Vodafone McLaren MP4-27 Mercedes

[Schulteiss]

Here is a picture of the MP4-27 exhaust position relative to the Regs.


Thanks Khan_F1 for the heads up.

Could teams employ a moveable exhaust which would enable them to point the exhaust gases at different places at different speeds? There has to be a reason for that bulge.

no

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Here is a picture of the MP4-27 exhaust position relative to the Regs.


Thanks Khan_F1 for the heads up.

Could teams employ a moveable exhaust which would enable them to point the exhaust gases at different places at different speeds? There has to be a reason for that bulge.

No that's not legal.

Edit: oops I see the question has already been answered.

[kalinka]

Scarbs said yesterday in The Flying Lap, that when he "inspected" the exhaust position , he saw that the exhaust is pointed inward-up, so he thinks that they are aiming the underside of the rear wing with it. Later Paddy Lowe or Tim Goss (can't remember) said in the interview that obviously they are about to experiment with that position in testing. So it's pretty sure that the exhaust is currently aimed at RW, but it could be just a bait for other teams, and they already know it wouldn't work that way...

My favorite detail on the car is the curved rear edge of the RW endplate, where they placed that gills. It looks much more integrated now. Almost beautiful

[volarchico]

Here is a picture of the MP4-27 exhaust position relative to the Regs.

Shouldn't the origin of those angles be at the exhaust exit? I thought the exhaust exit was in the pod that's bulging out of the side...?

[Owen.C93]

Here is a picture of the MP4-27 exhaust position relative to the Regs.

Shouldn't the origin of those angles be at the exhaust exit? I thought the exhaust exit was in the pod that's bulging out of the side...?

The last 100mm has to be straight so I guess from there is where it's measured.

[King Six]

I'm still trying to work out how they got it within the rules with a smooth nose



All I can think of is that their 275mm section starts lower than the drawing, making the underside of the nose lower (maybe allowing them to make that extended tea tray up to the front wing. So the top surface is the gentle curve from cockpit to nose tip. The Caterham is more like the drawing, with a straight line from the cockpit, a step down and a straight line to the nose tip.

Do the rules state that the top of the 275mm section has to be the same height as the cockpit, or just that that section of the car has to be 275mm deep?

It is not mandatory to keep the top of the tub at 625mm, it is optional. Mclaren have blended the top surface of the tub with the new mandatory height of the nose cone.

The initial revision of the rules stated that the top of the tub also had to be lowered but some of the less wealthy teams who wanted to recycle their tubs complained so the rule revision was made to make last years tubs compatible with this years nose.

I might be hopelessly wrong, but I've gathered that the bulkhead can be lowered as long as the 275mm cross sectional height is maintained, this is why teams aren't lowering the bulkhead from 625mm because if they do that and maintain the 275, that creates less space underneath, as this crude drawing shows:



The shaded grey area would represent what a team would 'lose' by going for some form of humpless nose.

edit: But that would contravene the yellow shaded area which states no bodywork. Hmm, I don't know, unless I just got the scaling wrong as I didn't really spend any time on this.

[Raptor22]

There is two tactics to follow with front end air flow.

The traditional way is over the tub, using the front of the tub to force air up and over the car via a low nose OR,(usually higher drag)

get air down to the bottom of the car where it meets Mr Splitter and it flows under and around. (usually less drag)

McLAren have for the past 3 years opted for a compromise between the two, seeing the benefits of both. The Under Nose Splitter forces air upward and over the sidepods of the car while the nose is still high enough to get some air to the splitter and around the car.

Red Bull has opted for the latter tactic.

Teams that opt for the Redbull style are going to end up with the Gator look.

Teams that opt for a compromise will look more McLaren esque

[PhillipM]

Exhaust looks more like it's there (well, at the minute) to help reduce the drag over the rear tyres and perhaps interact with the top edge of the endplates?

[Morteza]

Scarbs' launch analysis of MP4-27:
http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/02/0 ... es-mp4-27/

[horse]

how much "blowing" effect is there really. By the time the exhaust stream gets to the wing its lost energy and is less dense than cooler air.

Blowing the rear wing just seems a little far fetched for me. OK, if you don't consider the external airflow then it's easy to align the exhausts to the wing. Put the external airflow back and it will be all over the place depending on the speed of the car. I guess that there might be a sweet spot, but, when balance is king, why would you want a short, unpredictable, window of extra downforce on the tail?

[MIKEY_!]

I seem to recall shelly talking about blowing the RW endplate vortex a while back, I could be wrong. Anyone remember what the idea was?

[ringo]

Why all the talk on vortex? Vortex aren't necessarily good things to have on the car.
They are probably blowing the inside corner of the wing.

[JimiJams]

[ced381]

Maybe it's been said before, but where are the sponsors? Aigo, Johnny Walker, etc?

EDIT: I just noticed Johnny Walker on the mirrors.. Sorry about that.

[Just_a_fan]

Why all the talk on vortex? Vortex aren't necessarily good things to have on the car.
They are probably blowing the inside corner of the wing.

Some vortices are good, some are bad. The cars have vortez generators on them in various places. And the teams also work hard to avoid vortices in other places.

They're either using the exhaust to improve flow conditions to the rear end (wing or rear floor) or they're using it to influence mass flow to one of those areas. As we don't know the final design of the exhaust we can't know what/how they're doing it.