Honda RA108

[furnik]

IT'S HERE IT'S HERE

http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/bild ... 085425&d=3

[manchild]

It's not fair It took me 3 minutes to get urls of big pics and that's why I was beaten

[Principessa]

http://www.f1technical.net/news/8085

[manchild]

It's official now - Toyota is no longer car with ugliest aero.

[Tomba]

Hmm looks to me like they made quite a bit of progress over the winter. What I can see from these first pics:

- highest nose of the field so far, and a totally opposite design direction at the front compared to Renault
- no deck wing, and not even bridged (although that is very unlikely to happen considering the height of the nose cone)
- note the sharpness of the upper edges of the nose cone compared to roun noses at Renault or Ferrari
- They kept the zero keel (deceiving since they didn't paint lower part of the nose white). It is now a bit higher though.
- The sidepods are much smaller now
- The upper side of the sidepod inlet is sloping down seriously, aiming to guide more air over the sidepod instead of into it.
- Mirrors still at their regular positions (inboard)
- T-wing attached onto the chimney, previously onto the flipup
- Small sidepod panel, also similar to Renault (although Honda added a Ferrari slit into it)

Overall a much developed car in my opinion, but that sure was necessary

[Haastrup]

The two first pictures are still the RA107 if I'm not mistaken. But why would Rubens drive the RA107 car before jumping in the new car?

[Roland Ehnström]

In addition to what Tomba said, I also see Ferrari-style barge boards on the 108. Other than that, it doesn't look very interesting to me.

[meves]

I'm suprised the rear wing has so little sculpting and that the design is so clean but not particularly pretty. Mind you it has plenty of space left for them to try out wing the BMW!

[waynes]

It's official now - Toyota is no longer car with ugliest aero.

why is the toyota ugly? because it doesnt have bits sprouting off it at every angle?

the nose on the Honda will be changed by melbourne too

[ben_watkins]

the ra108 has very simple looking rear wing to me.. hope they can get the car to work, for Button's sake more than anything!

[scarbs]

Honda brought back Jorg Zander from BMW, his influence is clear….
BMW influence, in the bargeboards, tall engine cover, pod wing, chimney, t-wing and exhaust outlets. Even the rads are now facing up and not sideways.
The most important thing is the bargeboards going to a large rear board arrangement, as with Toyota the light has finally dawned that this is the best solution.
I am surprised at the high nose tip, may be they have their own wacky front upper wing design to try this year. The main front wing is a derivative of the late a season wing from last year.

Clean and simple, exactly what the team need this year to get back on its feet.
Scarbs…

[Roland Ehnström]

I think both front and rear wings will soon be replaced with something a little more interesting, these look like they are simply carried over from the RA107.

EDIT: The rear wing is identical to the RA107, but the front wing is different. I still expect Honda to do something with this front wing, because it looks very simple compared to all other 2008 cars.

[Spencifer_Murphy]

I'm overall quite impressed with the middle of the car, in inspired with the rear-most section, and damn near shoecked at the front end lol.

The shape of the nose cone reminds me of the 2002 Jordan (the EJ12 I think it was), and the pylons that support the front wing remind me of the 2003 Arrows lol. The whole front just looks a little bit like a step backwards compared with the rest of the field (although comparing to the RA107 you never know, this really could be a huge leap! LOL!!!)

It'l be interesting to see how the car goes (and how it develops over the season under the Brawn influence) as it's design is in quite stark contrast to that of say the Renault or BMW.

Finally:

Is it just me, or the angle of the picture, but the rear wing looks mightly close to touching the bodywork on the engine cover!

[vyselegend]

I'm surprised with the number (and the size) of cooling gils on the engine cover.
For a two year old, rev-limited engine, it certainly needs a lot of cooling! Especially considering this is a winter session.

[scarbs]

I'm surprised with the number (and the size) of cooling gils on the engine cover.
For a two year old, rev-limited engine, it certainly needs a lot of cooling! Especially considering this is a winter session.

I’m beginning to think there is more to the cooling gills (louvers)than simply cooling. Ferrari use them and we could agree they are a pretty switched on team in terms of aero. Looking at the F2008 at the factory I was surprised to see that each louver had its own blanking plate fixed underneath, held on with two QD fasteners. Now if the team wanted to reduce cooling and improve drag, surely they would have a swappable panel or blanked the louver from above?

We know that the sloping deck of the sidepods creates lift at the rear of the car, so if the louvers are acting to break up the airflow over the pod, they might reduce this lift?