new Caterham CT01

Everyone see pics of this rig yet? My gosh it's ugly. They do have a tight little sidepod arrangement though. The wings are last last year pieces while the exhaust appears to be blowing towards the diffuser with the purpose being to increase velocity post sidepods. I always though everyone would either attempt to blow between the beam and main wings are blow the top wing.
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Im thinking this could be the year of the ugly fast car

From Autosport:

The Caterham F1 team unveiled its 2012 challenger to the public on Wednesday, one day ahead of the what was originally planned by the squad.

The team has revealed its car on the cover of the latest edition of F1 Racing magazine, subscribers of which received their copies today. But the team has now also released an image of the car through its official Twitter feed.

It intends to publish more images and further details of its new car on Caterham's website tomorrow.

Caterham's CT01, as the car will be called, is the team's first single seater under the new name, having raced as Lotus in its first two seasons in Formula 1.

The car, which will be powered by Renault engines, features a platypus-style nose with front suspension mounts that raise above the noseline. Features such as these may prove to be quite common this year due to the new regulations covering the nose area.

It also appears to be more aggressive aerodynamically than its predecessors, which were deliberately conservative, and features tightly-sculpted, low rear bodywork with slim and short sidepods to maximise the low drag effect in that area.

The CT01 is scheduled to make its track debut at Jerez next month when testing kicks off.

 

Damn near the ugliest thing I have ever seen....I LIKE IT!



Mark

 

The back end with the obvious exception being the exhaust is just a carbon copy of RB7. Hey, whatever works right.

 

Why are they still using "lotus' " colors???

I'd think the change to caterham would warrant a reboot of the color scheme.

 

that nosecone is going to be the new trend

mclaren might not need to change the nosecone of their car much though, as it should be either very near or lower than the 55 cm stipulated by the regs

 

those are caterham colours too

 

Lotus(former Renault) will be black and gold. Should be zero problem to differentiate either team.

 

These nose regulations are strange. I wonder which team had the solution that lead to them.

 

This kind of nose is exactly what Scarbs had been predicting in his blog for a while.

http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/f1-2012-rules-designs-and-trends/


This is a newer article but hes had one with that kind of nose for months.

 

Good stuff in that link, cheers.

 

Yes ugly, but if it works well, there will be a lot of ugly looking cars on the grid.

Then it won't matter.

 

Ugh, what happened to good looking F1 cars?

 

I am hearing all the teams are following this trend. Lotus/Renault is just as ugly.

 

Yeah Scarbs always has the best analysis of the technical aspects of F1. Always love reading his stuff, I just wish there was more of it to read.

 

Ugly - yes, sign of the times.

Names for this one? platypus?, crocodile?, step nose?

 

Missed this. Really good stuff. Thanks.

 

The nose is just plain ugly. Personally, the F2001's nose was the most beautiful, IMO.

http://www.fedef1.com/teams/ferrari2001.html

Also, is it the new rules that the exhaust must sit so far away from the rear wings?

 

Hrm
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Nice!! lololol

 

I believe most of the cars this year will look this way due to the new rules which incredibly make the cars even uglier. That said, its all about points won on race day; no wc points are given for beauty.

 

A little surprised this one hasn't been posted...... And we thought the Ferrari back-end was tight!

This is a photo, not an artists rendition BTW.

[Hopefully, our resident PS guru can lighten it some?]

Cheers,
Ian
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I've seen this pic and I still can't believe how almost carbon-copy it is to the RB7 back end. Except for the exhaust of course

 

Well, there's only so much they can do. They're all pretty similar at the end of the day as they all want as much high speed air under there as they can get.

Here's the RB7 for comparison - It looks enormous! [The pods are bigger and don't taper near as much.]

Cheers,
Ian
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Team Lotus/Caterham licensed the Red Bull gearbox along with the Renault engine last year - so, given that the rear suspension is designed around the gearbox mounting points, it's no surprise that the new Caterham is essentially running a RB rear suspension.