2010 cars

[ISLAMATRON]

You also want to have the fuel tank as close as possible to the center of gravity to avoid shifting weight balance when the fuel burns off. This could mean that the drivers will be positioned slightly more forward.

Drivers feet can not be ahead of the front wheel centerline, if the wheelbases are getting too long the only thing they could do with the driver is make them sit more upright, but that is contrary to every aero move for the last 25 years or so. A while back, someone mentioned that the teams put in a spacer when the switch to V-8's made the engines shorter and that it would probably be removed to maintain a similar wheelbase.

With the fuel cell rules as they are I dont see the safety cells getting any wider so the teams will have to make the fuel cells longer and maybe slightly higher.

[WhiteBlue]

You also want to have the fuel tank as close as possible to the center of gravity to avoid shifting weight balance when the fuel burns off. This could mean that the drivers will be positioned slightly more forward.

Drivers feet can not be ahead of the front wheel centerline, if the wheelbases are getting too long the only thing they could do with the driver is make them sit more upright, but that is contrary to every aero move for the last 25 years or so. A while back, someone mentioned that the teams put in a spacer when the switch to V-8's made the engines shorter and that it would probably be removed to maintain a similar wheelbase.

With the fuel cell rules as they are I dont see the safety cells getting any wider so the teams will have to make the fuel cells longer and maybe slightly higher.

I wasn't aware that they are already max forward. Thanks for clarifying that.

[Richard]

2010 diffuser talk over here .....

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7580

[marcush.]

[quote="scarbs"]Here's the fuel tank regs below. I expect most teams already have some part of the their monocoque as wide as 800mm, it will just be that for next year a lot more of the tank will be that wide. Adrian Newey told me yesterday no team wil be able to get the required tank size without a longer fuel tank?

6.1.2 All the fuel stored on board the car must be situated between the front face of the engine and the driver's
back when viewed in lateral projection. When establishing the front face of the engine, no parts of the fuel,
oil, water or electrical systems will be considered.
Furthermore, no fuel can be stored more than 300mm forward of the highest point at which the driver's
back makes contact with his seat. However, a maximum of 2 litres of fuel may be kept outside the survival
cell, but only that which is necessary for the normal running of the engine.

6.1.3 Fuel must not be stored more than 400mm from the longitudinal axis of the car.[/quote
thanks for the regs...this explains a lot..so you have to weigh up whelbase increase +weight added due to longer car with the drawback of storing a lot of fuel high up in the car.For sure the longwheelbase does now make a lot of sense
and you have surely a big desire to shorten the gearboxbellhousing in front of the diff centreline

[scarbs]

I think the teams will pushing the fuel tank in all directions, width, height and length, as well as forwards or backwards.

• Width, its restricted, but there’s still scope for making more of the tank up to 80cm wide. This will impact sidepods, as the Radiators will need to be packaged into a smaller volume.

• Height, as we saw on the Lotus car a bulkier area behind the drivers head creates some space, with a relatively small impact. Although the rear wing is affect the flow lower down towards the more critical diffuser is less affected. The offset with this is that CofG height is increased; ballast can be used to off set this to a degree. How a falling CofG with reducing fuel load will affect handling will be a quandary.

• Length, they can either stretch the wheelbase or compress something at the front or rear. teams are able to push the driver a little further forwards, as their feet are not quite at the front axle line yet. This will push weight forwards. Shorten the gearbox, these are longer due to the need to shift weight forwards over the past few years and with the shorter V8 engines, this will push weight backwards. Bearing in mind all that and believing that weight will need to be shifted backwards to suit the front tyres, it could be thought that a shorter gearbox makes some sense. But again the offset is that the entry to the double diffuser depends on the gearboxes narrowness between 0 and 50mm off the ground. If anything aero would demand longer gearboxes to space the homologated and relatively wide engine from the diffuser entry.


Other ways tank volume can be recouped include
• Losing the intertechnique refuelling coupling, only one smaller filler is needed when the car is in the garage, negating the awkward filler positioning which is used to suit the refueller.

• Then, as this filler has a slower feed, the huge internal breather used to vent the tank during refuelling can be reduced too.

• I though resiting the oil tank (obviously KERS has gone too) would free up a lot of space, but Newey told me its position is homologated, thus cannot be changed.

