F1 2012 - This whole 'stepped-nose' thing

timbob said:
Good grief! What has EBD got to do with it? All the teams have lost their blown diffusers, not just McLaren.
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Because as I have already said McLaren had a great load of downforce from the EBD meaning the low nose, which gives less air to under the car a non issue, take it away and they need to find that downforce, Lewis said they have not yet recovered it, the other teams have, by having a high nose.

XeNoN89 said:
Lol I'm starting to notice you arguing a lot around here, and most of the time you are wrong, like in this case aswell :)

Mclaren are working from a different angle here, their nose was lower last year, and its lower this year. They have no need to have a step because they have no need to run the nose any higher.
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I am not arguing, I am stating an opinion, and you have no idea if I am right or wrong, as said we shall see, Whitmarsh made comments that the car will be very different come Australia, unless you are privy to their developments then I have no idea how you can say I am wrong. As above, they need to recover the lost downforce from last year, having a low nose is hampering them further in doing that.

Eriedor said:
Pot, Kettle, Black. You've just spent this thread arguing that you know better than the engineers from one of the most successful formula 1 teams in history.
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I have never said I know better, but every other team seems to think they know better and the great Newey seems to think he knows better, Gary Anderson is on the BBC F1 site talking how the low nose will be a dead end for McLaren and stifle development, but I guess you will be saying he knows nothing either right and the ocuk McLaren fanbase knows best.

McLaren have not won a WCC since 1998, As I have already stated Ferrari recently who by the way are the most successful got stuck in their ways with their design, a design that did not work, did not move on and was not pushing anything, they have had to change the way they work, now if that can happen to Ferrari why can it not happen to McLaren...

How about Williams, on par with McLaren for success really, does not guarantee you get it right. But as usual say anything that is not pro-McLaren round here and it's uproar.
 
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If McLaren need this duck nose as I call it then am sure there's one in a wind tunnel or in Woking ready to go.

Big business so everything is looked at
 
Mr Men said:
Because as I have already said McLaren had a great load of downforce from the EBD meaning the low nose, which gives less air to under the car a non issue, take it away and they need to find that downforce, Lewis said they have not yet recovered it, the other teams have, by having a high nose.
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It's not just McLaren who've lost the EBD is it though? Everybody has. McLaren are continuing with their well proven and well understood (internally, I mean) lower tub/lower nose concept and are trying to claw that lost downforce back.

A high nose is not a magic trick that automatically brings back all downforce lost by the outlawing of EBDs. You state that "the other teams" have clawed back this downforce "by having a high nose" as if it's gospel truth - but you have no evidence for this, other than your own opinion.


Mr Men said:
I am not arguing, I am stating an opinion, and you have no idea if I am right or wrong, as said we shall see, Whitmarsh made comments that the car will be very different come Australia, unless you are privy to their developments then I have no idea how you can say I am wrong. As above, they need to recover the lost downforce from last year, having a low nose is hampering them further in doing that.
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Again, how do you know this? Specifically, how do you know that the low nose itself is the actual reason they are hampered in recovering this downforce?!

Continuing with a full winter's refinement and development with their low nose and snowplough concept means that McLaren will almost certainly have a more efficient (aerodynamic speaking) car than last year - they are building on last year's expertise

The other teams have had to compromise with an ugly, and almost certainly un-aerodynamic nose design in order that they can continue with their outlawed high nose concepts. This compromise means that the other teams have probably spent the winter trying to get back to where they were before the winter, whilst McLaren have been forging ahead.


Mr Men said:
I have never said I know better, but every other team seems to think they know better and the great Newey seems to think he knows better, Gary Anderson is on the BBC F1 site talking how the low nose will be a dead end for McLaren and stifle development, but I guess you will be saying he knows nothing either right and the ocuk McLaren fanbase knows best.

McLaren have not won a WCC since 1998, As I have already stated Ferrari recently who by the way are the most successful got stuck in their ways with their design, a design that did not work, did not move on and was not pushing anything, they have had to change the way they work, now if that can happen to Ferrari why can it not happen to McLaren...

How about Williams, on par with McLaren for success really, does not guarantee you get it right. But as usual say anything that is not pro-McLaren round here and it's uproar.
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Every other team doesn't necessarily know better. They are working with and have many years worth of data on a high nose design - speaking both in terms of aerodynamic knowledge and suspension design knowledge.

These are the teams that complained that the FIA hadn't given them enough warning to lower the tub height, knowing that they would struggle to redesign their entire suspension geometry and aerodynamic concept over the winter.

Gary Anderson may or may not have some ill feeling towards McLaren, and whilst that clip was great and very informative, I'd be surprised if it was totally unbiased. He's totally ignoring the fact (as are you) that McLaren did rather well last year with a low nose, even though higher noses were within the regulations.

Again - to make the point - McLaren can now continue with this lower nose (that worked really quite well, as their whole car was designed around this), whilst everyone else (the great Newey included) are compromising on the overall aerodynamic efficiency of their cars to pursue the highest nose possible to get the maximum amount of air underneath, as the whole concept of their car design is based around this.

Lowering their noses and reducing the airflow under the car would be more of a penalty than a wonky nose, ON THEIR CARS, WHICH HAVE BEEN OPTIMISED FOR HIGH NOSES. I'm not sure this can be phrased any clearer?!

