Coefficient wrote:ajprice wrote: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.