So you can see height, width, wheelbase, driver and gearbox layouts are all interdependent on aero or weight distribution issues. It will be interesting to see the solutions.

[wesley123]

i had the idea(as told before) to put the undercut of the sidepods and splitter forward, then in the splitter there is alot of free space to add a fuel tank, maybe also add a small hole in it so you can 'cool' the fuel tank and possibly also use this air to go further for more cooling air.

[scarbs]

i had the idea(as told before) to put the undercut of the sidepods and splitter forward, then in the splitter there is alot of free space to add a fuel tank, maybe also add a small hole in it so you can 'cool' the fuel tank and possibly also use this air to go further for more cooling air.

Sadly and probably safely, not allowed

6.1.2 All the fuel stored on board the car must be situated between the front face of the engine and the driver's
back when viewed in lateral projection. When establishing the front face of the engine, no parts of the fuel,
oil, water or electrical systems will be considered.
Furthermore, no fuel can be stored more than 300mm forward of the highest point at which the driver's
back makes contact with his seat. However, a maximum of 2 litres of fuel may be kept outside the survival
cell, but only that which is necessary for the normal running of the engine.

[ISLAMATRON]

i had the idea(as told before) to put the undercut of the sidepods and splitter forward, then in the splitter there is alot of free space to add a fuel tank, maybe also add a small hole in it so you can 'cool' the fuel tank and possibly also use this air to go further for more cooling air.

please read the rules fully

6.1.2 All the fuel stored on board the car must be situated between the front face of the engine and the driver's
back when viewed in lateral projection. When establishing the front face of the engine, no parts of the fuel,
oil, water or electrical systems will be considered.
Furthermore, no fuel can be stored more than 300mm forward of the highest point at which the driver's
back makes contact with his seat. However, a maximum of 2 litres of fuel may be kept outside the survival
cell, but only that which is necessary for the normal running of the engine.

[wesley123]

i had the idea(as told before) to put the undercut of the sidepods and splitter forward, then in the splitter there is alot of free space to add a fuel tank, maybe also add a small hole in it so you can 'cool' the fuel tank and possibly also use this air to go further for more cooling air.

please read the rules fully

6.1.2 All the fuel stored on board the car must be situated between the front face of the engine and the driver's
back when viewed in lateral projection. When establishing the front face of the engine, no parts of the fuel,
oil, water or electrical systems will be considered.
Furthermore, no fuel can be stored more than 300mm forward of the highest point at which the driver's
back makes contact with his seat. However, a maximum of 2 litres of fuel may be kept outside the survival
cell, but only that which is necessary for the normal running of the engine.

whoa sorry that my english aint that good and i cant understand such things very well. Really, it is waay to hard to understand that.

so actually(i try to understand it as much as possible) the position of the fuel tank differs per driver? im sure Heidfeld has a different seat position as Kubica for example.

[scarbs]

The seat and driving position does alter by driver, but the seat\fuel tank bulkhead is fairly tightly worded in the regulations. (See below)

300mm forward of the drivers shoulders is just behind his bum.

The 2 litres would be needed near the engine\fuel injection system and probably not practical to locate in the splitter. besides this wil be the high pressure side of the fuel system and hence even more dangerous.


Seat back bulkhead covered in the technical regulations under drawing2, page 58 of the PDF linked here
http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.ns ... 0CLEAN.pdf

[newbie]

the slotted upper deck Renault diffuser with square sidewalls came in valencia, and the rounded wall diffuser (as claimed by some to be new as of the young drivers test) came two races later in Italy. ifs difficult to find images on public sites of these, but I have access to certain images that i cannot publicly post and so Astro you will just have to take my word for it (or not if you so please!). As the slotted element is part of the same upper duct, it remains a double diffuser architecture and not a triple deck! that way you could have a quintuple diffuser with one inlet and one outlet but a series of flaps!

[PlatinumZealot]

Ah here it is, Newbie. found it in the R29 thread.

We can see the slot in the upper diffuser. Strange how I didn't notice it before.

[Callum]

Would the exhausts above ^^ be legal during the season??

[ISLAMATRON]

THERE ARE CAPS ON THE EXHAUSTS, so nothing falls in, so that makes them look like they are sticking out a litlle more than the rules allow.

[Callum]

They are still prodtruding from the bodywork..