Chassis

[Shadow]

Not really a technical question. How many Chassis do the teams typically build for an entire season?

[coysht]

For a big team, generally 6-10.

At each race they will take 3 built up cars (2 race and 1 'T' car) and a spare 'tub' which can be built up into an extra car if needed.

Generally they will also try to allocate 2 for testing purposes.

They may also have spare chassis on rotation with the race and test cars to allow major updates to be built onto cars without interupting racing or testing schedules.

New chassis may also have to be built in the event of heavy crashes which leave the 'tub' too badly damaged to be repaired (on average a team will probably have to retire 1 chassis per season for structural reasons).


At the start of the season they normally only have 3 or 4 chassis full stop. This means that the 'T' car used at the first few races is normally the crash-test chassis which has been repaired. The race cars at these events will be the test cars from pre-season.

As the season progresses (normally about when they hit Europe) new chassis will be built and used as race cars, shifting the old race chassis over to testing duties.


The teams with smaller budgets may only built 4 or 5 chassis through the season, whereas a team like Toyota may build 6-10 of each iteration (with an A and B spec car per season that could be as many as 20 chassis per year!).

[Shadow]

Thank you for the reply.