Subaru's chief engineer for test and development, Pierre Genon has confirmed that the Banbury-based squad aim to introduce a number of new parts on the Impreza WRC during the second half of the season.
Although the team have not had the results they have craved thus far this year, they will be pulling out all the stops during the summer break, ahead of the second half of the WRC season, which kicks off with the Rallye Deutschland in August. As such they will conduct three-separate tests in the coming weeks.
"We have three tests planned before the next rally. There's a development test in the first week of July and then pre-event tests for Germany and Finland in July and August respectively," he told the team's official website,
www.swrt.com.
"It's time to think about specifications for these two rallies and later in the year, plus make decisions about new developments for next season. The break in the calendar gives us an opportunity to cover enough mileage to test new parts and sign them off in time for the second half of the year and the next evolution of the Impreza."
As for the difference between a 'development' test and a 'pre-event' test, Genon added that it is all a question of focus.
"A pre-event test is a short term set-up test where the engineers and drivers will prepare for a specific event," he explained. "They will be evaluating the set-up of the car and different tyre choices for a particular rally. We will try and test in the country where the rally takes place and as close to the event as possible so the conditions are similar to what you would expect on the rally.
"The aim of a development test meanwhile is to evaluate changes we would like to implement to enhance the performance of the car. We don't look at improvements for one specific event, the aim may be as vague as improving performance on gravel or tarmac, so we go to a test venue that has conditions you would find on several rallies. We will look objectively at areas, including suspension and transmission, outside the normal set-up parameters of the car.
"You could sum up the differences between pre-event and development tests as development drawing a box and pre-event as optimising performance within this box."
