F10 Ferrari 2010 car - Codename 661

[TheProdigalSon]

Rotational Dampers may make a return.

It should be noted, that this year, Ferrari is not running the rotational dampers from SACHS.

Though it has obviously not been confirmed by the team, there's been suggestion, that these may again make a return on the 2010 car. Their advantage is in their packaging in that the take up less space.

Ferrari may have gone away from this approach in order to try a more traditional damper approach to try and fix their tyre heat issues.

With the packaging of the car being very important next year with the focus going towards positioning the fuel tank and maximizing the air path to the diffuser rotational dampers may again play a role by possibly freeing up some space that could be used to displace otherwise immovable components and improve overall packaging.



Another aspect that we may see, is the use of a pull rod suspension as opposed to the traditional push rod. The RBR has been very successful in it's implementation allowing for a very tightly packaged rear end of the car and a better CoG. There's no news on this and will most likely have to wait a long time before we know what their plan is.


Image from formula1.com

I'm interested in what the "mechanical" solutions for next year are that were mentioned.

Mark Hughes's
“But there’s compromise to be drawn in virtually every design decision of an F1 car and this is clearly where Newey’s team feel the optimum solution lies. The most radical aspect of the car is its pullrod rear suspension. Every other F1 car has pushrod rear suspension and has had for the last couple of decades. But Newey has reasoned that with upper body downforce so reduced – and the underbody downforce enhanced – by the new regulations, the point of compromise has changed. The pullrod layout allows the rocker that operates the spring to be sited much lower and there are none of the lumps and bumps in the bodywork seen on other cars needed to clear the upper rockers of the conventional pushrod layout. It has led to an incredibly tightly packaged rear end, leaving a massive space to channel airflow to the rear beam wing. The regulation rearward shift of the diffuser has created the room to do this, though the siting of lower rockers will have compromised the shape of the diffuser. An additional benefit of the pullrod layout is its lower centre of gravity.”


Its believed Magnetti Marelli is working with Ferrari on how they can improve engine fuel economy.

---

Ferrari are testing some interesting wheelnuts on the F60. Despite the testing ban, it looks like teams are sneeking in little items here and there during this test. The wheel nuts could be a new way of battling the ban on the hub caps as well as possibly making the pit stops faster.





Credit to Astro1 for providing info.

---

---

[icegirljenni]

The pull rod suspension would have been the best choice if the multideck diffusers where outlawed for 2010, but now with that allowed and team going all out in their pursuits of lost downforce, redbull will either be forced to change that or forgo their plan to have an aggressive diffuser. Newey already admitted the multideck diffusers are a pain to incorporate given how low ad compact the rear crash structures has now become for Redbull. It is very unlikely Ferrari or even Redbull will go this root anymore, there is a decent gain in downforce to be gained in the dry setups, although the pull rod is the best for a wet weather setup. No one will think of being super fast in the wets alone. The dry standard performance is more the focus obviously. The point wheel nut tried by Ferrari is not entirely new or radical, its a old recycled idea, without hub caps there is little room to try and do anything with a part that will not contribute to gaining/loosing optimal airflow. No team need to wait to track test to improve fuel efficiency work would have already started on this on the bench months back. Ferrari are definitely working on it but it wouldn't have started with just this test alone.

[Tension_36th]

About the positioning of the fuel tank affecting the dampers that is a misconception, the fuel tank will not extend that far to interfere with the the damper at all. So the fuel tank size is not an issue here, despite the fact that teams will extend it backwards but it will still not interfere with the damper systems.

The reason why Ferrari abandoned the rotational dampers lies in the fact that rotational dampers are ideal in Linear damping scenarios. And more often than not we always have to deal with non-linear damping scenarios. An example of linear damping is that of a ship's propulsion system. Compare that to a F1 car or any car, we can see how its not linear with all the angles and twists compared to a straight line for a ship's system.

Rotational dampers do have the advantage of size being smaller also generally regarded as durable in linear conditions, but if they are used in areas where the non-linear damping is more dominant, the wear will be higher and needs replacements often, which wont be a problem for team as they can do it after every race, but these systems cannot handle the amount of load a mass-spring damper can handle for the same weight/size class. And this higher load requirement will be a factor when the mass of the car is highest at the start of the race.

