Last year, around the same time everyone was complaining about stepped noses cones of the F1 cars. This year, pretty much the same story, only a bit dirty. If you look at the three cars in the feature image, two of them have ‘anteater’ type noses, while Lotus F1 Team came up with a ‘fork-lift’ type nose never seen before in F1.
In my previous post, I wrote about Force India’s new livery, however FI only had released the picture of the car from one side and left everyone guessing how their nose has been. Though Andrew Green let it out in an interview that it looks more like an ‘anteater’. There you go, most of the cars (barring Lotus I guess) will have similar noses in 2014.
As the weekend starts, we will see more car launches and more disappointed fans with their favorite F1 car’s nose cone, often considered as the face of the car. Many are of the opinion that we all will get used to it. But with the amount of jokes people are making, I think it would be rather too difficult.
Lotus’ approach has been different. The reason why F1 teams designed their nose cones thus has to do with new regulations. Apart from the change from V8 Engines to turbo charged V6 engines, there is another requirement to lower the noses, apparently for safety reasons.
The 2014 regulations require the use of lower noses than in previous years, in the interests of safety. The tip of the nose will have to be no more than 185mm above the ground, in comparison to the 550mm allowed in 2012. These regulations were amended in June 2013 so as to completely outlaw the use of the “stepped noses” used in 2012 and 2013, thereby forcing teams to design a car with a genuinely lower nose rather than using the temporary solution.
– Wikipedia
With the design we saw on Lotus (fork-lift), it may cause more harm than add to safety it seems. There are no comments yet from FIA or F1 Governing body on the Lotus nose cone, but they have decidedly used a wiser approach.
Their right tusk is longer (and is perceived as the actual nose technically) and left one short (perceived as just another body work). It may be possible that Lotus figured out that by making one of the tusks longer, they could over come the limitation of having two noses, which is illegal according to F1 Rules.
It is really interesting to see how every teams interpreted the rules and how those thoughts converted into the car that we see. Well now you know why the nose cones of your favorite F1 car is dirty.
What are your thoughts?