LOL Had no idea they still used a window/periscope for driving. Thought it was all video screens now....
FIA Institute testing forward roll hoops to increase driver protection (Autosport.com) [ame=http://vimeo.com/40140808]FIA Institute Roll-Hoop Test on Vimeo[/ame]
I think that thing on the left is the "step-off" to be used anytime he gets alongside Mock Webba! :biggrin5: No wait, I got it! It's the F1 equivalent of a curb feeler!
This is a great documentary showing "old" school (mid-80s) tech and development. If you like the details you'll probably love this stuff. It's long at nearly an hour and 45 but, again if you like to see how it was done, it's worth the time. It's basically all about Cosworth and Ford starting from scratch to get into the turbo game. Watch engine design, some of the actual engine building process and fact-finding through dis-assembly after failure, going back to the drawing board to switch from I4 to V6, early (primitive?) mapping electronics and painstaking troubleshooting, dyno work, etc, all the way through getting it in the car, testing and so on. All the sorts of little (and big) things that can go wrong when you build a race engine and car from scratch. Then finally on to racing and they even get into how they used to alter the cars with extra boost and fuel just for the "irrelevant" qualifying. Lots of solutions crude by today's standards; wait until you see the solution for a brake caliper rubbing on the inside of the wheel (at about 45:25 in part 2). It seems a bit out of place in the 2012 thread so I thought about starting a new one but figured only those interested in F1 would look at it anyway. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbB1qwhKaaE]Turbo F1 engines - How they started, part 1 - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqfVAGOaGEc]Turbo F1 engines - How they started, part 2 - YouTube[/ame]
I watched both of these a few days ago and I wished I could find the "part three" vid that goes with it..... Lots of famous people in those vids, did you see a young Ross Brawn in the wind tunnel?
McLaren have decided the other teams had the right idea and their car's nose needs to be a bit higher after all. They can't easily rebuild the chassis though to raise the underside (too much redevelopment, crash tests, etc) so no broken nose, they just pulled the nose up at the end to get as much flow to the underside as possible. I see they also added a few little winglets on top of the side pods and there's a strange new ridge sitting across the front of the chassis behind the nose. There are undoubtedly quite a few other alterations to go with this new aero philosophy but I think these are the most obvious.
Well, Speed explained the ridge as the sighting plank. I.E. that is what the height of the car might be next year and they wanted to see how it will affect driver's vision.
They're from practice in Spain. Here's another: They tested the new nose first in Mugello and apparently decided it works because they took it to Spain.