Marussia’s female test driver Maria De Villota will get behind the wheel of the team’s MR01 to test a ‘significant’ upgrade prior to the British Grand Prix.
The outfit is hoping to make major gains in order to catch up with its closest rivals, HRT and Caterham, in what team principal John Booth described as their “first proper wind-tunnel generated upgrade of the season.”
“We have a fairly significant upgrade for this race, comprising a new rear wing, exhausts, floor and side pods,” said Booth. “I would have to describe this as our ‘first proper wind-tunnel generated upgrade of the season’; we’ve had some smaller parts in Malaysia and China, and a few small iterations recently, but this is the first fully developed package that is not just a modification of existing elements.”
The team had approached their first two seasons in the sport by using just CFD (computational fluid dynamics) to develop upgrades, but since splitting with Wirth Research and beginning a technical partnership with McLaren Racing, they have adopted wind tunnel testing as well.
Booth is excited to see what performance can be gained from the upgrade, with a straight-line test planned at Duxford Airfield this weekend to correlate the results.
“Aside from the performance step we hope it will bring us, as it means we have caught up with ourselves in terms of the diligent way in which we have approached and developed our Technical Partnership,” he added.
“We look forward to seeing what this brings, both at Silverstone and at Duxford Airfield beforehand, when we will be integrating the developments into our correlation programme.
“Duxford is also the first of our Test Driver Maria De Villota’s scheduled track days. She has been waiting patiently all year for this date to come around, so we look forward to seeing her in the car for the first time.”
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