Obviously, we'll keep you updated on the situation and present you the first photos of the new car as soon as the team will provide them to us themselves. Until then, however, the car's designer Nick Wirth revealed that the development of the new car (secured by design company Wirth Research) was made entirely via CFD, with no work in the wind tunnel whatsoever.
“Today is a very proud day for everyone involved with Virgin Racing, however on this occasion, where the car is the star, I want to pay tribute to all the amazing people at Wirth Research who deserve so much of the credit for the VR-01,” said Wirth.
“I have been fortunate to have worked with the very best designers in F1 and I am well aware of exactly what it takes to be successful in this sport. When you see what the existing teams have achieved using the conventional but proven design approach, it is unsurprising that there is a great deal of scepticism about our all-CFD approach.”
Additionally, Wirth admitted that the CFD approach of the team will cause some issues with the new car once the team will start testing it, but hopes that all of them will be resolved after the 12 days of testing scheduled prior to the season opening round in Bahrain.
“We fully expect to encounter issues along the way; CFD is an approximation - as is scale-model testing. In both cases, it is only when you hit the track that you can really appreciate the effect of factors that are tricky to model with any technology such as the effect that the real stiffness of all bodywork components and joints has on the airflow for example.”
“We've done all of this before on both closed and open-wheel cars, so I'm pretty confident in the accuracy of our predictions and looking forward to seeing how our starting configuration performs on the race track,” concluded Wirth.
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