Williams’ technical director Sam Michael: Adjustable rear wings will help during qualifying sessions
Williams’ technical director Sam Michael recently stated that the newly introduced adjustable rear wings are worth half a second per lap during the qualifying sessions.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) introduced the adjustable rear wings for the 2011 Formula 1 season along with Kinetic Energy Recovery System in order to make the sport more competitive.
“In qualifying it will be worth about half a second per lap. During the race, I think it should achieve what it is supposed to, but it may take two or three races for the FIA to fine tune the usage of the system,” said Michael.
An adjustable rear wing allows a team to adjust its car’s rear wing during a race in order to increase or decrease the downforce being applied on it. As a result, the teams can squeeze out as much speed as they can while travelling on the straights even
at tough tracks like Monte Carlo in Monaco.
However, the FIA revealed that the teams will only be allowed to use the adjustable rear wing at a specific portion of a track during the race but has not revealed anything about their usage during the qualifying sessions.
Red Bull Racing Team are against the decision of allowing the teams to use an adjustable rear wing during the qualifying session while McLaren and Ferrari are in its favour.
Other than that, Sam Michael believes that adjustable rear wings are going to have a lot of impact keeping the lap times in mind.
“It should not get to the point where a driver can just drive past another car with ease, but rather it should be a device that gives just a bit more to an already ambitious overtaking attempt,” Sam added.
Since KERS and the new Pirelli tyres are also going to be a part of the 2011 Formula 1 season, Sam believes that the teams are going to be much closer than they were ever before in terms of pace which would make the new season more entertaining than the
past few seasons.
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