Lotus: FIA happy with “innovative” E22 nose

2014 F1 season

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The FIA is satisfied with Lotus’s interpretation of the rules with the striking two-pronged nose which features on their new E22.

Technical director Nick Chester said there were no legality concerns about the team’s unique approach to the regulations.

“The nose certainly is quite interesting,” he said after the car ran in public for the first time in Bahrain. “We think it’s a nice solution and it’s quite innovative.”

“Naturally, as with any interpretation of new regulations, we’ve talked with the FIA to ensure that they are happy with the design. It’s nice to have something a little bit different and we’re happy with our path having seen what everyone else is doing with their cars in this area.”

Chester described the whole car as “an elegant solution for the 2014 regulations”. He said the radical change in regulations had led to the creation of a “completely new” car.

“There’s very little which could be carried across from previous cars. That said, in certain areas we’ve been able to follow the same philosophies such as in our approach to aerodynamics and suspension, where lessons learnt with previous cars have been highly relevant.”

Chester took over from James Allison as technical director last year. Lotus were the last team to put their 2014 car on-track but he remains confident about their new racer.

“Already Mercedes and Red Bull have interesting aspects to their cars, but looking at the E22 after seeing everyone else’s interpretations, we’re still very pleased with the direction we’ve taken and the hard work of everyone at Enstone really has created an elegant car.”

Former Caterham driver Charles Pic appeared alongside Lotus’s race drivers Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado at a presentation of the E22 in Bahrain, though the team has not yet confirmed whether he has taken up a role as test driver.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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36 comments on “Lotus: FIA happy with “innovative” E22 nose”

  1. The assymectrical nose still annoys me…

    1. Well, Alain Prost did have an asymmetrical nose himself, and had pretty good results nevertheless ! :-)

      1. hahaha true!

  2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    20th February 2014, 16:20

    They HAD TO create a double nose, so the car can keep running when Romain or Pastor (or both) break one of the cones in their so-well-known crashes :P

    1. these comments are starting to get old

      1. The Grosjean ones are

        1. And yet Pastor has actual won a Formula 1 GP – unlike Grosjean.

          Viva el Venezolano! Viva la Robolución!

  3. Take a good look, ladies and gentlemen…. that’s the most complete Lotus chassis you’ll see all season. *Cue crash jokes*

  4. Can’t imagine they’re “happy” with it.. but whatever floats their boat I guess.

  5. Somehow like that double-pronged monster. Don’t know why though.

  6. Is it true that Pic has signed for Lotus reserve and test driver?
    I read something about it on PlanetF1 News.
    If this is true, good for Pic! Hope he gets a drive in the car soon.
    Perhaps he could replace Maldo for 2016. Or, with luck, 2015.

    1. @jojobudgie – So do Lotus now have the choice of D’ambrosio, Valsecchi and Pic to ignore when they need a stand-in?

      1. @william-brierty

        +99999999999999
        ha ha ha

  7. The double-tusk design is quite a nit solution that brings some aero advantages (I base this comment on ScarbsF1 first assessement of this design).
    It had to be asymmetrical because of the rules regarding the maximum cross-section area for the front tip of the chassis. This way the actual front tip is just one side, which follows the rules allowing for them to have a much larger front nose section than anybody else.

    But no doubt that the RB10 keel design is much more elegant.

    1. The double-tusk design is quite a nit solution that brings some aero advantages. But no doubt that the RB10 keel design is much more elegant.

      The truth is that none of us can really know which design is better or worse without the numbers, only the teams know for certain (and only if they have a good windtunnel) what works better with their car and what doesn’t.

      1. Let me clarify my statements. There are some advantages in having this large front but of course it does not mean that they have an advantage per se compared to the other teams, specially the clever (and unexpected) solutions such as the Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull fronts.

