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Atlas F1 Magazine: title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 end title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 By Craig Scarborough, England Atlas F1 Technical Writer The second round of the 2004 season provided the ten teams with the challenge of fighting against searing heat, reliability, engine changes, and driver mistakes. Atlas F1's technical writer Craig Scarborough reviews the cars and the technical changes seen through the weekend After the cooler conditions in Australia's season opener, Malaysia's heat came back to bite into the teams' reliability − the thermal effects of the weekend leading to several engine failures. The opening days of practice were held in extreme heat, while the race day brought lower temperatures and even some rain. As teams sought to counter the heat, the bodywork was opened up with the usual range of chimneys, grills and ducts, while the less prepared teams had to resort to cutting sections of bodywork away to release the heat built up within the sidepods. This need to cool the car increases drag, which costs top speed on the straights. Furthermore, those unplanned holes in the bodywork probably sacrificed some downforce as well, costing the car all the way around the lap. Engine reliability is governed by ambient temperature affecting engine temperatures, with oil temperature being principally important. Engines split their water cooling into separate left and right side circuits, each bank of cylinders having a dedicated pump and radiator. Meanwhile the oil circuit is common, with a single pump and radiator; this cooler is typically placed in the right hand sidepod. This asymmetric set−up creates several issues for the designers, firstly requiring more space inside the sidepod to house both oil and water coolers. BAR and Sauber both have differently angled radiators left to right to accommodate this. Secondly, the heat rejection varies from the differing 1 Atlas F1 Magazine: title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 end title coolers; thus, more outlet space is required to vent the hotter oil/water sidepod. To this end many teams have larger outlets on the right hand side, with Williams running differing exhaust fairings and Ferrari having more slits in their grill outlets. Malaysia's mix of straights and short tight corners usually sees the teams running lower drag/downforce set ups. This year, as the teams develop new solutions to regain lost rear downforce, a surprising amount of wing was seen on al the cars at Sepang. Moreover, as the teams did not return to their European factories between the two Asian−Pacific races, little visible development has taken place. Many teams have tweaked their transmission software to respond to the manual starts, first mandated for Australia. Some of the secrets to teams' manual starts have been reported in the media, with Renault topping the "fast start" sheets. It is reported Renault drivers have a process that records the clutch biting point during the warm up lap and at the start of the race the clutch paddle is locked into this position, requiring the drivers only to release the clutch paddle (already at the optimum point) when the lights go out. It is possibly no coincidence that the FIA technical delegate subsequently undertook "Clutch and throttle operation data checks from the start period" and "Several gear shift data checks" on Fernando Alonso's car after the Malaysian race. At the far end of the "fast starters" were Jaguar, who still have problems after Australia, which returned to spoil Mark Webber's front row start. Tyres Tyres were a critical factor at the start, and as with Melbourne, Ferrari were at the front of the grid and able to control the speed of the formation lap. So, Michael Schumacher was able to run the lap slower than the Michelin runners preferred. He was still able to get several "practice starts", all but stopping the car and releasing the clutch at high revs to both warm up the tyres and presumably log data to control the clutch release. The warm up lap's pace was also symbolic of the tyre suppliers' comparative qualities. Michelin runners found their tyres were better in the opening laps of a stint, degrading towards the end, in a reverse to their behaviour in recent years. Meanwhile Bridgestone also displayed a reversal of performance, where their tyres worked best later in a stint. This lead the Bridgestones to be less effective over their opening laps, prompting Ferrari's low fuel qualifying and low speed warm up lap − both strategies aimed at countering Michelin's faster out−of−the−box pace. 2 Atlas F1 Magazine: title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 end title Both suppliers found graining to be an issue with the front tyres, Michelin runners being particularly affected. If they tried to run too low a downforce setting, it required either more front wing − and in a poorer balance; or more rear wing as well, to provide balance at the cost of top speed. As the weekend and the race wore on, changing conditions kept the teams on their toes, correcting front downforce to balance the car, and even during pitstops some teams revised front wing settings to reduce the graining. Bridgestone drivers had less of a problem but still needed to care for the tyres during the first five laps in order to reap the added grip in the later laps of a stint. Aerodynamically, there has not been the chance or opportunity to ship large new pieces of bodywork to Malaysia. Nor has there been a large test program prior to the race, with McLaren exceptionally taking the chance to run test cars in Spain, to add miles to the new front wing and evaluate where problems occurred in Australia. Team by Team Ferrari Arriving with Melbourne spec package, Ferrari still adopted the mid−wings over the roll structure. For cooling, the grills on the shoulders of the sidepods were opened up with more numerous and wider slits. With Bridgestone having adopted tyres with Michelin−like response to heat, it was surprising the drivers split their tyre choice − with Michael Schumacher on a soft compound and Rubens Barrichello on the hard compound. However, had the race remained as hot as the temperatures experienced on Friday and Saturday, the benefit might have swung more towards Barrichello. Opting to run heavy tanks early in the weekend and light tanks to qualify saw the teams' position on the time sheets jump up. Williams Visually indistinguishable from Melbourne, Williams displayed their usual management of the car's cooling requirements by only adopting slim chimneys on the sidepods, with the supplementary oil cooling provided by a larger fairing around the exhaust on one side only. 3 Atlas F1 Magazine: title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 end title Williams have created a new format for their installation of the rear springs, dampers and linkages. Last year's car was a step way from the traditional coil spring layout used by Williams for many years. This year's car also adopts torsion bars pointed sharply downwards within the gear casing. These are operated as usual by the push rod acting on a primary rocker linkage, but instead of placing the dampers inside the gear casing, they are operated by a secondary rocker pivoted on the gear casing. This in turn operates the dampers and antiroll bar. To accommodate bump control, a large third coil spring damper is compressed between the primary rockers. Throughout the weekend Williams were consistent in their chase of Ferrari and McLaren. Ralf Schumacher's weekend−long problems with graining were exacerbated in the race when he touched Mark Webber's rear tyre with his front wing, subtly affecting its geometry and requiring adjustments to wing angle during his Pitstops. Moreover, his fight with understeer was called to halt when his engine failed at half distance, on lap 28. Juan Pablo Montoya's race pace was faster than Michael Schumacher's only in the early laps of each stint, when his tyres were optimum and Schumacher's were still wearing in. But overall his pace was close enough to suggest the gap in Melbourne was indeed a one off. Renault Key visible changes to the Renault were the fitment of the various cooling options catered for in the rear bodywork. While Renault was widely expected to suffer in the hot conditions, they did not in fact adopt all the possible apertures on the sidepods. Pace was matched with reliability during Friday and Saturday's first qualifying session. Fernando Alonso's error and spin in the second timed session was the first for a top team under the new rules. So it was the first time teams were able to exercise their right to change an engine during the weekend. So an engine change was completed in 'Parc Ferme' late on Saturday, without any real loss in grid placings as Alonso was already at the back of the grid. Curiously the FIA scrutineering statement quoted the replacement engine was without radiators or exhausts, which is surprising given that the engine wasn't replaced as a complete prepared unit. BAR 4 Atlas F1 Magazine: title Technical Review: Malaysia 2004 end title Following on from their competitive Melbourne race, BAR was the only team aside from McLaren with revised bodywork, albeit just a detail change to the endplate on the flip ups. The usually small shaped endplate mounting the winglet was replaced with a longer plate (marked in the drawing in yellow), reminiscent of the type Jordan have just discarded. Whether this was a performance enhancing part or part of the larger cooling aperture (marked in orange in the drawing) is not clear.

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