Cautious thumbs up for new Falcon

The Prodrive Racing Australia engineer overseeing development of the final Ford Falcon V8 Supercar has given it a cautious preliminary thumbs up based on its initial outing at the sydney.com SuperTest.

Nathaniel Osborne, who is also now chief engineer at Prodrive Racing Australia, has taken some confidence from the performance of the FG X, with Chaz Mostert setting the fastest time in the single lap hard tyre shootout at the test in his brand new Falcon.Pepsi Max Racing teammate Mark Winterbottom backed him up with fourth fastest.

"I am hoping that we can be more consistent and more competitive throughout the entire season and not just pop up at the odd event," Osborne told v8supercars.com.au.

"I hope we have given the guys a car they can compete in day-in and day-out and that don't have to work so hard to find the optimum set-up."

But Osborne was clear an unequivocal thumbs up for the new aerodynamic package would have to wait until several championship rounds are conducted.

"Until we get to a broad range of circuits we are not going to know how successful or unsuccessful we have been," he admitted.

Mostert and Winterbottom will debut the FG X at the February 26-March 1 Clipsal 500 in Adelaide along with DJR Team Penske's Marcos Ambrose. Bottle-O's David Reynolds and Super Black's Andre Heimgartner will move from FG IIs into FG Xs early in the championship.

The PRA team struggled with the Falcon FG II, with Winterbottom falling from a clear championship lead mid-2014 to eventually finish third on the points ladder.

And no Falcon has claimed a pole position in a V8 Supercars event since Winterbottom emerged on top at Phillip Island in November 2013.

The aerodynamic package of the FG II homologated when the New Generation formula began in 2013 is seen within PRA as the root cause of most of its issues.

Osborne's redesigned aerodynamic package shifts the balance rearward, meaning more grip for the rear tyres, which should in theory improve single lap speed and reduce the Falcon's tendency to lock rear brakes.

That's achieved by a redesign of the front bumper cheeks, an extension of the undertray and the movement of the rear wing further back and down. The wing is also bigger, has two more degrees of adjustment and a bigger gurney flap.

The team has also been allowed to pare some weight off the biggest and heaviest car in the field by moving to an integrated bumper and headlight and moving away from standard radiator supports.

"Straight away we knew we had made inroads into the areas that we targeted," Osborne said of the feedback from drivers at the sydney.com SuperTest. "It was the first run we had done with the FG X and it was just a matter of undoing some of the set-up that we had generated over the last two years to now correct for a balance shift rearwards.

"We knew we were closer to where we wanted to be because of the complaints we had had in the previous two seasons."

Osborne revealed the change in FG X's behaviour meant a whole heap of development avenues that had been put to one side could be revived. And the lessons of the past two years would also still be valuable.

"You don't throw it (setups) out," he said. "There will be times that you have that handling characteristic you are trying to fix."But definitely, everything old is new again. Stuff that hadn't worked in the past is working again. So it's not so much that we have lost ground ... there are tools that have been reopened to be used that we couldn't use prior because we were so limited in that area."

Osborne, who has worked all of his V8 Supercars career at PRA, including the last two as David Reynolds' engineer, also managed the FG X design process throughout 2014.

His new role for 2015 is part of a reorganisation announced after Grant McPherson departed for Triple Eight to engineer Craig Lowndes.

Osborne played down the only obvious problem the FG Xs had at the SuperTest when bonnets started flexing at speed.

"The FG XR8 bonnet had a lot of form to give clearance for the engine, but the FG X hump continues all the way to the back and it's quite weak in that plane and just sunk down," he explained. "We will have to put some sort of rib in there to strengthen across the width of the bonnet."