Hi all, this came up during a conversation/debate between a group of friends and I last night. What year and model was the last low-nosed F1 car driven in a race? They seemed to think it was in 1994/5

I was trying to explain to my friends that a high-nosed car is more aerodynamically efficient in terms of front/rear downforce and airflow

DK

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

Hi all, this came up during a conversation/debate between a group of friends and I last night....

Wow, somehow somewhere someone had even more uninteresting Friday night than me.

EDIT: Check Wiki - Facts You Can Trust

I don't trust Wiki, and it wasn't boring...unless you count watching old F1 races as boring?

I'm unsure if it was 1995 though, I have a hazy memory of a car in 1996 having a low nose at one of the GPs

DK

Something like this perhaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWVMO3T5Q3c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_F310 (the photo in this is the 310B I think, obviously not the low-nose version described in the text)

EDIT:
Ah yes - here: http://es.geocities.com/fichastecnicas/F310.htm
Right after that the Ferraris entered aerodynamic puberty and started to look really disproportionate - a sad era as the first high-nose cars were so damn ugly imo.

Thanks That's exactly the one I was trying to remember.

DK

1993 there were mainstream low nosers, 1994, they started lifting the nose, and 1995 to 1997 was pretty much the same. If that is what you meant, I don't know exactly.

Car from 1993 :

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp- ... monte-carlo_1993_1024.jpg

Cars from 1994 :

http://www.formulaonestuff.com/images/shuey1994.jpg
http://funkyz.jp/f1/wallpaper/old/19940320.jpg
http://blogf1.co.uk/images/Damon%20Hill/1994-Testing-001.jpg

yes very hard to actually say when the last 'low nose' was, becuase as blue flame says 'mainstream'

the icture of Senna Mc in 93 is actually a high nose version (altohugh low compared to todays standards)

Classed as a high nose becasue the floor pan did not run to the front nose, it fact it finished just in front of the driver and the pedal assembly areas was off the ground and the feet were in a raised position.

Of course Tyrrell was the first to go high nose back in San Marino 1990 with the Alesi/Nakajima entries..... but when the last 'true' low nose car (with full length floor pan) is a little harder to actually put a number too

That's what made formula 1 better in those days... The differences of all the cars... Now, to be honest, most of the cars BMW and WILLIAMS for example just look like the same car but with different paint. I know there are subtle differences but what Dru is saying about the Tyrell, that car had a 3tier rear wing... If you had that in this day and age you would be banned... Even if you WERE spyker or something... Show's the good old days (even IN Max Mosleys hands) wasn't as bad as now.... They have to have differences between chassis' this makes it interesting, when you're proving your point about a certain Manufactures genius. When it is just the Mercedes or Ferrari engine that is on a control chassis all the other teams use... It would be very boring, and to be honest, it is getting to be close to single chassis in Formula 1 I think..

Perhaps it's important to point out that F1 cars are not actually intended to be perfectly aerodynamic. A perfectly aerodynamic car would not produce any downforce - useless on the track.

F1 cars are shaped the way they are to maximise the usefulness of the drag that they generate. Air is directed over the body of the car in the best way to perform all of the functions it's required to perform, from forcing the car onto the track in corners, to filling its lungs with air, to cooling parts of the engine and the brakes. The shape of the nose of the car may not appear perfectly aerodynamic, but you can bet yer ass it's doing what the designer wants it to do, as best he can make it do so anyway

Didn't Minardi have a low-nose a few (3-5?) years back? I seem to recall that... It may not have been a 'true' low nose, in that the floor pan did not span all the way, but IIRC there was one.

Maybe I'm just going senile.

Quote from Dru :

yes very hard to actually say when the last 'low nose' was, becuase as blue flame says 'mainstream'

the icture of Senna Mc in 93 is actually a high nose version (altohugh low compared to todays standards)

Classed as a high nose becasue the floor pan did not run to the front nose, it fact it finished just in front of the driver and the pedal assembly areas was off the ground and the feet were in a raised position.

Of course Tyrrell was the first to go high nose back in San Marino 1990 with the Alesi/Nakajima entries..... but when the last 'true' low nose car (with full length floor pan) is a little harder to actually put a number too

Tyrell started the 1990 season with a high nose entry at Phoenix AFAIK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ji0aqeG0Qc

Pheonix 1990 ^ low nose

Had to link this one - love the excited commnetators!

New car came out at the start of the european season at San Marino.


from wiki....

In practice the car did not make the same impact in terms of results as it has in technological advancement. Although Alesi qualified a strong seventh and took a point for a sixth place finish at its first race in San Marino, and then both qualified and finished in second place in Monaco, the remainder of the season resulted in only two points finishes. Nevertheless, as other teams experimented with the principle it rapidly became the norm for Formula One cars to sport a high nose cone. The last truly successful low nose design was the Williams FW16, built only four years after the Tyrrell's unveiling. After this car, all Formula One Championship winning chassis have followed Tyrrell's lead.

Well, if you want to know when the first high nosed or "shark nose" car came out, I believe it was the '91 Benetton. I could be wrong tho

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well, if you want to know when the first high nosed or "shark nose" car came out, I believe it was the '91 Benetton. I could be wrong tho

No Tyrrell did introduce the high nose in '90 (I remember a Tyrrell 018 from '89 with a high nose though. Maybe they used it for testing purposes) . The last low nose F1 car was indeed the Ferrari from 1996 (though they changed in mid season to a high nose). Though the low nose they used was a bit higher then normal low noses. Indeed one could say that the 1995 season was the last that saw low nosed F1 cars.

