Alan Jones^guide to the Adelaide GP Issue 34
FIRST yS/ITH THE NEWS
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INSIDE Germany’s other FI ace
Heinz-Harald Frentzen is poised to foliow Michael Schumacher to the top in Formula 1. Our exclusive interview is on Page 18
Kiwi superstar
He might have been a quiet achiever, but Steve Miilen is one of the most accomplished racers to come out of this region. Read his story on P14
Colour guide: Valvoline Night of NASCAR
A DISTINCTIVE heavily sculptured front air dam is the prominent element of Holden’s homologation package for the new VR Commodore race car. The new front end was tested on a race track for the first time on a modified VP at Calder Park
More exdusive pits inside
last week - just days before Tuesday’s homolgation deadline. Peter Brock completed the test, but Holden Motor Sport chief John LindeU said it was not designed to evaluate the full package, The secret tests were conduct-
ed under tight security, designed to prevent Ford.from seeing the package before this week’s CAMS deadline. However, as well as our pho tographer, rival team owner Glenn Seton watched the car
lapping from a spectator bank. Seton had coincidentally gone to the circuit to run his team’s two Falcons - interestingly only in 1994 specification, not with Ford’s new aero package. Lindell believes the new Commodore will be quicker than the existing VP, but only by a matter of tenths of a second.
The stock car circus goes under lights at Oran Park for the first time later this month and we give you the inside running with our speciai 8-page fuil coiour iift-out guide. ISSN 1320-9744
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News
4 November 1994
HOLDEN TESTS VR AERO KIT By DAVID HASSALL and CHRIS LAMBDEN
■ Steven Richards has returned home after a brief ■visit to England, where he tested a Van Diemen Fonnula Ford and one of Dick Bennett's Dallara F3 cars. At this stage, Steven and his backers haven't made a final decision on what 2-litre touring car he will run in 1995, but we believe as Alfa Romeo tops his list. "We know what we'd like to get - it's just a mat ter of cost," he said. ■ Michael Andretti has set some blistering times at Indianapolis in his first test back ■with Newman-Haas. Andretti set a best lap of 230 mph compared vrith Robbie Gordon at 229 in the Valvoline Lola and A1 Unser Jr at only 225 mph in an Ilmorrather than Mercedes-engine Penske. A week earlier, Scott Pruett recorded a 228 testing Firestone tyres with Patrick Racing’s Lola-Ford.
HOLDEN has track-tested the vital elements of its allnew VR Commodore touring car package. Racing against time to meet Tuesday’s 5pm deadline at CAMS, HRT last Thursday tested its dis tinctive new VR front end treat ment on a converted VP race car, as our exclusive pictures here and on the cover illustrate. Delayed by disagreement with CAMS and TEGA over the extent of structural changes to be built into the VR Commodore bodyshell, the team was extremely keen to confirm its wind-tunnel fi ndings on-track before the homologation deadline. According to Holden’s motor sport manager, John Lindell, the VR Commodore ■will be faster than the existing VP “by only a matter of tenths of seconds.” He described comments that the new Holden would be a hot rod as “rubbish” and said that a well-dri ven VP would still be competitive in 1995. “If Bridgestone do the right work over Christmas, we will certainly gain more time through tyres than with the car,” said Lindell. Rear downforce on the new Commodore is not expected to be an issue - ■with the rear deck height some 35mm higher than the VP, efficiency should be up and there fore downforce increased for an equivalent wing angle. The VR is expected to provide equivalent downforce to the VP with noticeably less drag, but over all drag will be greater because of the new car’s bigger frontal area. Testing of the front-end treat ment therefore became the priority, and that was completed at the Calder road circuit on Thursday. The VR front end features a dis tinctive scalloped look, designed to
n Having sold his substantial steel tube manufacturing busi ness for a reputed $15 million, ■we hear Brisbane's Ross Palmer is looking at putting a two-litre team together. With Geoff Brabham confirmed at BMW, he has approached John Bowe with a view to driving one of the cars (Ford Mondeo?) for him. Neal Lowe will engineer the team.
■ IndyCar director of opera tions Kirk Russell will be in Adelaide for the GP watching how evei-ything runs at the in^vitation of IndyCar GP boss Glen Jones, who will be working at his last Adelaide race.
