Motors The Official bit-tech F1 2010 Thread - Post season washup

From the 'Winners & Losers' article at PF1, with my emphasis:

Interesting. Very interesting. Looks like the Suderia have opened up a whole Vaso di Pandora...

 

I hoping ferrari do get hit hard and i think theres every chance they could do. imo its made worse by the fact that F1 has been trying to and succeeding in making the sport more open to the viewing public, and shedding the cloak and dagger feel of the past.

As a fan i love that the sport has become more 'transparent', in the past we would have never known that alonso was let through, because we now do know the whole situation is more serious imo.

Cant wait to hear the reaction alonso gets in brazil!

 

EJ wants the rule prohibitng team orders scrapped:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8855382.stm

 

EJ is also a 'tard... as gets mentioned quite frequently. /2cents

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8856761.stm

THE NERVE. THE SHEER NERVE.

Ferrari boss claims hypocrisy AND admits to rule breaking team orders.



So much for the "sport"

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2010/07/team_orders_rule_ties_f1_in_kn.html

He makes sense, sadly.

 

He does make sense, and I agree that team orders do happen all around.

At the end of the day, though, even Bernie has a point when he airs his "Everything for the spectators" view. Without spectators, there's no sponsors, without sponsors no money, and without money, no F1.
In that light, while there are team orders, they shouldn't EVER happen in that way. That incident did nothing to the sport but harm its credibility.

It also created a whole load of marketing around the sport (no media like bad media and all), but at the end of the day: would you watch a race because you know that the drivers are going to finish in this order anyway? I wouldn't.

There's a second point here:
I understand Alonso closing the gap to Lewis faster in 1st place than in 2nd. 5 points faster, to be exact. However, it's not like Massa was out of the championship yet. If anything, he proved that he bounced back from a bad spell in this race, and that he CAN STILL win races.
Lap times only matter so much in a race, because defensive driving takes its toll.

It in the light of those two factors that I reckon hammer them. Dock the race points Ferrari made in that race... all of them.

 

/insert expletives here...

Alonso "Every Win is Special"

I *really* hope Alonso & Ferrari lose points over this incident

 

All of the heat on Ferrari seems to have distracted everyone from RBR's flexing front wing. I finally found a half decent video showing how much it actually deflects and it's pretty interesting. Watch the cascades extending from the end plates, especially as Webber lifts off at the end of the straight:

 

Think I'm missing something here, I can barely see any of the front wing in that video and what I can see of it, it just looks like its bouncing a bit along with the rest of the car.

 

No, there's a definite flexing in there, no doubt. Watch it on fullscreen and look at the bits to the inside of the front wheels, at the end of the straight they move upwards by at least an inch.

Still, as has been pointed out, it's passed scrutineering multiple times over the weekend and never flagged up a problem. Looks like it's time for the others to play catchup.

 

at the start of the clip if you use the brake duct on the left wheel as a guide you can clearly see the front wing 'lower' as the car accelerates out of the corner. Hardly conclusive but its the best video ive seen of it tbh.

With the downforce the cars generate i would have thought it was impossible to have a wing so stiff that it didnt 'move' slightly?

 

Ferrari is said to ahve a similar system...
and there are photos (of course, angles etc can be argued) for comparison here, that seem to show what's going on;
http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2010/07/photo-exclusive-red-bull-flexi-front-wing-judge-for-yourself/

EDIT:
Reading through the testing system, it seems to me that the test is basically them pressing down on the front wing with a certain size block/item at a force of 500 Newtons (around 50Kg). Maximum deflection of the front wing at the end plates must not exceed 10mm in that test.

the pictures in the link seem to be anaylysed by engineers as being closer to 24mm.

I think (pure speculation, I am a programmer, no engineer) that Red Bull and Ferrari are using materials with non-linear deformation characteristics. Or maybe even a design that does that.
The idea being:
Say at 500N, the wing flexes 9.5mm at the endplates.
Normal material would then deflect (random number) say, 12mm at 1200N
if you manage tu build it in such a way that it deflects 15mm at 1200N, yet stays at 9.5mm @ 500Nyou're gaining an advantage and sticking to the rules.

 

Does anyone have a link to the test spec? I've had a skim through the technical regs but can't see it.

 

Im no engineer either but thats the conclusion i came to, but couldnt think how to write it without sounding stupid , could something as simple as a change in the carbon weave allow greater flexiblity at higher loads but still stiff enough to pass the tests?

 

I would think so, yes. I can see how something like that would make carbon fibre behave differently under pressure.
Also, knowing exactly WHERE they test the flexibility (thanks, tech spec) is sure to help. Although the rules DO stipulate that the FIA can conduct further, different testing if deemed necessary.
I do however reckon that they've got many more noses or a way to adjust the flexibility of the nose for each track. Otherwise they'd risk bottoming the wing out and breaking it.

on a more lighthearted note - I am sure that Chris Horner now wants all high-speed kerbs removed from all races...

As for the tech spec, this made it sortof understandable for me:

From HERE

 

Amazingly, these shots were taken way back in December with the RB5. They've clearly been working on this for a long time:

 

Doesn't seem like it'd be so hard to get a front wing to deflect in principle, it's probably just the difficulties of getting the cf to weave right.

 

McLaren Confused by front wing, saying "Clearly it's more than just setup options"... Hmmm... Maybe they should come join us on Bit-Tech. We'll figure it out.

 

Looking at the pics of the cabled up wing, I wonder if they're doing something clever within the wing? Something that puts the wing in tension when they want it to be rigid (i.e. on the straight) and then release that tension to get it to flex in the corners.

If it was internally braced with cables, that could be tensioned remotely (Like the wing flaps) you could control it from the cockpit.