Ferrari F2012

[xpensive]

It's just the first race of the year. Let's chill and remember how well Ferrari has been able to devlop its cars. And the car performed in Australia much better than most of expected.

Realistically the Ferrari F2012 is on P6 of the pecking order even behind the Williams as Maldonado stated correctly. I'm sure they will massively improve the car over the season but how long will it take to close the gap to the top teams? I believe too long for Alonso to catch up a 50 point lead which the leaders may have accumulated at that time.

I have after careful consideration and consulting with my kristal ball decided to make one of my rare predictions;
Ferrari will appear in Spain with a heavily revised F2012, more than one page ripped out of McLaren's book there, among them a lower and perhaps even aerodynamic nose with a conventional push-rod suspension and flagrantly copy-cat style xhaust.
And yes, Gazza is in there somewhere but the image is still a little blurry.

This will demand a new tub and the RRA is now thrown out of a furious Montezuma's window for good, why he threatens every critical voice, inside and outside of Maranello, with quitting F1 and go diesel-racing with Audi if he can't have it his way.

[Jersey Tom]

I'm also very curious as to that. How do the dynamics of pull vs push rods work in terms of loading and heating up the tyres?

As far as the tire is concerned, push rod or pull rod makes no difference. It has no knowledge or care of how forces are internally resolved within the suspension.

[.poz]

The whole "acer duct"/sidepods are wrong. Ferrari is the only car that eject hot air from sidepod laterally. Other teams eject it in the middle.

Their sidepod design totally prevent they to use the coanda effect to route exhaust; i think that they want to route it using the laminar flux over sidepod/acer duct + hot air from acer duct but obviously it's not working as intended.

The problem is that to change this



is something like that



or that



They need to redesign all the internal air flux which i think is equivalent to redesign the whole rear of the car

[Gerhard Berger]

It's just the first race of the year. Let's chill and remember how well Ferrari has been able to devlop its cars. And the car performed in Australia much better than most of expected.

Realistically the Ferrari F2012 is on P6 of the pecking order even behind the Williams as Maldonado stated correctly. I'm sure they will massively improve the car over the season but how long will it take to close the gap to the top teams? I believe too long for Alonso to catch up a 50 point lead which the leaders may have accumulated at that time.

A 50 point lead is not that big a lead in this points system. Alonso managed to pull that kind of gap back in 2010.

I'm not of the belief that our upgrades will work. Our first upgrade package without Costa failed at Spa last year. Our car this year is a failure.

[WhiteBlue]

Ferrari will appear in Spain with a heavily revised F2012, more than one page ripped out of McLaren's book there, among them a lower and perhaps even aerodynamic nose with a conventional push-rod suspension and flagrantly copy-cat style xhaust.
This will demand a new tub and the RRA is now thrown out of a furious Montezuma's window for good, why he threatens every critical voice, inside and outside of Maranello, with quitting F1 and go diesel-racing with Audi if he can't have it his way.

A new tub will be against the FiA homologation rules. That would not only break the RRA but would be subject to disqualification appeals by other teams.

[Crucial_Xtreme]

A new tub will be against the FiA homologation rules. That would not only break the RRA but would be subject to disqualification appeals by other teams.

No it wouldn't. The homologation rules are different and the team are allowed one chassis redesign as long as it's crash tested. That specific question was asked of Domenicali and he said the team would not use a new chassis, the problems were not that bad.

[Giblet]

They need to redesign all the internal air flux which i think is equivalent to redesign the whole rear of the car

They might have screwed themselves then. They moved their sidepods back, and had inadequate space for radiators, so there is a third rad in the middle rear for the first time.

I am unaware of the exact placement, so I am unsure can change the design now, or if they can change it enough to make difference.

[siskue2005]

Ferrari will appear in Spain with a heavily revised F2012, more than one page ripped out of McLaren's book there, among them a lower and perhaps even aerodynamic nose with a conventional push-rod suspension and flagrantly copy-cat style xhaust.
This will demand a new tub and the RRA is now thrown out of a furious Montezuma's window for good, why he threatens every critical voice, inside and outside of Maranello, with quitting F1 and go diesel-racing with Audi if he can't have it his way.

