A new active suspension system on Petter Solberg’s Impreza WRC may give Subaru an ace at this weekend’s San Remo rally.
A new active suspension system on Petter Solberg’s Impreza WRC may give Subaru an ace at this weekend’s San Remo rally.
It will be the first time that any rally team has competed with active control of the shock absorbers, but Prodrive Subaru director David Lapworth on Tuesday said the team’s modification could not be compared with the fully active systems used in F1 before they were banned at the end of 1993.
“It’s effectively a roll control system. What we’re proposing is a solution that is effectively similar to what Peugeots have got (hydraulic anti-roll bars), done in a different way. The main advantages are that it doesn’t roll and pitch. You can keep the body flatter: the tyres sit flat on the road,” Lapworth said.
Lapworth said the system was operated by hydraulics and electronics and that it was a “closed-loop” setup (the engineers can dictate how the car behaves in certain circumstances).
Rival teams estimate that the hydraulic pump would result in a power loss of between seven and 15 kW, but there is unlikely to be a weight penalty, as the Impreza currently needs ballast to reach the 1 230 kg minimum.
Lapworth wouldn’t speculate on the possible performance gain, but said that he expected Solberg to have a chance of winning in San Remo, regardless of the weather. The new dampers will only be fitted to Solberg’s car at San Remo and are not expected to be used again on the Rally of Great Britain, the remaining gravel surface rally this season.