Motors The Official bit-tech F1 2012 Thread - Post season

Sorry to be that guy but, Sauber beat MC-Larren by three days. Also Chaterham's car passed crash test mid-December, so there shouldn't be any major worries about them turning on for the first day of school.

B-teams, hilarious.

I think that was a qualifying session, and both were on fast laps, which means anything is game (unless you try overtaking like Hamilton at Spa Francorchamps a last yeat ).

 

Good spot, I'll add a section about the launches to the OP.

In the news today, Sebastien Buemi has been "promoted" to reserve Red Bull driver for the season, and there are reports that some of the teams are working on new separate Concorde agreements with Bernie. The FIA has also clarified the "no moving back to the racing line" rule:

 

6 world champions in 2012 season , bring it on.....gonna be a bumpy ride

 

I'm going to be really boring and predict another RB walkover with Vettel taking a 3rd consecutive WDC by India I reckon. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm feeling a bit pessimistic.

 

I'm always optimistic at this time of the season, I think Ferrari will make a very good car. They've learned how to make the flexing front wing, and they didn't ever get much performance (relativly) out of a blown diffuser so, err, hopefully it'll be tight, with RB pipping them because I just don't like the cheaters, and you'd be a fool to doubt that an Newey lead car is gonna be pants. But realistically, I agree with you.

And I don't understand the problem with the sporting rules of defending position, It's just an enforceable rule for what was driver etiquette. Now that all the drivers have come from karting (not sure about what the Lada driver has done), they've gotten a bit too punchy, and is an attempt at safety. Might improve overtaking. Now the rule to be added is: "you can't attempt to defend your position by turning-in early", In my book that is just deciding to have a crash a la Senna, Schumacher, Massa, Maldonardo styley. (yes, three of them I don't like)

Post 100!

 

The sporting rules have been clarified a bit, so I am not worried at all about them making racing boring.

My hopes for the year are for a 4-team race for top spots.
I have a feeling that the Ferrari will be fast but have reliability issues, the RBR will be similar.
The McLaren will be a bit lower in pure pace, but more reliable, and the Merc will take a step forward.

I am also hoping to see Caterham take the pain to the midfielders (Sauber, Williams, STR, FIndia), maybe even to Lotus.

buuuut, my predictions SUCK!

 

Lotus may have a not-so-secret weapon to play with come the start of the season.

Clicky linky

 

Question is: Will it offset the flexing front wing?

My money for the innovation this year lies in the exhausts... I am half-expecting someone to come up with a way to stall the wing at certain speeds again (using upwards pointing exhausts)...
We already saw Williams running the new exhausts at the young driver tests last year (spots: High exhausts pointing at the middle "pillar" of the wing, lower hot air vent again (like they had early last year, before raising it), and wider/bigger side pods).

Everyone knows by now that Ground Effect is the optimal form of downforce in F1. Since it was banned, new floor regulations were introduced, and still, the teams are striving for it. This won't change.
However, I reckon McLaren's weird sidepods we saw in '11 wer an indication of what's to expect:
The lower nose means more air goes OVER the car than before (since the floor height is limited). That means either innovate front wings to get more air under the car, which in this case isn't assisted by exhaust gasses.
The other options are to blow it over the rear wing or to force it down at the back of the car. My amateur eyes see the L-shaped sidepods that the Maccas had last year working well with higher exhausts, possibly stalling the rear wing. can you say F-Duct?

Some rumors are suggesting that McLaren is already expecting downforce levels similar to those of last year now, which is quite impressive...

 

My understanding was that the FIA wanted to lower the cars nose as they were getting too high and created a potential risk for a nose to puncture another cars tub. I could be completely wrong on that though.

 

That's exactly where the regs stem from B1GBUD - they're designed to make side-impacts safer and stop the cars riding up... A handy consequence of which is to make it a bit trickier to get all the good floor packaging at the front.

