Formula One - Will a late launching date affect some teams?
A former racer and now a Formula One expert and blog writer, Kunal Shah dismisses all the speculations regarding the late launch of McLaren and Force India cars. He believes that this will not affect the teams negatively; rather the delay might prove to
be beneficial for both teams.
Although there are 50 days to go before the 61st Formula One season begins, yet all the teams are extremely busy. Their engineers are buried in their factories preparing aggressive and competitive cars for the upcoming warfare. The first race
of the season is scheduled to take place in Bahrain in the middle of March, while practice sessions will kick off at Valencia on the first of next month.
Most of the teams have already announced the launching date of their 2011 package. Ferrari will be the first team to showcase its next year’s car, unveiling it on January 28th, 2011. On the other hand, teams like Renault and Sauber have decided
to hold the launching ceremonies on January 31st. Moreover, Red Bull, Mercedes and some of the other teams will bring their cars prior to the start of the first practice at Valencia on February 1st.
The pre-season testing has always been very important for the teams, but this season it is thought to be far more significant role than ever before. With the introduction of the new Pirelli tyres, the first test will be majorly concentrating on data collection.
Moreover, since the mid-season testing has been restricted by the FIA, teams will be tuning their cars at the practice sessions. For a Formula One car, its tyres are an integral factor determining the race results. The team that manages to use the new tyres
in the best possible way will deliver optimum results on the next season’s calendar.
While two of the teams have announced to launch its cars later than the others, Shah believes that this will not affect them at all. He told the race fans earlier today, “In my opinion, there is no advantage or disadvantage of launching one's car before
or after the first test. In fact, it could just turn out to be an advantage. With the new Pirelli tyres being used in 2011, the first test will largely be used to accumulate tyre data and focus on tyre usage and wear. McLaren and Force India have chosen to
run their 2010 cars with 2011 updates for this particular test.”
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