February 1, 2010

Diffuser-Gate 2010, the revenge....

Like we and some of our commenters have mentioned, rear diffusers are likely to be an issue yet again this year. Ferrari is already grumbling about Mclaren's.
Of course, rule interpretation has been a part of racing forever but still, after all the chaos in court in the last couple of seasons you would have thought teams and the FIA might have worked to avoid this potential issue.

Any aerodynamicist care to comment on these pictures from today's testing? (gallery courtesy theF1.com/sutton)




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7 comments:

  1. If I were McLaren and confident about my car, what I'd do right now is throw more of that green day-glo paint on the sidepods tomorrow, just to throw the other teams off. A visual sandbagging, one might say. The longer they can delay a Ferrari protest, the better.

    A good question is, if Ferrari are still faster come Bahrain, would they still protest?

    (Great banner pic btw, I know exactly who that CTR2 belongs to ;-) )

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  2. The McLaren diffuser seems the most extreme. Three diffuser floors, the last one integrated in the rear wing low profile (hence the Ferrari complaints, I think).
    Really good job, but I'm waiting for Red Bull. I feel that Mr.Newey decided to miss the first test just not to unveil the car too early...

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  3. One thing I notice is that none of these cars are using the extended rear wing endplates like Red Bull last season. All of these diffusers are wider (or are the rear wings narrower?).
    Despite an understanding of FD its difficult to examine the designs without seeing more of the diffuser/better pics.

    Oh, and hot yellow CTR2

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  4. http://twitpic.com/110v1j

    This guy has some pretty good explanations and photos on twitter. You should follow him.

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  5. Those shots are fantastic. You don't have to understand cfd to see the flow in these designs - just pretend you're the air flowing over these surfaces. Follow the curves.

    Imagine F1 without aero restrictions. four-wheeled fighter jets come to mind...G suits for extreme cornering forces and adjustable/programmable surfaces FTW! Lets bring it back to the core of ultimate design and performance.

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  6. Thanks for posting the link Jonathan, that guy's work is really amazing!

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