Renault Air Induction

Mercedes Benz kinda has the same setup but are more "discreet" about it. They have various "Pitot tubes" inside for everything having to do with ambient air other than a singularity this side of Star Trek.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Mercedes is also splitting airbox in three.
This has all gone out of hand with the modern power units where various components differ in cooling need.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

hehe... got side tracked while typing

 

Is the Mercedes cleaner aero-wise?

If you look at a head on picture of the cars, the Mercedes airbox is actually quite bulbous, and it's right in the path of the airflow to the rear wing, stealing some air from the rear wing, costing a little bit of rear end down-force.

With Renault's solution, the two side intakes being lower than the main engine intake means that they are stealing less air from the rear wing, reducing the loss of down-force.

For Mercedes, with the advantage that they had, the amount of down-force lost wasn't critical, but for Renault, they needed every bit of down-force that they could get, to make up for their cars other deficiencies.

 

Not new. Earliest such setup i can recall is mclaren from 2011, visually one of the cleaner setups. A goofy car in F1 history though.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I don't think 2nd in the WDC and 6 wins qualifies as goofy.

I always quite liked Mercedes W01 airbox.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Fast /= not goofy.

 

Lotus E21 air intake (2013)
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

What I don't get is why the airbox is becoming larger and the side-pods intakes smaller.
Aero-wise I would have thought the side-pods position is a much better one for an intake

 

My guess is that airbox receives pretty undisturbed air under many conditions due to being higher up, it is for instance less susceptible to cross winds which may affect either side-pod.
And the side-pod has implications towards the rear of the car (diffusor). The airbox much less so.

 

Don't forget that there's a massive amount of heat in those sidepods, which would heat up the air being supplied to the engine, especially at slow speeds - Less than ideal to say the least!

The cars design requires a roll-over hoop above the drivers head anyway, and so it makes sense to get a double use out of that area by using it for an engine air intake as well.

The only real downside is that, if the airbox intake is too large then it starts to "steal"air from the rear wing.

 

Air boxes are up higher because the air flow is more streamlined vs turbulent aid flowing over the body first. Laminar air will build a large charge vs disturbed air
Side pods are getting tighter and smaller to reduce drag and clean the air going under the turbulent air over the bodywork can spoil the floe under the car ... they want to keep the flow as un disturbed as possible

The 3 intakes I'm not sure what that is for.... I think it may be Kers cooling