How critical is the positioning/shape of the nose relative to the front wing? We have two extremes so far - that of the FW26 and the C23, in terms of distance between the nosecone tip and the leading edge of the lower wing element. Others teams have stated that they are investigating the Williams design. If (it's probably a big 'if') it is decided that a new nose profile is to be adopted during the season, how much will the shape of the respective chassis be modified?
From what I know,the positioning of the nose and wing will influence the flow downstream of the car,i.e to the diffuser and sidepods.So it is an integrated to the design of the car right from the start as changing the nose will change the airflow to the rest of the car.
But in 96,Ferrari switch from low nose to high nose mid-season.That car was crap obviously(but somehow managed to win some races and won by a minute in Spain).
To make a design similar to the FW26 during the season is very unlikely cause the design of the whole car has to be optimised for the nosecone. Most of teams are surely investigating the solution but just for the concept, for next year. In ’90, when Tyrrel launched the famous 019 with the high nose, other teams investigated the solution in windtunnel almost immediately. I’ve heard, from an engineer working for Scuderia Italia at the time, that once they tested the concept, about 1 month after they’ve seen the solution for the first time, it was clear that the car for the successive season had to be made following that concept since the advantage was huge, but for ’90 it was definitively too late.
Recently the most noticeable example of a radical modification of the nosecone during the season is the Ferrari F310 (’96), originally with a low nosecone with single mount for the wing, then, since Canada IIRC, with an high nose. Obviously the tub maintained the original shape and so the result wasn’t very elegant with a bulge right behind the wing, many called it the Pelican. Anyway, they needed lot of time to adopt it, I remember rumours about that hypothesis almost since the start of the season.
Another problem with the modification of nosecone shape is that you have to sustain again the frontal crash tests and, according to Patrick Head, it wasn’t simple for Williams to cope with the FIA requirements.
Anyway I doubt that, if FW26 happens to be an unbeatable car, the reason would be just the radical nosecone, it’s the whole package that wins. BTW it’s also possible that Williams isn’t exploiting the concept at the best, after all it’s just the first iteration of that design.
Cool reply from Reca, but with todays technology (computational, manufacturing, massive windtunnels etc), it should be more feasible to modify the chassis part-way through the season. A recent obvious example is the Sauber sidepod mods in '03. It produced significantly more downforce than the previous design (ok - it did cause problems with the car's balance but hey). With teams promising 'significantly modified' (or B-spec) cars, and with each coming grands prix seeing more iterations and changes to aero devices, I bet my left proverbial that we this will be a special, and indeed exciting year of aero wizardry!
True, nowadays with CFD, rapid prototyping and 24/7 work in windtunnel, the design cycle is a lot faster than in the past and new instruments allows to test several solutions, but the example of Sauber (Toyota or Renault) new sidepods, involves just aero, it doesn’t involve the chassis so doesn’t require a structural analysis and new crash tests. You have just to verify the cooling and the consequent reliability of the engine etc..., lot of research & testing are required in this direction but, apart of that, you are pretty sure that the new solution is, aerodynamically, an improvement. To change the shape of the nosecone is something more radical, and isn’t a guarantee of improvement, the team hardly does it, unless the design philosophy of the whole car totally changes, because the current design is the result of a fine tuning. Look at Ferrari nosecone in the last 3 years, the evolution has been minimal but probably required lot of work to optimise the whole package. It’s possible that the FW26 solution has the potential to be a huge improvement and probably some teams already tested similar solutions (compatibly with the already planned development of the car). Anyway it requires time to be understood and verified in many conditions, to be actually preferred to the current design. An unrefined design of a good aerodynamic solution could be actually worse than a fine tuned design of a solution that conceptually isn’t as good compared with the other.
Speaking about nose, which type of nose cone is better, the ones that is currently used by F1 which uses prongs to carry the front wing and allows airfolw under the front or the ones used in IRL and CART, which is joint directly to the front wing?
The cars in each of the categories are very different.
For example the cars at Formula 1 are much more aerodynamic dependent than the american´s cars. That´s why there is so much preocupation and time spent to the design of the front wing.
For me there´s no way to compare them because the amount of money put into reserach is much higher in Formula 1 than in CART or IRL so we expect the F1 cars to have much more downforce at the front, and, of course, this is only because they have better design, better manunfacturing etc.
And the reason for this is just one, the one who is dominating the world: money.
"I only race to finisht first, because the second is the first looser" Ayrton Senna
The biggest difference between CART/IRL and F1 in aerodynamics isn’t the money spent or the ability of the designers but, simply, the technical rules.
F1 requires stepped, flat, bottom, on the contrary IRL and CART allows tunnels under the sidepods. F1 has no limitation on nosecone height while IRL impose the nosecone/chassis to be very low (not 100% sure about CART), the rules on the front wing in IRL are also more tight than in F1, the design is almost fixed (and the rear wings are the same for everyone). But the amount of downforce isn’t low, on the contrary. IRL cars have from the wings lot more downforce than required, in an attempt to reduce speed in ovals and to allows to run close to other cars without suffering too much from turbulence.
While looking at cars for different categories it’s non sense to argue which design is better. The first thing designers have to do is to look at the rulebook and work to exploit it at the best. In F1 the design of the front end is relatively free and in fact we see very different solutions but to say which one is better is very difficult.
