Jan 12
25
Caterham, formerly Lotus, finished 10th in last year’s constructors championship
Caterham have become the first team to unveil their 2012 car after images of the CT01 were leaked on the internet.
The car will be launched officially in F1 Racing magazine on Thursday.
It features an unattractive nose, a variation of which is expected to appear on all this year’s cars because of a change in the technical regulations.
“The Caterham’s nose looks pretty stupid – but everyone’s going to be heading in that direction,” said BBC F1′s technical analyst, Gary Anderson.
The look stems from a new rule that demands the noses be 7cm lower than they were typically in 2011, in an attempt to reduce the risk of driver injuries in ‘T-bone’ accidents by keeping the nose lower than the cockpit sides.
However, the height of the chassis at the front bulkhead remains the same as last year.
The result, on the Caterham, is two pronounced lumps on either side of the upper chassis and a flat forward section to the nose.
Anderson, the former technical director of the Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar teams, said: “When I saw a 2012 F1 chassis for the first time a couple of months ago, I thought: ‘Oh God, I hope they’re not all going to look like that!’ But it looks like they are.
“They could have lowered the height of the front bulkhead in the regs to be the same as that of the nose, but there was resistance to that from some teams.
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The sidepods are more sculpted than they were last year and it has a big hole at the back of the engine cover like last year’s Red Bull
Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
“Given the rules, you want to get the underside of the chassis as high as possible, so the air coming off the front wing has reduced blockage and gets to the leading edge of the underfloor with as much energy
Articles are gathered and rebroadcast from public feeds: source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/formula_one/16727904.stm
