Ferrari to build new F1 team factory

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-starts-work-on-new-f1-factory/

 

They better throw in a new wind tunnel while they're at it.

 

Sure would be nice. Can't remember where I read it now, but apparently that's out due to cost. Estimated at ~70mm Euros IIRC.

Dunno how much the refit is costing, but it sure ain't that much!

Cheers,
Ian

 

I thought I read that work on a new tunnel had been started.
Too bad the Piano building can't be modified. It's stunning.

 

Nah, that can't be. After all Ferrari is rolling in cash. They have so much extra money thatt they don't even care whether they get some extra for a better WCC position or not...

At least that's what I read here somewhere...

 

I read they've just broken ground on a new F1 'factory', but not a tunnel.

I believe they are indeed modifying the Plano (?) building. The fans and tunnel itself should be ok (I agree, it is a nice piece of architecture). They've 'just' got to get it to agree with the real world......

The difference between their 2nd and, say, 4th is just a few 10's of MM's. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things.

Cheers,
Ian

 

Renzo Piano.

 

Kewl.

I love his designs. Met him once in Chicago.

 

I'm having trouble reading between the lines in your comments on the current wind tunnel. Is there actually a technical issue with the way it works that needs to be addressed, or is this a joke about the failings of the Ferrari aerodynamics engineers.

Sorry for the lame questions... it's just that F1 fans love to make tounge in cheek jokes and make up insane nicknames for drivers and team members, one of many things that it makes it rather difficult to follow F1.

 

The engineers were not able to match the data from the wind tunnel with actual car. They came to the conclusion that the fault is with the wind tunnel (which, IIRC is quite old nowadays).

 

Must have been cool.
I do hope they can repurpose the shell of the building at least.
I saw it when it was just about finished. It's quite something.

 

Cool.....

It's a ****ing wind tunnel!........

Sorry, but I really don't care who designed it - I want it to work properly! Plano, Piano, Joe Schmo, IDGAF as long as it works!

Cheers,
Ian

 

It's F1 competition, not a architectural award competition. I will take crude but effective every time. There's no style points in F1. They've had issues with the tunnel since 2007 and have had bandaid solutions. Now they they are using toyota's tunnel and hopefully it will be fruitful. At least they won't have that excuse anymore....

 

Gee Juss Ian. Since when did Italian design have to work to be great?
That's what the Germans are for.


I was describing it as a building. The outside of which is quite attractive.

 

Bingo

Although I wanted to say the Japanese.

 

Could have gone either way given that its a Japanese tunnel in Cologne.

 

Me too.

 

+1

I believe it opened in '97, so yeah it is something of a dinosaur by todays standards. OTOH, it is capable of taking full size cars IIRC - So it shouldn't be the scaling issue that others have bounced in to.

I suspect it's never been the same since the rolling road exploded a few years back (?)

Cheers,
Ian

 

If cost are such a big deal for F1 teams, why not have the FIA mandate all teams must use a single third party wind tunnel ?
Bernie could jump in and create a Super Tunnel bigger and better than the current models and lease time to the teams.

 

The price of steel in Italy is very high now.......because most of the steel inventory is being used to fix the hole in the Costa Concordia!

 

Parsing the regulations I've also just noticed that the fastest you can run your tunnel is 50 m/s. [Gotta love the metric system, huh ]

In the real world, that's only ~112MPH!

In other words, you can't even run the thing at close to top speed where different aero things start happening - Laminar flow at 120 MPH may detach at ~180MPH for example.

They're all shooting from the hip with tunnel results IMO.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Wow! Didn't know that.

And didn't some while ago somebody on here state that "wind tunnels are a thing from the past, the future is CFD". Sounds like that future hasn't arrived yet.

 

Where's the sense in that?

Oh yes. It's F1.
Nevermind.

 

One without 90 degree angles in it, I'd hope.

 

Indeed. Surprised me too.....

Also +1

IIRC, the original HRT (!) was done completely using CFD.

A conundrum indeed. Seems the only modeling you can do at "high" speed is gonna be CFD based. And the HRT "experiment" showed how good that is......

Cheers,
Ian