Lotus E23 Mercedes

[PlatinumZealot]

The wall of high pressure in front of the wheels will hurt cooling air flow.

[itix]

Do they have changed front wing since 2014 at Lotus ?

My feeling is that they have the same front wing, the same rear wing, the same sidepods deflector, but differents sidepods and nose... It can't be consistent isn't it ?

As I have pointed out many times, they have a new front wing. They even had two different sets of front wings for sepang. And nope, the sidepod deflectors are also new (at least in the lower end towards the floor).

Now... an embarrassing question from me... what is L/D? L-something/Drag I am going to guess.

I think the Lotus's weakest link is suspension and/or chassis. Once they get that thing on a rig and start testing in properly I think they can achieve something properly good with the E23. It is one of the fastest in a straight line and at the same time really good in medium speed aero corners...

<-- *hopeful fanboy is hopeful*

[3jawchuck]

Now... an embarrassing question from me... what is L/D? L-something/Drag I am going to guess.*

Lift/Drag ratio.

[AlainProst]

It's the ratio between drag and downforce isn't it ?

how can we calculate it? Lift force/Drag force ?

[JDC123]

It's the ratio between drag and downforce isn't it ?

how can we calculate it? Lift force/Drag force ?

Yes, it is the negative lift force (as downforce is opposite of lift) divided by the drag force. Therefore the larger the coefficient of lift the more 'effiecent' you are at making lift/donwforce. Efficiency isn't really the correct word to use as you can't have efficiency above 1.

[Moose]

It's the ratio between drag and downforce isn't it ?

how can we calculate it? Lift force/Drag force ?

Yes, it is the negative lift force (as downforce is opposite of lift) divided by the drag force. Therefore the larger the coefficient of lift the more 'effiecent' you are at making lift/donwforce. Efficiency isn't really the correct word to use as you can't have efficiency above 1.

Efficiency is absolutely the right word, the only problem is that you don't know the correct units. The maximum possible efficiency is not known, and because of that, you can't express it as the traditional percentage of maximum possible efficiency.

[AlainProst]

Do you know when Lotus will introduce a big new package on their car because I don't have see many progresses this week end in Malaysia...
Do you think they will bring a new engine cover with a bigger shark fin as they have done in 2014 in China ?
My feeling is that, during Jerez and Barcelona tests, Lotus had good chronos because they had a reliable car but now, every team have reliable car and we can see that this E23 is a disappointing car again. If Grosjean had not had this hanging with Perez, what position do you think he could have finished this race ?...not better than p9 or p10 and Grosjean did a good race anyway but he didn't arrive to overtake Hulkenberg (remember you during the first laps after the SC) whereas the VJM08 isn't a competitive car... Is it not a problem ?I'm not really optimistic for the Lotus 2015 season. What is your opinion about that ?

[korzeniow]

I think they won't introduce that many parts for those flywaway races, rather they will bring bunch of new parts starting from European faze, mostly because of their financial capacity rather than development one.

Regarding car's performance in Malaysia. I think they showed strong pace. I think Grosjean would have finished on fifth position if it wouldn't for crash with Perez which forced him to pit again.

Before the pitstop that put him behind Perez, Grosjean was running high and after the pitstop he was making up the ground very quickly, he would clear Force Indias and Red Bulls easly, then Torro Rosos.

I think Gorjean looked better in the race than Williams guys, left on me a very positive impression. Now lets add some new parts, fine tune the car and bring the fight to Williams, behind Ferrari

[henra]

Efficiency is absolutely the right word, the only problem is that you don't know the correct units.

Lift/Drag Ratio is a dimensionless coefficient.
It is determined by dividing the dimensionless Lift coefficient Cl by the also dimensionless Drag coefficient Cd.

