By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

Arrows have had a difficult start to the new season. Heinz-Harald Frentzen was cautiously optimistic for the first race in Australia - the team qualified in the mid field but neither car made it off the start grid. In Malaysia the team nibbled at the top 10, but only Enrique Bernoldi made the start. This site's message board has been full of critism and unkind comment, slating the OrangeArrows team for making mistakes at the first two races, and predicting doom and gloom for the 2002 season. There are some that even go so far as to predict the eventual downfall of the team, amid press speculation of financial problems and the race form shown so far.

After the Australian Grand Prix the team indicated that there had been an identical technical problem with both cars that prevented them from getting away from the dummy grid. Some visitors to this site indicated that the starting batteries that drive the starting prods had gone flat because someone had forgotten to charge them up. Technical Director, Mike Coughlan, explains exactly what happened to both cars.

"In Melbourne with the cars sitting on the grid, the power consumption from the battery to the car exceeded the power being generated with the engine running at idle," Mike explained in the OrangeArrows pre-Brazilian Grand Prix press release. "That meant that the car ran the battery flat, causing the problem. After Australia, we did a number of grid simulations to check the systems and we know we've sorted the problem."

The fan critisism continued after Malaysia. Heinz-Harald Frentzen suddenly found the pace in the qualifying hour and put his A23 in 11th, and with the pace he had it was clear that the team had a good chance of snatching a points finish. "Heinz-Harald's 11th place on the grid (in Malaysia) was wasted due to the launch control problems we had with his car," Coughlan explained. "Once we had reset all the systems and sent him back out, he actually had a lot of pace.

"We calculated, running at the pace he was, he would have been in sixth place and picked up a point, so that was obviously particularly painful for us, but goes to show the A23 has great potential," he concluded.