2006 Monaco GP Technical Review

Monaco is truly a one-off circuit on the Formula One calendar, and unlike any other track that is set around busy city streets, as the two other temporary circuits, in Australia and Canada, are set in parkland.

Monaco's demands are well known: cambered bumpy roads, with several tight corners and several heavy braking zones, following on from the short straights.

Within such tight confines, qualifying is unusually important for a good race result. In terms of set-up, the cars need higher ride heights, softer spring and soft tyres. With no long straight, drag is not a problem, and instead the need for maximum downforce and plenty of cooling are the aerodynamic priorities.

Engines need to be tuned for mid-range to give good pick up out of the corner, especially the hairpin, which sees the lowest revs of any corner in F1 - taken in first gear, the engines drop to 5,000rpm, and the drivers need full lock on the steering.

The Schumacher incident

On his second set of tyres in the last qualifying session, Michael Schumacher's Ferrari arrived at the final turn. Only two camera shots caught the incident - the on-track camera was low down and viewed the car side on. The second camera was on board and showed front wheels and cockpit.

The Rascasse corner is approached by a short straight. The corner is quite tight - not as severe as the hairpin, but in F1 terms, it is a very narrow radius turn. It isn't a corner that drivers tend to overshoot, but rather it's the oversteering out of the corner that more often creates a problem.

On his last run, Schumacher appeared to go straight on mid corner. The on-board shot shows the front left tyre locking slightly. Clearly this wasn't a major lock-up, and the wheel actually only locked as the car neared the apex. The telltale puff of smoke appeared just as Schumacher should have been turning the wheel.

At this stage, to turn in would have seen the car understeer more dramatically. By keeping the wheels straight, more braking time was provided to slow the car, but this compromised his turn in point. The barrier on the exit of the turn gives no room for a wide exit, and hence instead of trying to make the corner, the Ferrari continued to brake up in a straight line, up until it stopped just short of the barrier.

At this point, the car lacked just a few degrees of extra steering lock to turn to avoid the barrier. But the engine was already stalled and Schumacher could not spin the tyres or reverse to move the car from the dangerous position it now sat in, forcing the yellow flags.

The race stewards called an enquiry and were been provided with telemetry data and TV footage to review the incident. The telemetry showed when and how hard Schumacher braked for the corner and what steering inputs he used not just for the lap in question but for other laps over the weekend. This evidence allowed the stewards to see if the Ferrari was driven in a very different manner for that corner and on that lap.

Given the knife-edge nature of F1 cars and how accurate and consistent drivers are able to lap, any large variation in the data from one lap to another is easy to discern.

As the investigation took so long, possibly there was not the "smoking gun" pointing to a deliberate manoeuvre. Without that, it just isn't possible to tell if a driver made any deliberate but subtle input to the car specifically to fake a crash.

I found it curious that the Ferrari stalled - this is not a normal situation with current F1 cars. The engine's management system detects a stall and pulls the clutch in. In testing, the teams check this anti-stall system by simply letting the clutch out when in gear when stood still in the pits.

These systems are used to kick in at the start of a race or when a car spins. They should have just as easily kicked in when the Ferrari was braked to a halt, even if the clutch paddle wasn't pulled in by the driver. However, the Ferrari did stall, and this left Schumacher parked next to the barrier with no option to move the car out of its dangerous position.

Weekend strategy and reliability

You would expect the Monaco Grand Prix to feature a large number of accidents and car failures, but the 2006 weekend was surprisingly free of incidents, and the mechanical failures were curiously restricted to similar faults for each team.

Aside from Honda having two incidents for Anthony Davidson, it was Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren suffering a problem with the heat shielding around the engine, starting a small fire inside the bodywork.

The resulting damage was only restricted to the wiring loom and not the engine itself. Meanwhile, the BMW-Sauber of Robert Kubica had a crash induced by electronic problems, which forced the team to keep the other cars in the pits while the problem was investigated.

In the race, both Williams's cars succumbed to exhaust failures leading to small fires damaging the cabling and systems around the engine. Raikkonen suffered a repeat of his Thursday heat shielding problem during the safety car period. Takuma Sato's Super Aguri had electrical problems forcing a remedial pitstop and subsequent retirement. Last among the retirements were Christian Klien's Red Bull with loss of drive, and Jarno Trulli's Toyota with hydraulic problems.

Toyota's B spec car features a new monocoque, gearbox and small aero changes © Scarborough (Click image to enlarge)

Toyota TF106B

Toyota released their "B" specification car just as they forecast at the TF106's launch. The need for a "B" spec car was not a knee-jerk reaction to a problem, but rather an incremental step in the car's development, planned when the TF105 was being raced. This means items such as chassis and gearbox, as well and the perennial aero updates, needed to be rolled into one car.

