F1 testing
 

Opinions ?

I like the new tires, but the shark fin is Fugly. The broken nose is still there on most cars too... Would it kill them to write regs that make pretty cars ?

They'll never be pretty again. The computers and engineers have assured that.

From what I can see so far, they are uglier than ever!

I've done some F1 testing myself.







came up with some Microsoft support page.

I was going to agree with you, then I remembered the step noses ;-) How about we meet halfway to 2nd ugliest F1s made ? ;-)

Yeah, I almost retyped my post, thinking of those noses. They were bad.

Boy, I don't know. They look a whole lot better wider, with wider wheels, and with lower, wider rear wings. Aside from the shark fins, I think they look miles better than in recent memory.

My thoughts exactly!

This year's cars look like they're wearing backward facing dunce caps. McLaren looks like a Tom Walkinshaw "Orange Arrows" team. Honda's Lap 1 was an "installation lap". Lap 2 was "engine removal" lap.

They look decent form the front... The side view is what reveals the broken nose and the fin... We'll see... might make for interesting racing despite the aero issues...

The Red Bull is interesting. It has an ant eater nose, and the S duct is more like a straight shot. The side pods are almost gone now.

I don't like the red car because it's ugly. the pink car is much prettier! Bah.

Form follows function.
WGAF if they are pretty as long as they are fast.

That was bad. ;)

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Yes but... Form is pretty strictly defined in F1 within a restrictive box that limits a lot of cool stuff... So since the box is already set, why not add a clause to ensure they're not fugly cars ;-) They got rid of the awful broken noses of a few years ago... There was talk last few months about the shark fin, but not enough agreement within teams to get rid of it... Hoping the new owners are a little more dictatorial when it comes to making them prettier... I don't think 0.2 sec a lap makes much difference to us, but I'd rather watch a pretty car than an ugly one, all things being equal... Still overall it's progress...

Form follows function until you get short of space to put ADS.
Hey, let's put a fin on it, we are out of flat vertical areas for
all the ads.

And so it begins... I don't think we've seen the real ugly side of these cars yet. I'm told each wing is worth a few points and there is legality space to fit a number of them, so why stop at one or two or three..? Pretty soon we will have a complete sewer grating hanging there ;)

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Since the time this thread was started. Ferrari's 2017 F1 car has apparently been rolled back to a 2012 model. :D

^ Ha! Should be excellent. Now if they can get rid of some of the ridiculous aero crap, we'd have racing.

How about 1967 bodies with modern tires.

I'd be happy if they'd just get rid of all the complicated unreliable hybrid crap.

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Remember the good old days when a driver got killed at almost every race?

Very well. But that had more to do with track safety and car design than it did with how the cars looked.... They did look good though, damn !

Honda are the Lance Stroll of engine suppliers.

Time for the McLaren rookie owners to try to persuade Porsche/ Audi/ VW to have a go.

If not, then crawl back to Mercedes. Or just give up and sell the whole thing to some car company and go back to selling oil and airplane rides.

I'm ok with the hybrid stuff. Its the aero that they all complain about that keeps passing to a minimum.

On the otherhand, my first race was at Hockenheim in 2002. The main grandstand forms a bowl down the start finish straight. The 3 litre V10 at 19k RPM was chest thumping in the grandstand.

So maybe you are on to something...

V10 or 12, little to no aero. Then lets see who is best.

In a perfect world we could just specify maximum displacement and type of fuel.
Then let them have at it. Best design goes fastest and wins. That's how we get innovation.

This wanna be spec racer stuff with all sorts of gimmick energy recovery BS and a go-zillion restrictions just makes the cars more expensive and less reliable.

^This.

Wasn't that Can/Am?

F1 racing is on a different planet from any motorsport spec racer championship. LMP1 comes quite close but everything else is decades behind in the technology, materials, computing power, organisational stakes etc

There has been plenty of innovation in recent years but the public never get to see it as teams don't want to give away their competitive advantage their innovation brings.

