2012 F1 Car Launch Thread

I have an inkling Force India are going to be the surprise of 2012.

That car looks very tidy.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

Force India a solid team these days. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they managed to race competively with Merc at the 4/5th quickest car.

The driver line up is exciting, Di Resta & Hulkenberg offers plenty of potential.

Ferrari have also gone for a pullrod front susspension 1st time its been since Arrows tried it again,

____

My reaction to the Ferrari:




Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

I don't understand why ferrari have gone for a half carbon fibre/ half lego approach..... the front looks dreadful...

looks like they wanted to emulate this...






mclarenaustralia Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 2012 Ferrari
> [a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net]
> 655_303118919745384_179652892091988_895177_7213425
> 65_n.jpg

Yuck, that's terrible. Hope that nose fails for everyone and we can get back to something that looks more decent.

In what possibly the year when we'd have most least good looking cars, Force India have not only managed to make their car look very pretty, but also changed their livery from the ghastly mess it was before and turned into something quite pretty!

Mclaren now the 2nd best looking car !

The Ferrari just looks like a sick joke. So far Mclaren sticking with a low nose is going against the trend. I hope what they gain in suspension geometry is worth the possible loss in downforce (???). I suspect Mercedes will probably go for a lower nose too but I think thats just me being hopeful of seeing another Brawn looking car :p!

But yeah, kudos to FI :D!! fresh driver lineup, fresh approach so hopefully big results :D. The worst part about that though is we'll be hearing Eddie Jordan bang on about how it was his team blah blah....

edit - Is that now 3 sponsors FI have that are associated with alcohol??

---

"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 02:13PM by chet.

Ive always liked the force india livery, so its still looking as good as ever for me . Unfortunate they chose the broken nose... but i agree with whoever said it looks less offensive than the Caterham. Not saying it looks good, because i still hate that nose to hell...

Ferrari. Oh god what have they done! Im seriously hoping that car has some bad results because i do not want that to be the design that sticks with other teams, that is horrendous!

McLaren still the best looking car out there, easily.

Edit: looking at it again, im not sure about the force india nose anymore, it seems more inbetween caterham and ferrari. Atleast the Caterham nose managed to trick me at one point into thinking it was simply two raises blobs on the outside...

Oh and guys, has anyone actually worked out what benefits the stepped nose gives over the smoothed nose of the McLaren?

In other news, you can add that the Mercedes is launched at the 2nd test in Jerez i believe, so the 21st Feb, Toro Rosso launches STR7 on 6th Feb, Williams 7th Feb and lets face it, HRT will probably be at Australia

_________________________________________________

For a list of EVERY download for GP4, look here: [docs.google.com]



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 02:31PM by truecrysis.

There is no benefit from what ive been reading.

Mclaren have a lower chasis as they have done for a few years now so this means they dont need that step. Other have a higher one so they need that step.

Also Gary Anderson seems to think the pullrods at the front will give very little if any benefit.

chet Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> edit - Is that now 3 sponsors FI have that are
> associated with alcohol??


Ironic really, given the Sutil incident. Lol.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

mika19b Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My god that nose is more hideous than the
> Caterham's!

the nose reminds me a...



----signature--------------------------------------------------------

RELEASE => Physics (under FIA Technical Regulations)
MagicDatas? Setups? Pit Stop Strategies? Track Specific Performances? Up2Date GP?
Power Torque Curve? Where's this stuff? All download is available at ..

____

Incident 2k9 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Force India's launched tomorrow too, perhaps
> expecting them to go without 'stepped' nose too as
> they, like McLaren, haven't done so in the past.


Ffff...awkward...

I quite like the Force India, but that Ferrari...when Domenicali said it was ugly, he wasn't lying.

---

GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 06:41PM by Incident 2k9.

Ferrari is the ugliest at the moment, though Fiat already did something similiar in 1998:

---

---

What happened to that statement by Ferrari .... ' We only make Beautiful cars'... pph!
Well all I can say is I am now officially depressed. These are the ugliest Formula one cars I have ever seen ( Bar Mclaren) of which I am not a fan.

My only hope is that niether Mercedes or Red Bull follow suit.
I'm no engineer but my dog could come up witha better design than these latest offerings oh, and by the way I don't even have a dog.


" Perfection is not a gift ....... it comes with practice."

Member of R.S.C.T Group

That Ferrari is truly hideous-looking. At least Caterham and Force India have a more sculpted nose within a valley, softening and hiding the step somewhat. That said, the rest of the Ferrari looks really nice - there's something of the 90s about the rear of the sidepods (though of course for very different reasons).

I think we can guarantee that the rules regarding noses will be tweaked for 2013! That said, I don't know how the FIA technical delegate didn't see this coming, as amateurs such as Scarbs could see it (no disrespect intended to Craig by labelling him an amateur, as what he does is amazing).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 07:44PM by gav.

What.... The.... F---.......

People need to stop making ugly cars behind my back.

Okay, here's my first gripe about the Lego Noses: Someone actually thought this was a good idea. Now for what? It's certainly the opposite of aerodynamic, you may as well put a brick wall on the nose. I can kinda see the reasoning behind the suspension geometry, but another brilliant way around that is by designing another nose.

The downfall of the Ferrari is that what they are trying to do is design suspension geometry that is rigged to the chassis at a point that is higher than the nose itself, therefore they had to raise the nose to an unnatural point. It could have been as easy as making the nose a little bigger. But no.

My second gripe: did the aerodynamics get any say in this project at all? They must have had thrown a fit when they saw the nose in CATIA.

After thinking about it a little while writing this post, I think there is a tiny bit of an advantage. Airflow going over the Lego piece will surely be shot upward. However, that may produce some downforce if they are smart and are able to channel the upward flow to point it towards the engine intake. That's probably why there are two intakes in the airbox. In short, it's like they made the step to act like a wing.

However, there's already plenty of downforce on the front coming from the snowplow wing. You would want that kind of feature on the rear, where you desperately need downforce due to the tiny wing.

But hey, we're not the FEA engineers who were sitting behind the screens and drawing boards this whole time. Whatever happened, this Lego nose has some sort of amazing net profit in the long run, because everybody else is apparently deploying it.

-Slicer


-------------------------------------------------
Yes, thank you for noticing I am the most amazing being in the galaxy.

Juliooo, Did you also shrink Massa's head? It looks spookily small.

Quote
slicer
The downfall of the Ferrari is that what they are trying to do is design suspension geometry that is rigged to the chassis at a point that is higher than the nose itself, therefore they had to raise the nose to an unnatural point. It could have been as easy as making the nose a little bigger. But no.

The suspension has nothing to do with the nose. This year, the bulkhead (the front of the chassis, the bit you see the nose being screwed into when a driver needs to change his front wing) has one maximum height, while the nose cone has a different maximum height, lower than that of the bulkhead. The general consensus for 2012 seems to be that most of the teams will apparently want to the keep both the nose and the bulkhead height as high as possible in order to have more control over the air under the nose, something that's been important for the past decade, but which seems to have grown in significance dramatically since the 2009 regulations.

McLaren have taken a different approach, but we knew before the Caterham launched what most teams were likely to do. The Ferrari looks especially hideous, but that's because they've gone for a rigid step, while the other two so far appear to have gone for a more gradual approach (both of which looked awful until the Ferrari came along, but now don't appear too bad!).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2012 08:54PM by gav.