Official 2013 car unveiling and conjecture thread

No no, get rid of those rediculous upright radiators. Cante them forward like normal human beings right.

 

Sauber has announced that it will launch its 2013 F1 car, the C32-Ferrari, at the start of next month.

The successor to the very credible C31 will be revealed at the team's Swiss base in Hinwil on February 2nd with the outfit's new drivers, Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Gutierrez pulling back the covers just after mid-day.

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn, chief designer Matt Morris and reserve driver Robin Frijns will also be in attendance and the event will be streamed live via the squad's official website.

Sauber is the third team to set a launch date for its new car, following on from McLaren and Force India.

 

MP4-28 will have pullrod front suspension and a high nose. Mclaren have stated they are going for 'revolution' rather than an evolution of Mp4-27. Count on a ramp/tunnel exhaust system as well if they are going completely bananas.

 

Behind schedule is the word on the street.

 

That is precisely how I heard it as well.

others probably did the same thing, especially Ferrari and Mclaren.
Ferrari probably ceased or compromised developing certain aspects of F2013 in the interest of further developing F2012 for Fernando and second place in the WCC. Mclaren seem to know how to deal with this sort of thing better though.

 

In the end it probably won't effect either of them very much. Both have stellar in-season development. Any potential major design flaw they notice now is already too late to be fixed anyway.

 

I was told it was just after Brazil that they mentioned something to that effect. There is a source floating around somewhere. As usual though, this is probably idle conjecture at best but with sound logic. They were certainly right about RB8 being behind the 8-ball last year as it was quite the handful for several races.

 

I think the Mclaren and Mercedes 2013 contenders will be nearly identical cars. RB style tunnel and ramp exhausts, pullrod front suspension, only the Mercedes W04 rear suspension is supposedly arranged in a way that its geometry can be changed in a hurry and in multiple ways if needed. Here's the kicker for W04 though as I see things, suspension.


With W03s aerodynamics being what they were last year, it was an utter miracle they won in China and took pole in Monaco by far having the quickest car there. Monaco is where mechanical grip really comes into play, and W03s suspension system was such that it provided gobs more mechanical grip than any car on the field which is why even with worse aero it was so much quicker than anyone else at Monaco. I expect W04 to be a further development of this only hopefullly with more aero.

I expect Ferrari, Mclaren at the very minimum to follow suit with Mercedes in how Mercedes interconnect diagonally and front to back the suspension system. Brilliant stuff, and that ladies and gentlemen is the future of F1 suspensions.

 

That's the one. But again, I simply cannot give it much stock as the Red Bull and Ferrari teams also have magic wand factories next to their F1 facilities. Even if they're somewhat behind I have no doubt they can make the car competitive within 5-6 races given their resources.

 

You're getting a bit deep here, I like it. A new era of potential avante garde machines could be born I suppose, but realistically I believe it's the minor nuances of the very top contenders which indeed make them competitive. It seems that the design of a top modern F1 machine need only be 97% that of a top other contender as that other 3% can be made up with further in-season development. Has this laxed design? That 97% is always on a sliding scale. The silver curtain can never be seen through until unveiled, so IMO no, specifically because no team knows what the other is completely up to, they just know what they are limited to which is probably why nothing will be truly transendent again. And my definition of a truly transcendent mind-altering machine would be consistently 1.5 seconds quicker than the field at all times.

It's blatantly obvious the difference in quality between a Marussia and a Mclaren, but splitting hairs between Mclaren and RB you are indeed correct in that they are going for that .001% none of us can see minus access to the respective team's computational fluid dynamics program models. Man's brain is usually limited to what is directly in front of it, or immersed in such as F1 engineers are.

Let's get a group of creative Boeing engineers and see what they can come up with, how's that for a different kind of thinking. If nothing else, it would be an excellent think-tank type design study with ideas from those who are indeed engineers but know nothing specific to F1. Engineers who work in much higher mach numbers would probably have a completely altered slant on what a F1 (low mach) car would appear.