F1technical.net

When asked for his feeling on the new exhaust configuration, he said: "Nothing surprising in terms of performance. I think we tried different configurations of exhaust layout and each day we had a different one and different parts on the car. I think it was just to confirm what our thoughts were and what to bring for the next races and for development.

"This year it is not any more important what position you choose [for the exhausts], or how you manage the position. We saw in Australia one of the quickest cars had the lateral exhausts like McLaren, we saw in China two Red Bulls with different [exhaust] positions and we saw in Bahrain, Red Bull with the lateral ones, but the quickest car was Lotus with the straight ones.

"So we cannot lose even five minutes on this. There are bigger areas of the car where we need to improve and we try to do it."

raymondu999 wrote:Exhausts might not e the KEY factor, but surely they're still A factor though...

marcush. wrote:this was rather obvious .
Stubbornness seems not to be a trait exclusive to germans ....I´m surprised..actually I´m not(surprised).
You got a pack of engineers focused on exhaust development ,you may even have invested in very expensive equipment to map and judge exhaust phenomena and knowledge has been accumulated and the damn technology is reduced to a tightly defined slot in the bodywork...you got all the expertise and possibilities in hand telling you we will find the magic knack ...when in reality the maximum gain is next to nothing ...so you optimise looking for improvements but the end result is a gain that´s barely naticeable BUT doing weird thing to balance .....
I´d say one has to step back from the CAD screen two or better 4 m to get a broader view of the picture and look at areas not restricted at all...for example brake ducts?

marcush. wrote:[...] I think trying to achieve something useful creates a big opportunity to get it all wrong (complicated crossover tunnel creating instability of flow under yaw conditions ,end of story is the car is not quicker over race distance)...

King Six wrote:There's a merry go round going on here. Sauber develop ramp exhaust exit. Red Bull develop ramp and tunnel exit. Red Bull revert to Sauber ramp only exit. Sauber test McLaren v2 exit. Force India/Williams(?) test McLaren v1/heavy undercut exit. Caterham test Red Bull ramp and tunnel exit....