The new team on the block has shown itself at Barcelona this week. On Tuesday the team was plagued with reliability issues with their hydraulic systems.

The car shown (left) is actually not the car that will be raced as it is not up to the 2006 spec.

Why is not up to spec? well the car is actually based on the 2002 Orange Arrows car and the body work is still almost identical to that car.

This however is ok as the car they have been testing is a ‘System Test’ car and is the final car underneath (including the new Honda V8), but the body work is still being worked on and should be shown next week at Silverstone.

McLarens new colour scheme is a clever one, the team have spent time and rescources coming up with a way to make the car shine. This is done using a new surface coating.

Piccies to follow

Toyota’s new aero package that will be used in the season opener has been shown off (have a look at ITV’s website). There seem to be a fair few changes.

Here’s a piccie to have a look at.

Also Gerhard Berger has officialy anounced that he has purchased a 50% share in the Red Bull owned (until now) ex Minardi team Scuderia Toro Rosso. With a little luck he will bring some of his expertise to the team.

Stuff happening in the world of F1…..

• After the debate last year about Honda (BAR) using a seamless change gearbox, which was shouted about by the other teams, saying it was basically a CVT (Constantly Variable Transmission) it seems the other teams have jumped on the bandwagon. Williams F1 will be using their version of the same system as soon as possible apparently, with Sam Michaels sayiong he predicts all the other teams to follow suit at some point in the year. Why you ask? well Honda say that they could save in the region of 2 seconds a race on gear shifts alone.
• Team Super Aguri (Honda backed) have come to an agreement with the rest of the teams and the FIA to run this year, and even more importantly they have agreed a tyre supply with Bridgestone.
• Mercedes and MClaren have done another demonstration of the crushing speed an F1 car can attain in this video of a MClaren F1 vs an E55 and an A160.
• Pipass have a nice rundown on the rule changes for this year with Pat Symonds.

And that’s about it for now…..

I’ve just read a post (here) about the Toyota F1 project, seems there will be three cars this year, the TF106 for launch, a TF106b for Monaco and a TF107 (being designed by a second design team at Toyota) later in the season.

It’s just lucky Toyota are so cash rich at the moment.

The FIA have confirmed that the Super Aguri team is allowed to join the grid this year. They have announced that all the other teams have said they will allow the team to race. All the team now need to do is to give the FIA the $48 million bond and we will have 22 cars on the grid next year.

The rally is about to get going in earnest, for up to date information the best places are :-

• Official Dakar rally website
• Racing Live Dakar coverage (With a video diary)
• Eurosport (including video clips)

This year should be decent as they have outlawed one of the most useful technologies of recent times, GPS has been banned (sort of) and co-drivers must now read normal maps to get them from A-B. The GPS units that are supplied to the teams are official ones only and they activate automatically when within a 3km radius of a checkpoint, they also call home so the organisers know where all the vehicles are. There are also other minor changes, bikes are only capable of 150kph and fuel restrictions are in place this year.

Should be a good challenge for the drivers/riders (like it was easy before!). In Europe Eurosport will have regular updates when the rally gets into full swing.

German newspaper Bild am Sonntag is saying that Toyota are looking at signing up Kimi in a five-year 100 million euro deal. Tsutomo Tomita (Toyota team boss) is looking at bringing the Fin on board for 2007, adds new fire to the Ferrari whisperings going round.

Team Red Bull Skoda have announced there driver lineup for 2006, they are Andreas Aigner and for the first race in Monte Carlo Gilles Panizzi with Matthias Ekstrom taking over in Sweden. Rumour still has it that Duval could then take over the second seat after the first two races.

Keith Duckworth the designer of possibly the most famous F1 engine of all time the Cosworth DFV!

The 3.0ltr V8 engine won everything going in F1 for years (154 victories over the various generations of the engine) and some would say the ‘new’ V8’s in F1 for next year owe a lot to it’s existence.

Keith was an engineering student at The Imperial College of London and then joined Lotus as a transmission engineer under the tutelage of Colin Chapman no less; at Lotus he famously joined forces with Mike Costin and Cosworth was born. 

The company started to make a name for itself when Ford asked them to build two race engines, these where the now famous 1.6ltr FVA (F2) and the 3ltr V8 DFV. The DFV was not however used solely by Ford as teams you now know all used it to make there names, these include Williams, Brabham and McLaren (The engine was also used up until the 80’s in IndyCar to great success). Ford also asked them to build the Cosworth BDA for use in F2, however this engine actually came to fame in the Ford world rally cars of he era.

The Cosworth business was sold in 1988 and is now in the hands of Audi and Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe, Audi owning the road car section and Kevin and Gerald bought the race engine section from Ford.

Cosworth have brought many of the great British engineers up through the ranks (Mario Illien and Paul Morgan, the founders of Ilmor) and as such should be commended on the work they have done over the nearly 50 years the company has been in existence.

With a little luck the might of the DFV can be brought back into F1 next year as Williams will again be powered by the Cosworth V8.

More on Cosworth Heritage