Technical Review: Malaysia 2005

Considering this was only the second race of the year and the majority of the cars, equipment and personnel did not return to Europe in between, there were a large number of updates for all the cars across the grid. A lot of these were aimed primarily at Sepang's heat, but a lot of developments not specific to the track were also debuted.

This race was the first were teams had to race an engine with close to 750 km under its belt already. With the heat, many teams were concerned about the engines durability. BAR decided to install new engines after all, but since their cheeky withdrawal from the Australian race, two laps before the end, the FIA have moved to stop teams purposely retiring an otherwise healthy car in order to gain a fresh engine without penalty. According to the FIA "a distinction will now be made between failing to finish and choosing not to finish.”

Quite how the Federation plans to impose this rule was not clear but, just as with clarifications on team orders, the rule was aimed more at stopping blatant contravention of the rules, rather than a water tight method of stopping the practice. With this clarification in place any unashamed engine changes will cease. Ironically in the race it was only BAR who suffered engine failures, with the balance of the grid keeping their units running up to the end of their second races.

As well as longer life engines, Sepang tested the tyres more than Melbourne. The heat and mix of corners puts great demands on tyres. Sepang tests tyres for both longitudinal and lateral traction; the big braking zones and flat out accelerations test the former, and the long turns test the latter. With rear tyre wear largely a factor of traction, which is of course electronically controlled, most believed the front tyres would be the ones struggling to go the distance.

It has proved a surprise at both races so far that it is, in fact, the rears that have been the limiting factor. At the end of both races most drivers rolled into parc ferme with relatively tidy front tyres with all fours grooves in tact, while the rear tyres were at best heavily worn on their inner treads; many drivers, Ferrari in particular, finished Sepang with all but bald rears.

As breaking traction cannot be causing the wear it must the lack of downforce, or more specifically the lack of balanced downforce creating the wear. The impact of the aerodynamic changes is now showing their effect - particularly with the lower diffuser, teams have been unable to balance the grip from the front wing with the limited space available at the rear - this is why we are still seeing quite moderate front wings and a proliferation of devices at the rear. In the high speed turns the car lacks the downforce to stop the rears sliding, which is wrecking the tyres; in previous years it has been front end grip that has been the limitation.

With tyre longevity so reliant on the aerodynamics, this year we are seeing a new form of reliability; aerodynamic. As the cars aerodynamic devices are at the limits of their operating envelope, any small change to these conditions will seriously hampers a car's pace, and this will hurt the tyres, exacerbating the problem. Should the car run in dirty air (behind another car for example) or lose some bodywork, the drivers race could be ruined as much as by an engine or gearbox reliability problem.

In Melbourne McLaren lost some barge board elements, and as a result slowed up. In Sepang Rubens Barrichello's early pace was stolen by a slab of rubber being caught in his rear wing, effectively crippling one side of the wing and burning his rear tyres up within a few laps. Giancarlo Fisichella also lost some of his bodywork, and this affected his front tyres. McLaren brought reinforced bargeboards to Sepang, and the drivers will need to think as much about making sure overtaking and kerb riding doesn't damage the bodywork as they do about not locking up wheels into corners and flat-spotting tyres.

Almost all the teams brought some form of extra cooling outlets to the race, with some even opening up bodywork to solve local heat issues with the sidepods. Aside from Sauber every team adopts chimneys as their primary cooling outlet; these were enlarged for Sepang, and many teams used the spare area on the bodywork to add grilles to further vent hot air from the sidepods.

Team by Team

Ferrari

The team continued to controversially but legally test the F2005 in Italy during the race weekend. Its first developments have been noted, mimicking Williams's tail mounted mini wing, and Ferrari have also added a very tall and steeply angled winglet. This adds rear downforce; along with the car's revised weight distribution and suspension geometry it is now starting to draw positive comments from the teams. Whether these developments will aid the cars use of its Bridgestones tyres enough to return the fight to the Michelin teams remains to be seen.

