Oh yeah, I was not in the wind tunnel work with the 550. I was still with Brembo at that time. I did see the data and talk with the engineers in the UK about the hows and whys of what they did. Nothing done to the car is very far out. Pretty standard modification for a GT spec car. The key with Prodrive is that they made the car balance out very well, and not be overly sensitive to ride height and pitch. This made the car easier to drive and more stable between driving styles. the center of pressure is also well located and controlled due to this balance.
Many GT cars have more of a band aid solution, sticking on ever larger rear wings and front splitters and things like that. Often the root of an issue is that some element of the car is seperating or stalling airflow or taking air off the wing. But these things are near impossible to judge without wind tunnel time. But thats why the big boys win most often.
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the passenger area floorpan and roof structure are about all that is left from the OE 550. There are new suspension pick ups, and subframes are used to cradle the engine and front and rear suspension. The gearbox is not the OE piece, so a new structure carries that as well. The car is really a tube frame silhouette of the OE 550. Only the general layout and engine specification are still in place.
The suspension uses fabricated uprights, and to my knowledge, none of the 550 parts are still used. Prodrive scanned the entire car into 3d CAD data and designed the cage and support frames in order to get the CG of the major components as low and centralized as possible. The drivers seat is lower and further back than OE in order to get more weight off the nose for example.
The car is built pretty robust, so it is not the lightest of the GT cars. But it is a dead reliable endurance racer.