        I’m not good enough to come up with these theories if they are good solutions or not, as I can only evaluate the looks and later the performance after running, so I base my statements on Scarbs initial assessment of the E22: http://scarbsf1.com/blog1/2014/01/26/f1-2014-the-racers-edge-lotus-e22-initial-analysis/

  8. http://www.planet-f1.com/driver/3213/9175467/Grosjean-wants-race-wins-and-titles

    I really hope Grosjean does well. It’ll be nice for him and Lotus.
    Still supporting RoGro and Lotus. Still dislike Maldo though.
    Hope Pastor does well for Lotus’s sake.

    Go go go RoGro!

    1. My wife and me are both F1 fans. Although we don’t follow any teams/drivers, we were both impressed by the way RoGro bounced back. We were even more impressed by his performances towards the end of last season. For these reasons I’m willing him on this year.

      I’m not a fan of Maldonado either, but, if he starts getting onto the podium I might change my mind. I can’t warm to Maldonado but I think he is a fast, if erratic, driver.

      And I’m pleased Pic got the reserve role at Lotus, for the simple reason he gets written off too often. Because of his experience, I’d imagine Pic will be first in line should RoGro or Maldonado not be able to race.

      Oh, and I hope Chilton grabs a point or two this season.

      1. +1 @McKenzie

        Completely agree with everything you just said.
        Also hoping the Marussia’s will get a point ot two.

  9. If every team switches to a Lotus-like nose, the Flaccid style will be replaced by the Udders one …

  10. I admire the unique solution to the nose that Lotus has come up with. I hope ROGRO can make good use of it. I will continue to pull for Romain but I have lost interest i the team because they hired Crashmoor instead of Hulk.

  11. Technical question: does the asymmetrical nose favour either left or right handed corners? This leads me to wonder if they are built for clockwise circuits, would they consider making noses that were a mirror image for anti-clockwise circuits? Or is the difference negligible?

    1. @mattb I think the difference is negligible. Since in terms of lift the nose prongs are aerodynamically neutral I think the only difference is a slight increase in drag on the largest side, but nothing pronounced enough to make any reasonable difference.

      Although I’m no aerodynamicist! I believe the impression was similar from SommersF1 though.

    2. @mattb The angle at which the cars take the corners is really only big enough to affect the larger parts of the car like the rear wing and coke bottle area, this asymmetry is just around 5 cm so it really doesn’t matter.

      Just remember that the idea is to create a “tunnel” right in the middle of the nose so that the air can be split evenly to left and right when it reaches the sidepods, the anteater also tries to do this with the wing pylons but the finger is in the middle so the air is blocked somewhat.

  12. Essentially the same solution as Mercedes, but Mercedes achieved a more elegant rendition by using Vanity cover. Even without the top cover, Lotus could have made the thing look symmetrical. A pre-requisite for beauty is symmetry.

    1. Tell that to Mona Lisa.

    2. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

      The Lotus definitely has the latter half of the equation but not so much the former half.

      In any case, while the noses were off-putting at first, it’s the last thing on my mind now that we’ve seen the cars on track. So many other concerns apart from aesthetics; I’m willing to compromise and let them attach as many ‘toys’ as they can on the front if they get rid of DRS.

    3. They couldn’t make the nose symmetrical because the rules dictate that you can only have one ‘nose’. So the larger prong counts as the nose and the shorter one is only there to meet another rule which is the minimum cross sectional area slightly behind the nose (i think it might be 150mm behind the frontmost point).

  13. Really strange seeing Pastor Maldonado in Lotus overalls.

    1. It’s one of the ones I’m getting used to really quickly – Massa is taking longer as I’m sure will Ricciardo’s name appearing now at Red Bull!

  14. I think the E22 looks pretty cool myself – like a pair of evil tweezers. It’s much more elegant than many of the other cars, even with its asymmetry.

    I really hope Grosjean keeps improving as he did last season. Looking forward to seeing how he does against Pastor.

  15. The sideprofile of the E22 is probably what the TWG was imagining the new regulations were going to achieve, and I predict this is very close to what we are going to see next year with the mandatory vanity panels they are going to introduce. They just didn’t see the gap in the rules tho (pun most definitely intended)

  16. That nose is actually very pretty, especially in a side view – then it looks awesome, very vintage.
    If only it weren’t asymmetrical…

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