COMPARISON ...As our comput¬ er enhanced photo above shows, the VR will look quite different to the VP (pictured right). direct airflow to best effect while producing the required dovmforce. The aerodynamics for the VR race car have been designed by a former British Aerospace aerodynamicist who is now retired here. Holden has tested the new pack¬ age on a race car in RMITs fiJl-scale ■wind tunnel back-to-back with a VP, but had yet to tiy a car on the track. HRT was unable to test the mechanical changes which are part of the VR package. A combination of last-minute changes and a hea^vy workload preparing three cars for Adelaide, including repairs on the team’s two Bathurst cars, preclud ed the team from having its first full VR finished. “We’d like to have tested the whole package,” team manager Jeff Grech confirmed this week, “but ■with the delays it just wasn’t possi ble. I suppose it’s a bit of a punt, but we were fairly happy with the way it went.” 'Ihe team has a new VR shell near ing completion and will work hard to
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get that on-track as soon as possible. In the meantime, a late push by some Holden teams to retain the VP rear suspension set-up in its entirety for the VR was causing some late headaches for the Holden homologation team. Holden’s package includes longer upper rear arms to improve load distribution and, having already coped with several delays to date, the team was understandably loathe to make yet another change - particularly vrith an almost-com pleted VR shell in the workshop. According to Lindell, HRT engi¬
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neer Ron Harrop, who supplies components to many other teams, can pro^vide a kit to convert the VP rear end for just $320. Lindell said Holden had gone out of its way to design the car for a variety of components. He said the strut tower could accommodate all the various struts available, despite their considerable differences. He said the VR had been designed to the meet the Group A rules and therefore expected it to be approved by CAMS when it was scheduled to meet on Thursday (November 3).
■ Neal Bates wasn’t the only Motorsport News columnist to have rally success in recent weeks. Peter Whitten surprised the Victorian rally fraternity (as well as himself!) when he won Sunday’s state title round in his old rear-drive Escort RS2000. Next week he celebrates by get ting married. Well done, Peter. ■ TEGA reports brisk sales of seats in its AGP corporate stand, although a few seats remain. After relaxing on Sunday afternoon at the GP, the TEGA boys will get back to busi ness in Adelaide on the Monday ■with their AGM... ■ Tony Longhurst has attracted former Moffat team man Ian Walburn from Ian Thomas' NASCAR team and will move north to build the new Castrol Falcon. Tony has decid ed against leasing someone else's car in the meantime and the new team is hell bent on having a new car ready for the Winfield Triple Challenge, late in January.
Falcon gets radical rear wing By CHRIS LAMBDEN
A RADICAL new rear wing is the outstanding feature of Ford’s revised aerodynamic package for the 1995 EF Falcon touring car, which was due to he presented to CAMS by 5pm on Tuesday. The wing redesign has been nec essary to accommodate the rounder, slightly narrower rear end treatment of the EF Falcon. It features angled wing end plates (to keep the width of the wing the same as last year), but most interestingly 13 horizontal slots towards the tail of the wing to improve air-flow separation over
the wing, and thus its efficiency. To further improve efficiency, and keep the wing as far back as possible, the wing is curved to match the shape of the new Falcon’s tail. The centre of the wing is therefore some 75mm further back than the ends. “The road-going EF Falcon isn’t quite as suitable for a race shape as the old car,” Ford’s motorsport manager Greg Harbutt confirmed exclusively to Motorsport News this week. “So we needed to improve the efficiency of the rear wing just to retain the sort of downforce we had with the previous car.”
The 13 slots, located 60mm from the rear edge of the wing, are each 50mm in length and 6mm wide on the top surface. They angle through and upwards to “exhaust” quite
close to the rear edge of the underside of the wing. Overall, the effect is to improve air-speed under the wing, and thus increase downforce. In FI, the same thing is achieved by having two sepa rate wings - one small addi tional wing at the top of the main wing - but that is illegal for touring cars. The slots are Ford’s compromise solution. Other changes to the Falcon include revised front and rear bumper treatments. The front air dam - the third tested by the Shell-FAI team, which has carried out the develop-
ment work - is less radical than its predecessors, “but seems to provide a good balance with the rear set up,” according to John Bowe, who did the final on-track testing last week at Lakeside. Unlike Holden, which has made structural and mechanical changes for the VR Commodore, Ford’s work has been purely aerodynamic as the EF Falcon is mechanically identical to the existing EB. Incidentally, collectors will weep when they hear that the current test car is actually Johnson’s Bathurst-winning car. It has been repanelled and will be the team’s first EF race car.