Ferrari F10

[Astro1]

New info about the new Ferrari
http://motorandmore.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... o-661.html
http://clubf1.es/viewtopic.php?t=14343
http://www.thef1.com/destacados/tecnica ... so-en-2010
http://www.terra.es/deportes/formula1/a ... 690097.htm
http://www.elmundodeportivo.es/gen/2009 ... lonso.html

The news/rumors make some sense as Ferrari tested the (RBR nose) solution during Friday practice a few events back.

Also could somebody make a translation of the most sensible article. I understand what's written, but a proper translation would help.

[Miguel]

All these articles are based on an "El Mundo Deportivo" report, which apparently is the last link you posted. The main ideas there are the following:

• Next year's model will be named 661
• It will sport a high nose, and most aero will be inspired from the RB5. The article says that the Brawn is more effective but the RBR may have more development potential.
• The F60 is a difficult car to drive, and they want to fix this with suspension work and a different weight distribution
• The larger fuel tank will take advantage of the space currently devoted to the KERS.
• In order to improve weight distribution, the engine will be placed further back.
• Small rotating dampers might be back, because they are small and may allow a larger diffuser.

I'm no engineer and don't know if this damper stuff makes any sense. Personally, I wouldn't believe most of it. Some stuff is plain obvious (F60 difficult to drive, weight distribution and suspension work important next year), while nobody will remember the other details in January.

[Astro1]

Kind of what I thought as well.

There's not much to it other than the internal factory development designation and an idea that the car will use some RBR elements.

With the testing ban would it be possible becuase of early development for Ferrari to be able to benchmark an early beta prototype before making adjustments or will they have to wait till February to test which is a big gamble should the design be a flop.

A minimal straight line test would provide at least some data. When is testing set to resume?

[scarbs]

I think what’s been written could equally be applied to any car\team for 2010, I doubt it suggests any insight from the writers.


Next year's model will be named 661
Internally Ferrari consecutively code name all their cars The F2008 was 659, the F60 was 660 and the 2010 car…661! what Ferrari will use as the 'marketing' public name for the car is still unanswered.

It will sport a high nose, and most aero will be inspired from the RB5. The article says that the Brawn is more effective but the RBR may have more development potential
Most teams will sport the Red bull technology style front chassis, the loophole around the minimum dimensions of the footwell can be exploited to create more space between the front wheel and some beneficial suspension geometry. Brawn, Toyota and BMW have all tried the false panels to prove the concept works for the drivers view. I think the rest of the RBT design will be discarded for Brawns concepts the front wing endplates, the sidepods and the diffuser. That said, some teams may use the deeper rear wing endplates (Williams and Toyota already have)

The F60 is a difficult car to drive, and they want to fix this with suspension work and a different weight distribution
I doubt that difficulty to drive will be top of their list, the Ferrari grips well, Alonso's style matches that of Kimi and he hasn’t struggled. KERS effect ton braking is believed to be problem suffered by Badoer\Fisichella, although their lack of time in the cockpit is the root cause. Any suspension changes will be aimed at the narrower front tyres and improving tyre warm up. Weight distribution will have to change anyway as the front tyres will be so much narrower, the 50/50% set ups of this years will be eased back for a less radical 46-48% front bias.

The larger fuel tank will take advantage of the space currently devoted to the KERS.
This is true enough, the KERs battery sits below the fuel tank and the oiltank cutout will be smaller as the MGU won't be there. Still more space will be needed to package the fuel race fuel load. They haven’t really explained how Ferrari will do this.

In order to improve weight distribution, the engine will be placed further back.
This is one obvious way to tackle the problem, but is detrimental to aero performance and weight distribution. I suspect the driver moving forwards is more likely, along with a wider\taller tank.

Small rotating dampers might be back, because they are small and may allow a larger diffuser.
They ay be correct, but not for that reason, the dampers are nowhere near the diffuser! Brawn have run rotary dampers with some success this year, they are easy to package, but have little effect on the aero profile. The bigger diffuser (and they will be big!) will need slimmer gearbox and sump packaging, as well as a raised differential and rear impact structure.

[raceman]

I guess next year's cars will be very interesting to race and to watch them racing, of course

[Astro1]

@scarbs, with the diffuser loophole being blown wide open how will the car design change as clearly a major focus will be on maximizing the effect of the new diffusers.

I suspect that even the DDD cars that took advantage of the loophole at the start of the season are not (were not) fully optimized for the DD and were ready to remove the device in case it was banned at a minimized performance penalty.

I would think, that the 2010 cars would be diffusers on wheels, well perhaps not that radical but I would think that the designs would try anything possible to maximize the effect of the extra channels NO?

And, with the testing ban would it be possible becuase of early development for Ferrari to be able to benchmark an early beta prototype before making adjustments or will they have to wait till February to test which is a big gamble should the design be a flop.

