Day 1 Lap Count at half way (lunch) Ferrari - 80 Red Bull - 80 Mercedes - 77 Williams- 66 Alpine- 54 Aston Martin- 52 McLaren - 50 Alpha Tauri - 44 Haas - 20 Alfa Romeo - 9
I wonder how may cars immediately changed their wing mirrors to the merc design or if they all independently.coming up with this
Yes. Although in this case I'm not sure what that's showing them except the air appears to go everywhere!
Looking at the rear wheel there's a hint of different approach to the underside. Merc to red bull for example but I just dont know what it really is that I am looking at bar one has a gap and the other as a dip down.
It's where air from front wing is going I guess. On the mclaren one you can see the lower rear wing parts are coating in green The Williams seems to be getting "Clean" air onto its rear wing on the top.
I think you're right. It was more that I don't think I've ever seen a car with quite that much flo-vis on it.
I like the Williams livery - like how their whole car looks too. There is a lot of trickery in that RB. I'm fearful Newey has gone and done his thing.
engine is still the issue. how much faster round a corner can the red bull be? a) ground effect? b) standard down force? c) suspension? d) grunt? I have no clue that one car over another has tice the ground effect or is so much more stable in corners or over kerbs than another yet cos we can't see it in action this week I am kind of sure the merc engine will be faster than the thing in the back of the red bull pretending not to be a honda. the ferrari I just do not know, they sound bullish but they do that every year. Red bull need to be a lot quicker through the corners to keep up (in theory) one thing is for sure theres clear early differences in approach between merc, red bull and ferrari and that is leaving us all wondering who's fastest.
I don't have enough of an understanding of the physics really, but that Merc is skinny which makes me wonder if it might be a little better round a corner this year too.
I think I need to do a bit of digging to understand the aero more. The huge diffuser and relatively large rear wing surely is going have the potential to produce masses of rear downforce but the front wing isn't that big. Surely this is going to create a very front limited car?
Ok, so I get the basic concept of using the floor for ground effect and everything but there’s still bits of these new cars I don’t really get. What do those deflectors on the font wheels do? I’ve not really heard them being mentioned much. The upturned fin end plates on the front wing? The curved edges of the rear wing? How much of this do the teams have any influence over, and what function do they serve other than looking a bit more cool?
I think endplates are all about trying to get vortices that channel the air in the directions the team wants. The side floors, I believe, are feeding the rear diffusers and causing suction so somehow the teams have to stop the air leaking out from the floor. Back in the ground effect days they had skirts that either wore away or where mechanically adjusted to jeep the air under the floor to provide suction - but that proved dangerous when the suction was lost! Some of the other stuff is to stop the air coming off the back and sides being too turbulent for the following cars. The 'boxes' that the rules control for each component are very restrictive on purpose to reduce wake. I am quite surprised at how diverse the cars look. It's great to see so many different solutions, I hope they have all got good solutions. Hopefully in the coming days there will be some generic vids describing how it all works - I would love to see some wind tunnel smoke trails but that's not going to happen . Here is a short, 3 min vid of each car:
I thought just about everything around the wheels was simply to reduce the dirty air coming off then.
I know it's day one and there is absolutely nothing to get excited about, but the Ferrari wasn't last. Come on you fast looking thing!!
Nothing really learned from the Sky TV programs this evening other than they like Red Bull a bit too much Alfa R have a few issues that they seem to be aware of after their shakedown and Haas having a couple of issues like coolant leak and floor damage. Can't wait to see the cars used in anger come first race. I hope we have reliability, which I'm not sure about as I expect, PU wise, for the manufacturers to have pushed beyond the reliability limit so they have some wiggle room to make 'reliability improvements' after the freeze! There are some very different concepts with vents, undercuts and depressions on the side pods it's looking very interesting.
