Jeroen Krautmeir wrote:Hey, mario, if you don't mind, perhaps you can give us your technical overview of the F111, and perhaps compare it to the F110? Would love it, but don't force it.
Well, I'll pass a few comments at the moment - the shortage of rear end shots is a little frustrating, since we can't see how they've packaged the Williams drivetrain, and how, or if, they are blowing the diffuser.
Still, it does seem to be more refined than the F110 - there seems to have been more attention paid to the front wing, although it has been pointed out that the front wing does bear a fairly striking resemblance to the front wing of the BGP001. The end plates are quite simple - and again very reminiscent of the BGP001 - which is perhaps a bit of an oversight when we've seen how much effort many teams, especially Renault, put into that area.
The underside of the nose looks quite much rounder than the F110, and in fact rounder than just about everything else in the paddock, and it seems similar to the MVR-02 in terms of shape and design. The nose cone is still surprisingly low - it is pretty much the same height as on the F110 - given the recent trend to raise the nose to improve airflow beneath the car.
Further back, the next most obvious change is the sidepod air intakes - being much smaller, they've cleared more room underneath to clean up airflow over the top of the floor, and by the looks of things the barge boards are different as well (the barge board on the F110 went down in steps, not smoothly like on the F111). It looks like the sidepod turning vane, though, remains the same as on the F110, although, with the regulations limiting development in that area, that isn't too surprising.
The rear bodywork does look a lot tighter than the F110's too, although there is a peculiar bulge in the upper surface of the sidepod:
Considering that most of the teams prefer to have a smoothly descending sidepod (with the exception of Mclaren this year, but their design is very unorthodox), why they would want to have a bulge there potentially disturbing the airflow across the top of the sidepod is a bit strange. Still, the overall sidepod shape does remind me a bit of the Sauber C30, or the VJM04 in profile, especially near the front.
Asides from that, the only other obvious change is the rear wing endplate profile, where they've now introduced a semi-circular cut out in the rear edge (presumably to modify the vortex coming off the rear wing endplates).
All in all, there are a few more interesting than expected features on the car - but I'd still prefer to have some rear shots of the car to see what they've done with the cooling outlets, the beam wing and the exhaust configuration. There is a possible hint of where the exhaust exit might go in that picture I've posted, which suggests that they may be doing what a few other teams, like Williams, are doing, which is routing the exhaust around the gearbox casing and around the centre line of the car - but it isn't entirely clear.
