Subaru World Rally Team confirm they will undertake damper development in their UK base at Prodrive
The Subaru World Rally team has taken steps to further increase the performance of the new Impreza WRC2008 after revealing it will spearhead suspension damper development work from its own UK base.
The team has used off-the-shelf dampers from French firm Bos Engineering ever since the final evolution of the saloon Impreza, the WRC2007, was launched at Rally Mexico in 2007.
Results with the WRC 2007 were disappointing, however, and both Petter Solberg and Chris Atkinson struggled to overcome the car’s inconsistent handling. The team responded with a massive increase in test and development work, much of which was focused on dampers. Bos continued as supplier for the Impreza WRC2008 which was launched in Greece. But although the car propelled Solberg to the podium on its debut, some of the drivers’ comments since then - especially from Solberg - suggest ongoing handling concerns.
Damper issues have been the bane of Subaru over the last year and more
In Finland the team revealed that its relationship with Bos had been reviewed, and the dampers fitted to both cars at the weekend had been assembled in-house at the team’s Prodrive base. The first sign that the team’s relationship with Bos was changing was the disappearance of the Bos name from Petter and Chris’s cars. Both cars carried the logo at shakedown, but it was absent once the rally started.
David Lapworth, the team’s technical director said:
We are reviewing what we’re doing on dampers. Bos were a supplier, now they’re working with us in collaboration - although they will continue to supply us with hardware. The units for Finland were assembled by us but with nearly all the components from Bos. It’s an engineering led decision. We’ve had a few years of treating dampers as an off-the-shelf component we take from a supplier and it’s fair to say that’s not our intention in the future. We’ve decided to go back to a situation where we are involved with a partner because it’s such an important part of the performance of the car.”
Team principal David Richards added:
We hope to improve the whole process. From now on we’re taking a far more involved role and allocating resources to it ourselves. Now it’s a cooperation led by Prodrive. It’s almost a switch of roles, in that Bos have led the programme up until recently - and we are still working in cooperation with them - but we are now directing it ourselves.”
Lapworth said the performance in Finland was an encouraging start:
Hydraulically, the dampers have been fine. Chris had a problem on Friday, but this was down purely to impact damage rather than anything else. For Germany we’ll be using completely different units to the ones in Finland, although they will be built to a similar philosophy.”
Article from wrc.com
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