miguelalvesreis wrote:They were gathering data for the simultator. Can it be a sensor? Cooling in that area? And mess with the air that's going to the T-tray? Odd!
My armchair aerodynamicist senses say there's no issue with "messing with the air that's going to the T-tray", though I may be far wide of the mark here.
My thoughts on what happens under the nose is that the goal is to
1) get as much air under the nose tip as possible.
2) Once it's under there, get it all flowing downwards, so that it slips neatly under the floor and drives the diffuser.
3) if it doesn't get far enough down by the T-tray, the job here again is to push it a bit side ways, and try and get it to go under the side pods, and again, drive the diffuser.
4) The absolute last resort is that if you can't make it do that, get it around undercut, and drive the top of the diffuser instead.
The air at the top, which is attached to the underside of the monocoque is the air that's most likely to end up doing 4. It's primary job is not really to get to the back of the car, instead, it's to compress the air underneath it. This can be equally well accomplished by putting some bodywork in the way, and stripping the airflow away to do something useful like cooling stuff. Better yet, the air that is used to perform the cooling is then heated, and can be used to drive some aero part at the rear more effectively than if it had just washed out into the undercut.