Front engine F1 and impact absorbing structure

[CAEdevice]

I am sure that there have been many issues back in the 60/70/80's of fires caused by the fuel tank being located to close to the driver.

Not exactly: they put the fuel tank(s) on the sidepods, outside the surviving cell (or what we could consider the equivalent of a modern surviving cell).

http://motorsportrants.files.wordpress. ... 2_t2_2.jpg

In this case you can imagine to raise 100mm up the seat of this old Sauber, to make room to the fuel thank and move its baricenter forward:

http://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/gall ... ul/015.jpg

[thepowerofnone]

A couple of points of note here:

1) this entire argument seems to be based on the assumption of frontal impact; not only at they not the only direction from which one can have a crash, they are really relatively safe right now. BIA aside, but extra distance likely doesn't help a lot here and if you saw his crash I'm not sure an extra 750mm would have helped him much. Think WEB in Valencia or MAS in Monaco, frontal impacts are really well managed by existing crash structures.

2) aerodynamically, this layout is worse; mechanically, this layout is also worse. Poorer management of flows and higher CG, also harder to balance. Also the weight is all in the wrong place for RWD.

3) the drivers already can't see their front wings, after this change do they have any chance of not hitting the car in front when overtaking?

4) if the engine is rigidly mounted, as it should be given its immense mass/momentum, there isn't a difference between crumpling into it in a frontal impact, and it crumpling into the driver from behind.

[CAEdevice]

1) this entire argument seems to be based on the assumption of frontal impact; not only at they not the only direction from which one can have a crash, they are really relatively safe right now. BIA aside, but extra distance likely doesn't help a lot here and if you saw his crash I'm not sure an extra 750mm would have helped him much. Think WEB in Valencia or MAS in Monaco, frontal impacts are really well managed by existing crash structures.

A side impact would be less dangerous thanks to the bigger (longer) sidepods.

2) aerodynamically, this layout is worse; mechanically, this layout is also worse. Poorer management of flows and higher CG, also harder to balance. Also the weight is all in the wrong place for RWD.

I've done a CFD test and total downforce has beeen reduced of about 20%, but consider that the car shape has not been optimized (and was desineg for a conventional engine position during KVRV 2014).

3) the drivers already can't see their front wings, after this change do they have any chance of not hitting the car in front when overtaking?

The driver has about the same point of view beacuse the seat has not only been moved behind, but also raised of 100mm.
I don't think that now the driver havs a complete visibility of the front wing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBbPGQ3Bpug ). What we see on TV is the point of view of a camera that is place about 200mm above the helmet.

4) if the engine is rigidly mounted, as it should be given its immense mass/momentum, there isn't a difference between crumpling into it in a frontal impact, and it crumpling into the driver from behind.

The engine is not rigidly mounted (see the previous page).
Anyway (joking): if you were riding a bicycle with an elephant and you had a frontal impact, would you prefer to have the elephant sitting on the handlebar or at you back?