formula nippon FN09

[Ogami musashi]

The 2009 car has been shaken down, i ffind it beautiful.

http://www.f-nippon.co.jp/news/news.php?eid=00245

[Carbon]

Gorgeous car, very interesting front wing design. A few more pics, though some are animated - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhUscPEeH9s]

The FN09 bears a clear resemblance to some of Swift's earlier Formula Atlantic designs.

[Ogami musashi]

Yes the swift 017.N (the fn09) has been developped on the swift 016.a base (the 2006-present atlantics chassis)

[Scotracer]

This car will be frightening close to F1 pace. It is also great looking. At first I was very skeptical of the front-wing design but seeing it running it's beautiful.

C'mon for F1 2009 designs being as exotic

[RacingManiac]

how fast are F1 cars around Suzuka? The article mentioned 1:27.2 as the time, which is close to the Super GT/LMP car laptime around there....I'd imagine F1 car will be another 10-12 sec faster at least...

[rkn]

The lap record for an F1 car is 1:29.599 set by Felipe Massa in 2006, I'm not sure if it was set in the race though. This is higher than the record you mentioned, but I doubt Formula Nippon cars run the same track configuration as the F1 cars do...

EDIT: A lap record of 1:31.540 set by Raikkonen in the 2005 race has also been mentioned on different websites, this one was definitely set in the race, and with a V10. I doubt Massa was 2secs faster with a V8 in race configuration. But this also is confirmed by several sites. So I'm not really sure.

Anyway, here are the wikis for both races:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Japanese_Grand_Prix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Japanese_Grand_Prix

[RacingManiac]

oh wait....I am thinking of 1:50s...thats the LMP car's time around there....

damn...that's fast....lol

[Scotracer]

Suzuka:

2002 Quali

1'31.317

2002 Race

1'36.125

2003 Quali

1'31.713

2003 Race

1'33.408

2004 Quali

1'33.542 (damp track)

2004 Race

1'32.730

2005 Quali

1'46.106 (wet)

2005 Race

1'31.540 (dry)

2006 Quali

1'29.599

2006 Race

1'32.676

So what the bloody hell layout was the Nippon running on?!

[Ogami musashi]

the article talks about 1:28 but at FUJI not suzuka.

f1 cars ran 1:19 last year. The time set by the fn09 is already in line with GP2 times, yet this is only the fFirst time so the cars will surely lower it by several seconds. Very encouraging.

[Scotracer]

the article talks about 1:28 but at FUJI not suzuka.

f1 cars ran 1:19 last year. The time set by the fn09 is already in line with GP2 times, yet this is only the fFirst time so the cars will surely lower it by several seconds. Very encouraging.

I wouldn't call it encouraging, to be honest. It just goes to show that many cars designed for a specific purpose (and not ultimate technology) can run at times comparable to a contemporary F1 car. That's quite saddening to be honest

F1 should be at least 10 seconds a lap faster than anything else, in my opinion - not 5-8.

[Ogami musashi]

Well i'm not quite sure a specific purpose car can't be high technology.

But more anything more than 4-5 seconds from a F1 car is significantly slower.

And you forget next year F1 cars will surely be faster so..

[dumrick]

And you forget next year F1 cars will surely be faster so..

They were designed to be slower, though... and in this month's Racecar Engineer Pascal Vasselon is quoted saying they'll be on pair or marginally slower than this year. Which are your sources?

[PNSD]

I thought Wurz said something like when they tested 09 df levels and slicks they were quicker than 08 df levels and grooves ???

[Ogami musashi]

Yes at each tests with slicks, drivers said the 09df+slicks were faster than 08df+grooved.

Also some technical directors said in different interviews 09 cars would surely be as fast if not faster.

The reason for that is that the actual downforce reduction is more like 30 instead of 50.

The owg worked on a 50 percent reduction but said realistically 30 percent was more likely.

[Ogami musashi]

Just watched the actual FN06 car. It is already on par with gp2 cars. Doing 1:24 (in qualify) in fuji, 1:40 in suzuka.

Note that the time at fuji for F1 cars was done in pratice because qualifyin was wet.

Thus one could except the dry qualifying times being around 1:17.

That said the FN09 will surely better 1:24.