Miguel wrote:spaman wrote:ok - probably I was wrong, sry
Sorry? For what? I'm grateful for that video. You put a link of a video that shows a terrific difference between Rosberg in the FW31 and Alonso in the R29 in the last turn. I mean, Alonso is late-apexing
a lot. So it could be that the R29 has a good front end plus low polar inertia, and Alonso prefers to sacrifice some speed in the turn in order to get sooner to the throttle. It also seems to me that the line difference between Hamilton and Alonso in the chicane is much smaller, and the same applies to the fast section near the end of the video.
Question: this year's cars have less downforce but similar drag and power. Could it be that, as turn speed is reduced, late-apexing becomes much more favourable than it used to be with "high downforce" cars?
Your statement is pretty interesting considering the R29s design. Compared to the other 2009 spec cars the R29s front end is - as everybody knows - totally differnt.
What I was thinking is:
The nose cone has on the very front end two steps. This could possibly force the air at high speeds not to "hit" the second, lower step. This would lead to less drag. This in addition to the very simple front wing could be a big advantage at higher speeds.
On the other hand the ground / vacuum effect of the tunnel would be more effective at lower speeds like in fast curves and corners. Additionally the side skirts could stabelize the airflow which couldn´t be achieved by using a high downforce frontwing (at least not in the same way).
I am sorry for my rather bad english. But I am trying hard.
EDIT: Somewhere else someone pointed out, that the frontwing element which also leads some air in between the wheel and nose could cause a high pressure area, which additionaly stabelizes the air between the side skirts. I thought this was interesting.