By Ian Lockwood
February 3 2006

The Red Bull Racing test team is back at base now, after a couple of sessions at the inevitable Spanish circuits and, with everyone tearing the January page off their calendars, the beginning of the 2006 season is rushing towards us with all the speed of a very speedy thing.

Despite the fact that much of Europe is going through its coldest winter for several years and Woolly Mammoths are once again stalking the Mediterranean beaches, it is no secret that the RB2 initially struggled to disperse the heat generated by its engine.

Over to Technical Director Mark Smith for a more scientific explanation: “We’ve had to deal with a cooling issue and, over the past couple of weeks, have made the best possible use of the car in its current configuration. This doesn’t have the cooling elements in place that we will have on the aero kit that will be used at the first race. We will be testing the new elements at the forthcoming Valencia test later this month. We’re still working hard on detailing all of the issues that led to the cooling deficit and there is still some work to do. But the timescale means we had to move on applying a solution and our analysis indicates we have solved the problem.”

The test team could have applied a temporary fix, getting round the cooling issue by attacking the bodywork with hacksaw and drill, turning it into something that looked like a car from Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Instead, the engineers opted to restrict the car to a limited number of laps at a time, working on improving set-up and performance. Under normal circumstances, a lack of pre-season long distance running would raise serious engine reliability doubts, but not this time, as Mark explains: “Although we haven’t been able to do long endurance runs to evaluate race distance reliability on our engine, Ferrari have been running the same engine in interim form pre-Christmas and in interim and 2006 form in the new year, so they have a good mileage on the engine and a good understanding of its durability.”

After the next test in Valencia (14th - 17th Feb) it is planned to have three chassis ready in time for Barcelona the following week. But in the immediate future, Silverstone is the venue for a two day test, starting this Tuesday, where the team will look at pit-stop work and other elements such as driver fit, where it helps being close to the factory. “Everybody here is still working very hard on developments for the car,” concludes Mark. “As was always part of our plan for RB2, we are looking to get new parts onto the car at a fairly rapid rate and with several new people recently joining the team, it’s good to see that we are really beginning to gel.”