wuzak wrote:6 of 12 wrote:If I were one of Ferrari's opponents, I would ask myself a very worrying question: For what do Ferrari need these large amounts of air?
The intakes might appear narrow, but they are quite large. Also, they need secondary air intakes on top of the sidepods and the airbox might not be as huge as Mercedes' last year, but is not tiny either...
So what is happening with all the air? Cooling cannot have got this unefficient compared to last year, can it.
Quite possibly because they are not using the engine scoop to provide air for some of the coolers they may need bigger intakes. But it is really hard to tell.
If i had to make a non-educated guess, based upon what i see visually,
i would say that the amount of air that gets directed towards several parts of the car,
suggests it has focused on downforce and mechanical grip. From what is able to be seen from the videos provided is that the car looks like it is very, but very very stable in both corners as in a straight line, and it seems to take corners really really fast too. I would think that they have aimed for less high top speed and much higher corner speed. It's short lenght compared to the rest of the field makes me believe that it's rediculously stable and doesn't need additional lenght.
it also has an immensely huge rake and the front wing is insanely close to the floor.
i think it is also able to brake later, due to A)being able to corner very fast due to the grip and downforce it has, and B) due to it's stability and shorter frame i think it's able to 'dive' into the corners a lot better with less understeer.
For example, if i look at the Mercs last year, and when there were occasions where Lewis and Nico were batteling in overtaking eachother in corners, you could notice that the despite being in full opposite lock the car was still going rather forward and had lots of understeer. I would think Ferrari is able to take those corners better, and can take it much faster, at the cost of top-end speed.
offcourse this is all nothing but purely theoretical but if i compare for example Mclaren and Williams and perhaps Sauber, then i see cars in launch spec that look like they're very 'basic' or 'clean' and possibly aim at a rather high top speed. Offcourse the Mclaren looks like it will use lots of it's floor, but we'll see about that yet.
If i look at Ferrari, then i see much more attention to 'guiding' and 'directing' air into very specific areas.
I would make a guess and say that the RedBull is going to look a lot like the direction Ferrari is going.
All i can really say is that the Ferrari looks very complete and well-developed, where for example last year's contender looked pale and basic to me. So this is imho a very good sign that they've spent a lot of attention on the car, which quite frankly, was NOT at all what i was expecting.
Mercedes is living up to my expectations, and i think will prove to be a strong contender, their suspension is what looks most interesting to me.
We need the RedBull now to see where the big teams are at.
My feeling suggests this order :
Ferrari
Mercedes
Renault
Mclaren
Williams
Force India
Sauber
based upon what we have seen yet.
And yes, it's still rather a good deal of imagination, i know.
But if you would have asked me last year, it would have been quite like it turned out to be in the end.
