Here is a first look at the RicMe Motorsport car for the Malaysian Grand Prix. The car is quite basic in its looks, with unusual shapes, which reflect in recent results. The team have been challenging in the second half of the grid, and in some cases, they're pushing towards points finishes. The car has some interesting features, many of which will be discussed in this review.
Front Wing
The front wing is Brawn-esque, with a very large upper cascade, which will, for sure, affect the efficiency of the main plane of the wing. The natural evolution, would be an endplateless design, like much of the bigger teams, if they want to move up the field.
Front Bodywork
The nose remains a smooth one, due to having a low bulkhead at the cockpit. This may have some benefits, but it means airflow underneath isn't as efficient as most of the teams ahead of them at the moment. This is something for the team to take into consideration throughout the season. The splitter area, may well be where the big downfall is for the car. The splitter, doesn't flow with the sidepods, which is where most of the airflow reaches to the rear and diffuser. This means the team won't have sufficient downforce at the rear of the car. A good example of this splitter area, would be found on the Cottrell or Innovo cars, where their splitters flow fluently with their sidepods, while generating strong vortexes.
Main Bodywork
One issue with the car, is the illegality of the headrest area. Despite the safety risks, they were allowed to race anyway. The unusual area, is the exhausts, where the whole bodywork appears to drop, to aid the exhaust plume. It is still unclear whether this has been a benefit to them. They have a blade roll structure, with a large airbox, to help cooling at Malaysia. The floor however needs looking at, as the frontal area is not thick enough to be safe.
Rear Bodywork
The gearbox area, is unusual, in the fact it extends out, to cover part of the driveshaft, perhaps in an attempt to gain an aerodynamic advantage. This could be advantageou
For Adelaide, Innovo has brought a complete B-spec car. This analysis will focus on the rear of the car only, however. This car is nothing like the Jordan EJ16 we saw last season, which dominated the championship. Despite this, the car still seems very well balanced, and is one of the bookies favourites for championship victory. With a strong line-up of World Champion Heidfeld and new boy Robert Kubica, it's looking like possibly another good year for the Innovo team.
Floor
Innovo have brought a brand new floor to Adelaide, helping channel airflow to their double diffuser. They have some strong vortex generators, at the front end of the floor, to energise the airflow to the diffuser at the rear, improving overall downforce. Towards the rear, with the new tighter sidepods, you can see a large tunnel in the floor, feeding air to the upper deck of the diffuser in the central section.
Diffuser
There are few changes to the diffuser, only to help accommodate more airflow from the rear floor tunnel. Their double diffuser concept, is unique, although a similar concept has been introduced by Mercedes AMG. The top deck of the diffuser, is only in the central section of the diffuser, and is fed from 3 different areas. The 2 floor tunnels from either side, feed airflow into the top deck, from the sidepod vortexes, to increase downforce. The other area that feeds the diffuser is the engine starter hole, which feeds airflow from underneath the car, in a same way that the 2009/2010 double diffusers did.
Rear Wing
There are few changes to the rear wing, although the team have introduced slot gap separators, and multi elements in the outer 20mm of the wing. The flap and main plane are both split into 2 in the outer 20mm, making it a 4 element wing, in the space that is classed as the endplate. The Ferrari F2012 has a similar concept.
Exhausts
The exhausts are positioned above the suspension arm, increasing the downwards exhaust plume. As the exhaust gases blow downwards, they meet with the airflow around the sidepods, directing the high velocity flow into the rear floor tunnels, increasing the flow through the double diffuser, helping to generate more downforce.
Strangely, Innovo claim they have a new qualifying device that they may use in Melbourne, to help increase downforce, which they claim is unlike anything that's been seen before. Arguably, Innovo seem to already have the highest downforce levels of any team, with their multi-fed double diffuser concept, so it will be interesting to see what else can be implemented. Overall, the car is extremely well balanced, and will surely be challenging for a win, come Melbourne.
Hansen's 2012 challenger, the DW58 is almost a new concept to last year's car. They have a new chassis, and completely different bodywork. Despite a similar wing configuration to last year, there isn't much that has gone unchanged. The DW58 is a relatively simple car, at first glance it appears to have no tricks, its just the performance of simplicity.
Front Wing
The front wing, has a similar concept to last year. It appears to have no changes, although they have slightly revised their upper cascades, to get a better balance between front and rear downforce.
Nose
Strangely, Hansen have a cockpit that is at a 550mm maximum height. Despite this, they have opted for a very clear step in their nose, perhaps conforming to what others expect, rather than what is more viable aerodynamically. I am sure we may see a revised cockpit and nose concept during the coming season.
Bodywork
Last year, Hansen had a very chunky design, but overall had very good flow to the rear, which gave them the performance they had last year. This year they have completely revised the whole bodywork, with the exhausts incorporated into the sidepod-engine cover transition. The overall design seems rather BGP-01-esque, with the triangular airbox and sidepod intake shape. Many teams seems to have sidepods that are even tighter than Hansen's, so we'll see how they perform come Melbourne.
Rear End
The diffuser of the DW58, is somewhat of a disappointment. There appears to be a lack of rear downforce there, with no strakes, and a very simple shape to it. As expected though, I am confident there will be several upgrades of the diffuser area throughout the year. They remain with a similar wing to last season, generating maximum downforce, rather than optimizing their DRS with their larger rear wing flap chord length.
Innovations
From what has been seen, there appears to be very little, if not no innovation. The secret to this car appears, to simply be the simplicity, and conditioning of the flow.
Overall Review
From what has been seen so far, it looks as if Hansen have taken a step backwards in their design philosophy from last season's car. The balance appears off, and may take some time for them to get the car up to pace. The exit of Ben Hansen from the team, seems to have affected them greatly, but thanks to Tom Martin joining the team, we may see a much better car in the coming races. During the pre-season tests, they appear to have been running low-fuel to hide some of the errors in the cars design, however with great drivers like Raikkonen and Klien, I'm sure anything is possible.
The Adelaide test is coming up within the next few days, be sure to check here for all the latest technical updates from all the teams on track.
