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 see; you're saying the cleanup "strakes" are asymmetric? If you watched the vid though Fans were just snapping bits off the car whenever/wherever they could; so that could be it?
I agree with wesley: the fins are symmetrical. Maybe kalinka you hve been misleaded by the fact that the floor is stepped.
The plank (light brown color) is at the same longitudinal station as the kink line, but is 50+10mm lower: that should help you put things in perspective.
I'm (almost) sure that the fins had to be symmetrical, I just can't explain what I see here. If you look at the yellow lines that I draw, it seems that those fins are clearly assymetrical. Maybe it's an optical illusion, but if you hide out the stepped floor with your hand, or with a piece of paper, you seee the same shape. It's not the cause of the illusion. The edges of the fins are too smooth, so I doubt their shape is due to damage. It's visible on marekk's second picture too.
The nearside strakes are curving toward the camera so it is hard to detect the curvature, hence they appear straight. The far strakes are curving away so it is easy to see the curvature.
It is also complicated by the central section tapering on plan. All those surfaces in front of the kink line are flat (ie parallel to ground) but look curved. So when you get to the central part of the diffuser, it could be a flat plate with curved edges, or a curved plate with straight edges, or somewhere between the two. Its impossible to tell.
Last edited by Richard on 22 Sep 2011, 15:41, edited 1 time in total.
Yeah, I see it now. It's because the fin that is closer to the viewer curves towards the viewer and the far side fin curves outward, so that's the illusion I saw. It's like all optical illusions : when you figure it out you can't see it like before...
Probably is a super optical illusion. I remember the MP4-25 thread last year had 10 or 20 pages discussing what seemed to be 1 side of the FW having a higher AoA than the other
raymondu999 wrote:Probably is a super optical illusion. I remember the MP4-25 thread last year had 10 or 20 pages discussing what seemed to be 1 side of the FW having a higher AoA than the other
Crazy part is that was actually this year, wasn't it? The MP4-26 thread... How time flies when you're having fun!
the floor is very simple.
Just 1 or 2 things i notice with it that may be an advantage.
It's the 2 big strakes. I'm not sure why they are curved like this at the front.
This puts greater bias to the outer part which is blown. Their shape benefit the blown outer part.
They debuted that at Monza actually. What I find interesting is that Vettel has the r-shaped second cascade, but look closely at the photo of Mark there; it almost seems like he's testing a cascade similar to what the RB5 had (the extra long blade-shaped cascade)