what if your car was an F2003-GA

The Ferrari F2003-GA is the car which Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello will race in the Formula One World Championship from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards. The car, which uses Shell fuels and lubricants, is set to be the most advanced car, which Shell and Ferrari have ever raced in the Formula One World Championship, but how would it handle the different situations encountered on the road?

Imagine waking up in the morning to drive your brand-new F2003-GA to work, and realising that because it's raining you need to change the tires to wets to enable you to even think about using the car! Having spent half an hour replacing all the grooved slicks with wet tires, you go to start the car and remember that you have to let it warm up for 45 minutes before you can drive down the driveway and onto the road.

You are finally getting ready to go and you squeeze yourself into the tight cockpit and try to put your seat belt on, but because the cabin is somewhat narrower than you are used to, you have to call someone to come and help you strap in from outside the car. Once this simple task is accomplished, you attempt to move off from the driveway only to find that the clutch is a little more difficult than on a road car, and you stall it as you creep forwards. To restart it, you have to unstrap and use the starter for which you need to go around to the back of the car and reach underneath to the crankshaft before getting yourself back into the car.

As you move down the driveway and onto the road, you begin to think how much fun it is to drive as you race away from the lights and corner at speeds which the other road users can only dream of. Then you come back down to earth with a bang as the nearside front wheel drops into a deep pothole and the front wing gets knocked and damaged. The rest of the drive to work is then spent thinking about how much the carbon fibre replacement wing is going to cost you.

After work, having struggled to get over the speed bumps coming out of the car park, you decide to stop off at the supermarket on the way home. In the car park there, you attempt to reverse into a parking space and find that your rear visibility is extremely poor, and that other road users cannot see that you are reversing, as you have no reversing light. The shopping has to be left behind because there is no storage compartment, and then the exhilarating drive home leaves you with very little fuel, so you pull into a Shell service station to fill up.

The F2003-GA unfortunately does not have a conventional fuel filler cap, and you are unable to fill the tank with Shell fuel. By now it is dark and the F2003-GA has no lights and is therefore both illegal and extremely dangerous to drive at night. You arrive home after a long walk and wonder whether it was a good decision to buy the F2003- GA for road use after all.

Formula One cars such as the F2003-GA are designed for high-speed motor racing, and function best in that environment. The aerodynamics on the F2003-GA are designed to glue the car to the road at racing speeds by creating large amounts of downforce to complement the mechanical grip and enable the car to corner at otherwise impossible speeds. In order to do this effectively, the car needs to be running on a smooth, flat track surface, allowing the suspension to work and hold the car in the best position for achieving the high speeds we are used to seeing Formula One cars race at.

On the road the limited ground clearance and steering lock together with the cumbersome nature of the car at low speeds mean that it is difficult to drive, and the road cars designed to deal with this environment can offer more comfort and convenience to the road user. Shell fuels and lubricants are capable of powering and protecting the F2003-GA engine at the high speeds and under the extreme conditions of the racetrack and there should ber a very positive outcome this weekend.

courtesy of yahoo sports.

Great article

That's a good artice - it really makes you think! Well done for finding it.
However, they have made one discrepancy - all F1 cars MUST run on 'pump' petrol - that is to say, any kind of non-standard fuel is banned, and has been since Canada 1994. So, it should be perfectly possible to run your F2003-GA off of normal Super Unleaded, but probably wouldn't do it much good in the long run! So all you people who've read this and rushed out to buy yourself one, you can now sleep easy! :P

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i dont think 'pump' unleaded would do much damage to the engine, you would just not get optimum power and combustion probably.

pump unleaded is full of additives that 'prolong' and 'maintain' your normal roadcar.

race unleaded is just stripped of these additives.

when i was at mclaren, the guys were telling me how they once put the F1 unleaded petrol in there hire cars! didnt do the engine much good, as road vehicles are built to allow a fuel standard tolerance, thus necessitating the use of additives in the fuel.

What were you doing at McLaren?

did a work placement there going round each department in the factory.

carbon laminating - (i made a wing mirror! and it was good enough to put on the car!!!!), machine shop, gearbox - (they were working on kimi's gearbox from monaco last year, when rubens punted him up the backside at chicane after the tunnel), historics - (every successful mclaren kept here, brundles/prosts/senna/warwick/watson/coulthard/hakkinen - incredible!), electrical and harnessing - (made a rain light wiring harness)

was brilliant. now i am trying to get a full time job there.

Awesome! A friend of mine did that at Arrows a few years ago, because Arrows were the only team who would accept him. I guess they were just desperate for staff, and he was free......!

I would take it back, its far to ugly

id sell it and buy a lotus 49 :P hehe

seriously, i thought about doing work experience at mclaren or another team 4 years ago it would be now, but i never applyed as i didnt think id get in, theres proof that you really can do it! amazing, did they have hunts Mclaren

also that article failed to mention the all important part

you cant start the car from the cockpit as it has no starter motor, you need to get someone to do it for you, and of course the important wiggle of the finger :-P



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24 Heures Du Mans 18-19 June 2005

andrew_S.... they have mentioned that on the article, read it again carefully!!!!

hey powerhorse, do you know some David Stewart guy???? He used to work in McLaren as well, back in 1999 and 2000, on the testing team staff!!!!
He used to be my engineer on the British F-Renault, that guys was really good!!!!

