Some things I’ve noticed in the images posted by @Charlie_S_F1 & @UkOwners:
Nosecone: Longer, with four fused wing elements i.e. no lower element passing under. Similar to prev seasons’ Ferrari nosecone. Possibly for drag reduction. RB18 & RB19 had the lower wing element separated.
Front suspension: The upper forward arm attachment point appears to be kicked back further. It should look relatively severe in the coming photos. It’s now so far back that it’s in approximately the same area where pushrods intersect the chassis on pushrod equipped cars; if so, this detail would not be easily duplicated on a front pushrod equipped car. Their front suspension design has been on a different planet for three seasons now and no fans or press have been able to say definitively if it’s an aero concept or a kinematics concept.
Sidepod inlet: I’ll agree with others it appears to be underneath the leading edge blade. This was the next logical step for them. The simple way to raise the sidepod leading edge higher than it was on the RB19 while maintaining inlet frontal area was to place it over top the inlet. I'm expecting a letterbox shape--the RB19 inlet upside down.
Halo smoothing: Follows with their various low drag details on RB18 & RB19. It leads to the cannon exit and should work easily with their simple cylindrical louver array from the RB19.
Roll hoop inlet / engine intake: Shorter, wider, and rectangular. Looks to be roughly the same total area. The big change is that it is heavily recessed at the base which entails a return to roll hoop support pylons, which the RB18 & RB19 did not have.
Cannon exit: Steeply slopped downward; seems to be the most steeply pitched cannon exit seen thus far.
Overall the car appears longer (need to verify). The sidepod undercut (i.e. the area by the edge wing) looks unchanged.
AR3-GP wrote: ↑13 Feb 2024, 21:45
Adrian's championship sidequest. Win with the opposition's car.
There’s the FIA bodywork spec, and then there’s the winning spec of that spec, which Newey & RB have dictated for fifteen years running.
One rebranded user ITT with an etymologically entertaining confabulation of a username which translates as, “To suck,” (lol) seemed to think this car is literally the W14, however the plan view shapes of the sidepod inlet leading edge on the RB19 & W14 were identical and dictated by a regulatory bounding box, same as the AMR22. The shapes in that region are no secret. The W14 was a step back toward convention after a step away from it while the RB18 & RB19 never strayed far from it to begin with, so the comparison is trite and reads like the myriad MSM tier FUD posts found recently in the F1-sphere regarding RB’s imminent "implosion" (lol) and subsequent total brain drain to Maranello (lol) coincidentally issued by the “Fangio of 100 hp output advantages” fans in trademark monotonic drone. Yawn.
Regardless there was a mid-wing present on the RB14 which predated the W13 by four years and exploiting essentially the same regulatory wording, a car which had not only a mid-wing but a sidepod inlet beneath a mid-wing, meaning the general concept was already in RB’s repertoire 6+ years prior to this RB20.
May as well call them RB14 pods.
