The final interview from last week’s Aston Martin Racing 2016 race programme launch at Gaydon comes from AMR Chief Engineer Dan Sayers, the man responsible for translating the fiercely complex GTE rulebook into the best possible racing package on the V8 Vantage GTE theme and with major changes to the rules this season he’s been a busy man as AMR look to respond to the raft of new machinery being fielded in an increasingly competitive GTE Pro field in the FIA WEC and at Le Mans!
Have there been any major changes to the car that we saw at the post Bahrain WEC test?
“Since Bahrain (above), there are no real changes. That was the spec that was at the BoP test. That’s the spec we’ll be running.”
Whilst we’ve been concentrating on the external changes there have been some significant changes inside the car haven’t there?
“Yeah, it’s quite a challenge. There’s new regulations, safety seats, fixed safety seats and limits on the cushion thickness. When you’ve got drivers like Fernando, with Jonny and Richie, it’s a challenge to get them in.
“We’ve opted for a Racetech seat, that has a fixing to the roll cage. It has a rear fixing at a quarter height. Again, getting them in is very difficult. We’ve had to move the pedal box, get bespoke pedals that can move further away.”
Does it actually mean that it’s physically difficult, or impossible to get too much of a variation in height now?
“It’s very difficult now.”
What sort of parameters are we talking?
“Bearing in mind, Richie, Jonny and Fernando’s inner legs, differ about 60 mil, even that is proving massively difficult. You can get round that with a sliding pedal box, or other things you can do. But actually it’s the height of these cars, they need to be able to see out, have an eye-line at the right correct place in the seat. Irrespective of leg length, it’s actually the height that’s the problem. It’s matching them all up.
“You have to have almost identically sized drivers in the cars, there’s no way you could have Alex (McDowall) and Fernando (Rees) in a car this year.”
For a crew like Darren Turner Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen that must be marginal?
“It is, and again both of the Danes have to be slightly uncomfortable, and Darren has to be slightly stretched and then it works.
“There needs to be a better solution. I know the FIA are working hard with the safety department to find what can be done to improve the regulation.
“Don’t forget this will be GT3 soon, and that’s a different can of worms. You can dictate and select drivers on height, but GT3, you have some big lads in that.
“We are though responding to the challenge we’ve made other improvements like driver controls, steering wheel, display. We’ve massively improved visibility.”
Tell me how you’ve done that?
“We’ve moved the mirror off the windscreen, we’ve opened up the glazing to allow them to increase the glazing area around the window and screen. The new steering wheel, because you haven’t got the part at the top, it feels more open to them. All of them remark immediately after getting in, how much more they can see. It’ll help with lap time, and I believe we’ll have fewer on track incidents too.”
More than one person said today that reliability and serviceability are going to be key this year. Your car is one of the more evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) cars.
“You have already seen from Daytona, you can do a huge amount of testing mileage. but come the race, it’s different.
“A couple of manufacturers have experienced that.
“The Porsche is an evolution as well. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be strong this year, but we’re you know, optimistic. The car was 100% reliable last year. The guys did a fantastic job with the engine, mechanically it’s very similar to last year.
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be there. Providing we’ve got the window with the performance right, which we have, providing the BoP is done correctly and fairly – which we have every belief it will be – we should be right there.”
What can you tell us about what you’ve found with the aero on the new car? And what can you tell us about the tyres?
“Aerodynamics first, the biggest difference you’re going to see in lap time is in the sprint configuration. I think the reduction in drag is higher than the reduction in drag in Le Mans configuration.
“The top speeds will be higher in the sprint races, obviously depending on where they pitch the restrictors.
“Again, we’ve had to focus on reducing that drag. We’re starting from such a different point to the other guys. If you take a Ford and put it next to our car it’s very, very different. We’ve had to concentrate on aero efficiency. But they’ll have had to concentrate on other areas.
“And then the tyres. We had a good Bahrain test, we had the Dunlop ELMS tyre to test with Beechdean. And then we had some good results there straight away.
“We started talking to them about technical partnerships, as we’ve never developed a tyre specifically for this car. At this level now, everything has got to be right. That was the missing link.”
“Last year we were caught out, in 2013 and 2014, it worked quite well. The tyre was good, we were double stinting, deg was good. All of a sudden in 2015, something seemed to change. The car was the same, deg was the same. We couldn’t double stint.
“We saw the development the other guys were doing, and yeah, we were caught out by that. That’s basically the Championship!”
“The relationship already is so much closer with Dunlop, we talk every day, we’ve been to the rig. They’re a great technical team to work with, they’ve got the same goal as us. They don’t want want to be beaten, they want to win.”
Are you doing your own testing, or will you be at the big Dunlop test?
“Both, we’ve been to Aragon, we’ve been in Ricard a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been on the rig. We’ve got to go back to Aragon, then go to the Prologue and then it’s done.
“Our testing is more tuning the car to understand the tyre at the moment. It’s fascinating for us, we’re learning at the same time. Tuning the car to their tyre is quite different. There’s good set up changes to make, but we’re not going to know until Silverstone and then Le Mans where we are.”
GG