To restart it, you have to unstrap and use the starter for which you need to go around to the back of the car and reach underneath to the crankshaft before getting yourself back into the car.

Just in case you can't be bothered reading over it again

powerhorse wrote:

did a work placement there going round each department in the factory.

carbon laminating - (i made a wing mirror! and it was good enough to put on the car!!!!), machine shop, gearbox - (they were working on kimi's gearbox from monaco last year, when rubens punted him up the backside at chicane after the tunnel), historics - (every successful mclaren kept here, brundles/prosts/senna/warwick/watson/coulthard/hakkinen - incredible!), electrical and harnessing - (made a rain light wiring harness)

was brilliant. now i am trying to get a full time job there.

Too Cool powerhorse!
Here's hoping for the best of luck getting in full time!

That would really be something.....




Drunk Chicks Dig Me.

thanks everyone.

problem is, getting a work placement is one thing, getting a f/t job is another.

its bloody annoying, as on my report written by the head of each department at mclaren i had a good write up!

ian in carbon laminating said i was the only student so far to come in 1 hour early to get my wing mirror completed. also, in gearbox, i had a vote of confidence from neil trundle as he said he thourght i would make it one day. (trundle was dennis's partner when they used to own rondel racing)

but it really is hard. but as i am repeatedly told by our tutor at college who worked a bit for mclaren, they want people with determination, dedication, and love for the sport as well as there qualifications. it is not all about how many degrees you got.

fcarmoracing:

i did my placement in june 2002, so i dont think i met him. altho i did not spend much time with the test team. annoying as i spoke to the head of the factory and he said he would go and speak to dave ryan test team head about me getting a job there. did not get unfortunately.

just got to keep applying.

Hey powerhorse what qualifications have you got? And was your placement at the paragon facility?

On the pump fuel vs F1 fuel thing, most of those additives aren't so much for prolonging road cars but for allowing fuel companies to water down the fuel without getting knock and ping in the motor. I'm not sure what people use in Europe but in Australia we've got Lead Replacement Petrol for older cars with soft valves and that is shocking. The number of corroded heads we've had at work is astonishing, especially my car. LRP Sucks.
You won't find those unleaded station additives in the F1 fuel.




[akiro3.com]
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'That was a major, major sausage.' - Barry Sheene

Powerhorse must be sleeping.

On the GA 2003.
I'd love to have one. Might be a tad hard to fit in the friends to do a Rundle St cruise. Though there's a good point to that, no passenger seat means no female attempting to tell you to turn left 200m after the corner. Like to take it up on some hilly windy roads v.v.fun. It'd need a cd player so you could crank the beats whilst bending it through the highlands will all that scenery ablur.
Parallel parking would suck though and does it have an immobiliser, beep beep? There's no way you could leave it with a valet. You'd always be putting up with some crew pulling up next to you in their VK non standard Turbo dropped on it's arse and expecting to beat you.
Great Ocean Road here I come.




[akiro3.com]
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'That was a major, major sausage.' - Barry Sheene

Wow good for you Powerhorse! It must be a very good experience for you to do a job you really like.

I know one mate from Walsall and he works on the aero department at Jaguar and he said it is a lot of work throughout the year!



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Did your birth certificate come with an apology letter from Durex?

i just got the usual quals, gcse's, then btec national diploma in mech/elec engineering, i am anearly finishing a btec hnd in motorsport engineering, then i am off to the final year of a degree course to top upto a honours.

but dont think i am a genius - i have always maintained the thourght that experience is worth so much more than qualifications. there is prob. a good few of you on here that know a lot more about the practical side of cars than i do.

casper - my workplacement was at the woking factory, they had not yet gone to paragon. in fact, i dont think they are there yet now as i seem to remember it was delayed.

i did my placement in june 2002.

was an amzing experience. you get paid well working in f1, but the hours are just incredible.

one guy i worked with was a gearbox engineer on the race team. his hours he had to work were huge. they would arrive on the thursday and sometimes he would not get any proper sleep until about 3am sunday morning! then they would have to be up at 5-6am ready for race day. the mentality at mclaren is very much a team spirit. if something electrical goes wrong, it is not just the electrical engineers that stay up to fix it - the whole team will stay up. very much a team atmosphere.

this gearbox engineer guy that worked on the race team managed 12 years - this is quite a long spell on the race team, most guys are fed up with it after a few years at most. it is the lack of sleep that affects you. he said he was getting paid the same for working in the gearbox department doing normal hours at the factory instead of going to the races and doing stupid hours.

i still want to join the race team tho!!!!!

where u doing that course in Motorsports engineering?



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24 Heures Du Mans 18-19 June 2005

brooklands college, weybridge. home of jensen button!!!!! (or used too) and a few other millionaires. bloody rich area that.

course is by oxford brookes uni but held at brooklands college. near the great brooklands race track.