A bafoon wrote:Looking at Williams, I'm not so sure they chose an optimum packaging choice, as far as aerodynamics are concerned. Yes, there's a huge undercut, almost a double floor and this is naturally advantegous. However, their sidepods are enormously wide compared to top teams. So, other than having a big lifting surface, they are letting all that air stay on top of them some way down stream. In a way, this reduces the curve on top side pod surface, reducing the pressure difference.
However, I like more (in this sense) what Sauber did - their side pods are also wide, but almost flat and keep going straight to the cooling outlets. FW41 allows the air to go down somewhere around Rexona logo, which speeds it up, thus decreasing pressure locally and as a consequence - up stream, i.e. on top of side pods.
RB14, W09, SF71-H, almost all other cars (and some distinctly more than others) have shrunk their side pods, made them drop very soon after inlets and thus have reduced the low pressure area massively - and this is what they do for years now. Don't get me wrong, I like to see different designs, especially if they work against all odds, but I'm not convinced this is an optimal solution. (If someone had a gun against my head, I'd say they couldn't change radiator design quickly enough or didn't want to do it for what ever reason, so they chose to control the damage with this side pod design.)
Scratch that, judged it on first photo I saw, talking out of my... :idiot: That is one mean son of a Lowe!