It will really depend on what configuration of suspension the team decides to go with and the chances of rotational dampers being really needed is unlikely. If they do, its not because they expect to gain something from it in terms of suspension performance but because they had to a trade off in space-performance.

Ferrari or any other team for that matter will not be facing that problem so much. They can continue with the mass-spring dampers as they are doing now. The Fuel tank will not be this much of a factor. Also the KERS will be gone which means the radiators will be smaller with lesser cooling requirements as we discussed in the 2010 F1 season preview article, so there is a reasonable amount of space to be gained from that alone to move around hydraulics, piping and other components.

[Tension_36th]

Quick points on the new car (verifiable through ordinary CFD routines)

Nose Cone: Ferrari will not have a nose like Brawn, they will be going for the Raised nose cone as that gives the highest downforce with air rushing underneath the nose creating low pressure. The more well channeled air is also good for the multi-deck diffuser. It would be really odd if they went for the swooping nose like the Brawns/Mercedes, even Mercedes will not be keeping that concept anymore. The raised nose is simply better technically. You could say Mercedes didnt fully utilize their diffuser potential because of their nose design. There was more speed to be found.

Side pods: They are expected to grow in size especially given Ferrari's engine are not fuel efficient. Increasing cooling can reduce power wastage in the form of heat. This means larger radiators, hence more space taken up in the side pods. it wont be that large an increase but unlike the expectations of even sleeker side pods, we can expect a slight increase along with the more space created by abandoning the KERS system.

Rear packaging: They have two choices

1. Either go with a sleeker rear end and be less aggressive on the multi-deck diffusers and have pull rod suspensions or
2. go aggressive on the multi-deck diffusers and have a conventional suspension configuration.
   

The problem with the pull rod is that while its great for mechanical grip in the wets and other tracks where mechanical grip requirements dominate the need for higher downforce, it has not much space for further diffuser development. You don't win championships with a fast wet weather car alone.

The better over all gains are there to be taken advantage of through a aggressive multi-deck diffuser coupled with a conventional approach to suspension design push-rods dominating.

Ferrari will go with option 2. Unless they are so sure they have unearthed something special it is very unlikely they will chose option 1.

The rear ends will be still sleek as always is the case and aim, but just wont be as sleek as it could be with a pull-rod mode.

Engine covers: They might want to create more room permissible within the regulations to have more air rushing into the airbox, the best way to do it is to have a reverse multi-deck diffuser within the airbox which slow air down and increases air pressure that can help increase sent gas expansion ratio. But this also means if your engine is not well designed to cope with the new vigorous combustion process life of the engine reduces.

If they dont go for an aggressive reverse diffuser, a Mclaren MP4-20 style long engine cover with more room is always the other option to consider, but they may have to slightly increase the cross section, again adding drag.

Both ways have their strengths and weaknesses, But will depend on how they are with their engines. closely guarded secret. From what i can gather, their engine is not strong enough for this kind of abuse. Option 2 is more likely.

Wheel base: Many where saying Ferrari will have a shorter wheel base. Because the common mantra is that short wheel base means agile car to handle and longer wheel base means less agile but more stable at top speeds.

But given the starting fuel loads to be very heavy, a steady car offered through a longer wheel base can be very good for balance and setup. An Agile smaller wheel base car is going to be very unpredictable when conditions change on the tarmac. A problem they faced so much in 2009.

The above is only good ignoring the fact the fuel tank is now extending backwards, which means they wheel base will have to extend anyway. So it is highly unlikely any team can maintain 2009 levels of length. Also it is not even desirable given the heavy starting cars for GPs next year.

Suspension: As me mentioned earlier, they are expected to have conventional pushrod dominated setup, as there is more to be gained in performance with a good diffuser than with a pull rod restricted mod.

