Here’s the old thread:
And here’s some great news:
The reign of Bernie is over!
Three 2017 cars revealed so far. First up, Sauber:
Okay, I can live with that. The colours are going to stand out, though I’m not sure of the all-black fin.
Next up, Renault:
This is a nice car! Yellow and black look good. The yellow accent on the fin makes it into a feature, not like a design flaw or something left untrimmed after injection moulding.
Launched today, Force India.
Holy fuck, is that an ugly car. What’s going on with the nose? What’s going on with the bump? Didn’t F1 get rid of the stepped front design a few years ago? The paint job wouldn’t look bad on a nicely shaped car, but that orange stripe doesn’t match up with any physical surface. The fin is plain and square and yuck.
Let’s see what new cars come along in the next few days.
The Renault is really really nice. A classic design. A body from 2017 and paint from 1997.
Tangentially related, but it definitely shows the skill of F1 drivers: Tiff Needel, ex-F1 driver, takes a bone-stock Maloo Ute out on Silverstone, and passes pretty much the entire field of Porches, hotted up BMWs, and the like, even keeping pace with a dedicated Lamborgini GT3 race car for a while. And Maloos are not the easiest car to drive, let alone drive fast - they’re very light at the back with very responsive steering, and need a lot of attention, care, and a delicate touch on the throttle and brakes, lest you end up exiting a corner backwards at 90 miles an hour.
An interesting question is always “How good are F1 drivers really? Could anyone do what they do or is there something special that sets them apart?” And then even the mid-range F1 drivers leave, take part in another formula or motorsport, and either win like it’s easy or at least hold their own against the best specialists in the field.
[quote=“lukeburrage, post:5, topic:384, full:true”]
An interesting question is always “How good are F1 drivers really? Could anyone do what they do or is there something special that sets them apart?” And then even the mid-range F1 drivers leave, take part in another formula or motorsport, and either win like it’s easy or at least hold their own against the best specialists in the field.
[/quote]It depends. If you put them in something like GT racing or other styles of road racing, they tend to do very well, because it’s very similar in technique and execution. Well, that, and a lot of F1 drivers worked their way up to F1 going through other Formula and road racing disciplines, so prior experience.
If you put them in something like Rally or Hillclimbs, they tend to be better than Amateurs and learn quickly, but they’re not that great and it takes them quite a while to get anywhere except in some rare cases, because they’re very different disciplines - most of the technique and reactions you learn in F1 don’t serve you very well in those disciplines. Not starting from scratch, but a lot to learn.
That said, Tiff is also a bit of a special case - Despite his less than impressive F1 record(7 career points, 1 podium, two world championship entries), He’s one of the most talented drivers to have ever graced the sport, having gone from entering a brands hatch driver school for-fun “try it out, have a laugh” race with no prior experience to driving F1 in just under a decade. And would have managed a year sooner, if not for a licensing cock-up. Even at the time he was active in F1, that was practically unheard of. And not like he’s been idle in the years since, after F1, he spent a lot of time racing everything from top of the line GT cars to historics at goodwood.
Today, Mercedes:
It’s almost as though Mercedes have unlimited money to make both a technically advanced AND a good looking car. The front slope is a good angle, and it matches the angle of the back fin.
However, the back end of this looks really narrow. Like really too long and thin. The huge floor area is where they are getting all the down force, but everything else seems to be removed. I guess they know what they are doing, I’m just more used to F1 cars having more bulk at the back.
The front wing looks like I took a piece of paper and folded it into a fan in elementary school art class. Kinda weird.
Ferrari:
Boring! Also I’m not a fan of making the fin white, seemingly to make it separate from the rest of the car, but then adding the stripes to the top.
McLaren:
I like this one a lot. As I’ve very little knowledge of aerodynamics, I’ll just trust they know what they are doing with that nose. I like how the black bottom half of the paint job leads into the black floor board, and the orange is going to make them stand out from the pack.
Renaut and Mercedes are a tie for me so far. I’m guessing the wrinkly front wings have got to do with optimisation at the lower speeds the cars go at or more than likely may be assisting with air direction towards the intakes for engine cooling.
I actually really like the white with green and red stripes from Ferrari. It’s very classic and Italian. It just looks really stupid when it’s on a wing tacked onto the back of an otherwise typical all red Ferrari. It could be so cool if they made the whole car white white, but that will never happen.
I don’t mean the front wing, I mean the edge of the nose:
What is going on here? The McLaren is the only car with anything like it. All the cars have some unique aero stuff, but this on the McLaren is the most intriguing to me so far.
[quote=“lukeburrage, post:12, topic:384”]
What is going on here? The McLaren is the only car with anything like it. All the cars have some unique aero stuff, but this on the McLaren is the most intriguing to me so far.
[/quote]Basically just tacking on as much aero as they can and stay within the regs.
This wasn’t in the photos I saw yesterday:
It doesn’t look substantial enough to have any more effect on the car than the existing fin and rear wing… but who knows!!!
[quote=“lukeburrage, post:14, topic:384”]
It doesn’t look substantial enough to have any more effect on the car than the existing fin and rear wing… but who knows!!!
[/quote]At the very least, Ferarri are doing it too, with their little t-wing construction off the back fin.
But yeah, that level of aerodynamics is witchcraft beyond our level of understanding.
Yeah but the designs seem very interesting.
