Stu wrote: ↑22 Feb 2022, 21:00
That is exactly what I think that they are doing. Other than the louvres the rules forbid cooling outlets within the wheelbase, I think that the outlet for this piece is where the suspension enters the bodywork (it looks to be quite oversized for it to be just for the suspension arm).
They had reasonably small side pods last year, I see no reason why they need all of the volume that they have now for cooling. The external bodywork can then be used to control the wheel wake (and keeping it away from the beam wing) - the CFD study by @Vanja66, @jjn9128 & @Vyssion shows that to good for drag reduction. The internal flow can then be used to ‘boost’ the beam wing flow.
This is a very interesting idea, now that so many other things are banned you need to look for solutions outside the box. However, I'm not 100% convinced yet. SF21 had quite a lot of openings, airbox was slightly larger and there was a larger opening under the airbox than F1-75 has. Overall, doesn't look too different, based only on total inlet surfaces.
If they did dedicate some amount of air going directly trough the sidepods and sausages, than they also had to make a big effort with manufacture since all those internal surfaces also have to have a perfect finish and with composites you usually have only one perfect side, the one in the tooling. To have both sides requires special manufacturing techniques which can eat up a lot of time and money.
