China From An Engine Perspective

Posted on Monday 12 Apr 2010

The Chinese Grand Prix from an Engine’s Perspective
The Shanghai International Circuit is not one of the most severe on the engine, but does offer two notable straights which place a premium on outright engine power. Cars tend to run medium to high downforce settings to cope with the circuit’s combination of slow corners, which in turn puts greater loads on the engine along the two straights.

Unusually, the back straight is the longer of the two at over 1km in length, leading into a slow speed hairpin which demands excellent braking stability as cars brake from close to 320km/h down to around 70km/h. Only a relatively low percentage of the lap is spent at full throttle with just over half of the lap demanding maximum power output from the engine. This means that the circuit is not too tough on fuel consumption.

China is expected to be the coolest event of the year so far with ambient temperatures not likely to reach above 20C and a distinct chance of rain, more akin to the conditions experienced in pre-season testing. This is beneficial from an engine cooling point of view.

After three races of the season, there is now greater variety in individual team strategies when it comes to engine selection with different life cycles registered on the CA2010 units across Cosworth’s four teams. The fact that Shanghai is not too demanding on engines may prompt teams to run engines with higher mileage in the race.

Fast Fact
Cosworth has only participated in three Chinese Grand Prixs but has registered top ten finishes in each - Mark Webber's 10th in 2004, Christian Klien's 5th in 2005, Mark Webber's 8th and Vitantonio Liuzzi's 10th in 2006.

This Weekend in History...
The only other Formula One race to have taken place on Sunday 18 April was the 1971 Spanish Grand Prix at the Montjuic circuit. Jackie Stewart took his Cosworth-powered Tyrrell 003 from fourth on the grid to win the race, the first of six wins in his championship winning 1971 season.