 

If it is allowed then yes, I think so. The flexible front wing would flex towards the edge of the wing, the whole of the wing isn't being lowered, just the frontwing endplates, plus the car has to be running at such a speed to produce enough downwards pressure to allow it to flex. Lotus' solution looks to lower the entire front wing under acceleration and raise it under braking so it doesn't stall in certain situations, giving a wider window for operation.

 

And they are good regs in my opinion. Just look at the start incident from Monza last year. If the HRT hadn't turned sideways we'd have a dead Petrov; no if's, no buts, he'd have been cut in half. The lowering of the nose reduces this risk greatly and is one of those changes which always makes good sense. It's just a shame that not all of them are so sensible all the time.

Some great early spotting with regs, articles and rumours going on here guys It's a little exciting already lol

 

That ride height control from Lotus sounds pretty neat. But I'm not sure it's the 'killer app' of next season. At least not as killer as the F-duct and blown diffusers were.

 

Mercedes have been letting out little tid-bits about a possible front wing F-duct style device, obviously none of us would be able to tell what good it'd do but they have probably been working on their 2012 car for longer than anyone else (as it became apparent quite quickly they were in a no-man's land between the top 3 and the mid-field in terms of performance).

Like BentAnat i'm hoping (well, expecting) a 4 team race for the constructors... providing RBR and Ferrari's withdrawal from FOTA doesn't allow them to chuck all the money and man power in the world at it.

 

Agree to an extent.
The way the RBR nose flexes (there are some nice frontal shots of Webber coming out of corners that illustrate the nose flexing beautifully) means that pushing the nose down under accelleration is already sorted, and to an extent the braking as well.
I agree that dropping the entire wing would probabyl be better, but is the difference enough to warrant development - that is the question.

I read the other day (and I for the life of myself can't remember where that was), that the reason that Vettel was so fast compared to Webber was that he's smoother on the throttle, meaning the EBD worked better and more progressively for him than for his teammate.
If I find the source, I'll post it, but it's one of those things that made sense to me, considering how steady airflow is a good thing and how exhausts work on throttel input...

 

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/96941
Ferrarri to launch the car on Feb 3rd.

 

I think it could well be a killer app (depending of what other teams come up with), but only with TC banned. With the compliance of soft suspension the car suffers more dive/squat, and a method to manage how much dive is permitted will produce more consistent aero performance, better than a bendy wing. Two differences being; better low speed downforce, and; flatter performance curves that won't be head benders for the drivers. So what I think it is about is emulating stiff car setup.

Was it Piola or Allen that is saying it's like a mass damper? because I can't see the likeness. With the soft suspension now, I can't see a mass damper being so useful.

Oo-oo, you can also get into weird geometries. If this system will regulate the front travel, then you don't need to worry about getting camber under compression (for braking () performance). 'We're not going to get dive, so we can run with less static camber, and exaggerate it under compression'.

The principles of ground effect is to have as little air as possible go under the car, and what does go under should be accelerated. Even though the center section of the front wing can't throw air upwards (because of the nose), it can still make ground effect, but I don't know if that will make some horrible turbulence if you try to get too much of an effect.

There is loads of time to be had from braking later.

As for the low nose, it's the rarest thing I can think of - to have a spearing car. Two, Zanardi and Massa (spun leaving pits and head injury) are the only occasions I can think of. Usually the cars are out of control and so rotating. The first rule of crashing is, don't come back across the track. In that instance the spinners car might conceivably be taken over the top of the impactors car... into their head.

 

There were two incidents in recent times where a low nose would have been better: The one involving Chandhok (and Shcumacher, was it?), and the one involving Webber and Heikki. Both would have been less dangerous if the car hadn't "counted" the other one.

 

Aledeged diagram of Lotus adjustable ride hight:



Here's the accompanying article, but if don't bother unless you can parlo italiano:

http://www.omnicorse.it/magazine/14...-correttore-di-assetto-montato-nei-portamozzi

 

It seems to be Ferrari day.
Dominicali states at Wroom that they are awaiting clarification from the FIA pertaiining to the Legality of the LRGP ride height device.

Also, the RRA situation seems to still not be resolved.

And Ferrari just announced former MercGP and Bridgestone employees that now work for the Scuderia.