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Just saw the new Ferrari model released by Lego!
They also have a Force India and Caterham model. Heard a Sauber model is close to release.
Are these guys serious!!!
Fugly...
Let's see what Newey can come up with.
I thought Indy cars were Fugly!!!
Comments
Then again F1 cars don't have to look good, just to be racing animals (think about some models from the 70s).
But for sure, Ferrari looks terrible, and I agree it looks more like a Lego car than like a racing animal!!!.
This "step" reminds me of when the nose up was introduced by Tyrrell in 1990, may be a revolution. Can't wait to see the cars on track in Melbourne.
Needs must as they say, but this is going to be the year of the 'Fugly'.
At least Lotus have made it semi-cool.
By the by, did anyone take a good look at that Maclaren front wing? Get readty for the bendy arguments.
From what I understand - and as the years go by the scope of my understanding diminishes - the humps are a big, big compromise.
The noses have been getting higher because of some irksome thing called physics. The higher the nose, the greater the moment on the suspension from the front wing, and the more the sticky sticky to road.
This year they all agreed to lower the nose so that when they T-bone each other, the nose impacts the body of the car, rather than the head of the nut behind the wheel. The humps are caused by the designers wanting to keep the scope of the moment, with a lower nose (cause the nose is attached you see). Whether or not this means that we will see cars careering down straight tobogganning on their own noses through the forces now being focussed on the small radii of the hump, will be a matter of whether they have the sums right in relation to the amount of carbon fibre they have allowed by way of reinforcement.
great minds of F1 could have come up with something imaginative
that doesn't look like an afterthought.
I actually like this time of year when the teams unveil their new steeds.
However, this year I am underwhelmed.
Lots of speculation around the place as to whether the mess around the top of the hump is a slot, or whther it is not a slot. If it is a slot, then goodness knows what trickery is involved. some say it is a front wing f-duct, others say that it is connected to the exhaust to help achive blowing from the top, and it goes on.
The simplest reason (Ocam's razor) is that it is not a slot, and therefore it's purpose is to trick the airflow over the nose into thinking that the nose is more gently sloped in a similar fashion to the way that wing end-plates trick the air into believing that the span is longer than it actually is. That makes sense and is certainly a Newey-type touch.
Yet others are saying that this is a bullshit launch, and that is last year's car with the new nose rather scrappily bolted on. If those theorists are right, then the slot theory comes back because RBR don't want to show the whole car lest changes to the back give away the reason for the front.
The thing to remember is that the boxer is all about retaining the kind of front end downforce previously available. The solutions mostly provided to date are around the boxer, which helps to get the downforce, but has a drawback in aero efficiency. So the question really is, 'what the hell are Maclaren up to?' Can they have doen sums to indicate that aero efficiency is going to have greater dividends that downforce, or have they managed to achieve both by some devious means, or - and this relates to the theory that the RB8 is only a nose - is the Maclaren only a rear, and they are yet to roll out a super-secret nose?
Happy days.
I appreciate the function and reasoning behind the new noses but I feel that a more elegant solution should have presented itself than what we have this season. Form over function, I guess my architecture industry bias has taken over in this matter and that is why I am not an engineer.
The thing is that with aerodynamics, as they become more understood, you get to have more options than simply making a smooth and slippery surface. These guys are now playing with boundary layer effects, stagnation points and so forth, so they can put a bump here, or a node there, and that will cause airflow disruptions in that area that make something there disappear. In the olden days of aero you did these things to make the airflow downstream do something.
When engineers design fighter aircraft, they make the aero surfaces 'critical'. In normal aircraft the aim is to make the 'flight envelope' as wide as is required for the application. That means that the upper and lower performance parameters allow you to buzz along making mistakes without stuffing up the wing and crashing the airplane. In newer fighters, the envelope is tiny. so tiny that humans cannot react quickly enough in something as simple as a coordinated turn without exceeding the envelope and stalling the wing. So now, there is a comination of mulitple aerodynamic surfaces and control surfaces, that combine with computers to ensure that all buggalugs has to do is point the thing, and the airplane will do what is necessary to stay in the air whilst he does it.
The F1 dudes are now using the more passive side to achieve their downforce goals in the corners, and their slipperyness goals on the straights. It is not all passive of course, because suspension deflections cause changes in angle of attack and they are allowed to adjust hardness and so forth as they go. Changes in angle of attack will vary the airflow over some of the bumps and nodes and wings to achieve the overall ends.