Ferrari F2012

[radosav]

i watched race again yesterday. first 25 laps race pace of F2012 wasn't so bad. F2012 was faster on medium tyres than mercedes on softs. on lap 20 hamilton with free track wasn't much ahead of alonso behind vettel and rosberg.

I think the Ferrari is relatively good with lots of fuel on board but it struggles a lot in low fuel/qualifying trim. Alonso lost a lot amount of time to the leading four cars in the final 15 laps of the Australian race.

I also agree with your assessment that the Ferrari is probably faster than the Mercedes right now. The issue will be that the Merc is so much faster in qualifying trim and therefore will be significantly up the road at the early parts of the races, when the Ferrari is the strongest. Alonso needs to make amazing starts to have a chance of mixing it up with the Mercedes right now.

Hopefully they bring some sort of revised package to Shanghai.

i must say that their advantage to the rest of the field are fastest pitstops and fast first lap after the pitstop. that is how alonso left rosberg and webber behind him after first pit stops. i can't wait to see how will ferrari behave with tyres and how long tyres will hold the grip in sepang.

[xpensive]

The shape of that nose is beginning to annoy me, has that goulish thing ever seen the inside of a windtunnel in search for less resistance, it looks more like it was penciled to make sure the entire car would be travelling through turbulence at speed?

[Agasthya]

i watched race again yesterday. first 25 laps race pace of F2012 wasn't so bad. F2012 was faster on medium tyres than mercedes on softs. on lap 20 hamilton with free track wasn't much ahead of alonso behind vettel and rosberg.

I think the Ferrari is relatively good with lots of fuel on board but it struggles a lot in low fuel/qualifying trim. Alonso lost a lot amount of time to the leading four cars in the final 15 laps of the Australian race.

I also agree with your assessment that the Ferrari is probably faster than the Mercedes right now. The issue will be that the Merc is so much faster in qualifying trim and therefore will be significantly up the road at the early parts of the races, when the Ferrari is the strongest. Alonso needs to make amazing starts to have a chance of mixing it up with the Mercedes right now.

Hopefully they bring some sort of revised package to Shanghai.

i must say that their advantage to the rest of the field are fastest pitstops and fast first lap after the pitstop. that is how alonso left rosberg and webber behind him after first pit stops. i can't wait to see how will ferrari behave with tyres and how long tyres will hold the grip in sepang.

Pirelli are bringing the hard and medium tire to Malaysia so it should be okay for Ferrari (I hope)

[timbo]

Heavier car = less pitch change on corner exit.

How so?

[David1976]

Gills



RW detail


driver cooling




Turning vanes


Exhaust


Steering wheel

Is it me or does this year's F1 Ferrari have the fit and finish of an old '80's FIAT?

[PhillipM]

It appears to have, hell, the Mclaren and Redbull look like they're from a different series in terms of fit + finish.

[CmdrVOODOO]

It appears to have, hell, the Mclaren and Redbull look like they're from a different series in terms of fit + finish.

It looks like something I could do at my house.

My thought is the fit and finish is so bad because they're just doing some patch work on this car to get it through until they roll out the new version in a few weeks. If they're talking about having to do a crash test, I don't see them spending a lot of time with fit and finish because it's all a short-term solution.

[Marc.W]

The F2012 looks like it's been put together by a 5 year old with some pritt stick!

[Vanja #66]

OK, guys, seriously now... Reason for new parts looking badly manufactured is because they were built in a hurry and with less personnel, since most of them are busy with development for Barcelona... What did you expect, they said 3 days ago that there aren't going to be any new parts, and here we see some small high temperature-adjusting ones.

[MBilcke]

OK, guys, seriously now... Reason for new parts looking badly manufactured is because they were built in a hurry and with less personnel, since most of them are busy with development for Barcelona... What did you expect, they said 3 days ago that there aren't going to be any new parts, and here we see some small high temperature-adjusting ones.

That has to be an extreem hurry then, I can cut a wooden plank more flat and smooth than that snorkle or those gills, or are they recycling last years parts?

[Vanja #66]

That has to be an extreem hurry then, I can cut a wooden plank more flat and smooth than that snorkle or those gills, or are they recycling last years parts?

Cant comment on your wood-working skills, but the idea is interesting... Wont cost them too much track time, but would save some resources and development time. Painful damage reduction...

[Crucial_Xtreme]

More pics from today. Right click>view image

[myurr]

That has to be an extreem hurry then, I can cut a wooden plank more flat and smooth than that snorkle or those gills, or are they recycling last years parts?

Cant comment on your wood-working skills, but the idea is interesting... Wont cost them too much track time, but would save some resources and development time. Painful damage reduction...

When we're talking about the majority of the field being within 1 to 2 percent of each other then this kind of fit and finish may be a big deal. It's not just that the panel gaps and poorly fitting aero devices cause a bit of turbulence and friction because of the shoddy build quality, you also have to factor in that the aero parts on the car are not positioned exactly where they should be. Lots of tiny errors can compound into a big aero problem in a system where so many complex parts are designed to interact precisely with each other. This is, after all, why the Acer ducts are still there. Simply chopping them off would require down stream aero changes and changes to the internal aero and cooling system, so it's better to leave them in place until a full solution can be worked out even though the exhausts have been moved.

Now that may not be too much of a problem if your aero is already misbehaving and is not correlating with the wind tunnel. But this certainly isn't going to help with correlation.

[Th0R]

...
Now that may not be too much of a problem if your aero is already misbehaving and is not correlating with the wind tunnel. But this certainly isn't going to help with correlation.

Since the wind tunnel models may be manufactured by the same people, there could be the same gaps and bad finishs in the models. Therefore, correlation might not be a problem

[Jersey Tom]

I think the problem is in aerodynamic/pitch sensitivity. The car go better with full load of fuel. Heavier car = less pitch change on corner exit. If the problem is in the front suspension imho shouldn't the car go better with less weight ?

For as long as pitch sensitivity and porpoising have been known to be massively detrimental to aero cars, it would surprise me to be caught out like that. Would show up pretty blatantly in an aero map, no?

I still thing there were a number of cars caught out with crap handling at Albert Park. It's one thing to be slow because you no longer have quite as much downforce with a blown diffuser, but for the balance and handling to be unpredictable on multiple cars makes me wonder about tires.

But hey, who knows. Probably a combination of things. We'll see in Malaysia.