Updated Spyker brought forward to Germany

It's not been an easy start to the season for Spyker, with only one car making it to the end in Australia and both dropping out due to problems in Malyasia, but at least both Christijan Albers and Adrian Sutil reached the chequered flag in Bharain. There were no points to be had in 14th and 15th respectively but the team was happy enough to get two cars through a race in one piece.

Mike Gascoyne, Spyker F1 Team, Chief Technology Officer.

Photo by xpb.cc.

Chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne summed up the early season as hard work. "We didn't do the Bahrain test, and we didn't do the Malaysia test," he told the team website. "And with the update after the first race, it was always going to be a bit of a fight. Actually the boys have worked incredibly hard after the past two weeks, and they're very pleased to get a two-car finish. We'll only get better when we get back to Europe."

Spyker will soon be pretty much up to speed with the rest of the teams as far as the testing schedule is concerned and also the new wind tunnel will become operational in the not too far distant future. "We're now running in Lola in the UK and Aerolab in Italy, but within the next couple of weeks our new tunnel should switch on," Gascoyne explained. "It'll need a couple of weeks of commissioning, and then it will be running 24/7."

The B spec version of the F8-VII was planned to debut at the Turkish Grand Prix towards the end of August but now it's been bought forward to Germany in late July. "It's less of an update because we're doing more updates earlier," Gascoyne said. "The Malaysia package wasn't originally planned, and we're doing some parts for Barcelona, and hopefully there will be a package for Monaco. So we're doing more sooner, which is good."

"It's (the B spec) a new rear end, new gearbox, new radiator layout, new bodywork, and so on. Everyone's working hard. We already know that aerodynamically it will be a fairly major step, and there will be a big improvement in the stability of the rear of the car. We're going from rotary to linear dampers; when I was at Toyota we found that change to be a big step forward in terms of controlling the rear of the car. So we're pretty confident that we'll make progress."

Before testing and racing gets under way back on European soil, Spyker will go up against a different kind of rival. On April 20th Christijan Albers will be behind the wheel of his race car to take on a Royal Netherlands Air Force fighter jet at the air force base of Volkel.