chrisc90 wrote: ↑13 Feb 2023, 19:32
What's everyone's take on the convergence this season? Who's followed others and who's going to be out on their own again.
At time of writing we have seen more or less half the grid: (Alfa, Haas, Williams, McLaren, plus partial renderings or poor quality images/videos of AT, Alpine, RB)
With some exceptions, the general trend seems to be some combination of:
1 - Elliptical (and slightly backwards-swept) sidepod inlets (like F1-75)
2 - Downwash ramp sidepods (sometimes with ridges along outer edge of sidepod) (like A522)
3 - Deep undercut (like RB18, possibly even more streamlined)
4 - A general trend toward cannon exits as preferred cooling scheme
5 - "Underbite" sidepod inlets (like RB18)
Suspension design still seems pretty varied across the grid on both ends of the car.
Each car seen so far seems to have 3 or 4 out of 5 things listed above:
Alfa - missing the underbite inlet and no sidepod ridges
Haas - Missing downwash ramp and deep undercut
Williams - missing underbite
McLaren - missing elliptical inlet
TBC if Red Bull has all five of these traits, but it looks possible based on the footage. Same for Alpine. The AlphaTauri render showed elliptical inlets but no underbite, although it may not be representative.
Nobody has really borrowed ideas from Merc, except for Williams on the front suspension. I'm very interested to see what the Ferrari looks like as well, because a lot of people have copied elements of the F1-75 (or in Haas' case, most of it). But Ferrari themselves may have found something better. The Mercedes will probably still stand alone as the most different car of the lot, unless they've deceived us all with claims it will look the same as the W13 from the outside.
It'd be ironic if RB turns up with a Ferrari-style outwash sidepod while Ferrari turns up with a deep undercut and a downwash ramp, although I somehow don't think that's going to happen.
Edit: maybe I'll come back to this at the end of the week once we've seen the Aston, Alpine, Merc, and Ferrari.
"You can't argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"
- Mark Twain