Steve,Originally Posted by steve monty
to try and help..........
It is very unlikely that any Team has a Car that is 100% new from season to season.
They are more of an evolution! In terms of "readiness" the core components of the car begin the fundamental design process around late May early June of the following year.
A lot of simulation CfD & stress analysis go on in the backgroud.
There are factors that delay the whole process such as new regulations,change of engine manufacturer or tyre supplier etc. Any of these have a huge knock on effect on the full package.
Given now the fIA has vastly reduced testing you can see that a lot of the winter work becomes educated guess work!
A few years ago a Team could launch a car and it could be "of the pace" like i think you are saying but the general public would never know because there would be a dozen or more tests with development parts before the "show" came on TV. Today there are 3 tests before the season begins!
Given for example that Pirelli only got the contract last July and tested a single car early August it would be unlikely that the design teams had representative tyre dynamic data in order to design suspension geometry etc until the end of the summer.Thus some may get luckier than others...
There are 4 main items in the package...(in laymans terms) Chassis,Tyres,Aerodynamics & Driver. I any one of these is underperforming then the percentage deficit is high. Thus the large differences in lap time from f ront to back.
You are correct that they are always developing but it is very unusal to see the pecking order change that much during the course of a season as everyone is updating and updating every event!
The reason Brawn were working and developing so late and throughout 2009 was because up until Xmas they were not racing with the pull out of Honda!
I believe that those guys repackaged the systems installation from Honda to Mercedes in 26days!
Hope that confuses you more!
