The New Noses

As we're all aware, F1 has some new aerodynamic rules that have, for the most part, made the cars look pretty much alike.  While doing the "F1 Pr0n" series of posts, though, I've noticed that there's one place that the teams have been showing a surprising amount of individuality.

That's the nose, and particularly how the front wing is mounted to the pointy end of the car.  There seem to be three main schools of thought on how the wing should be attached under the new rules, and we'll take a close look at them in a second. 

First, however, let's take a look at how the nose of a F1 car has been designed over the past three seasons:

 The 2006 Ferrari nose came with an extra element slung beneath the wing, but had a simple short mounting.

The 2007 SuperAguri nose had a fairly complex, medium-length mounting system, and of course a raised bridge-style wing.

The 2008 BMW nose had a short length mounting, and a very convoluted wing.

Now onto the 2009 noses!

As I mentioned, there seem to be three base concepts behind nose mounts this season, which I'll call long, short, and intermediate.  Surprisingly, the teams appear to be divided over which style is better; nine cars have debuted (the last is scheduled for Monday, March 9th), and each style has the same number of adherents.

First, the long style:

All three mountings are thin, almost spindly, mounted to a high nose.  Each team, though, has taken a different route as to placement, however.  Red Bull's attaches straight to the underside of the nose with a visible offset from the edges.  Toyota's curves to the edges of the nose, and Force India mounts theirs straight to the sides.

The intermediate style:


Ferrari's mounting has a gentle bend with a slight offset inwards to the nose cone.  BMW, on the other hand, mounts straight to the side.  McLaren, on the other hand, nearly takes a right-angle turn at the top as they mount to the narrow nose.  Ferrari's nose is also narrow, with a substantial droop, while BMW has a wider nose with a less obvious swoop.

The short style:



Brawn has a severe droop to their nose, with a simple inset mounting for their wing.  Williams is similar, but with a more gradual droop.  Renault is the oddball of the entire field, however, with a broad, almost blunt, nose with only a slight droop.  It's also fairly high, but with a weird angle to the underside that allows a short mounting for the wing.  In a way, it reminds me of the inverted gull wing used by the F4U Corsair as a method of shortening its landing gear struts.

So what does it all mean?  To be frank, I haven't the slightest idea.  If I had to guess, I'd say the intermediate style is most likely to be the best.  It may be no coincidence that the top three teams in the Constructor's Championship (Ferrari, McLaren, BMW) are using it. 

If you go by the eye test ("If it looks good, it is good"), though, I'd go with Brawn Racing's nose.  It looks clean and simple, which probably means it's the least likely to be any good; that's how F1 works sometimes.  Conversely, Renault's truck nose is, without a doubt, the ugliest of the bunch, and thereby should be awful.

However, nobody really knows, which is the beauty of all of this... we won't know until they get on the track. Three weeks and counting...

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:34 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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