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Tech Analysis: Force India VJM01
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The new VJM01 car from Force India may look in parts like a C-spec version of its predecessor, but as seen in Barcelona testing this week, the car features quite innovative aero updates. Craig Scarborough analyses the latest challenger

By Craig Scarborough autosport.com's technical writer
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Now under the new ownership of Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya and Dutch businessman Michel Mol, this week the Force India team released their car for 2008 in testing at Barcelona.
It's been normal for the team formerly known as Jordan/Midland/Spyker to release a revised version of their existing car just before the start of the season, and despite the greater investment Mallya promises, this year is no different.
While the new car, the VJM01, is structurally and mechanically the same as the 2006 and 2007 cars, it does feature important aero updates, some of which are quite innovative.
This performance gain from the aero add-ons is also bolstered by the reliability gained from the level of carry over on the mechanical side, by retaining a race tested gearbox, Ferrari engine and chassis.
Thus, during the off-season the team have been able to test with a near definitive mechanical and electronics package while awaiting the aero update. In testing so far the car certainly appears to be an improvement, but how close it will get to the midfield teams remains to be seen in Australia.
Team Restructure
If the car is almost the C-spec Spyker, the team itself has been completely revitalised over the last few months - the recruitment of chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne back at the end of 2006 kick-started the team's push to develop a midfield car.
Both the Ferrari engine, its cooling and Force India's own gearbox are carried over from last year © XPB/LAT (Click to enlarge)
Emulating his preferred structure elsewhere, Gascoyne split the technical team between the current car and the next car. Thus, James Key as technical director is focusing on R&D for next year and Mark Smith is leading this year's car. Smith rejoins Gascoyne, having worked together at both Renault and Jordan. In the mean time chief designer John McQuillam departed the team last year.
Gascoyne's ability to focus resources where they count the most ideally suits a low budget team such as Force India. his lessons were learnt at Tyrrell under the tutorage of Harvey Postlethwaite. Steps Gascoyne has taken included new parallel aero programmes at AeroLab in Italy, Lola in the UK, and the team's own wind tunnel at Brackley, with much greater resources available to the team's head of aero, Simon Phillips.
Another of Gascoyne's favoured strategies is rolling out mid-season a B-spec car. Last year, this was introduced later than planned, at Monza, but the revised rear end was a step towards the four-race gearbox required for 2008, as well as revised rear suspension to aid both mechanical and aero grip.
The VJM01
It is the external changes that are the greatest on the new car; these are largely focused around a new floor and diffuser. The changes under the car are aided by several new solutions in the barge board area. The flow around the top of the car has also been revised with new sidepod detailing.
Force India have developed a new diffuser to exploit the extra side channel adopted by many other teams for this year. The greater exit area of the diffuser allows it to create more downforce for little increase in drag. Hence the shape of both the side and central tunnels are all new, aided by the brake duct fins adopted with the B-spec car last year.
These fins act as extensions to the diffuser, controlling the expansion of air through the side channels, and they are permitted by the rules as they sit within the 120mm-wide area allowed for bodywork around the wheels.
To feed the diffuser, Force India have had to revise their bargeboard detailing. Last year's car sported McLaren-like turning vanes sprouting from the keel area, mated to small vanes ahead of the sidepods.
Force India have paid a lot of attention to the front end of the car for flow over and under the car © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)
This small bargeboard approach has now been discarded by all the other teams, as Honda and Toyota have adopted the larger bargeboard philosophy. Speaking to autosport.com, Gascoyne explained: "We haven't gone down any fixed direction, this is just the optimum solution we've found so far."
While the small rear boards and the axe head extension to the floor in front of the sidepods remain, the forward board is new and mated to an innovative horizontal fairing around the front suspension. Many teams have a fin nestled within the "V" of the lower wishbone, which continues the along line of the front wing to keep the wing's upwash passing up over the sidepods.
However, the lower wishbone moves as the car pitches and rolls; this interrupts the clean flow between the front wing and the fin. What Force India have done is to conceal the wishbone as much as possible within a thicker fin.
Gascoyne explained that "it's an aero update supporting the front bargeboards, it's a general improvement, one of the range of the mods (modifications) we brought to the tests."
The prominent white fairing around the wishbone looks like a twin keel set-up, but in fact the wishbone still mounts to the chassis in a zero keel format. The practice of creating faired wishbones was outlawed in the 90s, but this solution gets around the rule but not attaching the fairing to the wishbone, allowing it to move freely inside.
Aiding the bargeboard's secondary function work to control flow around the car, the nose has picked up much larger scuttle fins. Last year the team fitted smaller fins above the pushrods; this year Mark Smith's Renault influence is seen with the two larger element fins.
Also, the Ferrari practice of adding endplates to the regulatory fake camera pods on the nose, have probably add some aero efficiency on parts that otherwise serve no purpose.
Further back along the car there are unusual-looking fins just ahead of the sidepod opening. At first they appear to simply be directing flow into the sidepod, but a more likely explanation is their shapely tips send a vortex around the sidepod's undercut to improve the flow heading over the diffuser for more downforce.
By adopting the extra side channels in the diffuser, Force Indian's car can produce more downforce © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)
The rest of the sidepods are very similar to last year, the cooling system has been largely carried over, albeit with some lightening of the components. The shoulders of the sidepods gain pod wings now merged into the chimney, McLaren-style. The T-wing behind the chimney is once again mounted on a strut and not the chimney itself.
The bodywork around the exhausts has been tucked in more tightly, creating more of a fairing around them, rather than the exhausts simply protruding through a hole in the deck.
Along with the engine installation, the gearbox is retained from last year, developed to meet the 2008 four-race rules, which also specify minimum gear widths and spacing. The damper arrangement was also changed last year to conventional linear dampers operated off the antiroll bar and matched to a third spring mounted between the rockers.
Along with geometry changes, Gascoyne expects "significant improvements in the rear suspension" and goes on to say that "mechanically, we have some sizeable updates, but we won't see them before Melbourne."
So the current car is far from definitive for the coming year, and it remains to be seen where and when these changes will appear around the car.
 
that cars color scheme sucks pretty bad


oh and 1 more week!!!!

Yea. they should've stuck with the maroon(redish) and white, that was simple and while still red, it stood out more and looked much better than blackred(tungsten, who the fuck uses tungsten anyways?), gold and white with red crap lines.

an all gold car would have been much better. At least it would've sucked but it would've received all kinds of attention just because of the sucky livery.


oh and 13days 17 hours 2 minutes and 10 seconds left

p.s. no matter how much I hate that entire team, I have to admit that with fat indian man money and gascoyone, that team actually has a chance to do well.
 
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