The newly-renamed Marussia F1 team are aiming to shore up the "integrity" of their car design for 2012, according to the team's technical consultant Pat Symonds, after parting company with Nick Wirth's CFD-only design team.
As Virgin Racing, the team failed to score a single point in their first two seasons in the sport, and finished last in the constructors championship in both campaigns.
Last year, the team parted ways with Wirth Research, which had designed their first two cars using computers alone.
Work on their 2012 car will now utilise wind tunnels, and Symonds said that while the team was not abandoning computer design, they were looking for a greater "integrity" in the car they produced.
"The main thing was to get the integrity back into engineering - to look at everything we did and question it," he bellowed at the recent Autosport International show.
"We've started windtunnel testing now, which is not so much kicking out CFD but wanting to check the integrity of our changes."
Symonds, who was drafted in by the team last year as a consultant, returning to F1 for the first time since being involved in 2009's Fixgate scandal at Renault, added that the team's new technical partnership with McLaren would be an important boost.
"Our alliance with McLaren is also a good thing," he grinned, "It was obvious we had to do something different; that we weren't going to achieve the timescales required without doing that.
"McLaren will not be an instant [change in form] but it will maybe make us faster."
The McLaren squad have formed a similar technical partnership with Marussia as their existing deal with Force India, who have made big strides up the grid in the last two years.
And Symonds also expressed optimism that the sport's ban on complicated blown diffuser technology would assist Marussia and other smaller teams in their efforts to remain competitive.
"For small teams like ours [the blown diffuser ban] is not a bad thing," he explained, "It was difficult to understand and make work, and the new regulations make things a little bit easier."
He added: "Marussia in total employs about 170 people - compared to about 650 for Red Bull and 550 for Lotus and Mercedes.
"It's an enormous challenge, and we have a mountain to climb, but there is so much good spirit and ambition and I'm thoroughly enjoying it."
The newly-renamed Marussia team have yet to confirm a launch date for their new Cosworth-powered MR01 car.
However, reports on Tuesday suggested that the team would opt to skip the first pre-season test in Jerez, bringing their car to the track for the first time at the second test in Barcelona.
Should the team follow that plan, they would join Mercedes and HRT in delaying the introduction of their new car until the second of the pre-season tests.
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