Renault R29

[ISLAMATRON]

just a noobie question...

if the underside of the nose is indeed hollow, wouldnt the air directed under the nose create a low(er) pressure effect on the backside of the nose cone and increase the effective downforce?

please correct me if I am wrong on this

-Aaron

totally correct as far as i Know, but i still dont know why they put that bulge on the underside of the nose... possibly just to hold more ballast, anyone got any ideas?

actually all the teams hollow out the underside of the nose, but it is most effective with a highly curved low nose

[donskar]

My two cents:

Unless the paint is very heavy (don't laugh) colors do not affect a car's performance.

Renault, IMHO, have established that they know what they are doing. It seems that when Alonso is in their cockpit (whatever the color scheme) they have a potential winner.

I like its apparent attempt to be different (and better).

Esthetically [-X

[Bob Brown]

My two cents:

Unless the paint is very heavy (don't laugh) colors do not affect a car's performance.

Renault, IMHO, have established that they know what they are doing. It seems that when Alonso is in their cockpit (whatever the color scheme) they have a potential winner.

I like its apparent attempt to be different (and better).

Esthetically [-X

I believe that says more about Alonso than the car, as evident last year. I expect Piquet to show the true failure of their car thsi year again.

[Rob W]

just a noobie question...

if the underside of the nose is indeed hollow, wouldnt the air directed under the nose create a low(er) pressure effect on the backside of the nose cone and increase the effective downforce?

I would assume so, as long as the air could 'escape' somewhere stream. (Ferrari attempted to solve this issue last year by having a hole in the nose where the air could be diverted.)

[Steven]

just a noobie question...

if the underside of the nose is indeed hollow, wouldnt the air directed under the nose create a low(er) pressure effect on the backside of the nose cone and increase the effective downforce?

I would assume so, as long as the air could 'escape' somewhere stream. (Ferrari attempted to solve this issue last year by having a hole in the nose where the air could be diverted.)

Renault's nose is quite a different design than Ferrari's hole, both in problem as solution. With Renault now, the nose and the neutral central section of the front wing form a venturi which results in lower pressure.

The nose of Ferrari last year was a solution to add downforce by using the upward airflow behind the front wing - which was not a neutral section in 2008. It was there to move air from under the nose to its upper side. Hence, less air under the nose, less pressure, more downforce.

[Conceptual]

I wonder if they could do something like this with these wide noses...

[Miguel]

Note this is an armchair expert talking on the internet. Salt recommended.

I think that wouldn't be allowed because of the minimum "radius" of body surfaces. There have to be some exceptions like suspension arms or wing endplates, but as far as I know most surfaces have to be less curved than a certain amount. You could rework the original "puzzle nosecone" to be within the rules, but that may be not too efficient.

In any case, with the wider lower front-wings, slicks and narrower rear wings I would have expected the emphasis of downforce to be on the back of the car. But I also expected many solutions of bodywork being renault-like, in that the cover engine is curved to do a similar work to that of "side-fins". Seeing a lof of "side-fin-less" designs exposing rear suspension and doing nothing about the rear wheels really surprised me.

[CMSMJ1]

@ Conceptual - there is a bodywork template and unless this had sides on it it would fall foul of those regs.

You are an obsessive dude man..would love to see inside your fridge

Keep it coming though..for every 99 lemons there may be a lump of gold

[Conceptual]

@ Conceptual - there is a bodywork template and unless this had sides on it it would fall foul of those regs.

You are an obsessive dude man..would love to see inside your fridge

Keep it coming though..for every 99 lemons there may be a lump of gold

I live to the code of "Relentlessly pursuing something better", or as BMW used to say the "Relentless pursuit of perfection."

Just wait, I bought a killer training app for CATIA, so I should be able to get away from the solid models, and get into planar modeling (much more detailed).

I never understood the minimum radius rule. I thought it was only for the sidepods to prevent undercutting, but that is obviously not correct with what we have seen so far.

And thanks for the encouragement! I'm sure that my brain will NEVER stop coming up with stuff like this... My only hope is that the community here keeps their sanity as I ask about the legality of my concepts.

Thanks again!

PS: The inside of my fridge is full to overflowing... With 4 kids, I spend about $225/week on groceries, so it is normally stuffing room only!

[Metar]

I was under the impression that the minimum radius rule was just a mathematically-verifiable way of ensuring that every winglet in that area is removed, and to ensure that teams won't sculpt their bodywork to extremes in order to achieve a similar effect.

[Miguel]

I was under the impression that the minimum radius rule was just a mathematically-verifiable way of ensuring that every winglet in that area is removed, and to ensure that teams won't sculpt their bodywork to extremes in order to achieve a similar effect.

That's what I think too. In any case, I would have loved to see bodies sculpted in order to more or less shape a big fin. I'm not really a fan of such tight backends (mmm... this could be misinterpreted), so maybe as seen in the "Minimum Radius" thread, a minimum radius of 50mm instead of 75mm would have worked too. For the sake of the argument I also quote mariof1 regarding the rules:

In simple terms, this rule applies to an area between the rear wheel centre line and a line 450mm ahead of the back of the cockpit, whilst there can be bodywork 625mm ahead of it, thus there is an 175mm long area in front of the sidepods in which some teams chose to fit some furniture.

[sebbe]

Hi everybody, a friend of mine (F1 freak waaaaaaay freaker than me ) told me he heard somewhere that Renault is 45 kg lighter than the rest of the cars. I think it's stupid to test under those conditions 'cause anything is gonna make sense (except aero) when they put the ballast in place again...
Anybody else knows more about it?

Thanks

[axle]

If true, my gut reaction would be that they are seeking sponsorship via setting quick winter times.

But I've certainly not seen any evidence that they are not using ballast...maybe the story was just that the car without ballast is 45kg's lighter than the rules allow.

[Scotracer]

As has been stated, the cars have a larger proportion of downforce to the front than the rear so your nose (even if legal) wouldn't be much help I'm afraid.

On to Renault: I would like to know how the friend of yours was able to compile the information on every car before ballast is applied. We all know that the cars + driver + fluids weigh under the 605kg limit but by how much is a closely guarded secret. It is possible that one car weighs less than another...but by 40kg is a very, very large margin in a car that only weighs ~500kg in the first place (you are talking nearly 10% lighter).

What worries me for this year is rear-tyre durability. The driving style that can be adopted is much, much more aggressive than in previous years; couple that with a much softer compound and you will have wear problems. We may see teams nursing their tyres for durability. But, it's still better than the arbitrary graining of previous years...

[donskar]

If true, my gut reaction would be that they are seeking sponsorship via setting quick winter times.

And Renault has just signed HP as a sponsor. FWIW (don't bet a lot on it) a friend at HP tells me the sposorship is mainly products -- not much cash involved.