Opening the rules would actually make the racing less competitive and kill off the competition very quickly. Keeping the rules stable and unchanged over time bunches up the competition to make better racing.

I'd love nothing more than to work on a race car where the only rules are 'if it fits in this size box and has 4 tyres touching the ground and passes stringent safety tests' as the options are unlimited.

Closest thing today to this nirvana is the Aston Martin road car that Adrian Newey and his team at Red Bull are designing. I'm reliably informed it will active aerodynamics, active suspension, monster powerful engine, very lightweight and so much down force the active suspension has been added to stop the tyres from exploding.

Unfortunately the sad reality is this approach wouldn't work with racing teams that spend 100's of millions. Budgets would get out of hand, teams would quit and there would be no racing.

In a past life not long ago I was paid to look at all the teams F1 cars in excruciating detail but I've not had a chance to with the new cars. From the few pictures I've seen I think the level of detail and complexity has taken a massive leap forward.

Will this translate into closer racing? I'm not sure it will.

no they did not have displacement limits
or many other rules or limits

but the limited number of 917 turbo's and their costs killed it

The good old days.

LIVE: Follow the Barcelona F1 test as it happens

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/live-follow-the-barcelona-f1-test-as-it-happens-878870/?tp%5B0%5D=31&s=1

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Three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton says fans shouldn't expect "fantastic racing" under Formula 1's new-for-2017 regulations.

Hamilton has long voiced concerns that the new rules could make the racing worse in F1 – and the Briton appears to be even more convinced of that possibility following the three days of Barcelona pre-season testing so far.

"The issue is exactly the same as it was before," said Hamilton. "We’ve got all this downforce and we need more mechanical grip. We need better grip from these bigger tyres, and less downforce, whereas it’s gone the other way.

"Let's hope the racing is fantastic, but don't hold your breath, I would say."

While Pirelli's new tyres are designed to better cope with the dirty air from rival cars, Hamilton is certain that won't make it sufficiently easy to follow others on track.

"I don't think it was ever the case of the tyres going off [in dirty air]," he said. "It was always the aero, in the front wing and in the rest of the car.

"Now the turbulence is easily twice as powerful from the back of the car so this magnifies the issue we had before."
"We weren't listened to"

After Hamilton said on Monday that his first test run suggested his suspicions about the challenge of following rivals in 2017 were correct, Red Bull's Max Verstappen offered a different opinion, saying it felt no different to last year.

Boy, THAT was F1!


The 2017 cars will be ridiculous fast compared with 2016.

McLaren‏ Verified account @McLarenF1

Nice rooster tails, Stoff. #F1Testing

https://twitter.com/McLarenF1/status/837216672624881664/video/1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVc8WDk8JyU&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_guSPVOIM

Not much sound improvement from last year... Oh well... Wishing for a return to small capacity grenades (V12s) naturally aspirated, with KERS being heat and brakes only. Would make everybody happy... manufacturers seem to be walking away from small turbo engines for their road cars at the moment, as they turns out not to be that efficient in the real world (surprise!).. Just dreaming I guess.

Back on topic for a sec.

Experts - What's going on here?
Measuring downforce?
Thanks
Bill K

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Not an expert but I'd reckon you are correct.

The big lump on the LHS rear wing end plate is a multi-port sensor block for measuring various pressure tapping's on the rear wing. The rib below the lump is hiding a bundle of small tubes

In various locations a small hole in the underside of the wing is connected via a very small tube which connects to a sensor which measures pressure at each location as the car is driven around the track.

Unlike an aeroplane wing an F1 wing is always very close to stalling so as to extract maximum down force but the downside is they are very sensitive to tail winds

Its the way the teams measure track performance compared to the CFD and wind tunnel results.

The underside of the floor will have dozens of small holes but the sensor block will be hidden inside the bodywork.

Hope this helps,

Horner is still hoping that Brawn might force everyone to ditch the shark fin before Australia ! Would be cool to have cars that don't look like a Bus advert from the side !

Cars I liked
 

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I don't think Andretti did that well in the Alfa, but it looked good.