Thursday 16 September 2010

In the fast lane with Force India F1

I won a competition to have a guided tour of the Force India Formula One racing team factory, warts and all. The factory is based at Silverstone which was about one and a half hours away by car. As the I had to be there by 9:30am I had an earlier start that I normally have, the one bonus was not much traffic on the M1 so I was quite a bit early arriving, on the plus side this gave loads of time to inspect the magnificent piece of engineering adorning the reception...
Once all the other winners arrived we were escorted to the boardroom for tea and biscuits before the tour, this was the boardroom where the likes of Schumacher and others have graced.
This series of pics are of last years car that is used for practicing pit stops, the black line is where the tyres should positioned and the pit man kneels readdy to change a tyre as the car is hurtling towards them at 70 mph!



    You can't beat a good back shot

Each wheel is £1000

This is the front aerofoil that proves a competitor had chopped them up in a race from last year, It was a famous argument? if you look closely the black stuff is actually rubber from the tyre, It also groves how strong carbon fibre really is, which by the way is what makes up almost all of the car except for the engine and wheels....
The exhaust system all hand built every one exactly the same so that they could use it in any of their cars, each radiator is also hand built from scratch and take three weeks to build.

I had a very good day very informative and a great insight into what it take to build and run a F1 car and team.

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