TEHNOS wrote: ↑30 Mar 2017, 18:14
Chene_Mostert wrote: ↑30 Mar 2017, 16:46
Yes, what's also interesting is that during the 2012 pre season there were speculation of Rory working on some kind of "thermal" floor...
Flew over 48 pages of F2012 speculation thread, to summarize:
heavy Byrne involvement
revolutionary reduced radiators size
tons of words of thermal floor and revolutionary diffusor with great seal
sidepods pushed back for lessend blockage
sidepod wings
and then F2012 appeared...
But it is indeed possible it took some time to mature, esp.sidepod wings, considering present complexity,being developed further as separate project, or was even taken from the shelf during past year reorganization,internal recruiting and renoved heavy Byrne involvment
Craig Slater mentions on the Sky F1 report that Ferrari say the 2017 car is not James Allison's concept - that he wanted to go in a different direction.
Now the response on the show was "well they would say that wouldn't they" - and that may well be valid - but consider the following:
- you fire your technical director shortly before a major regulation change
- if you were to continue down the direction he conceived, you're losing the person who best understands the concept and knows how best to develop it
- otherwise, it's too late to completely start from scratch, so you require a project that has reached a certain level of maturity
Those things in mind, it becomes even more plausible.
Here's a quick comparison I made between the concept from 2012 and the reality in 2017 - and let's bear mind that, contrary to suggestions made elsewhere on this forum by people who shall remain nameless, Piola did not pluck this out of thin air because he felt like it; he based the picture on information he had gleaned from sources at Ferrari:
The primary points I'm trying to highlight are:
- the relative similarity in shape of the structures in front of the sidepod (bearing in mind that in 2012 there was no regulation about a slanted front to the sidepod - in 2017 suddenly there came a regulation which encouraged this direction)
- the relationship between the front of the sidepod itself and the driver head restraints