2012 F1 Cars

[DrDrew]

Instead of having a separate thread for each new team's launch - can we amalgamate into one thread?

Caterham

McLaren

Ferrari

Force India

Lotus

Sauber

Red Bull

Toro Rosso

Williams

Mercades AMG

Virgin

HRT

 

[Lordyb]

Good idea. Redbull gets revealed today!

 

[DrDrew]

Yep, just over half an hour. Will be good to see what they've done for this year. Torro Rosso will follow suit later today too. Rosso is rumoured to look like this, but as it's not been launched officially yet I've not put it in the list

 

[Lordyb]

Hmm, only time will tell! Lol.

 

[waitey]

Looks like they've all been punched in the nose apart from the mclaren :lol:

I'm not much of an F1 fan though as I find BTCC and WRC a much better spectators sport

 

[Lordyb]

I think there wonky noses add character! Haha!!

 

[DrDrew]

Well the RB8 is out. It's another stepped nose contender. No pics yet but here's a video for anyone interested.

https://www.redbullracing.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Video/The-RB8-Revealed…-021243158945543

 

[Lordyb]

Poor picture but here is the Torro Rosso!

 

[DrDrew]

Red Bull's quite interesting with it's nose vent, but as is the Toro Rosso who have managed to implement the stepped nose, without really stepping the nose.

 

[singlespeed]

caterham looks sassy!

Which dictionary have you been looking at?


Being a Cateringvan, its probably got a live axle and a K series engine thats about to pop :? :lol:

 

[jra3d]

I do not like these drop nose models

 

[DrDrew]

 

[jra3d]

ROFL

 

[DrDrew]

Williams added

 

[Lordyb]

Im really interested about this vent on the front of the red bull!


Here is what Gary Anderson thinks about it!
(stolen from bbc website)
"The pictures Red Bull have released do not show a great deal. For a team running at the front, it's always hard to make a big step forward. Everything looks that little bit tidier, especially around the rear end, and while it has a similar front nose to many other cars, it's nicely rounded and blended. But the big intrigue is the hole in the nose where the step is in the area of the front suspension. It looks like there is an air duct in there, but where does the air go? It could be for cooling, perhaps of the Kers unit and batteries. That is an area where Red Bull had problems last year. Or it could exit out of the rear for an aerodynamic effect. The issue is that you have to go a long way backwards in the car - to the fuel tank area at the earliest - before the rules let you have a hole big enough to exit that amount of air."

 

[DrDrew]

Looks like Sauber have also gone for a vented style nose...

Also Ferrari are trying hard to hide the back of their car this year...

Pity for them there's plenty of interested photo-journalists around

 

[maggi200]

If you look from the front there isn't a vent so where does the air come from? Must be to help it across the top of the car as it's vented backwards?

Have to say the mclaren is the best looking then the red bull has the next best looking front. The vent distracts from the awful step at least and looks like it could have been there anyway

 

[manofhow]

what is the purpose of teh step. what have they said about the purpose of this new nose?

 

[DrDrew]

The purpose of the lowering of the front of the nose is to stop accidents like Liuzzi/Schumacher at Abu Dhabi in 2010. I.e. trying to make sure a car isn't pitched upwards if it crashes into another.

This went very close to Schumachers' head, so if this were to happen with 2012 cars "in theory" it would have just been a side impact and Liuzzi wouldn't have almost taken Schumachers' head off.

 

[DrDrew]

tbh I'm almost a little surprised we haven't seen any teams employ a nose like the 2004 FW26 to 'work around' this years rules.