February 3, 2012
Ferrari F2012 presentation
Nobody will care if it's fast but Ferrari went butt ugly with the platypus nose, like Caterham and Force India.
This was a predicted technical development to comply with new nose dimension regulation while still keeping the suspension mounting as high as possible, out of the under car airflow, but, man that's nasty.
That Mclaren has chosen to buck what is now a technical trend and go with a lower nose will be something to follow. Obviously the step nose made them gag sufficiently to consider another way around the problem.
Let's see where Red Bull and Mercedes go with this.
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A little bird told me RBR went for a similar (and butt ugly, indeed) solution.
ReplyDeletethe new designs are soooo fugly. You'd think that with all the resources and experience the teams would have found another solution.
ReplyDeleteI foresee a large conversion of fans to McLaren. Siply because they'll be the easiest car in the field to spot from a distance
Hmm. I don't think it looks that awful . . . the car actually has a balanced profile, unlike the F150(th).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the only thing that really matters is how well it keeps the heat in the front tires . . . and if the car does that Fernando will have a chance.
I don't know if you picked it up in the press
ReplyDeleteRelease but Ferrari changed wheel supplier from BBS to OZ. and apparently something in the design of the new wheels is to improve tire tems. Anyone have any clue how that might work?
Interesting picture (click on the pic to go full size) of last years cars which show predicted nose shapes for this year (by ScarbsF1). Interestingly, the McLaren nose is already a lot lower than all the other cars at the point of the front wheels. Also interesting from this pic is the wheel base of the cars. The Red Bull is by far the longest car.
ReplyDeletehttp://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/687/f1noses.jpg/
On wheels I read that it was because of BBSs business situation. As far as wheels, karts use wheels of different stiffness and materials to tune handling through flexibility and/or temperature retention - I would suspect that either BBS or OZ could build wheels to tune the tire temps one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteI understand that the rules body is trying to make the noses lower to help prevent the cars from leap frogging each other, but it's not working. Clearly all the teams are recycling their chassis work from previous designs with development bits stuck on them. I don't think any of them are going full bore into these cars anymore with engine changes forthcoming in a year or so. But I can still say aesthetically it's still better than the leftover abortion bits Indycar is going to stick on the track this year.
ReplyDeleteI'm betting that OZ doesn't want you to know how the wheels effect the tire temps. Beyond trade secrets, there are way to many factors such as the specific alloy they use, how the wheel is cast/forged, spoke design(hollow,thick, thin, different profiles, etc.) Without directly asking them i dont think there is a way to figure that out.
ReplyDelete