Ferrari F2012

[scuderiafan]

[...]

Does anyone know when ferrari plan any more upgrades for their car? Will they have to wait until Europe ?

They have a big update for Spain I believe.

[scuderiafan]

Mike Gascoyne seems to be on his way out of Caterham, my wet dream is to see "The Rottweiler" at Ferrari, what a match!

Could be great for Ferrari, but terrible for Caterham!

[MIKEY_!]

Ringo: why would thickening the floor help?

BTW the undercut does not create lift. According to Ferrari it gives some DF (although their judgment may be off this year). Air coming over the top of the sidepods an reaching the floor creates lift. Behind the sidpod is a low pressure area so it will create some lift acting on the top of the floor. Put bodywork above the floor and some DF is generated to compensate.

[radosav]

we all saw ferrari is hard to drive. fernando in Q2 made time on used softs 0.2 sec slower than webber. massa was 1 sec slower than fernando because he couldn't cope with that car and push it to the limit. if they ever find balance on that car, or mechanical grip, will it be enough for that 1sec they need? i mean ,now they can homologate new chassis during season and ferrari will do it. what do you guys think?

[donskar]

...
Mike Gascoyne seems to be on his way out of Caterham, my wet dream is to see "The Rottweiler" at Ferrari, what a match!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . .Surely a marriage made in Hell!

How's that Don, imagine Montezuma, Gascoyne and Lauda the advisor, sparks would fly, such a shame that Eddie Irvine has come of age, or we could have seen some serious fireworks in the pits?! Nothing for the faint-hearted to behold.

Given the car is so bad (so far) an all-new approach might be called for:
1) persuade Byrne back 100%
2) bring in another leader (I'm guessing Italian: Ascanelli)
3) go to LMP

[donskar]

we all saw ferrari is hard to drive. fernando in Q2 made time on used softs 0.2 sec slower than webber. massa was 1 sec slower than fernando because he couldn't cope with that car and push it to the limit. if they ever find balance on that car, or mechanical grip, will it be enough for that 1sec they need? i mean ,now they can homologate new chassis during season and ferrari will do it. what do you guys think?

IF what we are seeing is a true indication of the car's ultimate performance, then they need much more than an "update." I don't think relocated tailpipes will be a silver bullet. But, then, I was totally inept as an M.E. student!

[Uniracer]

Agree with other posts about the unusual front suspension on the Ferrari. It looks like the front roll-center must be really high. That's pretty sure to cause understeer on pitch due to acceleration, and poor stability over bumpy corners. From tracking road cars, its normal to aim to get the wishbone parallel to the ground to help the front end to grip on the exit of corners. I guess their designers would know that already though.

It seems like only McLaren have used a classical design for the front end geometry. I wonder if this might be part of the reason their cars look better behaved.

[munudeges]

The front suspension comes to mind, I'm still very suspicious of that geometry.

To my mind, given my limited mechanical knowledge, they are going to be much more limited in how they can react to handling issues with that pull-rod versus the push-rod that others use. You can do things like move the push-rod backwards or forwards that you're going to have major difficulty doing on the pull-rod alternative.

I think it's a can of worms from a handling and tyre wear point of view.

[munudeges]

Mike Gascoyne seems to be on his way out of Caterham, my wet dream is to see "The Rottweiler" at Ferrari, what a match!

Not heard that one. Interesting.

[Jersey Tom]

If anyone feels like returning to some actual objective thought...

I only just recently caught the coverage of qualifying, and haven't seen any of the free practices.

Did the Ferrari's handling look poor? Certainly. But so did a lot of cars. Lot of drivers (good ones!) blowing a lot of corners. Vettel and Hamilton come to mind. Is that due to it having been a relatively green track? Maybe. I generally never watch practice sessions in this series, so I'm not sure how much that may be the case. May also be some fundamental issue with the Pirellis.

If your car is deficient in downforce some of fundamental issues between chassis setup and tire become more apparent. Conversely if you're on the high end of downforce it may hide things like that.