Rear Wing: You will see more curvature and odd cut angles designed to close down air over the wing and increase airspeed under the wing. They will be really odd looking wings, everyone will have their own ideas, particularly dictated by how their front end is designed to channel air to the rear (for the diffuser primarily).

Over all you are looking at a slightly chubbier F61/F2010, Sleeker on the very tip end of the rear, but wider on the sidepods and engine covers and well designed at front to channel air to the rear.

This is the same idea for most cars but with slight variations per team. I will be putting up a detailed F1 car design analysis preview soon which encompasses all the major existing teams and how they may choose to go forwards. Some we know for sure, some we can only guess.

[fernandofan01]

Apparently, what was speculated in the paddock during Abu Dhabi, Ferrari are going for the Redbull style nose cone as opposed to Brawn/Mercedes' style. Whether thats down to its adaptability or not, i dont know.

[icegirljenni]

Ferrari seem desperately and drastically in their current design, which we wont know whether it will be paying off. It seem their major issue and concern over the refueling ban still bothering them. Technically they claim they are ready for the changes but the fact is they are still finding the way to sort it.

[Tension_36th]

(01-05-2010 01:54 PM)fernandofan01 Wrote:  Apparently, what was speculated in the paddock during Abu Dhabi, Ferrari are going for the Redbull style nose cone as opposed to Brawn/Mercedes' style. Whether thats down to its adaptability or not, i dont know.

Similarly there was speculation Ferrari they would copy Brawn's swooping down nose approach. But this one is just random speculation as usual without technical merit.

Technically the Redbull way is much superior approach. And this is the way most teams will proceed. Maybe all the teams in the end will. Ferrari even tested a concept that looked like a version of the raised nose.

[Tension_36th]

Giorgio Piola seems to have found some more info from those contacts of his within Ferrari.

But take note most of it will be wrong/outdated since Ferrari or any team for that matter will not be keen on letting out information that is completely accurate at such an early stage.

The one thing that is obvious is that people who said Ferrari are going with Brawn style swooping down nose cones were inaccurate. Redbull style raised noses are the way to go.

The rest of the article in Italian suggested a 15cm increase in wheelbase, it would have never decreased anyway. Wonder who even mentioned the 'decrease' idea to the media in the first place. As we discussed above a decrease will only make the balance terrible (if at all possible)

Piola is in agreement with the engineering logic here on:

1) Raised nose
2) Longer wheelbase

The rest of the details on front wing design or rear wing seems rather rudimentary and definitely not as innovative as it could be.

I get the impression that Piola is mixing confirmed info he obtained from him sources within Ferrari his own imagination inspired by the redbull designs.

Expect a more robust Rear wing and front wing design.

Piola is also making the claim that Ferrari are going for a 2009 style redbull approach to its diffusers, this will be the least aggressive diffuser design and makes the suspension definitely pullrod mode. But like we discussed earlier there are drawbacks for this approach as others will go aggressive on their diffusers. There is more to be gained from an aggressive diffuser.

I believe Ferrari will go for a push-rod aligned aggressive diffuser instead.

The attached picture is very very large.

[Astro1]

I posted this a few days ago, but thought you guys might find it interesting. It's the English translation of the La Gazzeta article. Plus the original image (see the rear wheels is fully there). I should have a bit more info by later on tonight. It's around 4:00pm where I'm at right now. By around 10pm - 10:30pm, I should have a bit more. I'll post it up if I get it.


Ferrari F2010 F1 Final Preview English Translation and Launch Details

Two chassis of the 661 (internal codename designation) #281 & 282 are almost ready. One chassis will serve for a series of homologation tests at the ‘Centro di Certificazione e Analisi comportamentale’ in Bollate (about 10 km northwest of Milan). The other one will serve as a sort ’school’ for the mechanics who will have to learn how to quickly disassemble the entire car, to then assemble it again. A rigorous ‘training’ that takes less than a week before the Valencia test.

The aerodynamic configuration will be revealed on the 28th or 29th in Maranello, Stefano Domenicali will announce the precise launch date on Wednesday at Madonna di Campiglio (where Alonso will make his first ‘official’ Ferrari outing).

