FEBRUARY 5, 2007

Spyker's new car

The Spyker F1 team unveiled its F8-VII design on Monday at Silverstone with a complicated explanation about how the car ended up with its designation, although beneath the new orange livery is aa car that owes much to the old Midland M16. As with all the other teams the Midland engineers concentrated their efforts on getting the most efficient aerodynamic package. The team designed only what needed to be redesigned and left in place components which did not need to be changed. Inevitably there were changed necessary as a result of the change to Ferrari engines and that caused other problems as the hydraulics, which had been looked after by Toyota, is now back under the team's control.

In many respects this is a car which will have a relatively short lifespan because Mike Gascoyne only arrived in September and he immediately started work on a developing the next step, which the team hopes will give it a big leap forward in the latter part of the year. It seems that this will be a B-specification of the F8-VII rather than a brand new car but there are probably going to be changes to the chassis as newer ones emerge in the course of the season.

The F8-VII designation, by the way, relates to the history of the Dutch company which built A, B and C models in the early years. When the company was resurrected it called the new cars C8s. The company is soon to launch a new E-line and so chose F for the F1 cars. The 8 refers to the number of cylinders and the VII is the year of manufacture (in Roman numerals).