“This morning was pretty tricky; I couldn’t get a balance with the car at all, and was really struggling with understeer through the first sector. You give away so much time when you’ve got understeer through the esses because it’s tougher to get the car to change direction. “For the afternoon, we made a few changes and the car felt a lot more responsive. We’re quite a bit off the pace of the Red Bulls, but we’ve got to look at getting the best out of the new package that we’ve got. “And that requires extensive testing, which can take a couple of runs. I don’t think we got the best out of our new parts, but we’ve made some good steps forward. We did a good job today of improving the car, but there’s still more to come. That’s encouraging, we’re just not there yet. “I damaged the car in the early laps of the first session.
I was only on my second fast lap, and was probably pushing too hard too soon. I didn’t go that wide - it wasn’t that big an off - but the gravel was very slippery at that point. A couple of other drivers had moments there and got away with it. “The guys in the garage did an incredible job to rebuild the car - they really had to work hard, and they got me out for the last 10 minutes of the second session. They are so supportive in this team: if one person is down, they’ll do their best to lift that person up. That’s what we do as a team. “I had to run the older rear wing in the afternoon, so I didn’t really get a proper feel for where the car is. And, hopefully, we’ll have a second new rear wing for qualifying and the race. Tomorrow’s another day - and it looks like it’s going to rain, so everybody will have to start again. “Lewis’s accident this morning cost us some track time, but we still managed to amass a serious amount of data from both his car, and from Jenson’s more extensive running in both sessions.
In the interests of improved efficiency, this allows the compression ratio to be increased versus a conventional port injection system. The fuel evaporating directly in the combustion chamber also lowers the temperature in the combustion chamber, reducing the engine's tendency to knock. The engine is homogeneously charged. Turbine rotors are used to generate charge pressure in the four-cylinder engine. The single-flow turbocharging of the four-cylinder engine operates more efficiently than a mechanical charger since no engine power needs to be devoted to the rotors. Other characteristics of the four-cylinder engine include four-valve arrangement with forged intake and exhaust camshafts, as well as camshaft adjustment on the vane-cell principle. This enables the valve timing to be rapidly and variably adjusted. The result is high torque even at low engine speeds, and a higher specific output. The crankcase and cylinder head are cast from aluminum alloy. The crankshaft is also cast, and has eight counterweights.
To compensate the secondary masses inherent to a four-cylinder in-line engine, two Lanchester balancer shafts rotate within the crankcase at twice the crankshaft speed. An electronically controlled thermostat provides controlled engine warm-up (no coolant flows through the cylinder head when the engine is cold), and therefore intelligent thermal management and shortened warm-up phase. A sporty exhaust note produced by a new sound generator provides an acoustic backdrop to the 4-cylinder SLK250. This generator is located immediately in front of the throttle flap, and enhances the exhaust note with elements of the intake noise. It filters out certain frequencies from the intake noise and conducts them into the vehicle interior via a pipe connection - an ingeniously simple and very effective solution for a sporty and appealing engine sound. The improved seven-speed automatic transmission is standard equipment for the Mercedes-Benz SLK350 (optionally available on the SLK250). The transmission has undergone extensive further development to achieve decreased torque converter slip, a significant reduction in internal losses and optimized efficiency.
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