[scarbs]

The whole rear end will need to be re-optimised to suit the DDD, I think even the team’s starting this year with a DDD will find their rear mechanicals are encroaching into space taken up by the diffuser, RBT and their low line rear end are especially challenged by this. We will see the entire middle of the car narrowed above and below the step plane to free up airflow over\under the diffuser. The fuel tank based might even be narrowed to 30cm (from 50cm) wide, as it forms the approach to the diffuser. The engine will needs the pumps and ancillaries narrowed\relocated\raised to free up space to form more undercut sidepods, the gearbox and particularly the differential will also be narrower\raised to clear the upper deck of the diffuse, the rear beam structure will also be teased to be higher up to the maximum 400mm height.
My view is that we will see brawns style of undercut sidepods, made more extreme with almost a Ferrari F92 ‘double floor’ effect to send airflow over the top of the diffuser. Red bulls low line sidepod philosophy will not see a return.

Many teams have probably been running 2010 parts where at all possible. We saw the run of false noses mid season just as teams were finalising the 2010 monocoques to be signed off for production. With the testing ban, we will see teams in rush to get at least interim cars running with the new narrower front slicks. They need data to confirm weight distributions and kinematics. So it won’t be an issue for a team to release their new car late (it might even be advantageous), the can easily run a 2009 car with modified suspension and weight bias all the way up to the final tests.

The only flops will be teams that have failed to make the changes to react to the tyres, aerodynamic wise all teams should be back on level pegging.

[xpensive]

It boggles my mind to consider the aggregated costs for the teams to re-design everything around a regulation loop-hole, which should have been killed in its infancy.

Only had it been concieved by McLaren and not the Honda-engineers.

[scarbs]

It boggles my mind to consider the aggregated costs for the teams to re-design everything around a regulation loop-hole, which should have been killed in its infancy.

Only had it been concieved by McLaren and not the Honda-engineers.

indeed its sad the FIA or FOTA didnt close the loophole for 2010, as it undoes everything the OWG and 2009 rules set out to achieve.

[Astro1]

@scarbs Thanks for the as usual very informative response.

It seems that it's not too far out of the scope of realism to call the 2010 cars "diffusers on wheels".

[xpensive]

It boggles my mind to consider the aggregated costs for the teams to re-design everything around a regulation loop-hole, which should have been killed in its infancy.

Only had it been concieved by McLaren and not the Honda-engineers.

indeed its sad the FIA or FOTA didnt close the loophole for 2010, as it undoes everything the OWG and 2009 rules set out to achieve.

Tragic, but I guess this is what you get when you ask a politician to do an engineer's job, not that anyone asked though.

[Miguel]

Thanks for your insight, scarbs. I guess next time I'll translate your posts to the journalists working at "El Mundo Deportivo" instead of the other way round!

One thing I'm wondering is whether next year we'll see as tight a grid as this season. Will the big spenders leave the other teams trailing or is mostly everybody acclimatised with the aero rules?

[ESPImperium]

The 2 most compeditive designs this year have paved the way for the next 3 years cars, and how they will look like.

They will have a Red Bull nose, sloping away to the Brawn style rear with the Brawn front wing concept and the Red Bull rear wing concept with the Shark Fin.

Looking ats what we have seen in FP1 & FP2 this year on some cars, i think thats they way were going. Tight sleek and sophisticated front with powerful and effective rear end. Thus a easy to drive car that has traction out of corners (Brawn) but hears up the tyres and easy to put in corners well (Red Bull) for the future.

Also there are some design element s from other cars that will make their way thrugh from other cars. I think that the F1.09 style phony mirror upports will be kept, as they are effective flow conditioners, the MP4/24 deep scoop rear wing as well. Also the Force India/Toyota sawtooth vortex creators that are infront of the sidepods where the BMW Sauber phony supports are will also be kept.

Also the BMW rear wing-rear wing will be used more effrctivly too.

I think that early next year when we are all pouring over the pics of the potential 14 new designs we will have many surprises that we never expected.

[Astro1]

Some 'contradictory' views on next years cars (though not from Ferrari) but there are some hints about development being centered around the diffusers and fuel tanks as scarbs has pointed out.

Martin Whitmarsh interview

Q: With only two races to go the focus must be on the 2010 car. How far along is that process?

MW: The car is very developed. Aerodynamically it is already superior to this car because we were able to work with the regulations as they are now being interpreted. So one can imagine that there is a relatively extreme double diffuser system on the car and it is quite a radical departure from this year’s car. We’re spending all our development resources on that project and it looks exciting. We will have a very competitive car next year, because frankly if not, you can’t win a championship as we did this year.


Brawn has a bit of a conservative stance.

Brawn's approach

I think conceptually the car is not so different next year but it's a non refuelling car so the fuel capacity is higher, the tyres are different.

"But the things we are doing aerodynamically now we can carry over to next year so it's not such a dramatic change. I think also everybody knows where they should be targeting.

"So we know what performance we have this year, we know what we should try and achieve next year, whereas some of the teams came in to this year not really knowing where they should be. I don't think it is quite as challenging next year as it was from 2008 to 2009."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/79298

[Astro1]

The F-92 double floor idea scarbs was talking about.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5672&hilit=F92A