Gascoyne: defending a non-blown, ‘ugly’ car that’s moving up the grid

Posted by Mikel on January 27th, 2012 at 11:56am

After releasing a quick picture, subdued by the mysterious dark lighting as to create suspens, Caterham  F1 has now engaged in the defense of “ugly”. The car was the first to be unveiled and has been dubbed “Platypus” due to is nosecone share and size. Technical boss Mike Gasc0yne has entered into a bravado-award-winning defense of the nose on their Facebook page:

“As we’re the first car out it is obviously stirring up a lot of debate, but because of the 2012 regulations I think you’ll probably be seeing this type of nose on most of the cars this year,” he wrote.

Gascoyne took the opportunity to mention the ban on blown diffusers as well saying:

“Aerodynamics is always the main focus of performance and improvement. Last year it was all about the blown diffuser, which we struggled with because not having it in 2010 meant we were always playing catch up throughout the 2011 season in comparison to other teams.

“The fact it’s banned this year certainly plays to our advantage. Other teams had so much more development time, they were able to get much more out of it than we were ever able to, so that eliminates a little of the competition in terms of technical development.

“But really, aerodynamics is always one of the main features of development and that’s why we’ve put so much additional resource into it.”

The team will officially launch its car in the pages of the British magazine called F1. The team was the best of the new(er) teams in 2011 and Gascoyne says he’s looking for a furhter move up the grid:

“I think we need to see the car on track first and get feedback from the first tests,” said Gascoyne. “Until we run the car, we only have numbers and simulation data to work with.

“But every team wants to move up the grid and we’re no different. We finished 10th in the last two years, which has been our target, but now I think it’s time we moved forward again. Let’s see what happens we get out on track.”

Let’s be honest, I stopped doubting this team quite a while ago. They may very well leap-frog Williams with the new CT01 and KERS in 2012 and I would be elated for them to do so. Long live Heikki! (by the way, what’s the deal with Heikki?…it’s an old F1B joke folks)

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