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Renault's all in one mirror and sidepod panel

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The new Renault R27 mirrors are one of the most eye-catching novelties on the 2007 contenders. After Ferrari came up with the idea to put the mirrors on the outer side or the sidepod, several teams investigated the idea. Together with the sidepod panels that Renault introduced at Canada last year they make for a good combination of minimising drag. The new mirror position is especially beneficial because it is behind the front wheel and not visible on a front view of the car (and thus also not in the main air stream). The most important disadvantage is the distance of these mirrors from the driver's head, possibly combined with decreased stability.

Comments

By Saribro on 29-01-2007 at 03:00

It\'s these sort of seemingly trivial pieces of ingenuity that really make me love Formula 1 and engineering in general.

By Mikey_s on 29-01-2007 at 09:52

Having seen the way these sidepod \"bargebards\" virated last year, especially on the Honda, I\'ll be interested to see whether the drivers can see anything out of them at all at high speed... then again, they did seem to wobble a lot on several cars last year already.

By jddh1 on 29-01-2007 at 18:15

If the drivers like it and don\'t see that much of a difference, then why not use it. Will it be blamed for mistakes such as when a slower car doesn\'t let through a faster car right away or hits it? Probably, but I guess that\'s the exciting part. (I think though, that to increase the viewing area, the glass is curved a bit outward. That\'s a guess though. Until somebody sees it and verifies it here then that\'s all it is).

By Principessa on 29-01-2007 at 19:05

Well after the launch of Red Bull, we saw that Renault isn\'t the only team that will use these on-the-sidepod-mirrors, so I believe it\'s an innovation that will work/pay-off

By nextgen on 30-01-2007 at 07:20

something like this will obviously be adopted by a large number of teams. Based on its positioning, it can\'t not work. I was also pleased to see that some draft drawings I had done towards the end of the 2006 season were quite similar to this design. What I had done was remove the side boards, then grafted the mirrors onto the corner of the sidepod.

By DaveKillens on 31-01-2007 at 04:09

This is a wonderful example of making a component do more than one task. It definitely may have some disadvantages, but until the rules force an alternate configuration, I expect this concept to become fashionable.

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