A new tub will be against the FiA homologation rules. That would not only break the RRA but would be subject to disqualification appeals by other teams.

i thought there was no homologation anymore?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

The whole "acer duct"/sidepods are wrong. Ferrari is the only car that eject hot air from sidepod laterally. Other teams eject it in the middle.

Their sidepod design totally prevent they to use the coanda effect to route exhaust; i think that they want to route it using the laminar flux over sidepod/acer duct + hot air from acer duct but obviously it's not working as intended.

The problem is that to change this


They need to redesign all the internal air flux which i think is equivalent to redesign the whole rear of the car

No the problem is they got it wrong the first time. The team specifically says the launch exhaust provides the best performance. Only it wasn't ready to be raced yet and needed more development. They will test it again in Mugello. And the launch exhaust did most certainly use the Coanda Effect alongside the downward slope of the Acer Duct to get the exhaust to the floor.
Using the exhausts to help accelerate the radiator cooling has allowed the team to make the sidepod inlets smaller. This wasn't a bad thing. Their design is very aggressive and needs more development time. It's a shame they missed the boat on their first go, but hopefully they'll get it right at the beginning of May.

[Redragon]

Related to the Tyres degradation, I think Alonso had a good pace on soft and he could have managed a few laps more if he wasn't defending from Rorberg. Rosberg pitted too early and after two laps Alonso was forced to pit to gain position and conservate the gap. Same for Webber, If both Webber and Alonso would have been in front of Rosberg at start would have being different in my oppinion. Lasting at least 4 or 5 laps more as Vettel and Mclaren.

P.S. Don't blame me I know are not precise details, not time to check but speaking from my memory views.

[godlameroso]

Their car is good, it's that they still don't understand how to make it work. If they get a lock on the mechanical aspect of the car they would probably be half a second faster. The car lacks overall downforce but it's very consistent, the problem is the suspension loading at high speed. I think Ferrari didn't consider very well how the higher CoG of the front suspension would affect the geometry in the rear.

[Arunas]

Their car is good, it's that they still don't understand how to make it work. If they get a lock on the mechanical aspect of the car they would probably be half a second faster. The car lacks overall downforce but it's very consistent, the problem is the suspension loading at high speed. I think Ferrari didn't consider very well how the higher CoG of the front suspension would affect the geometry in the rear.

Why you think "higher CoG of the front suspension"?

[Giblet]

Their car is good, it's that they still don't understand how to make it work. If they get a lock on the mechanical aspect of the car they would probably be half a second faster. The car lacks overall downforce but it's very consistent, the problem is the suspension loading at high speed. I think Ferrari didn't consider very well how the higher CoG of the front suspension would affect the geometry in the rear.

Its a pull rod so the dampers are down low. The COG should be lowered?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Their car is good, it's that they still don't understand how to make it work. If they get a lock on the mechanical aspect of the car they would probably be half a second faster. The car lacks overall downforce but it's very consistent, the problem is the suspension loading at high speed. I think Ferrari didn't consider very well how the higher CoG of the front suspension would affect the geometry in the rear.

Its a pull rod so the dampers are down low. The COG should be lowered?

I'm with you. Part of the reason to go with the pull rod was to lower the CoG because of the higher nose. I agree with him that they haven't found out how to set the car up yet. But the lack of downforce is the main problem. Once that is rectified, if at all, the car will be rather competitive.

[.poz]

No the problem is they got it wrong the first time. The team specifically says the launch exhaust provides the best performance.
Using the exhausts to help accelerate the radiator cooling has allowed the team to make the sidepod inlets smaller.

I hope that those "best" performance are enough to catch other top team.

For the exhaust i think that Ferrari setup need to calculate interaction between air speed, air angle while cornering and exhaust speed and volume (like other team) PLUS hot air form side pod.

They are behind other top team in CFD plus their setup has more variables to compute... is that a good idea ?