ringo wrote: ↑28 Feb 2022, 01:55
The car is fine. They are on the right track. The smaller the body of the car the better it is.
Ferrari is doing the opposite, but they are an exception because those sidepods are basically a big wing profile creating downforce. But I suspect this will come at a cost to drag and transient behavior.
Mercedes are okay. I don't see any dead end path for them, and having that slim car with that engine will still leave them as the fastest in a straight line. With the weight of these cars, theyre all going to be more or less the same in the corners; more weight for a little more downforce with lots of inertia. It's the straight line where the differentiator will be.
Actually if anything Mercedes is now the exception in retaining a “smaller is better” sidepod philosophy. Every other car, with the exception of the Williams, is now running larger sidepods than last year and significantly so for Ferrari, Aston Martin, Red Bull and Alfa.
The CFD analysis done on this forum seems to indicate that, as a baseline (I’m not talking about specific cars but the baseline small sidepod vs “dipped”) the small sidepod philosophy is actually higher drag. Is it a coincidence that Mercedes are said to be targeting lower drag with new sidepods fot Bahrain?
https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/merce ... n/8512038/