2011 Testing - Jerez - 10th to 13th Feb

[feynman]

The RB has a higher ride height in those pics. I'd be worried if I was the other teams if the RB is quick with ride height reduction to spare...

The Red Bull is photographed a little larger, slightly different angle, needs scaled down to match (matched on rear wheel and nut), it's also on a slightly different line/piece of track (exposing more blue kerb, helping to trick the eye)



Assuming the shadow lengths (time of day) are roughly identical, then the car may be a tiny, tiny bit higher at rear, but not anywhere as much as it first looked ... and we don't know the speed, weight or downforce, making the whole exercise kinda pointless, but fun pointless.

[vall]

it is still too early to make conclusion but do you think Virgin and Lotus are closing the gap to the mid-field? It seems to me they have made a good step forward.

[myurr]

it is still too early to make conclusion but do you think Virgin and Lotus are closing the gap to the mid-field? It seems to me they have made a good step forward.

It's way too early to tell but they definitely look like they've upped their game. Lotus in particular I would say. I think Virgin are still a couple of seconds off the pace, but that's a lot better than the 4 seconds or more it was last season.

[Paul]

Here I also tried to scale the McLaren & Red Bull by rear wheel:

[myurr]

Here I also tried to scale the McLaren & Red Bull by rear wheel:

Can definitely see that the Red Bull is a longer car. The Ferrari is shorter still, with the Mercedes the shortest car on the grid.

I did a comparison shot in another thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9503

[feynman]

Not as short as this, the Short-Wheelbase MP4-26, Loews Special Edition:

[andrew]

Looks better than what they've been testing. I take it that is the B-spec version?

[PlatinumZealot]

Should be tops at monaco.

[feynman]

Should be tops at monaco.

If you jack it up cartoon go-faster style, and bolt some low-profiles on, you really get quite a sporty little number



.... I reckon @IAmLewis4Real would bite your arm off for a set of those rims.

Anyway, enough off-topic ... but still, I gotta say more fun than reading people fret and squabble about utterly, utterly irrelevant test-times. People plotting stints with zero context or knowledge of test regime, makes the pre-season drag for me ... it's testing, all we can realistically do is watch all the pretty cars go vroom-vrooom, till we finally get to Q1 Bahrain.

[Poleman]

Took me some time but fixed the perspective of the McLaren to fit with the RB coz they were slighly off and also fixed the sizes.From this comparison Button seems to sit quite lower than Vettel.The cars themselves seem to have half a rim length difference and in this particular photo RB7 sits just slightly higher than the 26 but that can be from fuel load,downforce level at the time,suspension setup e.t.c.
What i noticed though is McLaren's different approach to the whole cockpit box and nose than most of the other teams.Compared to RB is much lower especially the upper part of the cockpit.

[myurr]

Not sure you've aligned those quite right. The Red Bull is the slightly longer car, not the other way round, and most of this length is in the back half of the car...

[Poleman]

Not sure you've aligned those quite right. The Red Bull is the slightly longer car, not the other way round, and most of this length is in the back half of the car...

They are aligned by rear wheel in equal size.Also i highly doubt that the RB7 is longer than the MP4-26 All images so far show the Macca longer,maybe anyone have more info on this than the obvious?

[feynman]

myurr, some of your scalings are out just a little (although with all the different angles/perspective/handheld long lens shots, it's hard to say anything for sure).

It took a 94% shrink on the Red Bull in your other thread to make the rear rims match better (green lines) ... resulting in a longer McLaren:



You can also see from the visible Red Bull right-front, how different the photo angles are between cars, so it's all guesswork either way.

[Paul]

I tried again to match tyres, this time with bigger zoom, but it still gets too blurry to match them perfectly. This time it came out much closer, but Red Bull is still shorter, albeit marginally:



Just shows the margin of error. I wish I found high-res versions of these photos...

[Poleman]

You cant get the front tires to match the size coz the 2 photos are in a different perspective and u need to work the image of the Macca to match the RB...Mine isnt perfect either in fact now i see that its a bit wrong but gives an idea.Definately 26 is longer but i agree thats all guesswork keeping us busy.