Designers: Willy Rampf (TD), Christoph Zimmerman (CD), Willem Toet (HA), Markus Duessman (Head of Powertrain) Drivers: Nick Heidfeld (3), Robert Kubica (4)
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
The BMW nose fins are like the fins all the other teams use on the nose, but with one main difference, their endplates. In some respects yes, they do function like the middle section of a bridge wing. As they are creating lift to send the upwash from the front wing down over the body to power the rear aero. But I believe their greater function is the using tip vortices from the endplates, acting like the Viking wings to improve the flow around the car.
I've read that Nick is quite unhappy with the car so far. He mentioned the lack of consistency and ballance. F1.08 is said to more 'unpredictable' and harder to adjust to than the 2007 car. Nick said that these new tweaks do improve balance but it's not as good as expected, also he said that there are more tweaks on the way (being tested in the wind tunnel).
(soory can't find ant english-language source so far)
"BMW were hiding their times from their private Valencia test in mid february.
They beat the record of Kovalainen (1.11:0 min) which was set in late january several times by half a second (1.10:5). The team released only times that were more than two seconds slower that the real ones."
"Correspondents in the Australian city for authoritative European publications including Blick, Bild and Auto Motor und Sport claim that the Hinwil built F1.08 could even be a match for Ferrari and McLaren this year."