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whats the advantage of having a curved fromt wing and a really low nose?
Im asking this because of mclarens new car. sorry the picture that i found wont paste on this thing.
well I personally have always seen more benefit in a low high-nose configuration as we saw on all McLarens that brought Mika Hakkinen to his wins and world chamionships. This new MP4/18 has an extremely bent down nose cone, but note that at its steepest, so where the angle of attack is the largest, the nose is also very thin.
In my point of view I would say Ferrari has a rather stable nosecone, not having very much air resistance, nor downforce. I dare even say that the main disadvantage of last year's Williams was its high nose, compared to the Ferrari.
Now a nose like on this new McLaren has been seen before, as I said on Hakkinen's winning cars, but there are 2 very important differences. First the nose is a LOT smaller, and it's not that thick. What I mean is that at the underside, after the front wheels, there is more space between the underside of the body and the track. This allows a better airflow from the front wing to the splitter and indirectly also the diffuser.
There's always a fuss that a lower nose generates idd more downforce of the front wheels (more air is directed to flow over the nose instead of under it), but this also increases the drag of that part. Well this nose would then anyway mean that McLaren could afford to make its front wing generate less downforce, reducing the air resistance there.
I think it's a balancing act here, where (nose or front wing) the most downforce can be made with the least resistance. As you can imagine, it is also from very high importance that a front wing must disturb airflow the fewest possible to enable good cooling and airflow asid the side pods.
So far my day... I'm going to sleep here. Tomorrow possibly a race update, I hope. Ciao!
