoying the present moment.
Symonds took over after the departure of Nick Wirth, who advocated for 100% CFD-based development. The former Renault F1 member reinstated wind tunnel aerodynamic testing, which he believes should help for 2012.
The main difference was to restore integrity to the engineering process – to look at everything we had done and question ourselves. We started wind tunnel testing; it is not as precise as CFD, but we wanted to verify the integrity of the changes made.
Pat Symonds also believes that the partnership signed with McLaren will be of great help to the Marussia team as it will allow them to grow even faster.
«Our alliance with McLaren is also a good thing. It was obvious that we needed something different; because we were not going to meet the necessary deadlines without it. McLaren is not going to change everything, but it might allow us to be faster, » added Symonds.
