Lotus T127 Cosworth

[Spencifer_Murphy]

Would just like to agree with giblet and xpensive on their last posts:

Manchild is far from a troll...he was a here a long time ago, and is one of the valuable contributers to the forum, and one of the reasons I showed up here in the 1st place. I'm glad he returned after an absence.

I absolutely agree, manchild's passion for this sport burns very brightly indeed, and while I may not always agree with him, I very much value his insight and opinions.

This forum might be called "F1Technical", but looking at the board it becomes rather obvious that is in name only.

Quite right, I've been away for a while, returned to the board and found that along with claiming EVERYTHING is to enhance the efficiency of the diffuser another commonly touted phrase is "This is a technical forum". Upon (not very) close inspection it is quite clear this is the general discussion board. There ARE technical discussion boards elsewhere on this site.

Now to the point of my post:
With regards to the Louts Cosworth T127, I've been looking at a model I have of the Williams FW16 and can't help but be reminded of it when I look at the T127's sidepods. Specifically with regard to the rear portion of them. Flat upper surface with heavily undercut sides. Its just made me think, while we may look at these sidepods as "boxy" and "underdeveloped"...even crude maybe...could it be that this design is just a completely different design philiosophy to the others with regard to rear end airflow management.

Theoretically these sidepods should produce a less low-pressure over the top of them than, say, the RB6 or the VR-01, could this be part of the plan, with the heavily undercut sidepods designed to draw air in, OVER the floor and, crucially, UNDER the lower element of the rearwing, thus increasing flow to this part of the wing and possibly increasing the flow velocity exiting the diffuser (by generating low static pressure at the exit of the diffuser) hence increasing the efficiency of the rear end in a different way. Just speculation on my part.

[ISLAMATRON]

ISLAMATROLL, I had no idea that religion has something to do with color of the skin. Live and learn...

Anyway, I was only mentioning technological backwardness of Malaysia, and nothing else. Same thing of heritage-rape was done by my opinion with Ferrari. Since Luca is as white as Pope, just the way Enco was, your calling up on racial/religion background doesn't work. Check for my Ferrari management criticism posts from 2, 3 or 4 years ago.

At no point did I ever mention ANY religion.. re-read my post please

Your "rice bag" comment was way out of line... as is your "technological backwardness of Malaysia" comment... If they are "technologically backwards" then who is "technologically forwards" european countries such as England or Germany? Please leave your colonial mindset out of the discussion of the Lotus 2010 car... buying company(or F1 team) is not "heritage rape" whatever that is supposed to mean.

[Lightspeed]

TATA owns Jaguar...Mallya could have called his team Jaguar couldn't he? He has the sway to do it. And he's a savvy enough business man to do it.

TATA do own Jaguar, but Mallya is in no way related to TATA.
Mallya runs his own businesses which have nothing to do with Tata.

The only thing that perhaps common between Mallya and Tata is the fact that they are both from the country of India.

[Spencifer_Murphy]

TATA owns Jaguar...Mallya could have called his team Jaguar couldn't he? He has the sway to do it. And he's a savvy enough business man to do it.

TATA do own Jaguar, but Mallya is in no way related to TATA.
Mallya runs his own businesses which have nothing to do with Tata.

The only thing that perhaps common between Mallya and Tata is the fact that they are both from the country of India.

Yes, where Mallya is a former member of parliament, and still holds some political sway with those (still) in power. It would be relatively easy I believe (and entirely possible) for Mallya to workout a way of getting TATA's support for his team, including the rights to use the Jaguar brand.

The point I was trying to get at is that, if he really wanted to, I believe it was/is entirely possible for Mallya to do such a thing (hypothetically anyway). Put it this way, Mallya has managed to get the Indian government onboard with the idea of hosting a GP in part of a grand scheme to get India firmly on the motorsports "map", one day he would like to run an Indian driver in one of his cars ideally. If he can do that he could easily do what I described above, it'd be benificial for both TATA & Mallya (or he could make it appear that way - he's a very savvy businessman lol).

