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Japanese Grand Prix
Suzuka International Racing Course
Tuesday 2nd of April 2024 19:00:00
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April 24, 2011
Published on tags: Superleague
A bit less than two weeks separate us from the next instalment of the GPVWC Superleague, when the circus will show up at the Kyalami track in South Africa for round 5 of the 2011 season; as teams regroup after the flurry of races in the opening fifth of the season, Research & Development departments all over Europe take centre stage: the effects of R&D were visible in China, and insider rumours tell us they might come to play an important part of the fight for the Championship.

After a near complete dominance by Draig Racing and Nordsjoen in the first three races of the season - the Welsh team's Lee Morris clinching all wins and Joe Consiglio being in pole position in each event - a casual onlooker would have been justified to be surprised upon seeing Jason Muscat's Red Archer and Mark Stanton's Constant in the top two slots on the grid in Shanghai. Even though victory ultimately went to Morris, the performance of the two early front-runners, together with other names such as Ojay Clark, Dave Carr-Smith and David Jundt made it clear that the gap between the leading teams and the high-end of the midpack has dramatically reduced in the two weeks following the Japanese GP.

R&D programmes are a closely guarded secret in the GPVWC; however, it is not difficult to notice new aerodynamic profiles and winglets being added to the cars as they slowly drive down the pit-lane. Red Archer's performance in Shanghai is almost surely attributable to the set of upgrades they received just before the race - a rumoured mammoth update that, according to sources close to the team, had the designers working "since early February". Rather than a few massive updates, other teams seem to go down the way of smaller, more regular retouches on their cars - and as Carr-Smith showed in China, this strategy seems to be paying dividends as well.

What remains a common denominator in these situations is the hard work the teams put in the development of the car. If, after a mere 3 races in the season, front-running Lee Morris can be outqualified and made work hard for a win by a team which just received a set of upgrades, the values on the track seem extremely fluid over the 20-race long calendar. Getting the right upgrades, at the right moment, could trigger an exponential increase in a team's chances - and the alacrity with which Red Archer works on test-days, with four drivers clocking an impressive number of laps, shows they truly believe they can be more than fighting for P3 behind Nordsjoen and Draig.

Development will be a fundamental variable in the 2011 season. With a few leading teams rumoured to be in short supply of either testers to gather data, R&D capabilities to run a research programme or, crucially, the money to fund it, the final rankings in the GPVWC Superleague are all except a foregone conclusion.