What's that on your nose?

The 2012 F1 season is rapidly approaching. The cars have been unveiled, and testing has begun. These cars look strange. There is a new rule this year that specifies that the nose of the car must be lower. This is said to improve safety by keeping the nose from entering another drivers cockpit in the event of a side impact. With this new rule change, as expected, there are some intersting design differences between the cars. Looks like there are two schools of thought; stepped or non-stepped. Stepped, where there is a strange looking step in the nose of the car is the most common. Very few teams 1 or 2 have a non-stepped design.

Well, what's the difference? Why would one be better than the other? Marussia, formerly Virgin, has been quoted as saying there is no difference. I suspect they are mistaken. It all comes back to downforce vs. drag. Downforce good, drag bad. Unfortunately, many things that increase downforce, also increase drag. With the step in the front of the car, I predict many teams are seeing some level of front-end downforce increase, with some level of drag increase. It will be interesting to see how these designs evolve thoughout the season.

The most interesting design is on the Mercedes. It is very streamlined. It looks much more organic than any other car this year.

Looking forward to the first race of the year where we'll see the pecking order. Testing times are deceptive, generally; and this year, hopefully. Ferrari only topped the times one day this year, so far. Although they were top of the charts often last year, we all know how that turned out.

Now, how can I post a picture here and not get Bernie knocking on my door?

Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images     

Date: February 23, 2012

Perfection

...It's the goal. Why would the goal be anything less? A: Because sometimes it takes way to long. I tend to be a perfectionist. One reason I haven't posted much here. I spend too much time trying to make posts perfect, that I just don't write anything at all. I'm hoping to change that now, so I write more here, but as I type this, I realize I am scrutinizing the wording, punctuation, everything. That should have been a semi-colon, a comma, or a period? Was that a run on sentence? These are the things I waste too much time on. That's right, that sentence ended with a preposition. I'm not rephrasing it. Ok. Here's to imperfect, more frequent posts. ::sips glass of wine from a box:: That's right. Classy.