Agree with other posts about the unusual front suspension on the Ferrari. It looks like the front roll-center must be really high. That's pretty sure to cause understeer on pitch due to acceleration, and poor stability over bumpy corners.

Not sure I agree with this. How are you coming to these conclusions?

Front geometry doesn't look at all suspect to me. Different? Sure. Weird? No. High jacking coefficients on the front axle are just that.. not necessarily an indicator of overall balance. Could just as easily make up for the increase in front geometric load transfer with less front elastic roll stiffness or more rear. With how stiff these cars are in roll I'd suspect that the practical difference between geometric and elastic load transfer are much less than on other platforms.

[Uniracer]

Front geometry doesn't look at all suspect to me. Different? Sure. Weird? No. High jacking coefficients on the front axle are just that.. not necessarily an indicator of overall balance. Could just as easily make up for the increase in front geometric load transfer with less front elastic roll stiffness or more rear. With how stiff these cars are in roll I'd suspect that the practical difference between geometric and elastic load transfer are much less than on other platforms.

For sure there are many things that determine the weight transfer of the front end. I have never seen any race cars with angled down front wishbones like used on several of this years F1 cars. Within normal range of roll centers it might not be significant, but the new design is certainly very "Different". If I am right, the car may work better on less bumpy tracks. I could easily be wrong, since the designers obviously implemented this design for a reason.

[Jersey Tom]

For sure there are many things that determine the weight transfer of the front end. I have never seen any race cars with angled down front wishbones like used on several of this years F1 cars. Within normal range of roll centers it might not be significant, but the new design is certainly very "Different". If I am right, the car may work better on less bumpy tracks. I could easily be wrong, since the designers obviously implemented this design for a reason.

High jacking geometry isn't that uncommon. Open wheel teams have done it to some degree, NASCAR teams do it, hell even FSAE teams have done it (somewhat inadvertently at times).

Besides what constitutes "normal" height for "roll centers" ? A number is just a number. Doesn't matter what it is, just what you do with it.

Still would like to hear the reasoning with the bumpy track comments.

[C Plinius Secundus]

Well, the moment of truth finally came, and it has hit hard. The car, for the time being, is a dog. They'd better change the Fiat logo in the nose-cone for the Iveco one. Seeing this Ferrari reminded me of Alain Prost and his remarks about the Ferrari 643 "It handles like a truck".

I think the reason for the disastrous qualifying for Alonso is not the spin-off. The spin-off is the result of an un-driveable car.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of the Ferraris could finish the race today. Massa is probably going to crash in the first corner, as he has us all accustomed to watch . And Alonso will probably have another incident like the quali or the FP2 "dance" on the main straight entry.

About the car, it's been too long since I studied Fluid Dinamics (is that the correct name in English?), and I remember the principle of laminar and turbulent flow. IMHO, those acer ducts not only "deprive" from flow of air to the beam-wing, and create a low pressure area above the floor, but also interrupt the laminar flow above the sidepod, creating a turbulent air zone to feed the beam wing and rear wing. I may be completely wrong, or not, but in light of the results so far, I think those atrocities should be chopped off!

[Jersey Tom]

... I remember the principle of laminar and turbulent flow. IMHO, those acer ducts not only "deprive" from flow of air to the beam-wing, and create a low pressure area above the floor, but also interrupt the laminar flow above the sidepod, creating a turbulent air zone to feed the beam wing and rear wing. I may be completely wrong, or not, but in light of the results so far, I think those atrocities should be chopped off!

Oh. So you can do CFD by eyeball and mental math then?

We'll see. The other part of this is not knowing how much of their issue is inherent to the car design and how much is a poor setup or prep work before the event. Something must have caught them out for the car not to just be slow but to be all over the place.

Will be pretty apparent pretty soon.

[NoDivergence]

Unfortunately, it has always been all over the pace. Pushing it to 100% just made the problems worse. Massive understeer on entry. Then when the driver tries to add throttle to get the car to rotate, car has giant oversteer.