Lotus E21 Renault

[kilcoo316]

There is some seriously nice detailing on that car.


The detail definitely does indicate - without a good tunnel that is well calibrated - your screwed.

[Maynard G. Krebs]

That picture gives it a bit of steampunk flavor.

[godlameroso]

If you're dumping cold intake air through that duct, and blowing radiator exhaust underneath the beam wing you could get a boost of downforce, it would compound whatever you're doing with the exhausts and main rear wing. It would certainly help to mitigate the fact that the chassis is blocking the beam wing. Clearly it won't be quite as effective as a free stream of air, but in F1 every advantage helps. Remember in chassis aero is practically unrestricted, and while not in itself capable of generating a second advantage it is an area of development where gains could be made. To be honest the step up from last year comes from the chassis not the wings, it's not just how the car interacts with the airstream outside, but in addition how the airstream interacts with the internal components.

Lotus was almost instantly successful with the Coanda exhausts because of their 2011 front facing exhausts, they know how to aim vortecies very well, this conceptual know-how allowed them to devote more resources to this relatively unregulated area, along with break ducts.

Fortunately Lotus is not the only team that has realized this or it would be a very boring championship.

[Ferraripilot]

Lotus are missing something all other top teams have, and that is a suspension arm integrated covered driveshaft. I'm wondering how much of an effect having the magnus effect still in place will be evident on this Lotus which certainly appears to be an otherwise great car, on paper so far anyway.

[RB7ate9]

Looks like they finally added the lower pipe of the DRD.

http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.ph ... u=14795526

It seems like the DRD piping coincides with a larger DRS Actuator Housing. It also looks like there's some small openings on the side of the actuator housing. Would there be any benefit to blowing the top-side of an open-DRS rear wing?

[Forza]

F1 testing - BCN T03- Day 1

[Blackout]

Lotus are missing something all other top teams have, and that is a suspension arm integrated covered driveshaft. I'm wondering how much of an effect having the magnus effect still in place will be evident on this Lotus which certainly appears to be an otherwise great car, on paper so far anyway.

E21's lower rear wishbone and the transmission rod are on the same plane but they are not close to each other. And the track rod is lower. Can they move them (wishbone and/or trackrod) in order to cover them with the transmission rod?

Pic also shows that they tested different rear wheel winglet sizes/shapes

[raymondu999]

Lotus are missing something all other top teams have, and that is a suspension arm integrated covered driveshaft. I'm wondering how much of an effect having the magnus effect still in place will be evident on this Lotus which certainly appears to be an otherwise great car, on paper so far anyway.

I never noticed that. I wonder if perhaps the fact that the Lotus is using a ramped exhaust a la Red Bull has to do with that - because then most of the air coming into contact with the open driveshaft is just the exhaust gases.

The counterargument, of course, is that the Red Bull does have these covered driveshafts to ease the Magnus effect. But we have to consider that the Lotus ramps terminate at the floor's trailing edge itself, whereas the Red Bull's ramp terminates well before that - there is still some coke bottle effect going on in the Red Bull, whilst the Lotus version seems to want to completely isolate the exhaust flow far away from sidepod airflow.

[Donuts]

It appears that Lotus has a rear wing airflow problem. This became apparent at the last test when, in the wet, the team detected that the direction of the airflow on the endplates was actually in reverse of how it was supposed to travel.

A camera was quickly fitted to look at the problem and more test time was dedicated to resolving the issue today. It appears the problem is at low speed and unrelated to the Drag Reduction device (DRD).

For the first time we have also seen the Lotus DRD inlets opened up - up until now these have been fitted with rounded covers. There's now the expectation that the team will devote some running later in the week to testing the device.

As the wet weather broke, Lotus needed to cover the inlets and used clear 'helicopter' tape, so despite appearances the inlets were covered for much of the day.

[raymondu999]

It appears that Lotus has a rear wing airflow problem. This became apparent at the last test when, in the wet, the team detected that the direction of the airflow on the endplates was actually in reverse of how it was supposed to travel.

A camera was quickly fitted to look at the problem and more test time was dedicated to resolving the issue today. It appears the problem is at low speed and unrelated to the Drag Reduction device (DRD).

For the first time we have also seen the Lotus DRD inlets opened up - up until now these have been fitted with rounded covers. There's now the expectation that the team will devote some running later in the week to testing the device.

As the wet weather broke, Lotus needed to cover the inlets and used clear 'helicopter' tape, so despite appearances the inlets were covered for much of the day.

I would've thought it was common courtesy to quote your source, especially considering that it's a commercially-available article rather than a free article: http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... melbourne/

[Donuts]

It appears that Lotus has a rear wing airflow problem. This became apparent at the last test when, in the wet, the team detected that the direction of the airflow on the endplates was actually in reverse of how it was supposed to travel.

A camera was quickly fitted to look at the problem and more test time was dedicated to resolving the issue today. It appears the problem is at low speed and unrelated to the Drag Reduction device (DRD).

For the first time we have also seen the Lotus DRD inlets opened up - up until now these have been fitted with rounded covers. There's now the expectation that the team will devote some running later in the week to testing the device.

As the wet weather broke, Lotus needed to cover the inlets and used clear 'helicopter' tape, so despite appearances the inlets were covered for much of the day.

I would've thought it was common courtesy to quote your source, especially considering that it's a commercially-available article rather than a free article: http://plus.autosport.com/premium/featu ... melbourne/

Now you've brought their team of copywrite lawyers down on us.

[beelsebob]

Now you've brought their team of copywrite lawyers down on us.

No, the person pasting the illegally copied quote has

[raymondu999]

Now you've brought their team of copywrite lawyers down on us.

Are you condoning the piracy and free distribution of their work, then?

EDIT: To clarify - I have no beef with the copy-pasting of paid Autosport material here. I do that in excerpts as well. But I always cite my source.

[bhall]

I do [not know why I just involved myself in any capacity here. I'm not well.]

[stefan_]

Barcelona (Test 3, Session 2) - Day 2 (01.03.2013)























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