Ferrari F2012

[Unc1e_M0nty]

Gary Anderson is the same guy who said the McLaren MP4-27 wouldn't do too well because it had a low nose..

No, he didn't say that at all. I do wish people would stop doing this.

What we've had so far is one race of the season, and what Gary said about McLaren's low nose is that they're going to have a smaller volume of air to work with under the nose which could well limit their ability to develop later on.

He then went on to say that he wasn't impressed with the car, it didn't have any real inovations and that it wouldn't close the gap to Red Bull.

[banibhusan]

Seriously, i'm not an expert but the quality of the exit of the acer duct seems unaccpeptable for an f1 team like Ferrari. Moreover the specific configuration of the exhaust doesn't seem to require the acer duct as it is in the picture.

The ACER duct is actually there for the vertical radiator layout that Ferrari have implemented this season. Unlike other teams, Ferrari use the same duct to blow the radiator gas out and also house the exhaust pipe.

[banibhusan]

Gary Anderson is the same guy who said the McLaren MP4-27 wouldn't do too well because it had a low nose..

No, he didn't say that at all. I do wish people would stop doing this.

What we've had so far is one race of the season, and what Gary said about McLaren's low nose is that they're going to have a smaller volume of air to work with under the nose which could well limit their ability to develop later on.

He then went on to say that he wasn't impressed with the car, it didn't have any real inovations and that it wouldn't close the gap to Red Bull.

Yeah. He was right in a way. It didn't close the gap to RBR. It actually went ahead of them.

[Maynard G. Krebs]

I think (hope) that sidepod vane picture is post-race with some damage from contact. Call it a "Bruno Senna stripe".

[Pierce89]

One thing I still dont understand is that one 1 hand we say the car rear end is too loose and on the other hand we say its due to the exhaust. I think exhaust problem only contribute while the car is cornering and the exhaust blown has already been banned. On the straight this should not be a problem, no?

Im worried that the problem with the car isnt only it exhaust or the acer duck, some bigger things are wrong and I hope this isnt the case.

I'm with Scarbs -- the pitch-sensitivity of the car is the problem. The whole rear aero probably works OK when the car is on the straight line or on fast curve (neutral attitude), but on the corner exit (nose up attitude) the airflow is probably disrupted to a degree. They probably try to compensate it with harder rear suspension but that also promotes oversteer.

2xpensive -- if they have problems with front suspension due to what you say, it should probably cause understeer on the corner entry. Not the trait F2012 shown so far, no?

To me that sounds a lot more plausible than many of the suggestions flying around here. It could also help explain why their car seems to be so inefficient - they lack rear downforce but still have huge amount of drag. If they are generating plenty of downforce from a draggy car but are then losing it at times does to pitch sensitivity then that would explain their straight line speed. Coupled with a higher CofG at the front and I can see how that would all add up to a poor handling car.

If this is the case then I'm afraid that's not something they're going to fix this year. They may tame it a bit but I don't think I've ever seen pitch sensitivity tuned out of a car within a season.

Mclaren 2009. At the beginning of the season before the car was good, Lewis said something to the tune of: "The car makes decent downforce, but it just switches off in the middle of a corner"
That sounds like the same type of deal.

[kebab]

I'm with Scarbs -- the pitch-sensitivity of the car is the problem. The whole rear aero probably works OK when the car is on the straight line or on fast curve (neutral attitude), but on the corner exit (nose up attitude) the airflow is probably disrupted to a degree. They probably try to compensate it with harder rear suspension but that also promotes oversteer.

2xpensive -- if they have problems with front suspension due to what you say, it should probably cause understeer on the corner entry. Not the trait F2012 shown so far, no?

To me that sounds a lot more plausible than many of the suggestions flying around here. It could also help explain why their car seems to be so inefficient - they lack rear downforce but still have huge amount of drag. If they are generating plenty of downforce from a draggy car but are then losing it at times does to pitch sensitivity then that would explain their straight line speed. Coupled with a higher CofG at the front and I can see how that would all add up to a poor handling car.

If this is the case then I'm afraid that's not something they're going to fix this year. They may tame it a bit but I don't think I've ever seen pitch sensitivity tuned out of a car within a season.

Mclaren 2009. At the beginning of the season before the car was good, Lewis said something to the tune of: "The car makes decent downforce, but it just switches off in the middle of a corner"
That sounds like the same type of deal.

