Given that this week’s shots were all taken at the Formula 1 Expo, I had to get at least one shot on the photoblog that showed part of an F1 car. What you see here is part of the front wing of the Red Bull Racing Renault that had pride-of-place just inside the door of the exhibition hall.
This was the closest I’ve been to an F1 car in years and the one thing that stuck me was the intricacy of the aerodynamic design. In the past (back in the 80s), the cars were always incredibly sleak but today, I notice that they have all sprouted a collection of oddly organic and remarkably complex little fins, wings and other knobbly bits along the sides of the bodies, presumably to fine tune airflow around the car. The front wing, as seen here, is also made of multiple “blades” which, I assume, can be tweaked depending upon conditions and whatever other factors the engineering team deem important. Obviously, there’s an enormous amount of fluid dynamics and computer optimisation involved in the design these days.