Valencia Blogging: Sunday

Posted on Tuesday 29 Jun 2010 and tagged with valencia, europe, blog.

A very frustrating race for Nico. He drove really well and deserved a points’ finish, but, in the end, an exhaust problem cut short his race. But that’s racing; in a 19-race championship you’re going to have a few retirements.

Rubens’ fourth place gave the team something to cheer about and the goal now is to maintain this run of form going forward. Ahead of the next race at Silverstone we need to solve the air leakage problems that stopped Nico from racing our blown rear wing in Valencia and we need to continue developing other areas of the car.

We’re planning to introduce a blown diffuser at the British Grand Prix, which could give us a good step in performance. One of the biggest problems to be overcome with this system is getting the bodywork and rear suspension to withstand the 900-degree exhaust gases, so we’re heading to Kemble Airfield next week to check everything over. But we’re confident that we can overcome this hurdle.

I went to the MotoGP race at Silverstone last week to get a feel for the new Arena layout that we’ll be racing on in the British Grand Prix. The new section is slow and quite technical, so there’s a lot of simulation work that needs to be done before we get there. I’d better get to it!