Special conditions, special preparations

Notwithstanding the FIA's stringent event-pairing rules which cover chassis, engines, transmissions and so on which must be used on several events, Citroen came to Norway with completely new cars which had never been used before, while Ford came to Norway with the same cars they used in Ireland. BP Ford Abu Dhabi's engineering director Christian Loriaux explained how rallying in deep winter sometimes demands special preparation - and sometimes not! "Compared with the specification of the cars we used two weeks ago in Ireland, a lot of things have to be different. We need to fit different settings of springs and dampers, we have special winter tyres, this year we must use 15 inch wheels just like it was a gravel rally, with smaller brakes that fit inside the smaller diameter wheels. And then of course many things have to be changed because of the wintry conditions. We need a big heater, which is important both for demisting the windows as well as keeping the crew warm. The heaters can sometimes, however, have a tougher time on a wet Wales Rally GB than here! We still need the engine to run at the same temperatures as on other events, but we are not allowed to change the water pump between events. We get around this by blanking the radiator to limit the air passing through. We only have one type of water radiator which we use everywhere, hot rallies or cold. We used to have different damper oils on cold rallies. Transmission lubricants are always the same. Conditions on winter rallies are not the same these days, however. Cars are kept indoors at night these days. In the past our really big single problem was cold-starting". Is there a reason why Ford used the same cars and Citroens new ones? "Not really, it just down to the logistic plans of each team. If you use the same car on successive rallies you cannot rebuild them completely, and of course that saves money!"

3mmm