Chevrolet ready to test the 1.6L turbo

Defending their leadership in the Drivers’ and the Manufacturers’ Championships is not the only focus for Chevrolet and RML. The team are already working with an eye on the 2011 season that will see the introduction of the new 1.6 turbocharged engine. Chevrolet is devoting a lot of work to the new engine and since this week the unit designed, developed and built in-house at RML is being tested on a dynamometer. In the forthcoming days it will be track tested in the Cruze.

Arnaud Martin, Chief Engineer at RML Engines explained: "We started the project from a white sheet of paper on the second week of January and the engine was tested for the first time last Monday, so it has been eight months of very intense work. The parameters laid out by the FIA are quite stringent, especially in terms of reliability; the challenge for us has been to reach a higher level of performance than the one provided by the current 2.0 aspirated engine while ensuring superior reliability to match the new rules: only one engine change allowed during the season in 2011 and none in 2012!. At the moment the engine has had 15 hours on the dynamometer, for tests essentially aimed at calibration and mapping, but we have already done some tests at full power output and everything went as we expected. The next step is to put the engine in the car. Generally, it takes a couple of months to go from the dynamo to the track, here we are talking a couple of weeks, so we can say we are off to some record-breaking!"

Motorsport Director Eric Nève added: "While we are extremely focused on the final rounds of the championship and determined to finish the job, we are also preparing the future. These are days of a lot of work around the new engine and the new car for 2011. Designing a new racing engine from scratch and building it from A to Z is an ambitious programme and a tremendous challenge. Chevrolet has been one of the first manufacturers to believe in the new global race engine promoted by the FIA and we are anxious to hit the track with the new car!"