Official 2013 car unveiling and conjecture thread

Wanna take a guess as to how much they've raised it by?
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You got it - 2Kgs! (640 to 642Kgs) Saves 'em having to make new ballast pieces.....

Seriously, I think it's a long shot to suggest it's gonna be a "longer" car based on that.

When checking the above I also noticed this, which I hadn't before;

That's a surprisingly tight window IMO. Will undoubtedly also bring out the "spec series" brigade too.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Interesting articles being posted today with the contents of an interview with Ross Brawn discussing the reasons for their slump. Lots of sites have it, so here's the Planet F1 link because I know how much people here love that site! He mentions Mike Elliott, the departure of former aero chief Loic Bigois, and more. Was Bigois formerly at Renault or Ferrari? Did he leave on his own to go elsewhere, or was he dismissed?

http://www.planet-f1.com/driver/3213/8376585/Brawn-explains-reasons-for-Merc-slump

 

Thanks.

I'd never given any thought to what tire models are used in wind tunnel testing.
Fascinating that Pirelli makes them. I wonder how detailed they are beyond scale size. Structure? Compound?

 

+1 We used to use a good ol' chunk of aluminum to "represent" the tires - Didn't flex a whole lot!.......But then, a rolling road was almost unheard of too....

My guess is the only thing they need is the correct flex - Compound certainly doesn't matter, but "structure", to allow modeling under load etc is gonna be the key. I have no idea how accurate they can make a 50-60% model though.

Gotta be honest, I'm not yet convinced that 60% is that much of an improvement over 50% either - The model's gonna be ~6" wider and ~10" longer. OK, that gives a little more room for additional sensors etc, but also needs a bigger tunnel so that doesn't mess things up in and of itself - I was reading the airplane guys on this a while back and the amount of "space" needed around the model so as to not introduce tunnel boundary effects is surprisingly large.

And we won't even mention Reynolds #.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

It's twenty percent bigger than 50% so its got to be better.
The "it goes to eleven" school of thought.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Back attcha.

Boy do my Mayan neighbors feel dumb.

 

...and with all that human sacrifice to boot

 

Yeah but that makes for some great block parties.

 

LOL!!

 

Who is heading the design of the F2013? I've heard some interesting stories from inside the Scuderia.

 

Thats as large as F1 allows, is it not what Brawn said in the interview? May as well go as big as possible and it gives better correlation.

 

Shouldn´t it be Pat Fry?....what did you hear, Rory came back?

 

Thats what I've heard also....

Seems as if the season just ended, and new cars will be shown in less than a month which is good for us. It would be silly to throw tons of $ for a car that will be completely obsolete at the end of this season so I expect the pecking order to be more or less them same.

 

Ooh - Do please tell.......

As for the chief designer, that's still shown as Nick Tombazis, but here's their release from late last year "explaining" it all;

No mention of Pat - He remains "technical director for the chassis division", whatever that may be...... No mention of Rory either.

Cheers,
Ian
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/104906

 

You've still got that bug up your arse about these, huh?

You want 'em to stand the rads upright, correct? I like them canted forward as it *lowers* the CofG and gives a nice area for the heavy electronic stuff ahead of the cores.

I also like that they're staying with the pullrod front end - I never did believe that was the root of their problems with Clifford.

Cheers,
Ian