Minardi factory



Introduction
I visited the Minardi factory for a tour and to conduct an interview with Paolo Tredozzi the technical director. I spent an hour with Paolo, talking about the old and new cars, I saw the drawings for the new car and also saw the semi finished chassis in the machine shop.

The New Car
The new car will have a much longer wheel base mainly by stretching the front bulkhead and suspension forward. It will be lighter as more development went into the crash test structures than for the 2001 PS01. It will feature high nose aerodynamics by ex Prost aerodynamicist Loic Bigois. Hence the car will return to pushrod front suspension. The car is powered by the all new Asiatech engine which will be lighter and probably smaller, but Paolo was reticent to say anything on size. The new ngine features elegant cast mountings on the cam covers as per the CAD images circulated around Monza this year, it is otherwise totally conventional and the rearward placed oil and water pumps that the CAD images suggested are more normally placed at the front of the engine. Asiatech demanded periscope exhausts despite Paolos preference for McLaren like low exhausts. There is an oil tank and de-aerator (is that spelt right...?) set into a large recess in the rear bulk head, this necessitates box like extensions out of the lower fuel tank area either side of the chassis. the fuel filler is set to the very rear of the chassis and the trademark cut outs at the front of the cockpit opening have been dropped, however the familiar abrupt side impact head restraints remain.

Images
I was able to get a good close look at the various PS01's and 01B's, stripped around the set up area. I spoke to the chief mechanic about some the suspension solutions which he explained in "his own" lay mans terms, He mentioned that the car was difficult to work on, changing camber required the mid placed steering arms to be adjusted by hand to correct for Toe, the low placement of the front dampers made access difficult and the rear double torsion bars (one fitted inside another) and antiroll bar set up was hard to work with. He confirmed third bump stops were run front and rear to limit pitch under aero load. the pictures attached show the front suspension very clearly, I wasn't allow to take shots of the gearboxes or disassembled suspension components (or the new car...!). the car was developed with only a small number of wind tunnel days and only two days a month are scheduled for its development.

Image: side impact spars


Image: Cockpit


Image: Engine installation


Image: front suspension


Image: Frontal view


Image: Front Bulkhead close up


Image: Underfloor


The design of the PS01
Paolo explained to me the development of the design that was to become the PS01. Gustav Brunner was the technical director at the end of last year and needed to make a decision what engine to design the new car around, the Supertec and ex Benetton gearbox deal was still going well so the French V10 was chosen over the Fondmetal badged and prepared ex Cosworth unit raced in 2000. At the same time the technical partnership with Fondmetal came to an end, among other things Fondmetal provided the Aero design, Wind tunnel and model making facilities for the team up to that point. Minardi had to resource the team to take this in house while still using the Fondmetal tunnel on a limited scale. As the financial situation worsened and the Supertec deal fell through, the design team were halted from working on the new car. After the European Aviation deal was penned there was a month to prepare a car for the new season and regulations. The Fondmetal engine had to be chosen, the team knew its design and cooling requirements and had most of the layout already designed. The new car had to be redesigned to accept the old engine. The car was redesigned without any wind tunnel testing and with only one chassis available for the crash tests, they had to be conservative with the side impact structures, preferring extra weight over any chance of failing the test or the test damaging the tub. The newly named PS01 had a very short wheelbase, in order to provide a balance that didn't require the movement of a lot of ballast, the car was going to be heavy and limited ballast could be used. Mechanical solutions were tried to improve the pace of the car, the basic rules of low CofG and Polar moment of Inertia were applied, hence the low nose and low placed pull rod suspension. The low CofG was carried through to the exhaust system, the same engine in 2000 used periscopes, the 2001 car placed them originally low like McLaren. Heat and other problems with the installation meant they were moved to the higher position over the diffusers side channels to provide a working solution, rather than work away to solve the problems of the lower set up. The lower set up was run later in the year at Monza and Indy. Aero solutions were based on rule of thumb and no detail testing on front wing or diffuser profiles was carried out, there was only one main front wing design used for most of the season.

Development of the PS01
The development plans were halted during the early season when Gustav Brunner left unexpectedly for Toyota. There still seems to be a degree of bitterness felt by Paolo who was then Race director for the team over this subject. Paolo was promoted to Technical director and had to plug the gaps left by Gustav and the staff that left with him. Development of the rest of the season centred on the Cast Ti gearbox, some aero and mechanical developments were due but their design required the shorter Ti gearbox. When the new gearbox was late, the new developments were left waiting for the new configuration. With the early confirmation of the Asiatech engine deal the limited design resources were soon diverted toward the 2002 car.