Force India is the first team to pull-off the curtains from its new F1 car! The team has named the car as VJM07. The released pictures have been clicked from a side angle, this seems to be a smarter move especially when new rules pertaining to the car's nose has been at a controversial platform. The car now features an addition of black shade along with the existing tri-colour theme.
Andrew Green, Technical Director said, “Almost every single part is a new design, from the front wing right back to the diffuser. The genetics of the VJM07 still lie in the 2013 car, but we’ve had to achieve the same results in a slightly different way. It’s been a massive job to accommodate all the changes to the power unit – it’s the biggest change I’ve witnessed in the sport since I started in 1990. Cooling has been the biggest challenge with most of last summer taken up trying to understand the cooling requirements of the power unit, and how best to optimize it in the chassis”.
The existing Mercedes power unit has been retained, but the supplier of gearbox has been changed from McLaren to Mercedes. As per sources, overall the car looks a lot similar to its predecessors, only the nose has undergone major changes. Green stated, “ From where we stand, it doesn’t look hugely different, but it is. Every single part of it is different, from the front wing right back to the diffuser. Its genetics still lie in the 2013 car, and it’s based around the same concepts, but we’ve had to achieve the same results in a slightly different way,”.
“The nose is a standout, but from the nose backwards, it looks quite similar. It’s a little bit ‘fatter’ for the cooling requirements, but we hope to trim that fat out during the early part of the season. If you want to be competitive, you have to develop, because there are so many areas that need refining if you’re going to optimize the car. It’s a big challenge,” he said.
Sources within the racing team said, aerodynamic changes would have been significant if not other changes would have been implimented. Downforce from the exhaust has been reduced considerably, maximum could not be attained as there is little scope in trying to capture the exhaust energy. Doing a bit extra would have resulted in loss of traction around corner, which is of prime importance around the circuit. Front wing width ahas been changed to change the overall flow structure. Its quite a feat that the team has managed to rebuild the front structures while simulaneously working on a smaller rear wing.
Andrew Green stated, “The loss of the lower wing, or beam wing, leads to a significant loss of performance. That lower wing helped connect the diffuser to the top wing, and gave those two areas a lot of support. Without it, it became very difficult to extract performance, and it’s going to be quite a tricky area to keep stable. So, there’s quite a dramatic loss in headline downforce numbers, while there’s also a drop in drag, which has fallen quite dramatically, as well.”
