Caterham to use Toyota wind tunnel

Caterham have revealed that they are switching their wind tunnel programme to Toyota Motorsport’s high-tech facility in Cologne, Germany.

Team principal Cyril Abiteboul explained that using the tunnel, which was once the hub of Toyota’s works F1 team and was also used by Ferrari last season, moves Caterham into a similar technological bracket as other F1 teams.

“The TMG (Toyota) facility allows us to run at 60 percent scale, more than the 50 percent scale we have been using to date, and that has obvious benefits in increasing the accuracy of the data generated in the tunnel,” he said.

“Ally that to our increased partnership with Dell/Intel and it’s safe to say our design office now has an IT infrastructure and wind tunnel that are on a par with any team in F1.”

Caterham finished the 2013 season bottom of the constructors’ championship table, but the team’s founder and chairman Tony Fernandes says that they now have “everything in place to make serious progress” in their fifth year of competition.