Lotus E23 Mercedes

[stefan_]

All the respect for the Lotus mechanics who built up the car overnight so it can run today.

[zioture]

[desl]

[FW17]

That car looks class.

Would look even better if they shrink the logos a bit

[Thunder]

Really good looking Car.

[Marc.W]

Really good looking Car.

Agreed, good to see they seem to have ditched the asymmetrical crap, still trying to use the rear of the engine cover as a beam wing it seems.

The only other team to go the same route as Mercedes in nose design

[erlik]

Really good looking Car.

Yeah, it looks really great. This is how formula cars should look like. Hope it runs also well.

[SectorOne]

[stefan_]

2015 Winter testing | Session 1, Day 2 - Jerez de la Frontera, Spain (02.02.2015)

[matt_s]

What are they doing with the bodywork at the back? The cooling exits are pointing right out along the inside of the endplates.

[roadie]

They are like cooling bazookas with the suspension arms emerging from them.

[i70q7m7ghw]

What are they doing with the bodywork at the back? The cooling exits are pointing right out along the inside of the endplates.

They seem to have made a lot more provision for cooling than other teams, the sidepod intakes are bigger than most, and there's a fairly big intake under the roll hoop. All of that air has to exit somewhere.

Perhaps they have just been cautious with the packaging, and they intend to tighten it up as the optimise the cooling solution?

The nose is impressive though if you believe what other teams said about passing the crash test.

[FrukostScones]

[matt_s]

It's not that it couldn't be tighter though. They have a very tight coke bottle on the undercut, and the 'pipes' appear nearly detached from the central bodywork at the end so it appears that they have intentionally chosen to run them wider like that.

It certainly seems odd that they would run the airflow along the inside of the endplate strakes like that. I wonder if it's incidental that they point out there, and it's more do do with unblocking the airflow along the centre of the car down to the top of the diffuser?

[fawe4]

What are they doing with the bodywork at the back? The cooling exits are pointing right out along the inside of the endplates.

I very much doubt it's just to direct air over the body work, I'm more inclined into thinking that they are trying to blow some hot air through cooling outlets and direct it.

I speculated for some time, that teams try to move some extra air through those long cooling outlets. And while others try to direct them over the diffuser, Lotus seem to be directing it higher. They could even be using air from those extra airboxes. It's certainly peculiar that they retained them going with different engine manufacturer. An interesting point is also, that Mclaren with MP-29 had a weird high cooling outlets last year. It was right over that mushroom suspension, and now without mushrooms, they are lower over the diffuser, as with the rest of the field.