Ferrari opted to run Michael Schumacher's Australian engine in Malaysia, despite the potential for an un-penalised engine change; this has been viewed as a sign the F2005 may race as early as Bahrain, which would coincide with the first round of engine changes (the F2004M uses a different engine to the F2005 - changing after Bahrain would see a engine change penalty imposed).

Meanwhile the F2004M continued to be raced at Malaysia; some developments noted on the car were revised brake drums, with the inner face now completely flat aside from the air scoop - with the front wing being raised, the smooth flow around the inside of the wheel is even more important. Ferraris cooling solution used the angled chimney augmented with a louvered grill beneath.

All weekend the team struggled with rear tyre grip; the cars looked awful in qualifying and throughout the race. With their problems and relatively poor grid position both cars were heavily fuelled going into second qualifying and the race. Schumacher lacked pace and made no progress initially, while Barrichello enjoyed a better first stint until after his first stop when he picked up some rubber from Kimi Raikkonen's blow out.

The chunk of rubber was trapped in the right-hand side of the rear wing, in the slot between the main plane and flap. This would have crippled the wing on that side, and the wings run so close to stalling that the loss of the slot gap would have the rear wing stalling, robbing the car of downforce. In his second pitstop on lap 31 a mechanic removed the lump of rubber but by then his rear tyres were ruined, and the other changes made to the car at the stop (rear tyre pressure and front flap adjustment) had little effect in regenerating his tyres; he retired on lap 50 with no rear grip. Schumacher ran to the flag for a lowly finish.

BAR

Modifications utilised for the heat consisted of a simple opening of the bodywork around the usual outlets and performance changes were the aggressive front wing seen at the launch. Once again the package did not look strong; the better qualifying from Jenson Button hinted that the team could threaten the four rows on the grid, but the engine reliability worries from Australia expressed as preventative engine changes after Australia remained, as did the lack of pace in the chassis and their struggle with tyre use.

Oil leak problems saw both oil pump seals replaced in parc ferme, with crankcase pressurisation mentioned as a problem. Early in the race Button started to trail oil, spraying both the track and the following drivers; this lead to a spin and thereafter his engine expired. Almost simultaneously Anthony Davidson's engine let go, with the oil igniting and flames spewing from the same side as Button's oil trails.

Renault

No visible changes were noted to the R25 and the team set the pace all weekend, this time with Fernando Alonso enjoying the better weekend with a car that appearing balanced and easy on its tyres. Finally the Renault engines power output appears on a par with its rivals; the package seems flawless. The cars kept their ground once more at the start but did not streak away.

Fisichella lost part of his bargeboard and cited a huge loss on downforce; this soon degraded his rear tyres, and a pit stop on lap 22 brought a front wing adjustment and rear tyre pressure change. Another front wing adjustment did not help - his rear tyres were blistered with oversteer in the high speed corners - and by lap 38 his rear grip was gone and he was involved in a incident with Webber.

Alonso's clean weekend saw no problems - at his first pitstop on lap 21 the team adjusted the car's rear balance with a tyre pressure change, and later asked him to take fast corners in fifth to ease crank case pressure. He ran to the flag without any further dramas to claim an easy win.

Williams

The team arrived in Malaysia with no testing of the new car in between races; instead they risked fourteen new aero bits, untested on track and run only in the windtunnel. This approach is typical of Williams's recent strategy when recovering aerodynamic deficiencies over the past few years. The new performance parts were additional bargeboards in front of the sidepods (yellow); these met the sidepod floor fin at the trailing edges, and the fin has also been revised with a distinct hump along its length, visible by the cut out required by the bargeboard.

These new boards would seek to improve the air quality to the rear of the car, improving rear downforce along with a gurney strip running across the full width of the rear wing. Cooling developments saw larger chimneys and exhaust fairings; one chimney reached as far back as the end of the winglet, while extra grills on either side of the chimney were also raced.

With the second hot race coming up in Bahrain, the team opted to use the old engine in Nick Heidfeld's car despite his retirement in Australia. The team provided a better showing than was perhaps expected; the team's raft of aero updates allowed the drivers to put in strong performances with good race pace, but still lacked the outright speed to challenge for front row qualifying or wins.