To ease the workload, Toyota aimed at having a phased roll-out of the car. The "no keel" front suspension was pushed out into an early race debut for the last three races of 2005 to form the TF105B. With the "no keel" set-up successfully raced, the team could effectively freeze the monocoque/front suspension design and focus on the rear end, even though the old single keel was still moulded into the chassis.

Former technical director Mike Gascoyne told autosport.com that retaining the old keel had very little influence on aerodynamics, and that the space it afforded inside the footwell allowed a neat packaging of the pedals and dampers. Thus, retaining the old single keel saved a redesign on a long list of other components.

Renault sported a larger winglet on the sidepod, with slotted endplates to reduce drag © Scarborough (Click image to enlarge)

The car badged as the TF106, launched back in January, was the TF105B with the rear end developed for the new V8. Part of the new rear end was a revised gearbox; this required a new casing to mount the revised suspension and damper arrangement.

It now appears that the new casing was not lengthened to make up the 10cm lost from the engine, but instead a carbon fibre spacer was added to the rear of the monocoque to retain the wheelbase. This set-up was also used in the Midland interim car.

The new TF106B tackles the jobs not completed in time for the car's initial launch - these being the optimised monocoque and gearbox casing. In terms of layout, the 10cm spacer was effectively moved from between the engine/monocoque to in between the engine/gearbox via a longer gearbox casting. This moves the weight distribution forward and improves the interruption the airbox presents to the rear wing.

A more angular front wing replaces McLaren's the old curved wing © XPB/LAT (Click image to enlarge)

With the "no keel" suspension now a standard fitment, Toyota have removed the old single keel on the new monocoque and have also revised the suspension geometry. As the TF105B retained the same pushrod apertures as the single keel car, the pushrods needed to be mounted in a compromised position on the upright in order to get the required steep installation angle. On the TF106B, the pushrods now meet the chassis much higher up, so this requires two sizable bulges (yellow) on the monocoque to clear the rockers.

Aerodynamically, the car is largely unchanged from the TF106 racing up until the Spanish GP. Two small new features are much larger shoulder wing endplates (yellow), and a triple mid-wing set-up - albeit the latter is probably just a fitment for Monaco.

Renault

Renault's aerodynamic add-on for Monaco was a new sidepod winglet (yellow). This sports a much larger wing, which is now split into two elements. The endplate has been enlarged and has two slots.

Just as with rear wings, these slots feed higher pressure air from inside the wing out through the slots to reduce the drag-inducing vortex that trails the wing. As Renault have made the wing much more heavily loaded (with downforce), the slots keep the wake of the wing to a similar level as the older, smaller wing.

Although un-raced, Honda tried this dramatically shaped bi-plane wing © XPB/LAT (Click image to enlarge)

McLaren

Having struggled all year to match their race pace with good qualifying pace, the recent test at Paul Ricard saw McLaren testing several new aerodynamic solutions, the major ones being new front and rear wings.

The new front wing has more defined changes in geometry across its span. Gone is the smooth spoon curve of the old wing, instead now there is a distinct droop in the middle and abruptly kicked up outer spans.

Also, in testing, a new cooling outlet was tried in preparation for the low drag Canadian and American races. Brief glimpses suggest the exhaust outlet is now brought forward and upwards, forming a chimney.

Honda revised their car with larger shoulder wing endplates © Scarborough (Click image to enlarge)

Honda

Honda have also struggled with tyre management this year, but with the reverse situation that McLaren have had with the Michelins.

The team tested with Williams at Vallelunga to prepare for the Monaco GP. Two main aero developments were brought to the principality: an aggressive bi-plane front wing, and a new shoulder wing.

The bi-plane wing was only tried on Friday and dropped in favour of the more conventional front wing with a larger flap. The new bi-plane wing used a profile with a twisted inboard section and a fence near the endplate. Perhaps the aggressive wing produced too much drag for its downforce, even though Honda struggled with understeer.

This flip-up was a neat addition to MF1's sidepod © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)

One development retained for the race was the new larger shoulder wing endplate (yellow), following a similar pattern to the car's original endplate wing, only much longer.

These wings act as a divider to the dirty flow around the inside of the front wheels and the cleaner flow aimed over the sidepods and towards the rear wing.

Midland

To tackle the demands of Monaco, Midland produced two simple aerodynamic add-ons: an extra flip-up neatly added to the sidepod's winglet (yellow), and also a winglet mounted over the tail lamp.

Super Aguri

These steeply angled dive planes were added to give the SA more front-end downforce © Scarborough (Click image to enlarge)

Still tied to the aerodynamics of the old Arrows A23 chassis and its front wing, Super Aguri ran a dramatic pair of dive planes to add downforce to the front of the car.

More commonly used in sportscars, these delta shaped fins add downforce with a degree of efficiency, as their sides are angled and a vortex forms underneath the steeply angled fin preventing it from stalling.

As such, these are aimed solely at producing downforce rather than improving flow to the rear.