Team: Pat Fry (TD), Nikolas Tombazis (CD), Stefano Domenicali (MD), Simone Resta (DTD), Corrado Lanzone (Head of production) Drivers: Fernando Alonso (3), Felipe Massa (4)
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.
"...and there, very much in flames, is Jacques Laffite's Ligier. That's obviously a turbo blaze, and of course, Laffite will be able to see that conflagration in his mirrors... he is coolly parking the car somewhere safe."Murray Walker, San Marino 1985
that's because there is NONE...the only thing i can see is the strakes on the nosecone..
hopefully more VISIBLE updates will show up either tomorrow or on the weekend...saturday and sunday
The nose strakes remind me of the "chines" on the fuselage of the SR-71 Blackbird, so I believe they have been applied to gain a similar (if inverted) effect :
Wikipedia wrote:The SR-71 featured chines, a pair of sharp edges leading aft from either side of the nose along the fuselage.
*snip*
Aerodynamicists discovered that the chines generated powerful vortices and created additional lift, leading to unexpected aerodynamic performance improvements.[37] The angle of incidence of the delta wings could then be reduced for greater stability and less drag at high speeds; more weight, such as fuel, could be carried to increase range.
Last edited by stefan_ on 28 Feb 2013, 20:43, edited 3 times in total.
"...and there, very much in flames, is Jacques Laffite's Ligier. That's obviously a turbo blaze, and of course, Laffite will be able to see that conflagration in his mirrors... he is coolly parking the car somewhere safe."Murray Walker, San Marino 1985
Gary Anderson on the BBC said when Massa stopped that he was looking at the front of the car. When the stewards where trying to put it on the truck. So maybe it wasn't the petrol the reason why Massa stopped. Maybe it was the front wing
The picture showing massa's car form the top, published above, is very interesting, as Scarbs on his twitter pointed out, because of the 3 gray dirt traces on top of the sidepods.
Some thoughts about them:
- is it my impression, ot those dark lines seem to start each from a bodywork panel junction line?
-the dust should be accumulated on lines because of the action of vortices: for the inside lines it should be the vortex generated by the small winglets on the sides of the chassis, for the outer line which is just visible on the lhd sidepod it should be the vortex from the ouside bargeboards of the sidepod mixing with the vortex generated by the indentation of the sidepod upper leading edge
-the deviation of the streakline -dustline to the outside towards the exhaust shows probably the combined effect of the bockage from the central part of the car (high pressure from the top of the beam wing also) and the entrainment of the fast exhausts pulling the upstream. If so, I did not expect this effect to be so strong - maybe it is something else.
Edit. also from the same picture it seems that ferrari are running a unique shape of floor -rear wheel strake: oblique instead of aligned with the longitudinal axis as most other teams, but with an oriented and rounded leading edge. What's going on?