Friday's Silverstone Blog

Posted on Friday 09 Jul 2010 and tagged with silverstone, blog.

We’ve introduced a huge number of new parts in recent races and it was no different at Silverstone today. We have another variant of the blown rear wing on the FW32 and, of course, a new blown diffuser. We tested both new parts in a straightline test at Kemble Airfield on Tuesday and ran them again today.

The strategy for the first practice session was to give Nico all of the new parts and to make Rubens use the old, high exhausts. That enabled us to do a back-to-back test and we immediately saw good on-throttle performance from the blown diffuser, so we put it on both cars for the afternoon session.

The biggest problem with the blown floor is coping with the heat from the exhaust gases. They exit the engine at about 900 degrees, which is enough to melt the carbon bodywork, and we’ve had to work hard to overcome that. On the evidence of today, we’ve managed to do that.

Looking ahead, we’ll go through the data to see where we can improve the set-up of the car for qualifying tomorrow. We’re confident that we have the performance to get a good grid slot; let’s see how we go.