Regulation #1: The Nose

While doing some research about the new regulations, I came across many articles about how ugsome the new noses of this year’s Formula One cars are. Formula One isn’t about the appearance of a car, not for a serious fan like me, but to call this year’s cars “sexy” would make everyone doubt your judgment of beauty. Apart from the chassis in general, which has changed and lowered a lot, I will write about the nose and chassis height reduction. It is one of the significant changes that have been made with the new regulations this year.

The main reason for these changes is safety. The height of the chassis has been reduced from 625mm to 525mm and the height of the nose has been dramatically lowered from 550mm to 185mm.

For the driver’s perspective, this was big change because compared to last year their feet are around 100 mm lower in the car.

The whole re-designing of the nose topic came up 20 years ago. The engineers and designers of that team realized that they could get a lot more air underneath the car if they raised front of the nose. This would increase the airflow under and over the care and achieve more aerodynamic downforce. Oh, and have I told you that aerodynamic downforce is the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Formula One”?

For 20 years now, the nose of Formula One cars was on a rise until the European Grand Prix in 2010. I still remember the day when it happened. Before we start watching it my brother, who is pretty delighted in other’s misfortune, told me that he wishes a horrible race with no one getting killed though. And yes, that was exactly what happened.

On Lap 9 in the Valencian race (European Grand Prix) Webber was driving right behind Kovaleinen. Webber was hoping Kovaleinen would move over for him, which happens pretty often if you are the car ahead but you know that the car behind you is faster and therefore let them pass. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, Kovaleinen hit the brakes and Webber’s nosecone hit Kovaleinen’s rear wheel. Think of a car going 320 km/h and crashing into the rear tire of another car going over 300 km/h. Well, that happened and there’s the video:

This was scenario number 1 that has come true. There are couple other horrible incidents that could’ve happened with noses set so high. For example, a T-bone crash where the nose might strike a driver’s head. Now, please don’t think of a car going 320 km/h crashing into your head!

First changes to prevent such incidents were made by introducing the regulation for stepped noses in 2012 and the ones covered with vanity panels in 2013.

Let’s get back to why people think that the new cars are very unattractive or even ugsome! Some journalists even compared the car to anteaters. Well, the reason behind such painful look of the cars is aerodynamic! The engineers and designers wanted to keep the hole under this nosecone as open as possible for airflow under the car.

Here’s a F1 car and an anteater:

Don’t you think that the anteater bears an uncanny resemblance to the F1 car?