We believe Ferrari haven’t yet decided who will drive the car, but usually it’s a driver that has been with the team the preceding year (Massa) meaning he’ll be able to make a direct comparison straight away. However last years car proved to be a very difficult car and because of this and the first road test of the car scheduled to take place in Spain might make Alonso an exception to the practice.



Here is a translation of the points made in the Italian La Gazzeta Dello Sport publication.

1. At the launch in Maranello the new car will still have the front wing of the F60, we will only see the new front wing during the Valencia test.

2. The chassis will be higher in the area of the nosecone, which will have a shape à la Red Bull (already tested on the F60 last summer).

3. Thanks to the front tyres being smaller and the chassis higher in that area, aerodynamic elements will be attached to the underside of the nosecone in between the front suspension. The smaller front tyres and the ban on wheel fairings are responsible for substantial changes in the front end aerodynamics.

4. Ferrari will continue to sport the external mirrors, still on top of the aerodynamic appendages.

5. The radiators will be longer to compensate for the larger tank area.

6. The tank capacity will be a lot bigger, it goes from around 100-120 litres of fuel last year to around 240 litres this year. As a consequence all the cars will have a longer wheelbase (around 15 cm). Everything has been designed in function of this major change in the regulations: from the weight distribution to the aerodynamics, from the suspensions to the brakes. Keep in mind that during the race, due to the ever lowering fuel load, the ride height of the car will be substantially different at the end of the race compared to the start of it. The aerodynamics and suspensions have been designed in such a way that they are least affected by this change. On the other hand, it will be up to the drivers to manage the brakes and the mechanical side of things in the best way possible.

7. The exhaust manifolds will be a bit more to the front.

8. The arms of the rear suspension will be inclined a bit more to the front as well in order to better exploit the air channels that aid the area of the double diffuser.

9. The biggest change will be the return (after 12 years) of the dislocation of the oil tank. The necessity to gain space in the quest to minimise the lengthening of the wheelbase prevents the designers to place the oil tank a central position (in between the engine and the chassis like usual).

Therefore, a solution first applied in 1998 (and then adopted on all cars) by Alan Jenkins, designer of Stewart, and John Barnard, technical chief of Arrows back in those days, has been reintroduced. So the technicians have made a leap into past placing the oil tank behind the engine, inside the housing of the gearbox. A choice that’s not optimal in terms of lowering and centering the weight as much as possible, but one that had to be taken due to fuel tank being much bigger now.

10. The shape of the diffuser, comprising of three channels, resembles to the one Red Bull had in the latter part of the 2009 season.

11. The rear end crash structure is an integral part of the rear end aerodynamics.

12. Like the front wing, we will only see the new rear wing during the first test in Spain.

Gazzetta dello Sport Translation and source of the news AFCA

Also, this are of the front of the sidepods and driver side protection are looks interesting if the drawing is anything close to the real thing.

[Tension_36th]

Thanks for translation. I did a PDF document of the image and did a rough translation of that italian article in google before I posted what saw was relevant from it in the few posts above.

Again the claim that they will go with a redbull style less aggressive diffuser suggest they want to adopt a pull-rod configuration on the suspension. Which as i pointed out is not the direction where teams will head as there is more to be gained by a normal configuration of push rods and a more aggressive diffuser. The redbulls where restricted in what they could achieve on that front because of their suspension compromise.

And the rest of the article as always are either outdated or incorrect most of the time since no team is interested in letting anyone know what they are upto until the day they let their preliminary designs launch.

The area you have shown in the picture has little interest, because having an inlet there is of no consequence, if its for cooling they might as well make the side pod intakes larger than have more openings which disturbs the headon cross-section of the car. It could may well be a raised area with no inlet at all. Mostly hiding some of the internal elements due to space constraints. This also means that much little (however small) increase in drag, if thats the case its not good. It shows a compromise.

[Tension_36th]

In a recent chat with Ferrari fans, Stefano is claiming:

Quote:“The first data is very positive. We’ll have an important test in the wind tunnel next week where we will compare the models of the two cars to get a more precise idea about where we stand. We worked on the aerodynamics and the double diffusor concept. Having said that, we have to wait for the first tests to see how the performance levels look on the track."

