Low noses next year!.....

Finally, the era of the "anteaters" will come to an end......

 

That's close to 30 years, isn't it?

 

It began with Tyrrell's inverted gull wings, I believe in 1990-1991. I think that it was Bennetton that took the next step by connecting the two wings to make it continuous under the nose.

It is ironic that in 1971-1972, March had done just the opposite with its "tea tray" wing that ran continuously above the nose! Ferrari's wings from late 1973 to 1980 were somewhat similar.

 

Indeed, the noses were raised in order to reduce drag--and they took about 100HP of drag out of the cars at top speed by so raising the nose and directing the airflow out the pods.

 

The Ferrari F2001-2004 kicked ass with low noses...beautiful cars too.

 

Cool.

I'm thinking the look of the early nineties is back. Nice.

 

Some of the best looking cars. My favorite F1 car all time is still the '95 Ferrari 412T2.

 

Technikmuseum in Sinsheim

 

I'm expecting some interesting shapes on the top side of noses directing airflow.

 

Fresh off ScarbsF1:
http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2014_draft.jpg

Brief summary:
• Front wing reduced front 1800mm to 1650mm wide
• Nose tip centered at 185mm high
• Front Bulkhead maximum height 525
• Chassis height maximum 625mm
• Vanity panels still allowed
• Engines now 1.6l V6 turbo, Direct injection, fuel flow limited, 15k max RPM
• Energy Recovery systems to add +150hp from Kinetic and Turbo harvesting
• Race Fuel limited to 100kg
• Gearboxes to have 8 forward ratios, those ratios are fixed for the season
• Single central exhaust pipe exiting 17-18.5cm behind rear axle line and 300-525mm high
• Last 150mm of tail pipe must point 5 degrees upwards
• No bodywork behind the tail pipe axis
• No lower beam wing
• Space still allowed for Y75 winglet (monkey seat)
• Top rear wing a little shallower
• Minimum weight 690Kg

 

What about the ridiculously ugly/stupid snow plow front wings? Are they going away or are we forced to look at those monstrosities for another decade?

 

Well, there's good news and bad news for this. The front wings will be 15cm more narrow.


The good news is the front wings will not be quite so complicated looking with massive amounts of downforce right off the bat, and this could be the case for quite some time really. The reasoning is that the rear downforce is taking a considerable hit with the deletion of the beam wing and no more sealed diffusers. This in essence means the front wings will not be nearly as complicated simply because they cannot be that complicated due to the rear end downforce being insufficient to balance such a complicated front wing structure with tons of downforce.

The bad news is that downforce in general is taking a huge hit next year.

Engine torque control (because there will be much more torque with these engines) and clever ERS harvesting maps will be the 'trick' for 2014 is my guess.

I expect the cars to look pretty simple to begin with really. We may see some clever sidepod interpretations but I'm not expecting anything overly ground breaking.

 

This seems to be quite a lot of changes at what is a rather late stage in the design process.
I suspect that a lot of work has been wasted. Another example of F1 "cost cutting".

 

Why do they want them to be fixed?

 

cheaper. less cog swapping throughout the season.

 

So probably the solution will not suit Monaco, right? The ratios will try to fit most of the
circuits, but the really fast ones and the really slow ones will be compromised, right?
So Monza and Monaco will be among them, and maybe Silverstone and SPA.

 

It's going to be interesting how teams deal with this. The 100kg/hour is further stipulated into measurements below certain rpm ranges too, so there are going to be detailed calculations showing how often a car is going to be below 'XXXX' rpm ata certain circuit vs above 'XXXX' rpm where 'Z' more fuel is allowed to flow, thus allowing engineers to better calculate fuel requirements for a race distance. 100kg/hour seems to not really be a problem so much as the question of how are they going to take advantage of that alloted fuel flow when they are below a certain rpm where flow is limited to the point where they couldn't burn 100kg/hour if they tried. Seems like a sliding scale to me. Fuel line reservoirs will probably be outlawed, I believe this was brought up before.......

note:

regulation 29.5
No car is permitted to consume more than 100kg of fuel, from the time at which the signal to start the race is given to the time each car crosses the Line after the end-of-race signal has been given. Other than in cases of force majeure (accepted as such by the stewards of the meeting), any driver exceeding this limit will be excluded from the race results.

 

I don't think it's going to be as much of an issue as the ERS system and its additional torque it will bring to the drivetrain at much lower rpms will be able to more than compensate for the previous gearboxes ability to swap gears. Clever ERS and engine mapping will replace gear swapping, the top teams will no doubt have a different map for every circuit.

 

I doubt if they use all 8 gears at any given circuit. At some they'd use first thru seventh, at others, second thru eighth.

 

Except for Newey. He'll whip out his mechanical pencil and slide rule and have a new design in a couple of days...

 

GREAT news some of my all-time favorites, from that era.

 

I'm glad to see front wing width reduced. I think the cars will look better with simpler smaller front wings.

 

These are great news, current f1 cars are butt ugly, and fron wings are plain stupid...i really hope cars will look a lot better next year....and less downforce will be good for driver skills