[ringo]

That is true, but i think the Indian people would rather stick with the identity of "Force India" than adopt the foreign jaguar name.

[christopher.mahlon]

That is true, but i think the Indian people would rather stick with the identity of "Force India" than adopt the foreign jaguar name.

What makes you think that? They cheer for European soccer teams instead of Indian ones, why not cheer for a European brand instead of an Indian one?

I've let myself drift from topic, though. I like the way this car looks. At the very least it is a significant departure from the rest of the cars. It is interesting the Gascoyne opted to keep the shoulders of the car high and go for that undercut with the sidepods. It should be interesting to see how that pans out. I'd expect the endplates on the rear wing to get a significant freshening before Bahrain, then again they may have aero updates to do that are bigger steps than that. At least we've got two brand new teams with relatively clean sheet designs. Maybe we'll see some of the bigger teams taking a page out of their books?

[Belatti]

Besides, I agree with manchild that recycling old racing names without a direct relation is a bit tasteless,
as I remember, so did the Brabham family last year?

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns21524.html

They bought the Super Aguris and bid for 2010...

[ringo]

That is true, but i think the Indian people would rather stick with the identity of "Force India" than adopt the foreign jaguar name.

What makes you think that? They cheer for European soccer teams instead of Indian ones, why not cheer for a European brand instead of an Indian one?

Yes, but if you can have that same team and switch the jersey's and the players passports, birth certificates and identity to indian... They would cheer even more.

Look how shamelessly Marusia (Russian super car maker) slapped their logo on the VR-01, having nothing to do with the team at all.

I've let myself drift from topic, though. I like the way this car looks. At the very least it is a significant departure from the rest of the cars. It is interesting the Gascoyne opted to keep the shoulders of the car high and go for that undercut with the sidepods. It should be interesting to see how that pans out. I'd expect the endplates on the rear wing to get a significant freshening before Bahrain, then again they may have aero updates to do that are bigger steps than that. At least we've got two brand new teams with relatively clean sheet designs. Maybe we'll see some of the bigger teams taking a page out of their books?

Yes indeed, i like to look at this car as a Lego set. It has some simple concepts which can be easy to work and develope from. Looks like it wont have any cooling and reliability problems either; very robust and "aired out" body.

[axle]

I hope we get back to discussing the Lotus T127 at some point as although this thread is in "General" it's also in the subsection F1 Cars and it's title would appear to expect a conversation about the T127's merits.

[Hangaku]

I hope we get back to discussing the Lotus T127 at some point as although this thread is in "General" it's also in the subsection F1 Cars and it's title would appear to expect a conversation about the T127's merits.

Sense at last. It would be nice if all of the posts relating to the discussion of the use of the name Lotus were moved to their own thread in the general discussion forum, and this thread were to be cleaned up.

Back to the car - at first look, I thought it looked quite a basic and blocky (see: not aero-eccentric) package. But on closer inspection, I think that Lotus have been possibly quite clever. Their car looks a lot more like a 2009 spec. than anyone else's on the grid so far - shorter wheelbase (?), bulkier rear end, a lot more squat in general. Perhaps we're going to see the T127 perform well around the twisties, but lose ground in a straight line (a bit like the Macca early last season).

Edit: to explain myself a little better with the "clever" comment - perhaps they know that they aren't going to build a car that's good on fast circuits straight off the bat, so they opted for the "safer" option of building a car that's going to perform on the slower circuits.

[horse]

What is the third exhaust coming out of the backside of the airbox?

I'm not seeing this third exhaust. Does someone have a picture?

[pipex]

Looking at the square end plates of the rear wing in the Lotus, can someone explain to me the function of the cuts in the other cars?

Thanks

[Henning]

Very interesting interferance between the push rod and the upper suspension arms

you may have to zoom in to the image



Original is here : http://www.gurneyflap.com/Resources/LOTT_1.jpg

[Giblet]

Without trying to flare up the UK folks, just a question, is this shade of greeen British Racing Green?

It looks like it to me.

[RacingManiac]

I don't think there is a shade of green that is THE British Racing Green....I think over the years many different green are used by many brand....