Monday, February 14, 2011

Alonso: Too early to judge rear wings

Fernando Alonso is reserving judgement on whether the introduction of moveable rear wings will improve overtaking

Halfway through pre-season testing, all the teams, barring Hispania Racing who have yet to run, have had a taste of the new 2011 regulations.

These include the return of KERS and the introduction of moveable rear wings, both of which are intended to make passing easier by giving the driver a power or speed advantage over the car ahead.

Alonso, though, reckons it may not be as easy as the powers-that-be are hoping.

"We were able to try the adjustable wing in race conditions, but it is still too early to understand clearly if overtaking will be easier," he told Ferrari's website.

"We need to see if the 600 metre limit set by the FIA is not too restrictive, but we know this situation is still able to be revised.

"From the little we could see, I think it will still be very difficult to pass a car with similar performance to your own. The system works well on our car: we never had any problems, not even under braking."

And although both KERS and the moveable wings are adding to the drivers' workloads, the double World Champion believes the switch from Bridgestone to Pirelli tyres is the biggest challenge.

"It is the biggest change of the year and there is still a lot of work to do to adapt the car set-up and driving style to these tyres.

"From what we have seen so far, we will need to run different strategies with more pit stops. We managed to do around forty laps, not all at one go, on the same set of tyres, but we know that in the much higher temperatures of Bahrain, the situation will be very different."

Source: Planet-F1

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