Spyker delays launch of B-spec car
The F8-VII/B had been scheduled to make its debut in Turkey, but initially fell short of the stringent safety levels set out the sport's governing body.
Adrian Sutil completed 76 laps, more than 400km, with the car, which Spyker has confirmed will now make its race debut at the Italian Grand Prix, despite the team encountering a gearbox glitch in the afternoon.
"We worked on finding a good set-up for the race and understanding how the car behaves in low downforce configuration and also tried out the soft and harder tires, which seemed to work well for us," said Sutil.
"It is difficult to say where we are with the new car; Monza is a very special track unlike anywhere else with less grip, but I think it was a good start."
Sutil was slowest of the 12 runners present, but was only 0.3s slower than Takuma Sato's Super Aguri by the end of the day.
"Spyker joined the Monza test a day late with Adrian Sutil driving the 'B' spec chassis for its first full circuit test. Monza requires a specific aero package of which the validation process was started today," said the team's chief engineer Dominic Harlow.
"Monza makes high demands on the brakes, suspension over the curbs in the chicanes, and on the engine with long periods of hard acceleration.
"During the day the team gathered data on all these areas and worked on particular developments for each of the systems. ITV.com/f1
"In terms of our preparation for the race here in ten days time our progress looks promising and we know that there is plenty of potential in the new car."
08/23/07 The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team has been forced to postpone the launch of its new B spec car until the Italian Grand Prix due to unexpectedly failing the rear impact test. The team will now contest this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix with two A spec cars.
Chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne, commented:
'It's obviously very disappointing to delay the launch, especially considering the hard work that everyone at the factory and track has put in. Unfortunately last week we had an unexpected failure of the rear crash test, possibly due to problems with a batch of material used. Unfortunately all the other structures available we had to test were from this batch and the modifications we tried to make were not sufficient. These tests are quite rightly very stringent and difficult to pass, but we did not expect to have a problem as the structure is very similar to the A spec one. We are confident that we understand the problem however and should be able to pass with no problems next week. Gascoyne added, 'We will now concentrate on doing the best we can this weekend. As we were aware we had a problem we brought two A spec cars as well as two B spec cars, so we will not have any problems switching back, but it's just disappointing not to have the performance increase as planned. On a more positive note, we will now be able to test the car at the pre-Italian Grand Prix test next week at Monza, which should allow us to be in better shape.'