James Allison explains Ferrari's nose design
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James Allison has explained the reasons behind Ferrari's long nose design this year and revealed that the team is working on shorter versions as a part of future updates.
From launch it was clear Ferrari had adopted a different philosophy to its nose design than most of its main rivals. Unlike the short noses on the Mercedes, Red Bull and Williams for example, the Ferrari design sees the nose tip extend beyond the front edge of the front wing.
The general thinking among Ferrari's rivals is that the shorter the nose the better and Red Bull is believed to have an even shorter nose in the pipeline which has yet to pass the necessary crash tests to make it to the car. Although the Ferrari appears to be the odd one out among the front runners, Allison explained that the design of the front bulkhead means it is unlikely the nose on the SF15-T will get significantly shorter.
"We will keep working on it, is the honest answer," he said when asked if there were plans for a shorter nose. "There's a few physical limitations, the rules for the crash tests are such that you have to absorb a certain energy without going above a certain G level, and that requires your nose to be a minimum length.
"Where our front bulkhead is makes it rather difficult for us to get a nose that is super-duper short and still pass the crash test. We can go shorter than we are now, but we probably can't go as short as some of the others, but that's one of those things."
Allison said the updates would continue to come thick and fast to the Ferrari as the team aims to consistently challenge Mercedes for wins.
"We're not going to stay conservative, we ae going to be shovelling performance onto the car as quickly as we can find it and make it. There is a bag load in the pipeline at the factory at the moment and that will find its way onto the car as soon as we can. There will be more coming after that, but the aero programme is performing strongly and these are still quite young aero rules, so we can expect more from it.
"Ditto the engine, the whole situation with the tokens means it's a very different situation to last year and, notwithstanding the gains we've made to date, we think we can add a lot more during the year."