For some reason i was under the impression that the high nose cars were because of FIA Safety regs.

http://club.vodila.net/i/2/0/5/8/7/3.jpg

Looks like Estoril or something to me, but I don't remember what order the calender was for 1990, because until after September the 10th, I wasn't born

Quote from BlueFlame :

http://club.vodila.net/i/2/0/5/8/7/3.jpg

Looks like Estoril or something to me, but I don't remember what order the calender was for 1990, because until after September the 10th, I wasn't born

Yeah that's the Tyrrell 019 from the 90's season. That's actually the first high nose car.

Quote from BenjiMC :

For some reason i was under the impression that the high nose cars were because of FIA Safety regs.

You're thinking of a more recent rule change that set a minimum height of the actual front wing off the ground (another example of a clueless FIA decision that is bad for racing without any apparent advantage). The OP meant a chassis design where there is a big gap between the nose part of the tub and the ground.

According to this 9362 x 6622 jpg I've got the first high nose was the 1990 Tyrell and the last low nose was in 1992. Or if you're looking at the actual front tip of the nose cone then it was in 1995.

Here's the file.
http://rapidshare.com/files/65823061/All_F1_Cars.jpg.html
It has all F1 cars up to 2004 on it. Has anyone come across an updated version? Low res preview is attached below.

Quote from J.B. :

According to this 9362 x 6622 jpg I've got the first high nose was the 1990 Tyrell and the last low nose was in 1992. Or if you're looking at the actual front tip of the nose cone then it was in 1995.

No no, there you're mistaken, best example are the Williams cars from 1991 to 1994 (FW 14-FW16) each was an evoltution from the other and each had a low nose.

FW14 (1991)
http://f1-facts.com/overview/product/2623

FW14B (1992)
http://f1-facts.com/overview/product/2644

FW15 (1993)
http://f1-facts.com/overview/product/2645

FW16 (1994)
http://f1-facts.com/overview/product/2624

Just to give you the example of the Williams' .

In 1995, those cars still used low noses:
Ferrari 412T2
Jordan 195 Peugeot
Tyrrell 23 Yamaha
Simtek S951 Ford
Pacific Pr02 Ford

It seems you are both right! The last car with the floor extending to the nose of the car, a low nose in the strict sense of the phrase, was indeed from 1992. But, the last car with the nose-cose at wing level was in 1995 (or 1996 but the F310's nose is a few cm above the wing if you look closely).

Quote from count.bazley :

The last car with the floor extending to the nose of the car, a low nose in the strict sense of the phrase, was indeed from 1992.

Yeah right if you see it that way then it is 1992 indeed. But I think nevertheless a low nose in my eyes means that the cone is on the ground and a high nose has an elevated cone, I don't take the chassis in account. But that's a thing of definition.

Quote from LRB_Aly :

No no, there you're mistaken

Your statements don't contradict anything in the part of my post you quoted.

Quote from J.B. :

Your statements don't contradict anything in the part of my post you quoted.

Np it's ok, read the 2 post above, we had two different defiitions on low nose. We did indeed talk about the same thing.

Man, its getting boring these days...

That's why I don't post anything in LFS forums weeks on end these day. I REALLY wish the next patch comes with significant aero and turbo updates. Last thing I want whilst racing against the clock or others is a stupid AI car to mess it up but......

Anyway, high nosed (and winged) cars have 2 obvious advantages.

1. Lack of ride pitch and ride height sensitivity

In both CFD simulation and RL aero tests, its has been proven time and time again that the LOWER you run a front wing, the better the aero for all parameters that matter to a race car (L/D ratio, etc). This is true only up to a point, however, just before viscous effects come to play and the airflow under the front wing drops to Zero....

Note that modern regulations force quite reasonable front wing ground clearances to vastly attenuate chassis attitude sensitivity issues, mostly out of safety concerns.


2. High nose reduces nose to wing interactions

Ideally, the wing will act as a wing on itself. In practice, that's impossible as they're meant to be there to make downforce. So to let the wing act as efficiently as possible and ensure maximum control of airflow, you want it to be as decoupled from nose airflow as possible. This is achievable by using really high noses and setting a reasonable distance between the wings mount and the nose.




Of course , the above are quite general explanations and aero is still very much a black art of sorts, since real life aero behavior is both notoriously complicated and in most cases impossible to model in a completely analytical manner. That's why there's CFD that relies heavily on the use of basic equations of aero, heavy numerical calculations and approximations and of course shear computational brute force. That's why teams like BMW Sauber invest millions in Supercomputers such as Albert (or was it Albert 2? I think hey have 2 but can't quite remember ATM...). Aerodynamics of an F-1 car are complex and full of complicated interactions that should either be eliminated or exploited, so all I said should be taken as a general guide, not absolute gospel.

Albert 1 was an AMD x86 cluster that they only used for about a year because getting Intel as a sponsor meant they had to replace it with Albert 2 made of Intel x86 cores. Wonder what happend to Albert 1. Sold? Gathering dust? Still in use with hidden AMD badges?