"We believe this pursuit of efficiency is just as important as getting something like new bargeboards or wing endplates. We are paying attention to detail and going for a quality product, optimising what we have. This is an ongoing task in an area where you are constantly striving to improve. The result of our efforts is that we should be in better shape for Barcelona than we were at the first three races.”
While the aerodynamic modifications are the most obvious changes on the Toro Rosso cars, Mekies reveals that work has also been carried out in other areas.
“We will also have some new mechanical parts that increase our flexibility when it comes to working on the car, giving us more set-up options,” he confirmed, “Over the first three grands prix, we had two reliability failures in the races. When you start the year with three flyaway races, you have to come up with interim solutions to fix reliability issues, while now we believe we have worked out proper solutions for the faults that caused the two retirements we have suffered to date.”
Apart from the fact the Spanish Grand Prix is the first event after a short break in the calendar, it is also a logical choice for introducing aero changes on the car, because of the nature of the track at the Circuit de Catalunya.
“It is a tricky track in terms of downforce level choices,” Mekies explained, “The layout demands as much downforce as possible, but it also has one of the longest straights of the year, made even more complicated since the recent change to the track layout. It is a difficult choice opting for as much downforce for pure lap time speed and yet having a car capable of overtaking. We have back-to-back tested the different set-ups, but we won't know how we stand in terms of top speed compared to the
others until the race weekend.”
Spyker F1 – Christijan Albers (#20), Adrian Sutil (#21):
If
Red Bull Racing reckons nothing will come close to the amount of development parts being introduced for this weekend's Spanish GP, Spyker may lay claim to the greatest amount of work that has gone on since the start of the year.
