The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team has been forced to postpone the launch of its new B spec car until the Italian Grand Prix due to unexpectedly failing the rear impact test. The team will now contest this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix with two A spec cars.
Chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne, commented: ‘It’s obviously very disappointing to delay the launch, especially considering the hard work that everyone at the factory and track has put in. Unfortunately last week we had an unexpected failure of the rear crash test, possibly due to problems with a batch of material used. Unfortunately all the other structures available we had to test were from this batch and the modifications we tried to make were not sufficient. These tests are quite rightly very stringent and difficult to pass, but we did not expect to have a problem as the structure is very similar to the A spec one. We are confident that we understand the problem however and should be able to pass with no problems next week.
Gascoyne added, ‘We will now concentrate on doing the best we can this weekend. As we were aware we had a problem we brought two A spec cars as well as two B spec cars, so we will not have any problems switching back, but it’s just disappointing not to have the performance increase as planned. On a more positive note, we will now be able to test the car at the pre-Italian Grand Prix test next week at Monza,
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