A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
I don't see why you'd expect something radical compared to the other teams. If they were the only team using CFD then maybe. But they're just a team using CFD only.
gridwalker wrote:
Not really : I had just hoped that Nick Wirth's "revolutionary" way of designing a formula one car would result in a more distinctive piece of machinery ... the only words that I can find to use for this car are "non descript"
Seconded.
I'd hoped that the 'all CFD' approach would result in something more radical than what they've shown with the VR-1 and VR-2. Very little exciting here.
I'm glad to see the cars this year are reasonably distinctive and show some interesting design approaches: McLaren's sidepods, William's rear end, Mercedes platypus nose, Toro Rosso's undercut double floor sidepod thingy (technical term that, I'm patenting it) and Redbull's amazing, dissapearing bodywork.
This is just "some car". Its the cheddar cheese of the F1 launches so far (looking at you HRT). If it were a colour, it would be beige.
Aero is aero from cfd or a windtunnel. CFD gives you numbers and helps you visualize what the flow is doing, but it can't design a car for you. That's all down to human's ideas. They would've built the same car if they used a tunnel or CFD(assuming both are accurate and give the same numbers). Virgin probably can't afford to work the bugs out of something too radical.
“To be able to actually make something is awfully nice”
Bruce McLaren on building his first McLaren racecars, 1970
“I've got to be careful what I say, but possibly to probably Juan would have had a bigger go”
Sir Frank Williams after the 2003 Canadian GP, where Ralf hesitated to pass brother M. Schumacher
LoudHoward wrote:I don't see why you'd expect something radical compared to the other teams. If they were the only team using CFD then maybe. But they're just a team using CFD only.
Virgin do use Windtunnels to test the car, just not as much as other teams. I just can't find where Nick Wirth said it, but he did. Something like they test the final model in the tunnel to see if it correlates, then the do the season development in CFD...
Nick wirth said they have decided to validate their CFD in realworld track evalution this year and have geared up considerably to enable themselves to exttract the necessary detail with enhanced measuring precision and even more sophisticated methodology.
I´m not entirely sure but I think he went as far as not doing any straightline /costdown testing as well...