It is normally used in aerodynamics to determine the properties of an airfoil and gives a so-called wing polar. That is the curve of Cl/Cd as a function of the angle of attack and it describes the Efficiency of a wing:
Liftforce (in Newton) of the wing Rho/2*Cl*A*v^2.
Drag (In Newton): Rho/2*Cd*A*v^2. With A being the frontal area in m^2 and V being the velocity in m/s.
When you divide Lift by Drag only the two dimensionless values Cl divided by Cd will remain. In an aircraft this will give you the glide Ratio.
In a race car it will give you the amount of Drag which you need for achieving a certain Downforce or vice versa.
Edit: Let's make an example.
Asumme we have an L/D of the car of -4.
Now we want to achieve 5g. Let's say the tyres are capable of providing 2g. So the DF has to account for 3g. Let's now assume a car that weighs 700kg. So we Need 2100 kg or 20600N of DF. With an L/D of -4 you would need to overcome an aerodynamic drag of 5150N. At a Speed of 300km/h that would require ~430kW or ~580HP.
If another car has an L/D of 4,5 you would only have to overcome 4578N. At 300km/h this would only require ~380kW or ~520HP. Alternatively with the same power you could proportionally increase the DF and thus the max cornering g.

[AlainProst]

I think they won't introduce that many parts for those flywaway races, rather they will bring bunch of new parts starting from European faze, mostly because of their financial capacity rather than development one.

Regarding car's performance in Malaysia. I think they showed strong pace. I think Grosjean would have finished on fifth position if it wouldn't for crash with Perez which forced him to pit again.

Before the pitstop that put him behind Perez, Grosjean was running high and after the pitstop he was making up the ground very quickly, he would clear Force Indias and Red Bulls easly, then Torro Rosos.

I think Gorjean looked better in the race than Williams guys, left on me a very positive impression. Now lets add some new parts, fine tune the car and bring the fight to Williams, behind Ferrari

You're really optimistic about the team ! I think Grosjean wouldn't have finished on fifth position without the crash with Perez and because, if I don't say a mistake, he still had a pistop at this moment of the race.

Somebody can explain what are the differences on the front wing between 2014 and 2015 because I don't see them. The same for the new suspension

[GM7]

Grosjean would have finished on 7th position in Sepang, he was faster than RBR and STR. He had difficulty to overtake the Force India because they were very quick on the long straight.

Nick Chester said that Lotus will introduce new parts in China or Barhein. In 2014 Lotus introduce a new front wing and shark in China.

[iotar__]

Sensor problems and no maximum power in Malaysia, it looked painful against FI and others so it is half-explanation. As for aero development figuring engine and other reliability problems should be now on top of their list. Hard to evaluate updates when you don't run in FP and races, plus step backwards compared to TR and Sauber in Malaysia. They don't talk at all so the last message (and reality) was that late tests updates didn't exactly work.

[AlainProst]

I hope the sensor problem is real because the race rhythm of Lotus wasn't really good in Malaysia. I hope it's not an invented argument for explain their poor performance last race.

[f1316]

Re upgrades:

http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/ ... et-permane

Permane remains positive, with the team planning on introducing a series of upgrades in the coming races, but concedes it's been a tricky start.

"It's fair to say that after a difficult year last year we're still finding our feet a little bit," Permane told AUTOSPORT.

"We've got some more stuff coming for China, including a new front wing, and we've got a new nose coming for Barcelona.

The part I find interesting is the new nose; there's been some assumptions - based on what, I'm not sure - that the Mercedes/Lotus nose solution is the best. Wonder if they're just moving back the mounting points or a whole new type of design?

[AlainProst]

The part I find interesting is the new nose; there's been some assumptions - based on what, I'm not sure - that the Mercedes/Lotus nose solution is the best. Wonder if they're just moving back the mounting points or a whole new type of design?

I remember last year they said the same thing " We will introduce a new nose" but in reality they have changed the part under the nose because they had many problems with their morse nose...

What do you want to say by "moving back the mounting points"? It's almost impossible to change their nose design type, the choice of Mercedes in this direction confirms this. After how can you upgrade this type of nose ? The overall dimensions cannot change because it's around that you design the rest of the car...

For me, the most important and most interesting part of his declaration is the new front wing. Indeed, the current front wing is the same (with maybe small upgrades) than in 2014 whereas the nose have changed.


The 2014 front wing

The 2015 front wing. As you can see, the most important upgrade is the new front wing endplate. If you want to play the game of 7 differences...