Dragon Racing Team’s Loic Duval took a break from his testing schedule to speak to Bunmi Ade at the penultimate test day at Donington.
By Bunmi Ade and Joe Jones
First of all, have you noticed any major differences with this car compared to what you drove last year?
It’s not a major difference compared to last year. I would say that the main difference would be the amount of energy we will have per lap. I think the system we have now is quite similar to last year’s, but maybe a little bit quicker to reach the maximum power. And it does allow us to use less energy per lap, compared to last year, doing the same lap time.
And it’s not just efficiency?
No, it’s the whole system, they’ve been working on improving the system overall.
The total overall power available is the same (28kWh) but for me, the main difference is really that per lap, let’s say a one minute lap time, last year would take you 2.5kWh, and this year for the same lap time, we would use 2.2kWh so that is better. It means that during the race we could go a little bit quicker and for more laps because we will use less energy.
But also the thing is that last year we used 150kW and this year it’s going to be 170kW.
And have you tested at the 170kW level?
Yes, though we are testing only one car for the moment and we are looking at it, because it also changes the balance of the car. There are a few things which are quite interesting so we still have to learn and progress.
Given that your powertrain is provided by another team (Venturi), do they send their engineers to support yours?
For sure they send some people to us to make sure everything works. Basically we work with the same people/team as last year and it’s a close relationship with Venturi because we are using their powertrain. So their engineers come over to make sure everything works and we do have briefing after each session to find out the problems we had, what’s positive, try and resolve the problems and to continue to improve the positive side of the package.
Will they be able to compare your data directly with theirs?
For sure they can. It’s a positive thing. Of course, we’re not going to share the set-up (information); this is something which is really private and we are working on that on our own and this is where you make the difference. But in terms of issues we have, or positive things or in terms of software, we do share because it’s good for everybody, the more data we get, the better it is.
I was speaking to Jacques Villeneuve (Venturi driver) and he said he hadn’t tested at the 170kW power level yet and that his first opportunity will be in Beijing (1st race)
Well for him it’d be good to use it (during the test). It’s a really difficult car to drive, it’s not something similar compared to what he’s used to, to what he drove in the past. The more laps you have the better it is. Testing at the 170kW level will be always better because you get a different feeling on the braking; the car behaves differently because you have more power so you have to adjust the setup a little bit: aerodynamics and stuff like that. And the more laps you do, the better it is.