These interviews were taken at the R23s Technical launch at Paul Ricard in February 2003, The format included a scripted technical briefing followed by a open Q&A session. I was later able to question Mike directly on the new cars design, some of the comments from this interview were printed by Racetech magazine having directly asked their journalist not to record the conversation.
Mike Gascoyne technical briefing
First car that is truly result of that integrated structural process we put in place two years ago, because engine timescales are two year timescales you don’t design a engine in one year, you design it over along period of time, we put in place at Enstone joint chief designers who roll over this year, this car is the result of team lead by Tim Densham who designed our 2001 car, so since the end of 2002 championship he’s been working on this car, he’s been designing that car for that engine for a two year period. F1 is such a competitive environment that by the time we produced the car raced it taken it and worked out what’s wrong with you have to design a new one you haven’t time to do it so we put together a design team that has a longer term philosophy and that was fundamental to our design process to allow us to be competitive
We expanded our aero with John Illey.
The whole team is lead by Deputy chief designer Bob Bell having two chief designer can be a problem going one direction on e year and a different direction next year, luckily I am allowed to referee and make sure we work in one direction at a time, we believe fundamentally we have this design process right we believe we’ve in invested in the right area of technology what this car is an evolution. you don’t make big steps by having revolution you make big steps by evolving
Mike Gascoyne Group Q&As
Q: engine gearbox installation risky approach
MG: Run a lot in testing, this gearbox ran 6months ago, it ran on the gearbox the rig, it’s a very different gearbox its not a risk if you needed to run the gearbox for Imola and relied on it totally it’s a risk, if you get ahead of your technical program that’s a becomes a design process and engineering progress Its not a risk so yes its very different gearbox
Q: Stiffness weight
MG: Both, its stiffer lighter, it allows you to do things and that makes it more competitive
Q: Carbon Top mounting
MG: We have the struts we always have, it’s not a problem.
Mike Gascoyne Private interview:
Q: aero concept
Launch car represents what you’ll see in Melbourne, we haven’t made it yet
Q: Titanium gearbox
Investment Cast by co in America
Q: Damper torsion bar layout
It depends on push rod angle and everything, if you lay them on top you can have a longer bar a one piece bar, your not worried about width, you obviously want to get a high push rod angle which means the thing comes together at the bottom, I think the compromise we’ve got is pretty good.
Q: More weight to gain stiffness in two part gearbox
Any join has a stiffness penalty, you want to use a high modulus material so you get a stiff light structure high especially high up, its always easy to have bearings in metal as opposed to carbon which obviously has different thermal characteristics to metal components running in it. So one compromise outweighs the deficits in other ways
Q:3rd damper
yes, they operate in tension, its just the layout. you can do it anyway once you don’t have spring on there you can operate a pull damper or push damper if you have coil springs you can only operate one way, with a torsion bars and vertical rocker it makes a different arrangement from a horizontal rocker, so its just the way it layout.
Q: 1 day testing more simulation resources
I don’t think its changed the numbers we have, only the importance you put on it
Q: Good Correlation
Its good which is why you would trust it more in the future
Q: Windtunnel scale 50%
yes
Q: Transient
Transient in our tunnel in Fondmetal we use for half the year. Yaw, roll and steer in Enstone from the control room
Q: Water problems
Probably yes I think there was a problem with the fundamental design of the engine which means there was cracking in the block and heads, I believe that’s been very much eradicated
Q: Chimneys
Rest assured it was the optimum solution we’ve found, we tried very much to make it look different but that was the best that is was.
Q: aero gains:
Doubled the gain made in previous years
Q: Stiffness
I think with the regulations there’s not much you can change, what is changed if the fine tuning that make sit a lighter structure which you don’t see from the external surfaces
Q: Cof G lower by 10-20mm
You’d do that normally as part of the process
Q: Ballast
We run a significant amount of ballast, the problems getting it all in, we have some solutions that are perhaps different to other teams in terms of engine-gearbox integration
Q: Engine mount:
Doesn’t have conventional lower mounts
Q: cruise control
Yes, we have tested the device
Q: OPT
We ran it, we did suspension testing on the old car and will continue to do so,
Q: Wheel offset related to OPT
possibly