They are comparing scaled models of the F60 and the 661 project (First chassis being 281).

It is concerning because at this stage a comparison run is rather hasty and rushed to say the least, this sort of work should have been done and signed off many weeks ago.

It maybe that the performance numbers are not as strong as they hoped for, even if there was an improvement over last year. Late pushes to find performance could be the reasons for this late test.


Watch this space.

[Tension_36th]

First few images,

As predicted raised nose, which means we can expect an aggressive diffuser.

[Tension_36th]

Here are some preliminary pictures of the now called F10 Ferrari





Notice the:

1) Forwarded exhausts, but this is in part an illusion since the fuel tank causes the wheelbase increase, nonetheless there is a slight forwarding of the exhausts.

2) Raise nose redbullstyle

3) the side pods are bulging, which means they have struggled a bit with rewiring, piping etc.

4) The engine cover is a bit fatter which means they have increased the aggressiveness of the air compressors

5) Zero Keel configuration

6) Surprisingly the rear crash structure isnt curving upwards, then it poses serious questions about their diffuser's aggressiveness.

7) There was no upper air channel on top of the sidepods as one of the members above speculated, it was never of any consequence to have one, it made little use or sense.

[Tension_36th]

I will do side by side comparison soon but the first impressions of the car is that nothing special has been achieved in terms of new ideas, Mostly more of a reactive evolution to their 2009 problems.

Havent seen clear pictures of the rear diffuser and the rear configuration. But so far I am underwhelmed. Shakedown has been aborted due to poor weather.

[Tension_36th]

No clear shots of the rear end yet.

[Chrissie]

I've been reading that they covered up the diffuser anyway

Edit: here's a video to illustrate the above point.... (@0.27)

[TheProdigalSon]

Yeah diffuser was covered

[Tension_36th]

Actually I saw that was trying to make a enlargement of that section to state exactly your point.

But covering that up just help engineers to get 40% of what's underneath it.

I can tell you right now its a variation to Renault's concept shown below on the 2nd channel, curved and largely gaping hole. The design within the channel is now the point of interest.



To put the records straight there's hardly enough days for anyone to really do anything ahead of the first tests, and when the teams rolls the cars out every team will have detailed Hi-res pictures of their rival's car designs. This is a futile exercise really it achieves nothing.

[Tension_36th]

Ok here is the easy to understand and also far more accurate side by side comparison of the F60 and F10 cars from Ferrari.

The other websites which have done comparisons are either poorly base referenced or completely wrong in scale (in some cases both).

First of all please disregard all the frontal comparisons made by other wedsites as they are all rubbish. Becuase the distance at which those headon photos where shot are different. Not to mention the longer wheel base increases the distance of the rear wing from the photographer, hence to due to optics the wing appears to be shorter when its not.

You can see what I mean here, even if I matched the tyres size, the rest of the car is simply not matching the scale.



This above picture is useless for analysis.

But there are better chances at a decent comparison side by side along the length and from the top view

First up

Side view

Click to expand these pictures to really see the markers I have added to see the comparisons.



Now even though there can still the optical parallax errors in the wider ends of any large picture, we can get a reasonable comparion by using the middle of the picture as the reference point. So you should not start off by matching the rear wing or the front wing for that matter like some sites have done.

I have referenced the engine air box inlet as the baseline and from there we can see that the front part of the car is almost a match despite obvious parallax effect. And we are abe to see just by how much the wheelbase has increased.

