In Singapore, modernized nose fairings will appear on AlphaTauri cars – their front part has changed: if at the beginning of the season the “tip” of the nose protrudes noticeably forward, and the edges of the right and left halves of the lower plane of the front wing (ie in the central part) came up noticeably, now this part of the machine looks different.
It has become more similar to the solutions used by other teams. Additionally, making changes to the nose cone design required reworking the entire front wing of the AT03.
But in general, the championship teams this season are not characterized by frequent improvements to the nose cone, and there are reasons for this. First of all, they have to do with the constraint of budgets – everyone has to calculate exactly what money is being spent on and what can be saved.
“One of the factors has to do with costs,” James Key, McLaren technical director, told Auto Motor und Sport. “When introducing a new nose cone, we always have to do crash tests. There has to be a good reason to upgrade this element, so it makes more sense to spend the budget on finalizing other parts of the car, say the bottom, as this will allow you to get a bigger speed increase.
In general, the front of the car now forgives some imperfections, although that was different in the past. If the front wing were still as important as last year, the nose cone upgrade would probably be more intense. However, the regulations set very strict limits when it comes to the dimensions of both components, so I think we won’t see some noticeable changes until next year. ”
However, the AlphaTauri situation can be regarded as an exception. The solution they applied in the nose cone area was different from what we saw on other teams’ machines. At the same time, the old tried-and-true rule that works in Formula 1 says: if an unusual solution is applied to a car, it is usually either very effective, or vice versa, it turns out to be very unimportant.
Of course, AlphaTauri engineers analyzed the work of the AT03 to understand if they had made a mistake shaping the nose of the machine this way.
“We’re looking at different machines, and of course we’re interested in other solutions, and we want to understand how effective they can be. That is why we compare different versions of the nose cone using computer simulation methods,” admitted Guillaume Desoteux, the team’s chief engineer from Faenza, before the summer break. – The front part completely determines the characteristics of the airflow directed towards the rear of the machine.
Making changes to the nose cone design is not that easy. The risk of certain consequences is not excluded, so you must be sure that the changes made are compatible with other parts of the machine.
It seems that for Singapore, AlphaTauri had some kind of “plastic surgery” in the nose part of the car, and now there is no protruding part on it and the main face of the front wing has become almost flat, which also required a rework of the other elements .
It is not a fact that the team will be able to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the new solution already on the urban track, but in the next phase in Japan it will be possible to conduct a more detailed analysis.
Source: F1 News
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