This is exactly the reason why I still beleave we can turn things around. I have strong faith that Pat Fry can get it fixed, just as he did in 2009

[myurr]

I think (hope) that sidepod vane picture is post-race with some damage from contact. Call it a "Bruno Senna stripe".

Wrong side of the car for it to be a Senna stripe.

[munudeges]

On topic, I get an annoying feeling when I see the above pictures. The car looks so badly finished and plain dirty. One would think they do not need to patch up to this amount, and I can not imagine that all those panels are dummies?

You're not wrong there I think. The finish of the exhaust outlets looks a bit......half done. These are pretty critical aerodynamic areas that should be finished up with no half-assed edges.

As an esteemed forum poster might say, build finish like that is quite often reflective of the state of mind of the team. We've seen it at times with Mercedes over the past couple of seasons, but not to that extent with Ferrari.

[radosav]

i watched race again yesterday. first 25 laps race pace of F2012 wasn't so bad. F2012 was faster on medium tyres than mercedes on softs. on lap 20 hamilton with free track wasn't much ahead of alonso behind vettel and rosberg.

[motobaleno]

i watched race again yesterday. first 25 laps race pace of F2012 wasn't so bad. F2012 was faster on medium tyres than mercedes on softs. on lap 20 hamilton with free track wasn't much ahead of alonso behind vettel and rosberg.

Finally after 20 pages of delirium I see something serious: if you go on the merc thread they are all thinking they have a rocket...here it seems that f2012 is doomed to be a looser....but though f2012 is a car with some serious problem, this car has until now demonstrated to be overall faster than mercedes...
More than this, not considering future further develompments, this car will FOR SURE improve its performance rather soon since one of the 2 following possibilities will happen

1) Ferrari will be able to make the original exhaust layout to work: possibily this is a more extreme layout with respect to competitors: hard to set up but if you succeed your gain is likely to be big.

2) The original exhaust layout will not work: ferrari will go back to a more conservative layout but in this way they could easily reshape their sidepods to a more aero efficient design

[.poz]

I think the problem is in aerodynamic/pitch sensitivity. The car go better with full load of fuel. Heavier car = less pitch change on corner exit. If the problem is in the front suspension imho shouldn't the car go better with less weight ?

[f1316]

Just going back to Gary Anderson's analysis again, I've lost track of the amount of times he's used the cake/icing analogy about the F2012. Obviously he likes it (I find it annoying after the 5th or 6th time of hearnig it!) but if, as noted above, they do just go to a more simplified approach at the exhaust - the technical equivalent of a sponge cake - that icing may start paying dividends.

Ok, my turn to kick an analogy to death!

[Afterburner]

Blog from a brazilian journalist, he talks in "significant" camber on the front wheels to justify F2012 lack of balance braking:

http://translate.google.pt/translate?sl ... 2F&act=url

[Agasthya]

i watched race again yesterday. first 25 laps race pace of F2012 wasn't so bad. F2012 was faster on medium tyres than mercedes on softs. on lap 20 hamilton with free track wasn't much ahead of alonso behind vettel and rosberg.

I think the Ferrari is relatively good with lots of fuel on board but it struggles a lot in low fuel/qualifying trim. Alonso lost a lot amount of time to the leading four cars in the final 15 laps of the Australian race.

I also agree with your assessment that the Ferrari is probably faster than the Mercedes right now. The issue will be that the Merc is so much faster in qualifying trim and therefore will be significantly up the road at the early parts of the races, when the Ferrari is the strongest. Alonso needs to make amazing starts to have a chance of mixing it up with the Mercedes right now.

Hopefully they bring some sort of revised package to Shanghai.

[Jersey Tom]

Seems many teams have issues getting the tires to hold on after some laps. Some worse than others.

The overriding theme in many of your posts on the subject, to me at least, is that there are no absolutes with regard to tires. At the risk of asking you the mother-of-all tire questions, why are they apparently so damn difficult to figure out?

Vehicle dynamics in general is a challenging field of study given the immensely complex mechanical system, plus the human element of the driver and understanding how they fit in.

At least part of the issue is being able to fully characterize the tire even as a black box system. On a structural level things are changing every second with wear, with heat, with strain, with history. There's just no way of capturing it all, all the time. So you get what you can, and work from there.

Beyond that, from the race team perspective sometimes you're just locked in a box in what you can do. There's only so much adjustment you can get out of what your tire supplier gives you and the rules of your series. I'd think having a fixed weight distribution would really suck. It can be such a powerful adjustment for handling... and if Pirelli doesn't give you something that matches what your driver wants - that's one less thing you can tune with.