1. The yellow marker line in the middle is to show the engine airbox inlet being used as the baseline reference.
2. The green marker line to its left is to show the alignment change if any, of the engine exhuasts. I mentioned in other posts that the exhausts looked forwarded but this also due to the illusion created by the longer wheelbase. Infact it is very slighlty forwarded but not by much. In this comparion we can clearly see how the engine cover and the rest of the body work has been extended.
3. The dull orange marker line is to show the gap between the end of the main body work and the end of the engine cover extension on the new F10, when compared to the F60. This is to highlight the wheelbase increase
4. Further to left the faint cream colored lines to the further left are shown to again highlight the wheelbase increase.
5. On the right of the reference yellow marker line we have the purple marker line to show the tip of the floor starting point. And on the F10 we can see the higlighted yellow oval patch. There is a spitter vane to better channel the air under the high nose, around the sidess and under the car. The F60 has no such splitters.
6. The twine blue markers are for showing the correlation of length at the front of the car in comparion to the rear of the car.
7. Now lets look at the patches. The blue oval patch is to show the nose is higher. Notice the tyre on the other side is more visible in the F60 since the nose is lower than the F10.
8. The yellow patch as we already pointed out is to show the spliter on the F10
9. The purplish-blue patch is to show the head rest area has lost some of its height in the F10 as the fuel tank is larger and hence the wider bulkier bodywork.
10. The white oval patch is to demonstrate that the F60 was more curved inwards to reduce drag, but the F10 has to be bulkier and heance has a streamlined tappering body work. Drag coefficient is definitly higher for the F10 but so is the case with most other teams.
11. The bargeboards are a tiny bit larger.
    
    Top view
    
    
12. The front wing has some rudimentary changes to the end plates and the introduction of new smaller planes on the F10. Notice the variation on one of the wing planes highlighted in a purple patch.
13. The white patch is again to show how the wider body work of the F10 is forcing the car to be less tappered to the rear when compared to the F60
14. The green patches are just to make you notice that the heatshields are also modified to reflect the new alignment of the exhaust pipes.
15. The light blue patches show the small slit channel in the rear wing for the F10. This was seen in the BMWs in 2009. Mclaren mostly have this on their MP4-25 as well. This split channel is to slow down air and increase the gradient pressures levels under and over the wing planes.
    

Other feature not seen in the pictures or due to lack of pictures are:

1. The gear box of the F60 was larger and posed a problem in trying to keep the wheelbase as short as possible once the large fuel tank was incorporated. Hence they had to design a compact version of the gearbox for 2010. Its reliability will be their main worry now for 2010.
2. The cooling systems have been re-laid out since the packaging changed things around in the sidepods. They basically had to keep the increase body width to a minimum.
3. The suspensions are push-rod configuration just like as predicted
4. Its Zero keel config
5. The rear crash structure, crucially doesn't rise up like the others pioneered last season. Why they have gone this route yet again is unknown and really alarming. Especially since they are not limited by suspension design anymore. Perhaps they have a new floor and rear package before the start of the season. They better.
   

Ferrari cover up their multideck diffuser designs. The diffsuer concept is still more or less evident at this time as to what it looks like. It is will be a variation of the Renault concept tried in 2009



NOTE: Just to clear it up for people who may have notced and wondered about this



The bulge that I have highlighted in yellow is just a collection of a Gyroscope and Accelerometer. In pure terms the device measures changes in direction in 3D space and the also the angular velocities.

This is not used in active racing but merely as a tool in testing. It would only add more drag due its cross-section.


Verdict

Without going for unwarranted sensationalist tag lines and clichés. I have to say the Ferrari car is an evolution but hardly close to the term 'radical' in any sense of the word. The very fact that they copied Redbull in principal is not something to be very proud off. It just shows some teams innovate and the others follow suit the next year. This is not good engineering or a display of skill, rather it displays a lack of original ideas and talent pool at Maranello. If they want to prove us wrong they need to come out with something truly original. Until then the F10 is a decent evolution on paper but hardly looks like a definite world title winner. Because just when you thought you have been surprised by Redbull and Brawn in 2009 they may yet again show some new innovative design approaches. A team shouldn't be in a position to wait till next year to copy that as well.

Ferrari maybe confident of improvements in comparison to their own F60.

But having already seen the Williams car, it seems like Ferrari's efforts are not good enough to out develop the others. That Williams is really something even if its a copy of ideas as well. Lets see how the Mclaren looks like now.

[Chrissie]

Ferrari may be working on 'B' spec F10

http://en.espnf1.com/ferrari/motorsport/story/7644.html