Lotus E20 Renault

[Huntresa]

Why would they think it would be banned for 2013 Madly? FIA and Charlie Whiting said at the start of the season that all the exhausts were in the regulations and it was fine. Nothing has changed since then.

[madly]

In the early mid-season Charlie was talking, that FIA should see, if exhaust rules aren't to change while teams started to develop to extreme solutions. IMHO most teams wanted not to tightening exhaust rules simply because they invested too much in that area.

[MarkedOne8]

Charlie was talking is past.Teams developing Coanda exhausts is present.

[siskue2005]

No, Charlie did say in mid season that the exhaust might be changed for next season, as the 2012 rule change didnt bring the expected results which they hoped for

[madly]

No, Charlie did say in mid season that the exhaust might be changed for next season, as the 2012 rule change didnt bring the expected results which they hoped for

Exactly!
IMHO that pushed Lotus more in passive f-duct research than exhaust developing, therefore so late introduction of their Coanda exhaust.

[Huntresa]

No, Charlie did say in mid season that the exhaust might be changed for next season, as the 2012 rule change didnt bring the expected results which they hoped for

Exactly!
IMHO that pushed Lotus more in passive f-duct research than exhaust developing, therefore so late introduction of their Coanda exhaust.

Ill believe when i see article, but more on the topic, we know Lotus was gonna push harder this to bring updates later in the year compared to other years, which means with a philosophy like that they ofc develops a new exhaust regardless of next year.

Edit: Also isnt the 2013 decided alrdy? As in no major changes were made after the last big meeting, since this would be a big change.

[madly]

Yes. Coanda exhaust will be legal in 2013. No one talked that it's illegal. The point is, why Lotus waited so long to implement Coanda exhaust? IMHO, they started developing it in mid-season when it was clear that exhaust rules doesn't change in 2013. Is it clear now?

[munudeges]

The point is, why Lotus waited so long to implement Coanda exhaust?

Now there's a question, and it's really cost them a shot at at least one championship.

It won't be banned next year because it can't be. There's nothing in the regulations to stop it.

[Huntresa]

I still dont buy it that they waited for a rule clarification when the point of this year was to show that they would develop to the end or to the end where they cant win the championship anymore.

Also if you look at other teams who didnt run coanda exhaust from Australia, not that many has found a big benefit from them, its been pretty much static with Ferrari being the exception but they also bolted on alot more updates then the likes of Force India, Toro Rosso and Caterham who also went coanda mid season.

I buy what alison says about the coanda and that was that they took it to the track when they got the benefit from it over their old exhaust layout in the windtunnel and/or simulator and cfd.

[madly]

That brings another question. Was Lotus traditional exhaust so good, or is their Coanda exhaust so weak?
Of course it isn't exhaust alone but the whole package.
Lotus lost his momentum after Spa. But still it's better / faster than ie. Sauber with advanced 2nd or 3rd generation of exhaust.
It looks like they closed a little gap between SF and McL with new exhaust although maybe it is to early to assume that.

[Forza]

I posted this at another thread. There was a decision at TWG that there won't be further restrictions in exhaust area for 2013.

Lowe revealed that the teams have already decided that tightening exhaust restrictions further next year is unnecessary and would only push up expenditure ahead of the major regulations shake-up in 2014, when the new V6 turbo engines are set to feature a single, central exhaust.

“It has been discussed at the TWG (Technical Working Group) whether there should be a further constraint this winter,” he confirmed. “All the teams agreed that it wasn’t necessary or appropriate, and to keep developing for another year with sight of 2014 when it will all change again anyway. One of the big drivers of cost is change itself, so if you were to change the rules and change them again it would only cause teams to incur further costs.”

Also team notes from Friday about progress and updates

Technical programme notes :
We evaluated an exhaust update on Kimi’s car in FP1 and FP2.
Romain ran new chassis wings in both sessions.
Pirelli’s medium compound tyre was used in the first session, the medium and soft in the afternoon.

What we learned today :
We gained a good amount of data to make a conclusion on the exhaust update.
We will run with the new chassis wings on both cars for the rest of the weekend.

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "We’re quite happy with where we are today. We spent the morning on medium tyres, setting up and balancing the cars. Both were reasonable, with the drivers relatively happy. We ran an exhaust update with Kimi in FP1 and went back to the standard setup for the start of the second session. We then did another back to back analysis, so whereas we would normally have done a much longer high fuel run we spent FP2 evaluating this to gain good data and give us a clear picture on where we need to be tomorrow."

[siskue2005]

+1 Forza

[stefan_]

It didin't look great in the practice sessions, but the E20 had a good development programme this year, and if they don't nail it and win a race in 2012 I think they have a solid base to go from with the E21.

[MarkedOne8]

Lotus was alwaly better in race and even qualiying than free practices.Kimi is yet to tweak the setup.Maybe we will see at least one Lotus in second row.

[techF1LES]

Genuine Lotus F1 accessories used for brake bleeding