Front wheel covers - this seasons must have...

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scarbs
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Front wheel covers - this seasons must have...

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I noticed at Jerez; McLaren and Renault have joined Ferrari, Toyota and Williams in running the static front wheel covers...

Here's some quotes I've taken in the past few weeks from the teams TDs on the wheel fairings.


Pascal Vasselon
"We call them ‘Rim blankings’, honestly the effect of the front wheel blanking is not something you can capture very simply. We have now some experience with it, very clearly it can have totally different effect according to the rest of the flow structure over the rest of the car. It’s a powerful item, you can use it in different ways. Its not only a drag reduction item and really can change a lot of things in terms of front wheel wake. You are of course playing with the font wheel wake
It requires careful tuning according to the rest of the car, the first time we ran it on the TF108 concept it was not working, now it has started to work. That’s just to illustrate that it is something which easily interacting with the rest of the car. Its not just something you put on the car and gain a couple of points of drag, its much more complex than that.
It affects the brake cooling, You need to step up the brake cooling, in our case its not been a problem because we were not really marginal on brake cooling and adding some brake cooling was not really detrimental in terms of aero efficiency. But yes it does affect the requirement in terms of brake cooling and it can have an effect in some cases on effect on yaw\steer sensitivity.
It requires a very interesting design in terms of the extension of the front hub, with of course the rotation of the wheel and not the rotation of the rim blanking. From the outside we are quite happy the way we have done it. "


Sam Michael
"They very complicated actually, we were running them in testing last week at Barcelona. We did plan to take them to last couple of race, but we had problems, not with the aero side, but with the mechanical side. You can imagine its bit complicated to keep something still while everything around it is moving. We had problems with it before we could take it to the race. So we had a revised design at Barcelona last week.
From the aero side their pretty complex bit of kit, were still earning them to be honest.
The dimple at the top was there just for legality. That’s why Ferraris looks like someone’s done a messy job of trimming it, its because of legality. Its controlled by the plus minus 160 height overall on the brake ducts. The other thing is that you don’t want the disc touching wheel because when carbon rubs on magnesium it will cut through it like butter, within a lap you wont have a wheel left. So you’ve got to be a bit careful you don’t push for a bit extra and end up losing your wheel.
Of course they contribute to brake cooling, they’re brake ducts…."

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Sawtooth-spike
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Of course they contribute to brake cooling, they’re brake ducts…."
I liked that bit

We got any pictures of the Mclarens running them?

Ps. Thanks again scarbs Some really good reporting
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mx_tifoso
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Re: Front wheel covers - this seasons must have...

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scarbs wrote:Sam Michael
¨Of course they contribute to brake cooling, they’re brake ducts…."
Its funny how he makes that last statement before ending his speech, as they had mostly spoken about the aerodynamic influence of the wheel fairings. But if everyone says that they are for brake cooling, than they´re for brake cooling 8) .

I have seen all the teams mentioned with their wheel fairings on, all except McLaren, I have yet to see a picture of theirs. I am going over November testing pictures just in case I missed it before, but so far I´m not having any luck. Scarbs, do you have any pics of McLarens wheel covers?

I´ll include some of the teams wheel fairings in this post.

Ferrari
Image
Renault
Image
Toyota
Image
Williams
Image
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scarbs
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Re: Front wheel covers - this seasons must have...

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mx_tifosi wrote: Its funny how he makes that last statement before ending his speech, as they had mostly spoken about the aerodynamic influence of the wheel fairings. But if everyone says that they are for brake cooling, than they´re for brake cooling
To be fair to Sam, I've listed his comments without the questions I asked in between. I think I asked soemthing like Do they add anything to brake cooling, Sam took the legality route in his response, Pascal said they needed more cooling

modbaraban
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Image

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checkered
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Joined: 02 Mar 2007, 14:32

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A nicely written

analysis on autosport.com. Thank you for taking the trouble of providing some backround here as well. Does anybody feel that in the current format, air flow management (concept refinements aside) opportunities around the front wheel have now been exhausted or are there still completely unused opportunities thereabouts? It's a complicated area, but here I'm just mainly referring to the available spatial potential.

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mini696
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Joined: 20 Mar 2006, 02:34

Re: Front wheel covers - this seasons must have...

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scarbs wrote:Its not only a drag reduction item... You need to step up the brake cooling...
So they are there to aid brake cooling... But you need to "step up the brake cooling" when you fit them.

Hmm....
Supporting:
Mark "It happens" Webber
McLaren

stewie325
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Have Renault got a new front wing?? Looks like they've used a lot of curves around the top plane..

mx_tifoso
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There have been many versions of the now popular fairings, including this creative interpretation by Super Aguri... Image ... at the Brazilian GP.
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Conceptual
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I love this stuff.

It proves that the more strict that you make the technical regulations, the more innovative the engineers become.

I LOVE IT!

modbaraban
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This one looks like a low-budget rough test of the idea they consider. A DIY F1 rim-shield :lol:

scarbs
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modbaraban wrote:This one looks like a low-budget rough test of the idea they consider. A DIY F1 rim-shield :lol:
that carbon disc on the super aguri, is just used when shipping the car around. Jordan used to have them too.

Conceptual
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They ship the cars with the tyres on?

Saribro
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Stops the floor from getting damaged?

ss_collins
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I think at least on the ferrari it may have to do with the tyres rather than the brakes/drag reduction. We ran an article on them a few months back after trying them in the wind tunnel. The we discovered the gas thing