In the race Heidfeld pitted on laps 20 and 42 and was fighting for position with his team mate. Mark Webber also had a fighting race, pitting later than Heidfeld; his battle with Ralf Schumacher as well as some robust moves to keep his team mate behind him cost him some aerodynamic parts, and an incident with Fisichella left his suspension wrecked at Turn 1.

McLaren

The curious humps on the top of the McLaren nose are explained by the extreme angle at which the torsion bars (yellow) are installed. Most teams pass the torsion springs through the front of the nose; McLaren instead have to remove the bulged fairing and withdraw them at almost 45-degrees through the aperture.

Both cars still appeared to lack the pace expected from testing but seem to have no other specific vices. In the race both drivers presented little threat to the front of the field, although Raikkonen's race was again spoilt, masking his potential in the race. Both cars were under pressure in the opening laps, suggesting the fuel load was heavy, and indeed Raikkonen was of the last cars to stop.

His first stop on lap 24 saw a small adjustment to the front wing to alter the cars balance., but he went off with a puncture further around his out lap; the rear tread parted with the sidewalls and Kimi had a half lap to complete to recover to the pits for a new rear tyre (the one used on Friday), after which his pace picked up again despite damage to the bodywork around the rear wheels. Juan Pablo Montoya, meanwhile, had another quiet race, leading his team mate home to a points finish.

Sauber

The weekend saw the team again struggled to qualify, and in the race the drivers weren't at the level of pace shared by the other Michelin runners, squandering their aero resources, Ferrari engines and Michelin tyre supply. Added to this is some apparent communication problems between the team and Jacques Villeneuve; reading between the lines of the outbursts from team owner and driver last week the feedback of criticism in the cars set up is not being caught properly, shown by Villeneuve's continued problems with brakes - both parties are part of the problem.

Villeneuve has been accommodated in some ways; he has a unique cockpit layout compared to other drivers, and like a steering wheel with large moulded grips. As well as the grippy material being used to top the steering wheels buttons, he also uses only one hand for gear changes, the one side paddle going forwards for downshifts and backwards for upshifts. Felipe Massa uses conventional double sided shift paddles, and suede grip on the rim.

Villeneuve spun under braking in the race and retired his car in the gravel; he has often mentioned he dislikes the Saubers behaviour under braking, and he tried re-setting the brake bias in the race to prevent the fronts locking but then found the rear would lock when he was pushing; it was the rear end that broke away leading to his shunt.

Red Bull

The car's pace appears to belie its origins as the 2004 Jaguar and Cosworth customer engine supply; the team have made the most of the Michelin tyres and the greater power from the new for 2005 engine. Balanced and well paced, the team has embarrassed many of their rival Michelin teams; it remains to be seen if they can progress as fast as the currently failing teams to keep this position.

Christian Klien was the first to pit during the race after only 18 laps with no adjustments being made; he fought a tough race to finish two places behind David Coulthard in eighth.

Toyota

Jarno Trulli drove another amazing front row qualifying sessions again, with Ralf Schumacher almost matching on row three. Trulli pitted on lap 21, the same lap as leader Alonso, and for his final stint he was under no pressure and was instructed to ease off; despite this his front right tyre had evidence of blisters after the race.

Schumacher tussled with the Williams pair, and in the process damaged his car in several areas; he pitted on lap 41 for a new nose and a couple of laps later his right winglet also parted company with the car on the straight - by race end his front tyres were wrecked with blisters and heavy wear. Second and fifth was great reward for the progress made by the team.

Jordan

Cooling was improved with larger chimneys, which were later cut away to create more outlet area, and a small aperture was cut into the sidepods flank. Despite these moves, the teams pace was poor; the drivers were incessantly lapped during the race.

Minardi

Minardi appearing once more with the revised 2005 aero package; this seems to have been developed since Albert Park, with the diffuser being only at the maximum height, as there appears to have been another format diffuser used at Melbourne which had bodywork in the area of the old higher tunnels, forming wings above the diffuser.

Cooling was expanded with the usual chimney, and the engine cover was cut back over the rear damper blisters. Both engines were replaced overnight for the race, to no noticeable affect.