http://i386.photobucket.com/albums/oo306/Tarya/rbrnose3.jpg
90% of the grid thinking "**** you Newey"
90% of the grid thinking "**** you Newey"
So the fduct saga begins again eh? :P
When I say cleaner, I mean aerodynamically cleaner but you already knew what I meant amp, you're just trolling me but there, I endulged you by replying.
When you say "generally" then what you say should apply in a lot of cases. What you said doesn't really apply in terms of aerodynamics either. Remember in 2007 when the teams were adding 'dirty' looking winglets and they were getting up into 'dirty' looking multi-element front wings? You think the teams would have done that if they could have achieved the same sorts of aero performance from 'cleaner' designs? Then you have the more obvious (and more extreme) comparison of a 1960s F1 car to one from 2008. The '60s cars generally looked a lot cleaner (with the classic cigar-shape and very few appendages) but clearly they were vastly inferior in terms of aero performance.
They did it because the rules meant that was the only way they could gain downforce. You give F1 teams unlimited capabilities and they will be clean as hell aerodynamically, hell look at the RedBull X1 for a rough example.
When you try to use an imaginary concept car from GT5 you know your argument is sound.
Well my argument is basically supporting the X1 concept. In a what-if hypothesis.
X1 was built with the idea that the ground effects make most if not all all the downforce it needs. Ground effects create downforce more efficiently than winglets. Plus the X1 was designed to look good so compromises in performance could be made. Plus the GT5 physics engine is not even within miles to be able to simulate such an aerodynamically complex car. In real life it might need some ugly pieces of carbon fibre to work within ints intended performance window.
Basically you are saying that human eye has natural ability to create aerodynamically efficient engineering solutions and that a good looking car also looks good in wind tunnels. That is utter crap.
When the first F1 cars were built using wind tunnels the people who were designing those cars were quite surprised how inefficient their designs actually were. Despite being made to look as flowing as possible.
Just look at anything performance wise, supercars even, they are generally clean aerodynamically. The cleaner the surface the more aerodynamically efficient it will be, it's not a myth.
Aerodynamically efficient and creating as much dowforce as efficiently as possible are a bit different things. Take a look at the front wing of any F1 car and tell me "cleaner surfaces" work better.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You are mixing the concepts of reducing drag and lift to concepts like increasing downforce in a situation where you are restricted by a set of rules instead of situations where artistic goals are more important.
So why do dimpled golf balls fly further than completely smooth ones?
Sauber looks pretty mean with those black rims and the dark paint fore and aft. 
I think the livery looks like a stereotypical American police car
The X1 has a fan that sucks it to the ground, so it has downforce regardless of speed. That is why it's body is clean in appearance 
Well why do you guys think they would go with that horrid bump on the Ferrari? Do you guys think it is channeling air around the driver, creating downforce, or just an anomaly that they could not fix (perhaps there's something large under the bodywork there)?
I thought about it too, but more than downforce factor it looks like drag increasement factor.
Wish i could see the windtunnell data explained a bit, because it looks like plain nonsense (which in F1 has always some hidden sense etc. etc.).
I think they are hiding something, and that magically sometime during the test sessions that part will change drastically.
you're forgetting that in F1 the aim primary is downforce not low drag, for the latter i'd be prepared to go with your generalisation but once you're after downforce aero efficiency no longer follow the "smooth is best" rule, after all a brick has a lower drag coefficient than any modern F1 car, the reason that an F1 car produces so much negative lift from it's wings compared to an aircraft's lift from a same size area is that drag is not the primary concern
Well the bump is directly over the front tires, so wouldn't it help boost front downforce in high speed turns?
According to the interview on the autosport site the underside of the front is much more important to the overall aerodynamics than the upper side. After alll the air that goes over the nose goes over the driver as well so it is not very clean and useful air for creating downforce.
It is incredible that the Cd figure is up somewhere near 1, but of course most f1 teams could generate the downforce of the teams slightly ahead of them, and I'd imagine in the case of a low downforce track, even the middle running teams could match the best for downforce. But the cost in terms of drag would be far too great.
So even though the drag is immense, they're all still looking for downforce which doesn't add more drag than it's worth, of course.
before any times come in a quick summary of the arguments about noses
if you believe mclaren is wrong then
"they must be wrong because it's different to all the others, the step nose is best solution because red bull have chosen it"
if you believe mclaren is right then
"they must be right as they were almost a match for red bull last year using the same solution and if the step is so efficient, teams would have made their cars with a step last year, they didn't so their noses must have lost efficiency"
today we start to find out
if you believe mclaren is wrong then
"they must be wrong because it's different to all the others, the step nose is best solution because red bull have chosen it"
if you believe mclaren is right then
"they must be right as they were almost a match for red bull last year using the same solution and if the step is so efficient, teams would have made their cars with a step last year, they didn't so their noses must have lost efficiency"
today we start to find out
Alternatively...
The nose was meant to be even lower this year, but the teams complained about having to redesign the whole tub due to the height of existing bulkheads. So the minimum nose height was raised and the height of the bulkhead was not lowered for 2012 season.
McLaren, knowing the nose height was being lowered, last season designed a car with lower bulkheads, enabling them to not have the ducknose/step this year.
Edit:
Didn't have time before, but here's a pic from last year showing that their nose was lower than the majority of others...
Some more as well:
In depth timeline of all laps set:
http://f1tests.co.cc/2012.php?rev=on
BBC's live reporting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/16914962
I really don't think we'll find out today or even this week if McLaren's nose is better or worse than the conventional one that most of the others have. It's early testing, most teams are simply going for shakedowns and data collecting rather than ultimate pace. Even then, whose to say who is on what fuel?
to be honest given that everyone is feeling their way with the new regs i don't think we'll be absolutely sure of any teams relative performance till th end of the 1st race and possibly the 3rd or 4th race
Formula One Season 2012
(1268 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG