The Weekly Grapevine

Evidence of things to come

When Felipe Massa's Ferrari F2008 hit the Circuit de Catalunya with a 'nostriled' nose on Monday it certainly was a sign of things to come - next year.

The Italian team was hard at work in Spain, evaluating the nose - whose principles hark back to the 1968 McLaren M7A, which incorporated NACA ducts in the same area as the F2008's slots are found - for use in a fortnight at the same track, but the design is a taster of 2009, when flips and flaps and flops are banned and alternate means of directing airflow to claw back lost downforce need be found.

In both instances the ducts - named after the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the predecessor of NASA), which developed them for space travel - create low and high pressure areas to better direct airflow.

Although McLaren's 1968 car, designed by Robin Herd well before the Ron Dennis era, used said ducts for cooling purposes - its radiator was fitted in the nose, and the low pressure areas sucked air through the nose and out and over the car (and, in the M7A's case, around the driver) - the aerodynamic principles remain exactly the same more than 40 years on.

McLaren M7A Fords in the paddock at Brands Hatch for the 1968 British Grand Prix © LAT

That Ferrari would be the first team to experiment with such a 'radical' solution - if such a term is appropriate for an innovation first developed for use in WWII jet fighters - for next year's aerodynamic regulations are very much the product of a committee headed by Ferrari engineering consultant Rory Byrne.

Thus McLaren and Renault are likely to be the next teams to test such noses...

Why so? Very simple: the South African heads the FIA's Overtaking Working Group, consisting of the 64-year-old qualified industrial chemist, Renault's Engineering Director Pat Symonds, and McLaren's Director of Engineering Paddy Lowe.

Why has this trio been chosen for the OWG is the obvious next question, and the answer is as logical as their choice.

When the FIA decided, in late 2006, to establish the committee, the then-top three teams were requested to supply primary input and make available their facilities, although all teams were requested to contribute - which, by accounts, all but one (thought to be a 'customer' team) did.

Equally, the choice of Rory to head the OWG was logical: Ferrari's ex-Chief Designer, whose Thai-born wife Porthnip, incidentally, presented him with a son last Boxing Day, had signalled his intention of heading into semi-retirement (remaining with Ferrari as consultant until early-2009), and, having carved himself an enviable reputation for penning cars which were both fast and difficult to overtake, he was the obvious choice.

As top-three finishers in 2006, the Anglo-French, Italian and British teams obviously had access to state-of-the-art facilities, and, saliently, despite all three being embroiled in one way or another in last season's lamentable 'Spygate', they pooled their resources throughout the scandal to develop guidelines for the 2009 regulations.

For example, concepts were tested in all three teams' wind tunnels over four sessions, and the overall effectiveness of the concepts was in many instances - and here comes the biggest surprise of all given the level of last year's acrimony - cross-checked on McLaren's multi-million dollar simulator, with one such session occurring at the height of the 'war'!

The committee was thus able to not only measure the actual aero values of their concepts, but also the impact their 'dirty' air would have on cars behind them - which, ultimately, is the crux of any such study.

Felipe Massa testing the F2008 at Barcelona © XPB/LAT

Their recommendations were presented to the FIA - according to sources in January - and finalisation expected during the last World Motor Sport Council meet on 26 March. Although other matters have since overtaken the FIA, the OWG's findings are very much on the front burner, and hence Ferrari's nose in Spain.

The findings are set to change more than just the face of the sport as we know it. Not only are the cars likely to be wider by 20 centimetres to create a larger, yet cleaner 'draft', but their front wings will be substantially lower and wider, with their number of elements reduced from three to two, with their adjustment range restricted.

However, the OWG has recommended that drivers be given adjustable aircraft-style front wings in order to claw back downforce when travelling in the wake of another car.

Conversely, rear wings will be narrower and taller in order to 'clean' up airflow and a maximum of three rear wing elements, although adjustment on these, too, will be restricted.

Then, the OWG recommended that diffuser shapes and dimensions be changed to reduce 'dirt', whilst all external flow conditioners - barge boards, winglets, flaps, etc.- will be banned, altering the aesthetics (for the better) and reducing the aerodynamic efficiency of any given car by restricting the flow of air - and hence the internal 'flow conditioners' fitted to Massa's F2008...

Should there be any doubt that the aesthetics of F1 will be improved, just a cursory glance at the latest Honda, with its Dumbo 'ears', or the billboard-like rear end of the Red Bull racing RB4 will suffice.

But, the OWG's work was not aimed at a beauty pageant. According to Byrne, their simulations showed the 'dirty' air effect of Formula One's 2006/7 aerodynamics meant that a following car had to be on average two seconds a lap faster than the car immediately ahead in order to stand any reasonable chance of taking its position.

Under the OWG's proposals that has been reduced to one second - more than doubling the chance of overtaking (which does not, obviously, mean an increase from one move to two) and therefore vastly increasing the spectacle.

The reduction in downforce by an estimated 50 percent brought about by the studies will also ensure that, for the first time since the early eighties, cars have more power than grip.

That, too, will increase the spectacle, and whilst the introduction of slicks - both on aesthetic grounds and to increase mechanical and chemical grip, leading to better traction out of corners and therefore more overtaking - will reduce the impact on lap times by the aero measures, these are still expected to increase by around five seconds on the average circuit.

Robert Kubica driving a BMW Sauber F1.08 with 2009 downforce levels © XPB/LAT

Whilst five seconds is considered an eon in Formula One, very few folk can visually judge the variance in speed between, say, a Raikkonen in an F2008 and a Sato in a Super Aguri.

And on television the difference is even less distinct - there is no doubt that five cars jostling in close proximity to each other offer a vastly superior spectacle to a spread of cars circulating below last year's lap record...

To date the measures have found favour with teams and drivers alike. "I believe the Overtaking Working Group under Rory has done a very good job," said Williams Technical Director Sam Michael a fortnight ago in Bahrain.

"They didn't have access to a car, but with CFD (computational fluid dynamics), wind tunnels and simulations they achieved an awful lot. I think it's great that F1 commissioned them and that they went to all the effort.

"It is difficult enough to do their day jobs, but they found the time to do something extra and I believe they managed to define a good set of regulations. That could not have been easy."

Massa, too, was full of enthusiasm for the 'feel' of a Ferrari with 50 percent less downforce, whilst Tonio Liuzzi, who did not try slicks at F1's first such test in Jerez in December, hailed as 'amazing' a slick-tyred Force India shorn of 40 percent of its current downforce. "It feels like a kart," the 2001 world champion in the category added.

In fact, the only negative comments surrounded the ban on tyre warmers. After the first 'slick' test late last year, Red Bull's David Coulthard strongly expressed misgivings about their ban, and the same sentiments resonated around Catalunya's paddock this week.

As one, drivers spoke of the dangers of returning to the track on cold slicks after a stop - the most fraught period of a race bar the start.

But, even if warmers are ultimately reprieved the good work of the OWG remains, for the ban on heated blankets played no part in their studies and is ostensibly a 'cost-saving' measure - although how much money will be saved when the rigs or aircraft are travelling in any event and the warmers were paid for in full five years ago, remains a separate matter...

The most important thing is that overtaking is poised to return to a sport in which should be paramount. Imagine football without goals or rugby without tries, and you will realise what has been missing for many years now.