PS: This in no way means McLaren have got the jump on the entire field (although it'd be nice if they did!), because, as you point out, they've not been WCC since the 90s, and they probably wouldn't be able to start a season well if their mothers' lives depended on it!
 
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Gibbs said:
If McLaren need this duck nose as I call it then am sure there's one in a wind tunnel or in Woking ready to go.

Big business so everything is looked at
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If McLaren decide to abandon 3 years of development and go for a high nose, the tub of their 2012 car is low enough already that they won't need a downward step in order to get the tip of the nose low enough - they could run a horizontal nose all the way forward from the cockpit and still be under the maximum height allowed.
 
It's well rumoured on various F1 sites that RB and Ferrari at least have got the downforce back from losing EBD, I do not state it as fact. McLaren might not need a step but they might well need to abandon what they have, its very possible, just like they had to abandon the octopus exhaust when it blew up every 20 laps.

Its fine to dismiss Anderson as disliking McLaren for whatever reason? but he also mentioned the lack of EBD this year and stated why most teams are going with getting as much air under the car as possible. What worked last year may well not work this year, as Newey said they had to go back a few years to get a starting point for their exhausts this year and how to get the car to work.

I am not ignoring McLaren last season, but without the EBD then it's a massive game changer, as Silverstone showed. Can you explain why the step is bad for aero as you state as gospel? when all the stuff I have read on scarbs etc suggests its going to do very little aero wise?
 
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Apologies for a 3rd consecutive post, but for the benefit of more casual readers who CBA to get through my essay above, I figured a way to explain things more clearly...


Imagine two conversations - one at McLaren and the other at Red Bull, after the finalisation of the 2012 nose rules:

Red Bull HQ said:
These new nose regs are a right pain - the whole car's aerodynamic concept and front suspension is designed around having a high nose. Let's keep the tub as tall as it's allowed and have the nose as high as possible, even if we do end up with an ugly hump. That way we can keep the suspension design we have 7 years of refinement and data on, and we can probably still get 90% of the air under the nose that we had last year because it's not too much lower. The hump will probably only be a 5% aerodynamic penalty anyway... Best get going chaps, we've got the lack of EBD to contend with too...
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McLaren HQ said:
These new nose regs are great - our old tub and nose fits right inside the new rules. We can carry on with our successful low tub and nose concept, and use all our data from last year to refine everything even further over the winter and make sure the loss of the EBDs don't hurt us too badly...
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Mclaren would not need to do anything with the height of their bulkhead in order to give their nose considerably more height than it currently has - they could simply run it horizontal instead of tapering it downwards as currently. The fact that they aren't doing this has to mean that having a high nose is not important in the overall functioning of their car.
 
Mr Men said:
Why has Ferrari changed their suspension, when it's such a hard and complex thing to give up on?
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Because they've struggled ever since the 2009 regulation changes to get heat into their tyres quickly. It means the Ferraris are notoriously kind on tyres during a race situation, but can't make it work during qualifying.

The pullrod suspension on the Ferrari seems to have been quite a shock amogst F1 techie people, and is pretty "big news".

(unlike the wonky noses...!) :p
 
sorry for possibly sounding like an idiot, but were mclaren running with a low nose and no EBD before everyone started doing EBDs but during the time the regulations were pretty similar to what they are now?

i'm not too hot on my F1 regs from a few years ago, but i think mclaren were reasonably successful in 2009, and i'm pretty sure that the row was double diffusers back then, not EBD
 
I think the important thing to remember about the stepped nose is that nothing has really changed from last year, just imagine the red bull engineer having to take out a hacksaw and cut off the top bit of the nose that is now outside the regs, thats all, a bit has gone missing, other then that it is pretty much the same as they ran last year.

The step is a compromise they have had to accept to have the same air under the wing as last year, the step is not an advantage its a penalty. A penalty mclaren don't even have to contend with.

If it wasnt for the step the front ends of the mclaren and red bull would look identical to last years with the main difference being mclaren wont have lost the entire winter testing and development on a back end heavily compromised by a last minute decision by the FIA.
 
dalin80 said:
If it wasnt for the step the front ends of the mclaren and red bull would look identical to last years with the main difference being mclaren wont have lost the entire winter testing and development on a back end heavily compromised by a last minute decision by the FIA.
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Was no last minute FIA decision, the material they used was already banned when Ferrari wanted to use it, and the rules said exhaust can only have 2 exit pipes, McLaren tried to be clever but just could not get it to work.
 
Oh god some silly arguments in here.

Also no team can change the tub now, they are stuck with it till the end of the season. So no one however much they would like to is changing the tub.
 
http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2010/03/awkward-moment-for-virgin-racing-over-fuel-tank-request/

If I had my iPad I would search the regs but it's away being repaired. Tubs can not be changed mid season. That's why virgin had to get special dispensation, so they could make a longer chassis and so fit a bigger fuel tank.

Iirc it was introduced as part of cost cutting.
It's also why teams struggled to copy f-duct as it needs holes in the chassis which you can't alter. So teams had to find ways to route air through Pre existing holes.

You are simply wrong.
 
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