Jenson Button believes blown diffuser ban has improved wind tunnel results – Formula 1 news
Jenson Button says that the blown diffusers ban for the upcoming season has benefited the wind tunnel accuracy.
He said that the correlation is much more realistic than it was before and the stronger correlation between the two will now shows in teams have a better understanding of their cars.
“It's a lot more straightforward than last year in terms of trying to find downforce. When you see something in the windtunnel, you stick it on the car and it goes quicker. But with the blown exhaust you could try so many things in the windtunnel,” he said.
FIA banned the blown diffuser exhaust for the upcoming 2012 season after the Red Bull innovation was deemed unfair advantage. Red Bull managed to pull out two back-to-back world titles and driver championship titles with their highly successful blown diffuser
exhaust.
Other teams tried to copy the design but none had much success, McLaren was the only team to have come close to Red Bull with their version of the innovation.
Button said that he feels much more confident going into the season knowing that the track feels will be very much similar to the wind tunnel run. He added that he has better understanding of the new car than he did last year at this point with its predecessor.
McLaren did not have the best of the pre-season tests as technical difficulties hindered their progress. Button said that he was very happy with the results of the new car and despite he was only able to complete 44 laps on the final day of the final pre-season
test he remains confident.
“[Last year we were] running round, scratching our heads, wondering what we've done wrong. Last year we had the problem of the exhausts cracking and also that we just weren't fast, which I think we kept a secret behind the exhaust problems. It was a very
hard winter and when you have reliability issues you can't do any proper testing,” he said.
It will be interesting to see how McLaren fares during the season in which they are tagged as narrowly second favourites behind Red Bull.
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