2012 F1 Car Launch Thread

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


Sorry mate, my mistake, this is the original one:

gav Wrote:
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> Juliooo, Did you also shrink Massa's head? It
> looks spookily small.
>
>
>
>
> 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!).

I'll add some figures to this: the nose has a maximum height of 55cm, but the bulkhead is allowed to be 62.5 cm. According to Scarbs, there will be a maximum nose height of 25cm in 2014 (edging towards the Brawn car?)

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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

Thanks for clearing that up, Gav.

It's a very intriguing ruleset, though. I'm guessing the FIA wanted the noses to slope down, instead of "lego" down. And if it is true the noses will be lower in 2014 (And I have a copy of the regs, of which I should probably check before making posts) then either the teams will follow the mold, or we're going to see huge walls on the front ends of F1 cars.

However I must agree with the general consensus: Force India and Caterham make it look sexy, at least. Let's just hope the 2012 Ferrari is just one of those cars that is remembered in history as "one of the weirder ones".


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

As already discussed, the Ferrari looks decent from some views, but the front view is horrendous. Hopefully it's at least fast.

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

By my count, 4, but no more than in 2010;

Kingfisher Premium, Whyte & Mackay, Royal Challenge, Vladivar

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X (@ed24f1)

Ahh. Never noticed them all last year! I guess because I didn't want to look at it much :p!

On the Ferrari. The more I see it, the more I hate it. I know it might sound crazy, but i'd rather look at the new (and old!!!!!!) indy car than this Ferrari!

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

chet Wrote:
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> Ahh. Never noticed them all last year! I guess
> because I didn't want to look at it much :p!

They're all brands owned by Mallya, so it isn't really particularly noteworthy in terms of dollars coming into the team.

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X (@ed24f1)

SchueyFan Wrote:
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> As already discussed, the Ferrari looks decent
> from some views, but the front view is horrendous.
> Hopefully it's at least fast.

I'm actually hoping for the opposite really

If they have an awful start to the season then we could see a different approach to the nose

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Races: 163 - Wins: 23 - Pole Positions: 24 - Fastest Laps: 22
Season 9: Constructors' Champions

SchueyFan Wrote:
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> As already discussed, the Ferrari looks decent
> from some views, but the front view is horrendous.
> Hopefully it's at least fast.
>
> chet Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > edit - Is that now 3 sponsors FI have that are
> > associated with alcohol??
>
> By my count, 4, but no more than in 2010;
>
> Kingfisher Premium, Whyte & Mackay, Royal
> Challenge, Vladivar


The car's gonna look pretty blank then in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi...

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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

I think the Ferrari is quite nice actually. Barring the stepped nose I think the strangest feature is the really huge front wing supports. They're MASSIVE.
I like the scuplted yet squarish profile from some angles.

It'll all look different before the first race anyway. The Kaspersky sponsor on the nose looks really tacky.


FI:




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2012 12:27PM by loque.

A lot of designers seem to be saying the same thing and that is Mclaren have gone the wrong way in their design and this is what has effected them over the past 2 years.

By having the lower chassis than the rest they don't get enough airflow to the back and sides of the car so they don't generate the same levels of downforce others can.

Will be interesting to see.

I have a horrible feeling that Mclaren will continue their year on/year off policy and be slow this year. Every other team can't be wrong. However the Force India dude said that Mclaren's approach gets this design to work well, whereas his (Force India) team couldn't get it to.

Mclaren have also lost their Aigo sponsorship:

Personally i cant see that somewhere in Mclaren the designers have seen the other cars and thought "F#@%, we should have thought of that..." about the nose. They must know something which means the nice nose works as well if not better, or atleast you would hope people of their expertise could. Then again they could turn up at Melbourne with a new broken nose and this comment would look rather stupid....

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

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2012 07:42AM by kubica2.

*Remove the spaces.

[ i m g ] [ / i m g ]

And place the URL inbetwen.

Ferrari2007 Wrote:
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> I'm actually hoping for the opposite really
>
> If they have an awful start to the season then we
> could see a different approach to the nose

Yes, I agree, but I'm biased because I like Ferrari (well mainly Massa). These noses won't be around for more than two years due regardless of what happens due to the new aero rules for 2014.

Incident 2k9 Wrote:
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> The car's gonna look pretty blank then in Bahrain
> and Abu Dhabi...

Well Bahrain has turned a blind eye to alcohol advertising in the past. Abu Dhabi (and Turkey previously) do enforce it. It's easy for them to get around it though, because they can just advertise associated brands, e.g. Kingfisher beer to Kingfisher airline and Royal Challenge whisky to Royal Challenge music.

loque Wrote:
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> I think the Ferrari is quite nice actually.
> Barring the stepped nose I think the strangest
> feature is the really huge front wing supports.
> They're MASSIVE.
> I like the scuplted yet squarish profile from some
> angles.
>
> It'll all look different before the first race
> anyway. The Kaspersky sponsor on the nose looks
> really tacky.

The nose supports were also huge in 2011 as well, but I think they looked better in white rather than red.

loque Wrote:
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> I have a horrible feeling that Mclaren will
> continue their year on/year off policy and be slow
> this year. Every other team can't be wrong.
> However the Force India dude said that Mclaren's
> approach gets this design to work well, whereas
> his (Force India) team couldn't get it to.

Well 2007 and 2008 was good, 2009 bad and 2010 and 2011 were reasonable, so maybe they're starting a cycle of two good years and then one bad year?


loque Wrote:
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> Mclaren have also lost their Aigo sponsorship:
>
> [www.ausmotive.com]-
> MP4-26-01.jpg

Yes, and Johnnie Walker. It'll be interesting to see if they can sell that space before the season starts.

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X (@ed24f1)

Johnnie Walker is still in there... Take a very close look at the mirrors....

I've always wondered why McLaren hasn't been able to sell the advertising space they have in the back of the rear wing? It's been sponsorless for three years!!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2012 11:20PM by JPMrules.

I would think any number of sponsors may be clambering over each other to buy space on the McLaren, but it's not like they need it being one of the best funded teams with some of the very best technical partnerships to boot.

Sponsors and partners don't always get space on the cars, and a team such as McLaren appreciate that the car represents the face of their image and hence it should look good. They don't want to spoil that with random logos that don't fit their scheme.

Other sponsor logos will find their way on to the drivers overalls or team wear, pit-lane awing, team transporters etc. And many partners may never even have their logo visible on the teams image but benefit by association by having liscence to use McLaren's image on their product.

JPMrules Wrote:
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> Johnnie Walker is still in there... Take a very
> close look at the mirrors....
>
> I've always wondered why McLaren hasn't been able
> to sell the advertising space they have in the
> back of the rear wing? It's been sponsorless for
> three years!!!

Yes, good spot, although they have reduced the sponsorship.

Johnnie Walker were on the back of the rear wing at the end of 2011, maybe they'll end up going back there for 2012.

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X (@ed24f1)

Is the new Red Bull revealed today?

Edit: Apparently not. This thread contains duff info :P The Renault is launched today at 16:00 UTC via website and Red Bull is tomorrow.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2012 12:28PM by loque.