2022 F1 Launch dates and car reveals

I can't tell if those are gills on top of the side pods or just some stripes

 

I think they're stripes...

 

I thought the same also because the area allowed by the rules for such openings I believe is much more limited.

In any car, hasn’t been mentioned by the Twitter experts:

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If the gills are real, isn't it a pretty bad way to get rid of heat (aerodynamically speaking).

 

I can only guess they wanted to avoid exiting the cooling air at the back and so maintain flow energy around the trailing edge of the floor and the beam wing. If they got their design right, the “choppy” air will be funnelled between the beam wing and the main plane of the rear wing.

This doesn’t change the fact that turning the cooling air through and out the rads through two basically 90 degree bends is not good for drag and neither is the flow out of the louvers.

Maybe that’s just their hot-day or low-speed circuit configuration. Or they expect to make up the losses using their drivers’ talents.

 

The front wings look like a snow plow.

 

Ultimate combover

 

Cooling louvers look like a messy solution, but they weren´t using them until now just because they were banned, so I guess they work. The good thing is that they can close them when not needed.

 

I don’t buy the cooling idea. Surely they should be looking to maximise airflow to the rear end via the slimmest possible bodywork? I expect all these cars to look very different when they appear on track…

 

Good call! That's gonna stick lol

 

That interpretation of the rear wing suggests the design of the mule is not as cookie-cutter as we've been led to believe.

 

Nailed it! (as have so many others lol)

 

They were used in the past but not like this, at least not since the Toleman of 1985:
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Also, if they do close the louvres off and force the air to the back, with the rads pretty much laid horizontal as expected, that’s quite the tortuous path for the air flow. Not sure they’ll close out the louvres.

This solution in fact has almost no opening at the back—so very tight—but the air reaching the rear of the car may be quite disturbed from the air exiting the gills. The other advantage this solution has is that of a relatively flat topped sidepod. So, unlike with a downward tapered sidepod, the air is not accelerated over the top and so reduces lift.

This may be an early development to get through the first week’s testing but redoing a sidepod design with associated cooling system mods sounds like a major undertaking.

 

They used them in the 2000s until banned in 2009 IIRC.

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Didn’t remember them on the tops of the sidepods like that but still not to the extent of what AM showed yesterday. Great pic, BTW! Also seeing the S-duct.

There’s also this example. Comes pretty close:

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Any specific reason why were they banned? IIRC, it's primary function was to cool the engine and other internal components. Or am I missing something.

 

Meh, things that FIA does. The idea was having simpler aero because things were going out of control (take a look at the 2008 BMW Sauber), so basically they mandated minimal radius of curvature in the bodywork, exclusion boxes and so on. The result was the ugliest cars in decades.

 

Okay... these cars look great. I can't wait to see final versions of the packages and the new liveries.

 

Ex Mercedes Aero Guy...