Force India - Dominic Harlow

Dominic Harlow: “I can’t remember a better winter build period”
Even during the winter the pace never slows in Grand Prix racing, and it’s been a busy few months at the Force India factory at Silverstone as the team prepares for the 2010 season.

In some ways life has been easier than last year, when Dr Vijay Mallya made a relatively late call to switch to Mercedes power and a McLaren transmission. Hindsight shows that it was an inspired decision, but the drawback was that last winter the technical team had to make a lot of changes to a car design that was already in progress.

That is no longer an issue, of course. On the other hand time is a little tighter than last year, because the first race in Bahrain is two weeks earlier than the 2009 season opener in Australia.

However, the big difference in the Force India factory is the buzz about the place. After fighting at the back of the field for several seasons, last year the team earned a pole position and regularly challenged for points. Everyone expects that form to carry on in 2010.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer, says that there’s a great atmosphere in the camp.

“I can’t remember a better winter build period for the team in the time since I’ve been here,” he says. “It’s been good in terms of continuity, the general feeling, and the aims and the goals that we are setting ourselves. That’s all been very positive. It’s still a time for change and regrouping and planning and so on, so all of that is going on as normal.

“But underlying that there’s just a confidence that if we carry on what we’re doing and believe in each other, then we will deliver. And unlike some other teams we’re not scratching around trying to put together a car at the last minute.”

Continuity is the key. Under its various identities over the years the team became used to changing engine suppliers at relatively short notice, so carrying over the Mercedes from 2009 – not to mention the fact that the same engine that won the World Championship – is a major boost.

“It certainly is,” says Harlow. “We’ve kept the whole powertrain. The regulations are basically the same, although that helps every other team as well. We’ve been able to start everything much earlier and everything is as you’d want to have it now, rather than just being a reaction to everything else that’s going on around.”

Although the regulations are essentially unchanged after the huge upheavals of last winter, there are some issues that have to be addressed.

“We have a narrower front tyre. And the tyres generally always change and are a little bit of an unknown – we’ll be interested to find out about them when we go testing. The deletion of spinners, or wheel discs, also has a big impact.”

The biggest change is that there is no refuelling at pit stops in 2010, so cars will start races with a much heavier fuel load than previously. Thus a major task over the winter has been to determine the size of the fuel tank – in other words calculate how much fuel would be required to finish the race which is heaviest on fuel consumption. Get the numbers wrong and make the tank too small, and there could be a major embarrassment.

“We were pretty systematic,” says Harlow. “We looked at everything we could think of that affects fuel consumption – the drag of the car, the circuits we run at, driving style, the way we run the engines, the fuel itself. We forecast that forward to 2010 and came up with a prediction based on the worst circuit in terms of fuel use, which is now Valencia. Then you have some design factors to include, such as the way a calculated fuel tank size never quite becomes a manufactured one – it’s a slightly inexact science.”

The lack of refuelling means that race strategy is now going to be quite different. Drivers still have to use both the prime and option tyres during a race, so there will be pit stops. But determining the best time to change – given that the heavy fuel load at the start will put more stress on the tyres in the early laps – is an extremely complicated equation.

“It’s quite a big unexplored area, and there’s still a lot of modelling for the fuel consumption and the tyres that we still need to do. Depending on where we’re racing, I think people are going to be a bit more cagey at the start of the race.”

The extra complication for the drivers is that the car behaviour will change dramatically between the early laps, with a full load, and the latter stages of the race.

“The car balance will change quite a lot as the fuel weight goes down. I think it’s another challenge, and as always, the cream will rise to the top. It will help the fastest learners. And for us it’s where the continuity and the relative experience of our guys is going to favour us.

“In wet conditions the extra weight of the cars will be another interesting factor, and will probably accentuate the differences between the drivers even more than previously.”