Ferrari used Toyota’s wind-tunnel in Cologne, Germany to help tweak the aerodynamics of the new 2011 car, the F150.
Under the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA), teams can spend more than their budget allows if they outsource some of their development.
Ferrari chose to use Toyota’s wind-tunnel in a bid to help develop the F150. Since leaving F1, Toyota’s Cologne base is available for commercial use and, as such, the Italian outfit decided it would be best to correlate the data from their own tunnel and the Toyota tunnel to get the most accurate results.
“There are some FOTA regulation restrictions in terms of expense – which is the cost for the framework, the number of people working in the team, the number of hours spent in the wind tunnel, and also the power of the server for the CFD,” said Ferrari’s technical director Aldo Costa.
“These are the four restrictions and the last two are connected – so it is up to the team how to spend money, how to employ people and where to work.
“We therefore decided to really focus on the work of the wind tunnel, and one wind tunnel was not enough – we needed one and a little bit more.
“The Toyota tunnel is one of the commercial tunnels that is more state-of-the-art, and that is why we have selected it.”
