Car balance blamed for lowly qualifying

Bernoldi's home race
By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

Car balance has been cited by the team and it's drivers as the primary reason for the teams slump in form throughout Saturday in Brazil. Race trim balance on Friday didn't seem to be such a great issue so perhaps there is a chance that the race could could back to the team after all on Sunday.

The Saturday practices and the qualifying hour were something of a mystery to this site after the very competitive form shown by the team on Friday. Friday is normally used to work on and fine tune race setup, and the comments from the team suggested that a balance had been found on the car and that indeed it was fine tuning that was being worked on.

During the qualifying hour both the OrangeArrows cars stayed firmly down the back of the grid, and it was a surprise to learn that it was car balance that was the main factor cited by the team as the cause.

"We couldn’t achieve the necessary balance today," stated Heinz-Harald Frentzen to the official Arrows website. "Missing most of the second practice session this morning after stalling doesn’t help as that is the time you do your fine tuning for qualifying. It only accounts for a few tenths of a second but that would have made a lot of difference today. We were basically fighting against understeer and oversteer in each of the four runs. We need to analyse why we have this problem more here than we did in Malaysia or Australia."

Enrique Bernoldi, in the teams post qualifying press release, agrees with his more experienced team mates view. "Naturally I am disappointed to be so low down the grid in front of my home crowd," Enrique has been quoted as saying by the team. "We were able to steadily improve the car throughout this morning’s practice sessions and qualifying itself but we just couldn’t get the balance right for Interlagos. Let’s hope we have a better day tomorrow."

Technical Director, Mike Coughlan, backed up the drivers views. "Needless to say, we are not happy with the result," he said. "We knew we were in for a fight today but to be so far down the grid is not good at all. We struggled to get the cars balanced for this track and now have a lot of work to do to make sure the cars are competitive in race trim."

There are three saving graces that this site can see at this moment. The first is that on Friday the A23 chassis was competitive and capable of a top 10 pace. The second is that in race trim the car balance did not seem to be as great an issue as it obviously was during qualifying. The team look to have elected to run on the harder tyre (revealed by ITV during the qualifying coverage) and it seems the strategy will be to fuel the cars up to the brim and run the race on a one stop strategy. The A23 and it's Cosworth engine were reliable in Malaysia and, all being well, should be the same tomorrow in Brazil. Being so far back down the grid will ensure that both drivers are clear on any first corner clashes, so perhaps the race might come to the team after all.