![]() While Force India may not make it to Barcelona, midfield rivals Williams are optimistic their 2018 car will be ready for testing, with Paddy Lowe saying: “There is quite a bit of work to do but we think it will be manageable. It is going to be a challenge and we don’t know how much we will have to do before we receive a data and do all the work.” “We will have to shorten it somehow, and we work to pretty tight schedules anyway. Our schedule has slipped, our release date for the chassis with all the information has come and gone. “At the moment, I don’t know if we will make. Our development time has been compressed into days. It was big shock to us all when the Shield got overturned and the Halo got introduced. "A lot of teams are struggling, but they already are struggling now, so it's going to be worse for them.“Every minute that we sit here it’s delaying it. You just have to work hard to make your car lighter. The team is doing a good job of saving weight. "We're still in a luxury position, we have some ballast. ![]() It's as heavy as a dead donkey, as we say in French. "We've had to save weight as much as possible," said McLaren's Eric Boullier. Some teams may have found a way to mount the halo with less weight added to the chassis than Force India has, and those teams are likely to be the same ones who can afford to save weight elsewhere in the car. "That impacts performance against the teams that can get ballast on their cars, who can spend the money and make the car lighter." "I can't see our car having any ballast next year," said Green. In recent years some teams have been able to produce cars comfortably inside the weight limit, leaving them with scope to use ballast to adjust weight distribution. ![]() "They're incredibly tough to pass, and if you don't pass them, you don't race. "There are two tests," said Force India technical director Andy Green. The teams have had to not only fit the halo mountings but also bolster the structure around the cockpit. Everyone has had to design and build their 2018 chassis to meet the requirements of the FIA's stringent new halo static load tests, designed to replicate the impact of a wheel assembly. What the teams could only estimate until now was the structural impact on their cars. ![]() Teams decide from which of the three they source theirs, and how many they want - with prices starting from around €15,000. Three manufacturers, from the UK, Germany and Italy, have been granted the right to produce the halos by the FIA. The drivers and the FIA also had an opportunity to assess the effect on visibility and cockpit access. The testing gave teams some feedback on the aerodynamic impact, and in Abu Dhabi we even saw some early attempts at directing the airflow, within the permitted limits. ![]()
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