Montreal 2003

There's been a lot of talk about Renault in the current Formula One year, with always the wide angled V10 coming up. This particular engine should be down in downforce, which is why team principal Flavio Briatore decided to go for a regular angled engine in 2004. With his decision though, important engine designer Jean-Jacques His left the team as he was strongly supporting the 111°. Just now, on such a particular engine-circuit, the Renault was performing unexpectedly well. In reality, the team had the best tire manufacturer (which was Michelin), and chose the best tire from the options available.

Loose mirrors

During the GP, both Williams cars kind of lost on of their front wings due to the vibrations and stress that took action on these. According to Patrick Head the mirrors failed due to the additional stresses of having cameras inside. On each car, one mirror hang was only coupled with the car by the radioantenna cable, or the cable for the cameras in the wings. It was however a weird sight noticing that a first hand team like Williams committed such a funny error.

Williams did get the newspages in a good way though, because they were the fastest team that wasn't in need of brake saving during the race. It was quite remarkable that after the race, Raikkonen and both Ferrari drivers said their teams wanted them to save on the brakes to safely get to the finish. Ralf Schumacher on the other hand was easily able to follow his leading brother, while Montoya and Alonso were able to catch the leaders in the last part of the race.

Jordan's ideas

Although the Jordans are having a hard time to compete for some points this season, there are some special items to notice about their contender.

Image 1 shows how the body protection flap opens when the car enters the pit lane. It is interesting to see that the other teams have a flap that opens up upwards, while the EJ13 rotates the flap to uncover the fuel connector. It has apparently some advantages it the bodywork doesn't permit the flap to open high enough in the usual way, and it certainly improves visibility in that case.

Another details can be found at the rear wing endplate. The front side of it is bent around the rear wheel, to not pull the rotating air around the wheel into the rear wing. As a wheel is a rotating object, the air around is very unstable, and therefore hardly usable for generating downforce. It would only increase drag, but probably without any considerable other advantage.

Jordan must have thought after a couple of races that their car was kind of difficult in comparison to its performance on most of the circuits. They have introduced a new front section at the A1-ring. The front wing endplates changed in a way that they now look very much like those of Renault. Furthermore, as you can see on the comparing pictures (the left at Montreal, the right taken at Imola), the turning vanes have been simplified as well, now looking like a solid carbon plate, leaving out the horizontal elements that were placed on top of it.

Preparing the season's second half

McLaren showed up for the first time this season with a two-element front wing. Because the Montreal circuit requires relatively few front downforce, the third element was not needed. The newly designed wing has a larger second flap than usual, but the total surface is remarkably smaller than the usual one.

Ferrari on the other hand cut a little off the second layer of their barge board. The smallest plate has now become 5cm high panel that is not curved in a special way. It is likely that this simplification will allow the boards to be easier produced, and of course there is the (although very small) weight advantage this will come with.

Another, much more important change that Ferrari made is the change of dampers in the rear suspension. The rear suspension is since the A1-ring supplied with 2 Sachs Rotation Shocks, also known as SRS. These dampers do not catch wheel movement by linear movement, but rotate to damp the shocks. The new sacks shock absorbers are patented, and protected so that only Ferrari can use this system during this season. Although these dampers are not adjustable, Ferrari can choose between three types. The usual third damper that takes car of the vertical movement of the total car, connects the two SRS's, and is still a regular damper from Sachs. The complete package weighs in 110gram less than what was previously the case, and is smaller than any other composition, which allows more air to flow into the diffuser since that will increase the total downforce at the back of the car.

As explained in Monaco's GP update, rear wings have become a little more complex this year, although the regulations limit the wings to have 3 horizontal plates. More and more teams are adopting these shapes, but the first two to come with this idea were McLaren and Renault. the following image clearly shows how complex rear wing design is at the moment, with all elements being curved vertically and horizontally. The idea is to optimize downforce generated over the width of the rear wing, knowing that air flowing centrally over the wing will be a little turbulent as it passed the driver's helmet partially. Air passing the rear wing at the outer sides will be much more cleanly and thereby a lot more interesting to generate pressure on the rear wheels.

After a reintroduction of the 'old' front wing, Minardi brought their new Ferrari-like front wing to Montreal. The new wing seems to be working well on mid- to highspeed circuits, and may have helped Verstappen to be so close to the first championship point of Minardi this season. The inner winglets (painted black) just above the front wing panels and attached to the end plate, are an idea stolen from Williams, and further back in history from Prost GP. These winglets should help the front wing to generate downforce, and thereby not disturbing the airflow. It is possible that with these flaps, a more fluent airflow can be realised above the front wing planes, because the air can be 'prepared' before being quickly pushed up by the white "Muermans"-panel.