I think it's important to note that the pitstop nose twisting is a bit of a sideshow here. We've seen ample evidence of a bendy nose in the form of the Webber gif posted here and in still photos taken over the last couple of years. This is an area Red Bull are known to have explored. We're not seeing anything new; just more and more evidence of the same.
I'm going to toss it over to the dearly departed for a moment...
Ciro Pabón wrote:For large mechanical grip you need a soft suspension with big movements in the vertical plane.
However, you need to control the riding height of the front wing, which means you\'d wish hard springs.
There you have conflicting goals. What you would like is a suspension that stiffens under load (on a side note, the magnetic-rheological suspension could be used theoretically to achieve this).
When under large aerodynamic loads, the springs compress so much that you only have the tire sidewalls working as springs (and they are non-damped). The mass damper can help you amortiguate the load oscillations you get when running over a kerb or in the transitional phase of cornering. It is sort of a \"mechanical emergency patch\" for a car in which the riding height influences enormously the aerodynamic behaviour.
The following is a crude depiction of the device to which he referred. It was used by Renault from 2005 until it was somehow declared illegal in 2006.
The following is a (decent) demonstration of how dampers work.
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuCdZLQOrAw[/youtube]
Now look at the Webber gif, and what do you see?
Look at how stable the chassis remains as the car goes over the curb, even as the front and rear wings, as well as the mirrors, shake madly from the vibrations (which is common for all cars, though Red Bull's front wing obviously moves more than most). That chassis stability means consistent downforce from the floor/diffuser, which makes the car very stable under braking and through turns.
I'm convinced Red Bull uses its bendy nose and front wing like a mass damper.
Thoughts?
