A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
- new nose
- turning vanes on top of sidepod cooling inlets
- fw endplates cut out on the end and they now bend outwards
- much tighter engine cover
- refined cooling outlets
As expected... My guess is that this upgrade alone brings the car up to the ferrari performance wise. Let's see if ferrari also has an upgrade this week.
I thought last weeks sidepods (and the redbull pods) were insane, but this... Wow.
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It amazes me that they go to the effort of building a front wing, body work etc just for one 4-day test knowing that they have this package sat in the factory. None of that was done over the weekend in response to the "doom and gloom" of the first test, that's for sure.
The front wing alone is an entirely new item. They can't just stick new endplates on the old wing as the flaps are now longer. Also, notice that the outboard end of the wing is now lower - the top flap is below the notch in the endplate and so is significantly lower than on the "test 1 wing". So the flaps are differently shaped too. The money invested in that "test 1 wing" for just 4 days of running. That's F1 in a nutshell, right there!
The way the cape intersects with the nose is interesting. Presumably that's going to increase any vortices produced to help further back along the car. New bargeboards and turning vanes in front of, and to the sides of, the sidepod entry. Quite a few changes there.
The sidepods are tighter and reminiscent of the previous design but more so.
Addenda on the floor edge to increase the "sealing effect" of the vortices that are generated by the turning vanes and bargeboards further forward. Perhaps they're going to try to run a bit more rake or perhaps they're just fine tuing the floor sealing from the front tyre wake.
This is a really big package and I would say that it's the W10 A spec., where last week we saw the W10 Beta. No way this is a W10 B spec.
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